Chap 172: Frozen

Tee froze. She could have crushed the girl with a flick of strength, but instead she just stood there, stunned. For once, she hadn’t moved. For once, they had hit her.

Before the girl could strut away, Kie was there. His hand clamped down on her shoulder with firm authority. His voice cut sharp through the air. “Not only are you blind,” he said coldly, “but you’re lacking in basic manners.” He pointed to the bag at Tee’s feet. “Pick it up. Apologize.”

The trooper blinked at him, startled, then flicked her gaze to Tee. Her mouth opened, closed. A muttered apology slipped out before she snatched up the bag and shoved it back toward Tee, cheeks flushed. Then she fled.

For a heartbeat, silence stretched between them. Tee clutched the bag, her expression unreadable. Kie didn’t let go of the irritation still burning in his chest.

The slim chip that held all their money had fallen. Both Tee and Kie reached for it at the same time. Their heads knocked together with a sharp thud.

“Ugh—” Tee hissed, rubbing her temple, glaring at him from inches away.

He grunted something under his breath, just as annoyed.

The absurdity of it almost cracked her composure. A laugh threatened at the edges of her lips, but she bit it back, clutching the chip tight in her hand.

They left the square, slipping onto a hover-bus to put distance between themselves and the watching eyes.

The driver, separated by glass and grille, frowned immediately. “Xeno-victim not allowed.” His voice was flat, unmoved.

Kie stepped forward. “Bus is empty. I’m with her. If she mutates, she’ll eat me first and give you time to escape.” He said it like a joke, but the driver’s face didn’t change.

So Kie pulled out cash. More than five times the fare. He shoved it through the slot. The driver hesitated, then grudgingly unlocked the side door, waving them toward the very back. “Stay there,” he ordered.

They went in. Kie slipped onto a bench on the right side, settling his broad shoulders against the glass. Tee paused, unsure, and began lowering herself onto a bench across the aisle.

A snap of fingers. She turned her head—Kie was staring, pointing to the empty seat beside him like it was a command.

Instead, Tee smirked and slid into the seat directly behind him. Let him think he could order her around.

Kie didn’t argue. He only draped his arm casually across the top of the empty bench beside him, staking his invisible claim. No one else boarded anyway. If Tee mutated, sitting in front meant he’d be the first target, shielding the driver. His life was jacked-up enough without that, but so be it.

The bus rumbled forward. Sunlight streamed through the windows, casting his hair into molten strands of glass. Bone-straight, neat, almost too perfect for a trooper. Tee stared at the back of his head, fascinated despite herself.

She leaned forward and brushed her fingers over the nape of his neck.

Kie inhaled sharply. The stroke was feather-light, soothing in a way he hadn’t expected. For a second his vision blurred, thoughts scattering. He almost told her to keep going.

But he didn’t.

Instead, she threaded her fingers through his hair deliberately, tousling it. “Too much hair for an MG trooper. Maybe I should cut it,” she teased.

Kie leaned forward abruptly, ducking from her reach. “Not even if you paid me.”

Her fingers slipped free. “If you don’t like it, I can amputate you. When your head grows back, your hair will be the same.”

He shot her a glare over his shoulder. “Never. And quit touching me.” He leaned back again, settling stiffly.

So Tee leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to the back of his neck.

That did it. Kie shot to his feet, slammed the buzzer, and headed for the side door before the bus even stopped fully.

Tee rose, lips curved in amusement. Annoying him was better than tripping some MG off, at least.

They walked for a while, winding through streets until they found themselves at a balcony overlooking the sprawl below. For once, they stood in silence, just watching.

Then the stories. 

She told him about all the ways she used to annoy MG officials back at the Academy in her district. Small things at first—sticking gum to their batons, drowning them in overly formal politeness. She’d salute for absolutely everything. Permission to breathe, sir.

Then there were the unnecessary clarifying questions. When you say no running in the halls, do you mean no skipping or jumping or skating too? She’d ask with a perfectly straight face. Whenever they confronted her, she’d put on a wide, painfully fake smile that made it impossible for them to decide whether to yell or walk away.

And then there were the less subtle moments. The “accidental” trips on the stairs. One official had kept rolling, thumping down step after step, while the students parted around him like it was some grand, humiliating entrance. She finished the story with a grin, clearly proud of the memory.

At her Mid-Guard, she’d been even more brutal. With her foresight ability helping her plan ahead, she sometimes stole a spare pass to an official’s lounge and locked the door from the outside—then casually disposed of the pass so no one could let them out.

