Chapter 81 - A Cage : Part 2

"This is where you live?" Axel asked as he stood behind Adreanna, who was unlocking the door in front of her.

"When I'm not home, yes." She answered flatly, opening the door as she let her brother get in first.

"I sometimes take a nap on an abandoned building." She added while closing the door behind them.

"That's... great." The boy awkwardly retorted back. He opened his shoes and put them aside before getting further down to her apartment.

The apartment was pretty small. The building looked old, and the neighbourhood was pretty empty. There were small cracks along the walls, looking like they would fall down at any given moment.

But despite how poor the apartment was, Adreanna managed to make it look good. She neatly put everything in their places, making them outshine the crappy building. She probably chose this apartment building because it was a good place to hide from the police's radar.

There were faces of governments on the wall. Axel stopped in front of it to inspect them. The amount of 'x' on their pictures was concerning.

His eyes caught a picture of the president with a question mark on it. The boy squinted his eyes when he saw something was hidden behind it.

He reached his hand while tiptoeing a little. Adreanna was taller than him, so it made sense why he struggled right now. When his finger reached the edge of the picture, he quickly plucked it from the wall, causing another picture to fall that was hidden behind the president's photo.

Axel put the president's photo back on the wall and went to pick up the fallen picture. He widened his eyes when he found a picture of Rune, smiling formally at the camera.

He raised his eyebrows when he read the words on the picture, messily written yet still managed to look beautiful.

'Axel's best friend, do not harm.'

Oh. That was pretty considerate of Adreanna despite her being a literal walking statue all the time. Though the words on the picture probably would not work because Rune was not his best friend anymore.

But let's keep it that way so Adreanna would not actually harm her.

"Drink." Adreanna suddenly spoke while standing beside him, causing the boy to hide the picture behind him in a hurry.

He looked over Adreanna with a forced smile while trying to calm his racing heart. Sometimes he would forget that she was the most remarkable assassin and could appear out of nowhere like a ghost.

She had already put away her cloak and porcelain mask, leaving them hanging on the wall near the door.

Adreanna still stared at him without a single glint of emotions on her face. Axel looked down at her hand and noticed that she was offering a glass of water.

"Oh, thanks." He hurriedly took the glass, realizing that he had been making her wait for too long.

Axel chugged the water in one go. He finally drank after a while.

The boy did not feel thirsty beforehand. After getting the water running down his throat, he quickly realized how dry his throat was.

"He was foolish." She suddenly spoke again. It always came out of nowhere.

Axel blinked in confusion. "What?"

"No matter how smart Kiaran is, revealing your identity was a stupid move." She continued impassively before walking away from the boy, leaving him to process her words alone.

"Oh, right." Axel nodded in agreement while quietly putting back Rune's picture to where it was.

"Here." She popped up beside him so sudden again, though he was already prepared not to get startled this time.

The boy looked down to her hand again to see what she offered this time. He frowned when he saw a black shirt and black short pants.

"Is this Kiaran's clothes?" The boy questioned with a doubt. Did Kiaran meet up with her so many times? He never told him anything about it.

Well, to be fair, his brother never told Axel anything since the beginning.

Adreanna put the clothes in his hand and a towel on top of it. "He likes to break in and stay here sometimes." She dully explained.

"He-" Axel choked on his words, looking at her bewilderedly. "-will he break in?"

"Maybe." She blinked slowly. Her long eyelashes batted on her cheek as the 19-year-old teen watched her brother stiffen at her words.

Adreanna's sea-coloured eyes caught Axel's trembling hands. She diverted her gaze to the boy's breathing that had become ragged.

"He won't come. He stays here once in a blue moon." She reassured without a single tone in her voice.

"What if he did?" The boy's eyes twitched as he stared at her wide-eyed.

"Then I'll tell him to go," Adreanna stated easily, still staring at him with her two beautifully uncanny eyes.

"He can't- he shouldn't know that I'm here. Please." Axel tugged her sleeve almost desperately.

"Okay." She put her hand to Axel's hand. It was as if she was trying to comfort him. Maybe she did.

