Cael slowly rose from the sofa, his gaze turning deep and unreadable.
He moved so slowly that Belle instinctively took a step closer to Wise.
The siblings exchanged a glance.
The message in their eyes was obvious.
There really was something suspicious about him.
Wise kept one hand behind his back, gripping a stun gun tightly.
“Since you asked so sincerely…”
Cael suddenly lowered his voice.
His usually gentle eyes narrowed slightly, and the corner of his mouth curled into a faint smile.
Belle’s back instinctively straightened.
“I’ll be gracious enough to tell you.”
Cael stood upright and adjusted the hem of his rumpled clothes.
The dim light from the television struck the side of his face, dividing it into light and shadow.
Combined with the almost sinister smile on his lips, he looked exactly like some kind of villain.
“To protect the peace of New Eridu…”
“To carry out the evils of love and truth…”
Belle’s mouth twitched.
Anyone could tell by now that something was seriously wrong with this speech.
“Cael!”
“The cute and charming villain…”
“The chosen employee roaming the halls of Random Play…”
“Cael!!”
Belle finally couldn’t take it anymore.
She grabbed a cushion from the sofa and hurled it at him.
It was only a pillow, so it wasn’t exactly dangerous.
Cael raised his hands and caught it easily.
His villainous expression instantly collapsed into a cheerful smile.
“Hahaha, I’m kidding.
Don’t be so tense.”
Wise let out a long breath and quietly switched off the stun gun in his hand.
“You don’t happen to think watching us get nervous is funny, do you?”
“Not really.”
Cael sat back down and took a sip of water, inwardly lamenting that he really wasn’t cut out for dramatic performances like this.
“Can you be serious?
This is important!”
Belle sat down across from him, visibly annoyed, and glared at him as fiercely as she could.
“If you don’t tell us the truth, you can forget about getting paid for this past week!”
Cael’s expression stiffened.
Even heroes had to bow to the realities of making a living.
And he wasn’t even a hero.
Dennies couldn’t solve everything, but without Dennies, you couldn’t solve anything.
“There’s no need to go that far.”
His tone immediately softened.
Cael gestured for both of them to sit down and sighed helplessly.
“Relax.
Right now, I’m just an ordinary employee at a video store.
There’s no need to make this so tense.”
Cael had never been particularly good at pretending.
Something unfamiliar was unfamiliar.
Something familiar was familiar.
When it came to things he already knew well, he couldn’t convincingly pretend to be seeing them for the first time.
And Wise happened to be extremely observant.
Sooner or later, he would’ve seen through Cael’s act.
So should he simply tell them the truth?
Confess that he’d crossed over from another world?
Forget it.
That would only make the siblings even more suspicious.
No one would willingly believe in some fantastical experience that belonged in novels or movies.
Even if it happened to be true.
People were strange creatures.
Most only believed what they were willing to believe.
Cael sat on the sofa and looked seriously at Belle and Wise.
“I know both of you.
I know Eous, and I know about the HDD system because I already knew you more than ten years ago.”
“More than ten years ago?”
Belle looked confused.
Wise frowned in thought.
“Don’t tell me you…”
Wise seemed to have vaguely realized something.
Cael’s expression turned solemn.
He let out a heavy sigh before continuing.
“Yes.
Just like you two, I came from the Helios Academy.”
“What?
Helios?!”
Belle exclaimed in disbelief.
She looked Cael up and down, trying to find some flaw in his expression or movements.
But there was nothing.
Nothing at all.
After the fall of the Old Capital, she and Wise had survived and struggled to make a living throughout New Eridu.
Eventually, they’d saved enough money to come to Sixth Street and open Random Play.
Their origins in the Helios Academy were one of their greatest secrets.
They had never told anyone.
Anyone who knew their identities had to be either a former Helios employee who’d interacted with them back then…
Or one of the children who had undergone experiments there.
But Cael was young, around the same age as them.
The first possibility didn’t fit the timeline.
Which meant…
Only the second possibility remained.
Had Cael really come from Helios, just like them?
Then why couldn’t either of them remember him?
No.
That wasn’t necessarily strange.
Helios had been enormous, and there had been many children involved in its experiments.
Belle couldn’t possibly remember every single one of them.
She found it difficult to believe.
Wise did too.
But neither of them could find an obvious way to refute his claim.
Especially because the Helios Academy itself was…
The Helios Academy had once stood at the end of Highway Seven in the Minerva District of the Old Capital.
It was one of the world’s leading research institutions in human Ether aptitude and Ether manipulation.
While the siblings remained silent in shock, Cael continued.
“Helios had many different departments.
Each research group handled a different subject related to Ether aptitude and Ether manipulation.
“I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember that Carole was the chief researcher at the time.
She oversaw many different projects, including research into the perception of living beings and Ether.”
“Professor Carole…”
The moment that name was spoken, the way Belle and Wise looked at Cael changed again.
Now they truly believed he had come from Helios.
“The research into Life-Ether Perception was based on whether a human could accurately distinguish ordinary living beings from Ether entities inside a Hollow without relying on vision or instruments.
“I actually used that ability while we were rescuing Anby.
Remember when you couldn’t trace the signal from her phone?”
Cael looked at them.
Wise nodded.
“I remember.
You pinpointed Anby’s exact location, as well as the Ethereal on the ground floor of that building.
So that was an ability produced by the Life-Ether Perception research?”
Cael nodded.
“That’s not all.
There are still many mysteries about my body that I haven’t figured out yet.
I still don’t fully understand everything Helios researched or did to me back then…
“Unfortunately, all the research records are now inside Hollow Zero.
If I wanted to find the data from those days…”
He sighed and shook his head.
“After the Old Capital fell, I survived and ended up drifting around the Outer Ring, scraping by on whatever salvage and junk I could find.
“Later, I secretly followed a vehicle into the city.
Then, only a few days after I arrived, a Hollow disaster broke out—the one on Fifty-Sixth Street.
“After that, I heard someone here was hiring, so I came to Random Play.”
“So that’s what happened…”
Belle was already beginning to believe him.
A trace of sympathy appeared on her face.
“I didn’t realize you’d been through so much.
You’ve had it even worse than Wise and me…”
But unlike Belle, Wise still maintained one final trace of caution.
“If you really came from Helios, and you knew Belle, me, and Professor Carole, then you must have experienced that…
disaster.”
“Wise…”
Pain appeared on Belle’s face.
She gently grabbed the hem of her brother’s shirt.
That disaster was the memory she least wanted to revisit.
There had even been a time when she’d desperately wanted to forget it.
But no matter what she did, she couldn’t.
Cael raised his gaze toward the ceiling.
Then he spoke slowly, emphasizing every word.
“One day, we’ll catch the [Sun].”
It really helps the fic grow!