After they returned to the room, silence condensed into something almost tangible, filling every corner of the air.
Seraphina walked straight to the bed and sat down, head lowered. On the surface she appeared calm, but her heart was anything but.
The brief moment of closeness she had felt in the library earlier clashed with the tension of returning to this place, causing her heartbeat to speed up once again.
Movira watched her quietly, her own heart filled with unease. She could guess at the turmoil and confusion swirling inside Seraphina. These issues had to be resolved, or problems would arise sooner or later.
Finally, Seraphina took a deep breath, lifted her head, and stared straight into Movira’s eyes. There was a flicker in her gaze.
“Can we… talk?” Her voice was soft, carrying a slight tremble, yet it shattered the quiet in the room.
“Of course.” Movira’s heart tightened, but she nodded. “What do you want to talk about?”
She walked over to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down, keeping some distance from the bed.
Seraphina clasped her hands tightly on her knees, swallowed hard, and spoke with visible reluctance. Her voice was even softer now, almost like a murmur. “I… I just wanted to ask… what exactly are we right now?”
The courage she had gathered seemed to deflate the moment the words left her mouth. She didn’t dare look at Movira anymore and quickly lowered her head, staring at her own fingers. “Are we… sisters… or… something… more than that?”
The last few words rolled around in her mouth before becoming indistinct.
If she could, Movira would have immediately said they were more than that. But reason told her to stay silent.
Seraphina’s words echoed in her mind. Right now, the girl desperately needed balance. Any further stimulation could make her collapse, and the conditions were far from ready.
“We are sisters. There is no doubt about that.” She paused, her gaze softening as it rested on Seraphina’s lowered head. “You are my precious… little sister. That will never change.”
Seraphina seemed to breathe a small sigh of relief. Her tense shoulders relaxed slightly.
Yet a faint trace of disappointment—something so subtle even she herself wasn’t aware of it—flashed through her eyes.
“Then… what about those things you said to me before? About me being your… continuation… or whatever those words were. What did they mean?”
That was a thorn buried deep in her heart—the greatest source of her confusion and fear regarding their relationship. Movira was caught slightly off guard by the sudden question but quickly composed an answer.
“Those words… part of them were said so you would stay by my side. The outside world is too dangerous for you. I couldn’t bear the thought of you facing it alone… So I did some extreme and wrong things. I thought I could scare you into not leaving.”
She looked into Seraphina’s eyes, trying to make her gaze appear sincere and full of apology.
“But now I understand that approach was wrong. I… was completely mistaken. I was a terrible sister who used the wrong methods because I was overly worried.”
The explanation was half-true, half-false. It wrapped her obsessive possessiveness in the cloak of “excessive protection” and carefully avoided the word “love,” which might have detonated Seraphina’s heart.
Seraphina listened silently, absorbing the words.
Then her cheeks visibly reddened at a speed noticeable to the naked eye. Her voice grew even smaller. “Then… what about what happened yesterday… Is that also… something sisters… can do?”
After all that buildup, she had finally asked the question that left her most flustered. She buried her head even lower.
With a kind of obsessive avoidance and shame, this reaction was probably tied to her confused self-identity and past trauma. In Movira’s view, bodily needs were sometimes independent of emotions—a natural phenomenon that needed proper guidance.
“Seraphina, the body sometimes has its own needs. There’s nothing shameful about it. It’s like eating when you’re hungry or drinking when you’re thirsty. When two people are close, and both are willing, helping each other to relieve those needs can be seen as mutual care. You shouldn’t feel pressured or disgusted by it.”
“I-I obviously know about bodily needs!” Seraphina seemed provoked by the words “nothing shameful.” After all, she had… experienced it herself before. She suddenly raised her head, her blush deepening, her tone carrying both embarrassment and annoyance at being seen through. Yet because Movira’s words made sense, she lacked real conviction.
“But… but that still goes way beyond… normal sisterly boundaries!”
She couldn’t even imagine Movira doing that kind of thing with her. Just thinking about it made her scalp go numb.
They had done it before… but this time it felt completely different in her heart!
Seeing Seraphina’s adorable, flustered reaction, Movira’s heart stirred. She felt it was time to ease this stalemate. The corners of her lips curved upward.
“Well… we are sisters, aren’t we? If you ever encounter a similar situation you can’t handle on your own again, I’d be very happy to… provide help!”
“Y-You! What nonsense are you spouting?!” Seraphina instantly exploded, like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, puffing up in indignation. She glared at Movira with shame and anger, her previous grievances and confusion completely washed away by this wave of embarrassment.
“I won’t! I would never have that kind of situation! If you keep saying things like that, I’ll… I’ll… I’ll…”
She struggled with the word “I’ll” for a long time but couldn’t come up with anything threatening. Mainly because in front of Movira, Seraphina’s meager strength really wasn’t much of a threat.
In the end, all she could do was huff angrily, “I just won’t talk to you anymore!”
She didn’t even know why she said that, but it came out instinctively.
Seeing her regain some vitality and even show this angry, pouty side—so different from her earlier lifeless state—Movira knew she had hit the right note with the joke.
Seraphina had experienced those needs before, but Movira had no intention of pointing it out.
She knew when to stop.
The atmosphere seemed to loosen a little under this slightly confrontational surface that was actually bringing them closer. Seraphina pouted for a while, then silently lowered her head again. However, her voice was no longer as heavy.
After another moment of silence, her voice turned soft once more, carrying uncertainty and vulnerability. She asked weakly, as if seeking the final lifeline of reassurance:
“Then… after this, we’ll still be… sisters, right? Just like the past few days. It won’t change… right?”
As soon as she finished speaking, Seraphina couldn’t help thinking that in this unfamiliar place, the only thing she could grasp onto and rely on was actually this person before her—Movira, whom she had once feared and resisted, yet who had also saved her.
This realization made the tip of her nose sting. The faint sense of grievance was almost impossible to hide.