Adreanna moved her hand to Axel's face and brushed his hair away from his eyes. "Wash yourself first. We'll attend your wounds later."

"My wounds?" Axel asked after calming down a little.

"Ah, right. My wounds."

She must have noticed the faded scars on his neck. He really did not tend his wounds that much back in Rune's house. The red-haired girl helped him heal, but the injuries were too much, and some of them left a big scar that she could not recover by simply mending them.

So Axel lied to Rune that the wounds were healed. He had lied to her too many times.

"I better take a bath, then." Axel stiffly said to her before slowly making his way to the bathroom.

Adreanna watched the boy clumsily get inside the bathroom. She stared at where Axel was with hidden thoughts and glanced at the president's picture.

The oldest Vergessene made her way to a cabinet and opened it. She grabbed the medkit inside while grabbing a handful amount of bandages beside it.

She put it on the bed and took another towel. She didn't have to wait too long before Axel got out of the bathroom with Kiaran's clothes.

It was pretty big but not that large for the boy. Kiaran and Axel's bodies were pretty much the same aside from their heights. So the clothes fit Axel enough for him to wear.

She noticed the scars on his legs after wearing Kiaran's short pants. Adreanna moved her eyes up to Axel's red eye and stared at it for a long time. The boy noticed the look she gave and quickly covered it with his wet hair.

"I won't ask if you don't want to tell me about it," Adreanna uttered to him and pat the place beside her, telling him to come to her.

Axel rushed to her side and sat down on the bed obediently as she started to open the medkit and bring out a needle.

"Roll your pants up a little." She ordered, and Axel did as she told in silence.

She froze at the sight of the wound on his thigh. Axel tried to catch what she was thinking at the moment behind her emotionless eyes.

"It healed up. It's fine. Don't worry about it." He decided to say that to her despite not knowing what went in her mind.

Then Adreanna tended all his wounds thoroughly. Axel would grimace when she stitched some of his opened wounds and bandaged them all.

In the end, the bandages were all over his body except his face. They wrapped both of his legs, arms, and neck.

When Adreanna put the last bandage on his arm, he noticed the scars on her neck too. He could not help but divert his gaze to the horizontal scar right below her left eye again.

"I got them from another me when she kidnapped you." She suddenly told him without giving the boy the chance to ask.

"I tried to bring you back, but I was in a coma for a while. I lost to the demon." There was some bitterness in her words, it was vague, but Axel managed to notice them.

There was so much happening when he passed out that day. He did not even know she was fighting another Adreanna. And Axel would lie if he did not feel a little warm for the fact that she tried to save him.

"Are you okay?" Axel questioned with concern. She had never lost to anyone before. For him, she was the strongest person in the world.

It kind of made sense that she lost to herself.

"Yes," She answered truthfully and finished the last bandage. "Thank you."

"Oh. Yeah. You're welcome." He cleared his throat and looked anywhere but her face.

"When I woke up, I searched for you." She began while putting in all the medicines inside the box of medkit again. "But you were with your best friend already. So I left."

"Thanks for searching, I guess." Axel felt a little sour at the mention of Rune. He tried so hard to forget about her. It only made his heart even more.

✵✵✵✵✵✵

Axel wore a red jacket that he borrowed from her with a hood that covered his head. The boy put an eyepatch over his red eye to hide the colour.

Both of them were on their way to a nearby convenience store to buy something to eat. Adreanna wore a red crop top and black jeans. She wore a black drape over the blood-coloured crop-top. The girl's hair was neatly braided, just like it always did.

They both got in the store with some men stealing glances at her. Axel would sometimes glare at the people who would look at Adreanna in the wrong way, even the slightest.

Axel's eyes caught a cupcake on display, and quickly made his way to the aisle, separating with his sister.

He took two cupcakes with a smile and went to ask her if he could buy them or not. "Adreanna, can I have-"

Axel snapped his mouth shut when he saw her getting surrounded by police officers and quickly hid away.

"Adreanna Vergessene, sister of Axel Vergessene, you're under arrest."