From the upper balcony, she’d watch MG officers pass below with their morning coffee and carefully drip hot pepper into their cups. The coughing fits that followed—grown officers hacking like lunatics—were priceless. She’d stroll past afterward and stick gum onto the voice-coms clipped to their waists, just to finish the job.

Sometimes she upped the chaos. Red toy lasers flashed across their faces, giving the impression Priman soldiers were tracking them. Watching them scatter, panic-stricken and scrambling for cover, never failed to make her laugh. And on patrol days, she’d collect bugs and release them into the officials’ lounge. The screams that followed always made her day.

Kie couldn’t help but laugh at the stories she told him. Tee was pure juvenile chaos.

He found himself grateful she was with him, more than he’d admit. Passing loners below made him realize he wasn’t as bad off as he thought—even if his companion was…Tee. She made him laugh, at least.

Tee, meanwhile, hated herself for noticing how gorgeous Kie looked in the sunlight. She still despised the MG, but maybe—just maybe—she had been too harsh on the troopers and MG offs in her life.

The conversation drifted, touching on bills and math—Kie fumbling with numbers, Tee mocking the quality of his Mid-Guard education. He bristled, insisting he didn’t need tutoring. She smirked, but then asked something serious.

“How did you join the MG at only ten years old? Tell me more about it.”

At first he was silent, staring down at the city. Minutes passed. Then he spoke.

He told her his parents were the last of their bloodline. No siblings, no relatives, nothing. How his mother had warned him and his brother to never leave each other, because being alone in the world was terrifying. How his father had left, and his mother had died of heartbreak, leaving him and his brother in an orphanage. How, one day, his brother simply ran away.

“I still don’t understand it,” Kie said quietly, eyes down at his knees. “He never said a word. Just gone.”

He told her about running away himself. About sleeping on streets, begging for food, hiding in shelters at night from Xenosapians. And about overhearing troopers talk about the MG recruit program.

The program wasn’t popular—mainly because it wasn’t appealing. Most of the homeless kids who heard about it compared themselves to the able-bodied troopers already in the ranks, thinking there was no way they could measure up. 

But Kie, exhausted from hunger and desperate for something more than the cold streets, had overheard troopers gossiping about a feast at HQ. That was enough to push him past caution. Close to the global curfew, he snuck onto a train, heart hammering, only to be caught almost immediately.

He wouldn’t talk, because fear had frozen his tongue.

The DNA search later revealed that only his brother was alive. When he admitted that his brother had abandoned him, the officials—strangers who might have been cruel—took pity. It was a fragile mercy, but it opened the door. Kie asked about the recruit program, and MG officers stared at him, measuring, calculating, judging.

His age confused everyone. Some assumed he had been sent there for punishment. Others whispered he must be a prodigy, a genius who had skipped the Second-level Academy and the Third, to end up in the program at ten years old.

The first year he spent in classes with the other troopers, though they quickly realized he wasn’t great with numbers. A special math class was assigned to him, which made Tee chuckle later when he mentioned it.

The following year, he was out in the field—no more sheltered classrooms, no more predictable lessons. The field was terrifying. Troopers died around him, their screams and blood burned into his memory. He got scars from countless encounters, and even some officials quietly bet on how long he would survive. 

He didn’t die. 

Others came and went, leaving him behind, yet he endured. The clean bed, the food, the structured life—it was a trap he willingly walked into, but it reminded him why he needed to survive.

Scars accumulated. Bruises healed, bones mended, but one day, the frustration of constant torment boiled over. He attacked an older trooper, leaving him near death. Kie couldn’t explain what had snapped inside him, and the officers didn’t punish him. They speculated, quietly, that he was special. 

Soon, he was taken under the wing of a select few, welcomed into the MG official’s lounge, though not all approved of him.

Wounds healed faster than for others. There was something inherently different about him, something that made him stand out even among troopers. 

With time, status, and skill came attention. Troopers began noticing him—not just his strength, but his presence, the aura of control he carried. And yes, some of the girls started to notice too. 

Tee listened, expression unreadable, until he started to drift toward stories of girls who had been drawn to him once he gained status.

“Alright, that’s enough,” she cut in sharply. “I don’t want to hear about… that.”

He smirked faintly. “Sure you don’t want to hear about—”

“Yes, I’m sure!” she snapped, turning away before he could finish.

He let it drop, though his thoughts lingered on the darker truths he hadn’t spoken.

