Lucilfer (ChrolloxReader)

Chapter 37

A few thoughts had played lowly on the back burner of my mind as the day passed, mostly about Kassidy. I still hadn't answered his text, and he never sent me anything else. It made me feel bad, guilty almost—I knew how often he viewed himself as a burden on others, as something to be put up with. But I wasn't avoiding him because of that reason at all; rather, I was avoiding him because of a few different pieces which had begun to fall into place.

Firstly, I understood that Kassidy was a Hunter. Of course, I'd never told him about Chrollo, or even that I was in a relationship, as much as I hated that word, but that was mostly for safety measures. I hadn't considered that I shouldn't tell him about Chrollo because of the fact that they could indirectly be enemies. Although, Chrollo understood that Kassidy was a Hunter, and never seemed highly bothered by it—this could have been simply because of his general mistrust of the entire association, however. He had no reason to personally dislike Kass.

Secondly, and contrary to what I'd previously thought, it was dangerous for both him and Chrollo. If I considered Cadence's words about the reward money hovering over the capture of the leader of the Spiders, and the Hunter Association was a natural friction against the wayward nature of the Troupe, I was sure that if Kassidy found out about him, at the very least, it would jeopardize our friendship. At its worst, it would lead to an organized witch hunt for Chrollo, and I would be the reason why.

It's imperative that I'm even more careful about my life around Kass.

Perhaps that was how he felt, though—the unspoken words which had been tinting every vocal conversation we'd had in the past month, the tension boiling hotly beneath the surface of each desperate expression he tried to hide, could all be for a similar reason. Perhaps there was something, some detrimental secret, he was wary of sharing with me. If that was the case, I could afford to be a little more gracious towards him concerning the issue. But it also meant that I should probably have braced myself even more so for what was coming.

I stared at my phone, at the message he'd sent five hours ago, my thumbs waiting for some sort of response to magically move them in the right direction, to put words on the screen and fill the electronic silence. But nothing came to me—and honestly, what could I say? Nothing was wrong; everything was just stressful.

I hated anxiety. I hated the way it suffocated my thoughts and paralyzed my movement and impaired any adequate reaction I might have otherwise been able to muster. When it was bad, it was like screaming through a thick oil sludge, as though my whole body had been submerged in tar and no matter how viciously I shredded my throat to emit the loudest cries I could possibly claw out, the sound barrier would never be permeated, and no one would hear me. And the worst part was that it felt this way no matter how small the issue seemed, so all I could do was distract myself, keep it low, keep on that back burner.

This anxiety felt too large to be assigned to just a response to Kassidy. In that light, I decided it was probably a build-up of that, as well as several different occurrences—confronting Cadence, sneaking out of the coffee shop, almost being chased by the police away from the liquor store as Chrollo victoriously emerged with stolen, expensive wine, and of course, the looming threat of Thursday, the day he would leave me.

But he's coming back. He promised.

I sighed heavily, melancholy and unable to bring a specific emotion up to the surface to justify such a sigh, and turned off my phone again, setting it face down on the floor beside the low sofa in the music room. I laid with my head against the arm of the loveseat, tuning more fully into the ringing, harmonic notes of the drawn-out piece Chrollo was playing absently on the piano. From where I was positioned, I could see his side profile, the way his brows furrowed almost sadly over his eyes as the piece crescendoed and then decrescendoed, falling away into a restless staccato and then building back up, only halfway, to a minor melody singing of wholehearted regret and the lies of youth.