Chapter 15: Reminiscence

I stood there as I watched Ellaines' laughing face turn to one that was crying.

It took me a moment to react as it was too sudden, and I was just standing there slack jawed as I watched my best friend cry.

I ran up to my bed but I did not know what to do in this situation, Of course I had seen her cry before when she got hurt while we were playing or practicing, but in those cases I knew the reason for her crying.

After an awkward pause next to the bed I managed to stutter out "Wh-Why are you crying? What happened? Did you hurt yourself when your dad pushed you out of bed?"

Ellaine suddenly stopped crying and had a shocked expression on her face as she slowly turned her head to face me, her eyes slightly swollen and asked me.

"How did you know?"

"How did I know what?"

"How did you know that my dad pushed me out of bed?"

I froze for a second, realizing the blunder I had just made.

I had been keeping my abilities a secret and hadn't even told my dad and now in the heat of the moment I'd said something which I couldn't know if i hadn't been there.

"W-Well I heard a thud from where your bedroom is, and I know how much of a heavy sleeper you are, so I thought it was obvious that your dad who was the first one to check the house, would check on you, find you asleep and push you off the bed to wake you up causing the thud."

I said, trying to come up with a reasonable excuse.

Ellaine, still teary eyed, looked downwards as if thinking about something and then promptly shook her head before looking at me with a perplexed look while wiping the tears at the corner of her eyes with her hands.

"Anyway" I said, trying to divert the topic "Why were you crying"

Ellaine looked into my eyes, small tears forming at the corners of hers again even though she had just wiped the last ones away.

"I-I don't want him to get hurt again, every time he goes out with that stupid sword, he always comes back cut and bleeding from somewhere."

That did make sense, Uncle Tao was on silver level rank 9 and was one of the few upper silver level people in the city, he had some patrol duties but usually he was only called for large scale expeditions or for high level suppressions.

I patted Ellaines' head like how dad had been doing it for me whenever I felt nervous, I never told him, but somehow he always knew when I was.

"It's gonna be fine, your dads with my dad and even though they may not be invincible, they're pretty strong together you know." I said while remembering the time when me and dad had come to this town a few days after he had adopted me.

On the way here we ran into a group of upper bronze rank wolves, and they chased us for quite some time, I had managed to trap a few while dad wasn't watching but it looked pretty hopeless back then with the limit on my abilities.

Then Uncle Tao who had been out on an expedition with a group of adventurers, ran towards us and killed one wolf with one hit, it took him a mere 2 minutes to clear the entire group.

After that, my dad fell to his knees from exhaustion while still cradling me and holding me tight to his chest.

I dont know what Uncle Tao saw in dad, but he asked him to train under him if he wanted to protect me, and my dad agreed after taking one look at me.

Unfortunately, my pleasant reminiscence was interrupted by a scream from the house right next to ours.

Activating my ability I saw a similar shadow from before emerging from that house but instead of running away, as if noticing the lack of people, It moved towards the house me and Elaine were in.