Troopers and officials kept their sharp eyes locked on her as the two of them crossed beneath the library’s immense glass archway. 

The building loomed ahead like a crystalline fortress, its surface catching the morning light and scattering it into prismatic colors across the polished stone courtyard. Tee could feel every stare digging into her back, branding her as different, dangerous, unwanted.

Inside, the library was no less overwhelming. The absence of the earthy smell of books was the norm. Instead, the air was sterile, humming with faint static. Towering shelves floated above the ground, their contents shimmering with holographic projections. Whole aisles pulsed with shifting light, words re-forming into images, then fading back into text as researchers passed their hands through them.

Kie moved with practiced calm. He slid a holographic volume into his hand, its blue pages glowing against his skin. He skimmed quickly, his eyes darting over the projected information as though he’d done this countless times before.

Tee trailed after him. She glanced at the locked displays where the “real” books—ancient, irreplaceable—sat encased in transparent prisms. Their spines were worn and fragile, titles barely legible. They weren’t for touching. They weren’t even for reading. They were relics, sealed away like corpses in coffins, kept only to be admired from a distance.

Holograms of famous figures shimmered nearby. Heroes of past wars, scholars, leaders, cities that no longer stood. They seemed like ghosts, their faces projected in endless loops, their gestures frozen in false life. Tee thought it eerie, like walking through a graveyard of history.

After a while, the weight of surveillance inside pressed too heavy. They left through the grand glass doors, emerging into the bright outdoors.

The sunlight hit hard and clear, illuminating the sprawling green lawn that stretched endlessly around one of the largest libraries on Geovalon. Trees rose in loose clusters, their leaves rustling with the wind. Beyond, hills rolled in emerald waves, and glimpses of water sparkled like scattered gems. The sea was just far enough to gleam, promising coolness and escape.

It was beautiful, but Tee couldn’t forget how many eyes were still trained on her. Kie, however, carried himself as if it didn’t matter, as if the weight of a thousand glares couldn’t bend his back.

They walked until they found a patch of shade beneath a tall tree and sat, the view stretching wide before them. Tee’s eyes caught the shimmer of blue waters in the distance. For a moment, they didn’t speak.

Kie leaned back against the bark, and a memory slipped into his mind unbidden. He remembered a younger version of himself sitting with his family—his mother’s gentle laugh, his father’s steady voice, his brother nudging him in jest. The memory was fragile, painful in its clarity. He hadn’t thought of those days in years. The warmth of them cut deeper than any wound.

When Tee rose again, he followed. They drifted closer to the waters, neither rushing. The air carried the faint brine of the sea. The grass swayed, whispering with the wind.

They walked without looking at each other. Yet when Tee spoke, her voice carried as though the world itself had hushed to let him hear her.

“You know I’m going to die,” she said. The words were soft, but laced with a cruel edge. She wanted him to feel it. To carry her burden with her, even if only for a moment.

But Kie’s heart… he told himself it was for the best.

She let the silence stretch before speaking again. “If I got the Balance Seal… would it make you happy?”

The answer shot out of him before he could stop it. “Yes.”

Too fast. Too eager.

Her gaze flickered toward him, suspicious. “Do you really think I have a dead heart?”

He didn’t hesitate this time. “For me to know, for you to find out.” He flashed a crooked smile, dimples cutting deep. It was teasing, mocking, and yet warmer than he intended.

Tee narrowed her eyes. Then, with a tone almost playful but heavy with intent, she murmured, “I just realized another thing on my list. A passion kiss. That could make up for not ruining me.”

She reached out, her hand brushing against his before curling around it.

Kie’s reaction was immediate. He yanked his hand away, his voice harsh. “No. Quit it.”

His lips still held a smile, but to onlookers it looked wrong—like a mask that didn’t fit.

Whispers rose.

“Leave him alone!” a woman’s voice called sharply.

“Damn Xenoids need to know their place,” muttered another man nearby, his disgust aimed like a blade.

Tee froze. The heat in her cheeks burned. She turned away, leaning over the balcony rail, her ponytail falling forward as though it might hide her face. But it couldn’t. She was exposed, her shame on display for all to see.

Kie’s jaw worked. He didn’t like depressed people. They drained him, made him feel heavy. And yet, there she was, her sadness so raw it pulled at something in him he didn’t want to name. Still, he refused her request. A kiss wasn’t something he would give unless it was real, and in the moment, it wasn’t.

But then—Tee turned suddenly, transformed into a tall blue-glass statue. His gut twisted.

She pressed the teleportation button. In public.