ᴇꜱᴄᴏʀᴛ ᴍᴇ

1.11

"Fuck, what the hell happened here?!"

The woman could barely look at the gruesome scene in front of her. Her eyes were wide with horror and her stomach churned with nausea, threatening to send her dinner up to her throat. She held her breath in a failed attempt to keep her nausea at bay and quickly exited the room.

Once outside, she concentrated not to throw her inside out before she glared accusatory at the one who she assumed to have committed this heinous deed, filled with anger and resentment for having been subjected to such a gruesome and horrifying sight.

"Shit, I know you were crazy, Cyrus, but I didn't know that you were this batshit crazy! What did the poor girl ever do to you?!" She scowled exasperatedly.

The man in question furrowed his eyebrows, displeased that he was accused when in actuality he was innocent. "It wasn't me."

"If it wasn't you then who and whyー?"

"It was Kael."

"Huh?" Her expression changed to confusion. "Why would a freak who never physically harmed his clients no matter how badly he was treated do this to your client?"

"How would I know?" Cyrus sighed, tired of everything as he turned away. "I'm going to take a bath."

He then left to enter another room.

The woman let out a deep groan at the man's indifferent attitude, already feeling the beginning of a throbbing headache at the notion of the extensive cleanup that was now her responsibility to manage. She felt a sense of relief that her role was only that of an assistant and not a cleaner, lest she would have to sacrifice her precious sleep hours to deal with the immense stain left behind by the blood and gore that had covered the room in an ugly crimson hue.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and exhaustively took out her phone to dial a string of numbers.

"Hello?" 

"Hey, it's Cookie. One of our escorts lose their shits again so I want you to send over the cleaning team to my location. The mess is a 7 on the severity scale, so this one will take a long night to clean."

"Oh, wow, again? Seriously? Who did it? No, no, let me guess. Is it Carmine? He does tend to make it messy. I mean, he should know by now that humans are very, very fragile. Or is it Cyrus? Oh but, if it's him then he would clean up his own mess. I guess it's Hollis then? No, wait, he just did this two days ago, no way he would do it this quickly. Ah I know, it must have been Sage! He's the most brutal of them all so he will definitely make it messy!" The owner of the voice laughed excitedly. "So between Carmine and Sage, which one?"

The woman sighed. "Wrong. it's Kael."

"Whaー?"

"Yes, I know, it's not a name you would hear often when it comes to cleaning up this mess. It makes me wonder if Cyrus was bullshitting me too."

"Well, if the severity scale is 7, it's not impossible for the perpetrator to be Kael."

She frowned in confusion, mind went back to the way that said man eating roasted chicken with bare hands. Although he does act like a freak constantly, he doesn't seem the type to harm others, in her eyes, he's more like the type to beg others to harm him instead.

"Ah, you haven't been working at ROMANCE as long as me, Cookie, so you wouldn't know. Kael's ability is explosion. Back when he was a child, our founder found him at an auction. At first, our founder is not interested in bidding for him even though the boy is an Amorii, but do you know how capable Kael was despite being so little at that time?"

"When people were bidding for him, he suddenly manifested an ability to release a wave of kinetic energy that disrupted the molecular structure of his targets. At that time, he used his ability to make the heads of everyone in the hall spontaneously combusted and explode like a volatile bomb, even the children who were auctioning together with him weren't spared."

"Our founder, one of those who were unaffected by his ability, obviously found talent in that young child so of course, Kael would be recruited. In the end, our founder didn't even lose any money and even managed to bring back a capable boy home. On that night, the severity scale was 10 so you should know how much blood was shed."

Cookie gulped down in disbelief. "So among the children who were auctioned, only Kael survived? What about other children?"

"Well, a few children of Amorii who were naturally immune to Kael's ability manage to survive but as for the children of the humans," the person on the other side of the phone went silent for a while. "Ah, I remember now, there's one boy who managed to survive, and he's also a human. I heard from our founder that he survived because he managed to call upon a spirit to protect him."

"Call upon a spirit? What the heck is that? Why don't I know it?"

"Ah, I forgot that you're a human, Cookie, of course you won't know such a thing, so apparently, it was told in our folklore and myth that if a human were to make a wish hard enough to the point of shaking even the heavens above, they would be granted an extraordinary ability to bind a spirit by their side. This spiritual connection would form an unbreakable bond, making the spirit their other half in body and soul. It was called the Spiritual Union and it was said that the human's life and longevity would be tied to the well-being of the spirit they have bound. Hence, when the boy managed to do a Spiritual Union out of desperation to live, he managed to survive the explosion because well, his spirit protected him."

Cookie frowned. "I have been in a few life-threatening situations before, why couldn't I do that Spiritual Union thingy?"

"What a laughable question. Obviously, only those who are chosen by the heavens will be able to, and surely they wouldn't choose someone as dirty as you," the voice laughed. "Can you shamelessly claim that you are pure and righteous, Cookie?"

The woman in question doesn't answer, opting to remain silent.

"Anyway, who was the deceased? Hopefully, she doesn't have any strong background or else it would be a hard job for me to fabricate her death."

"Don't know. You can just look at the record. All I know is that she's Cyrus's newest client."

The sound of pages being flipped can then be heard from the other side. "Okay, thanks for the infー oh fuck, she's an actress?! And she's married?! Bye, Cookie, gotta go, I've lots of work to do now."

The phone then went silent.

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