The SSS-rank Guide Doesn't Need Saving

Aisha looked at him for a second without saying anything. What did he tell her? She honestly didn’t know. There was still a gap in her memories after all.

"Sigh... I told you, if you’re ever going to hit someone, make sure there’s no one around to witness it." His gaze swept briefly around the empty living room. "We got lucky tonight. The servants had already been dismissed so we could discuss your ceremony privately. But I was still here. You shouldn’t have left a witness standing right next to you."

"I can fix that."

Aisha lifted her hand slowly, mimicking the exact motion she’d used to twist Irene’s neck, tracing the same gesture through the empty air between them.

Zenick’s expression didn’t even flicker. "No need. Out of everyone in this house, I’m probably the only one who won’t run off and tell anyone what you just did."

Something strange settled into Aisha’s chest at those words. An uncomfortable and unfamiliar ache she couldn’t quite name because he wasn’t disgusted by what she’d done. He wasn’t looking at her like she was some kind of monster.

He was simply accepting it. Worse, he was even offering her advice as to how she should handle it if a situation like this happened again.

"Just make sure no one sees you do it next time," he continued.

"..."

Aisha stared at him for a long moment before she nodded stiffly, unused to being treated this way by anyone in this family. Let alone by someone who barely appeared in her memories because Zenick was always out to handle their family business with their father.

Zenick didn’t intend for her to stay there while Irene was unconscious when anyone could walk in. He said, "Go back to your room and get some rest. You still have class tomorrow morning."

Aisha didn’t leave immediately.

She lingered there for a few seconds, searching for something to say in response. Nothing came to mind. Eventually she gave up trying and turned to leave.

She only made it a few steps toward the staircase before something appeared in her mind.

She warned, "Be careful of Irene."

Irene’s ability to manipulate people was extremely dangerous. It was a rare skill, something only a few S-rank Guides developed to help calm unstable and hard-to-manage Sentinels of high ranks.

She’d had her suspicions about Irene long before this, but after the incident with the bracelet and seeing how she could easily twist their perception, she was certain of it now. However, instead of using it on Sentinels who needed it, Irene had been using that ability on ordinary people who had absolutely no way of defending themselves against it.

She wanted to warn him. Half of it was because it felt like the right thing to do. And the other half was that if she was being fully honest with herself, some small part of her hoped it might keep him from turning against her in the future.

"I know," Zenick replied unexpectedly.

Aisha turned fully to face him again, genuinely surprised. "You know?"

He nodded once, offering no further explanation. He didn’t elaborate on how long he’d known or what exactly he knew.

She didn’t need to know what he meant by his words.

Aisha turned and continued toward the staircase.

Just as she reached the first step, she heard him speak from the living room.

"Ah, I almost forgot to tell you... I left a present for you and had your maid put it in your room."

Aisha paused briefly on the stairs. Then she continued upward without responding.

By the time Aisha disappeared, the easy expression Zenick had been wearing vanished from his face completely.

He looked down at Irene, who was still unconscious on the sofa. Her neck tilted at that unnatural angle. It would take her to go to a treatment room, and she might have to wear a neck brace for a couple of days.

His eyes turned cold as he murmured, "You’ve gone too far, Irene."

He studied the slight twist of her neck for a moment, then thought back to what Aisha had said earlier about having a witness around. What did she say or do back then? Ah, she wanted to fix the matter by twisting and rendering him unconscious as well, like she did to Irene.

His hand inadvertently went up to his own throat. He let out a short, nervous laugh under his breath and swallowed hard, feeling his own pulse beating a little too fast beneath his fingers.

To think he’d actually believed her words for a second there...

"Hahaha..."

He had expected to come home and find Aisha barely holding herself together after everything that had happened these past two months. Instead she seemed livelier and spirited than he’d ever seen her. He had been worried for nothing, it seemed.

He had originally planned to stay off Gaia a while longer, running extra trade routes through the outer systems to cover the cost of repairing the merchant ship they’d lost last quarter. He intended to delay his return for another year. But then their mother’s message had arrived out of nowhere, telling him Aisha had tried to take her own life and had been rushed to the hospital.

He hurriedly completed everything he needed to do before deciding to return early despite his father’s disagreement. But getting back to Gaia had taken far longer than he wanted. There were too many permits and protocols he had to go through before he could even set foot on the planet again.

Every delay had felt unbearable, knowing what might be happening to his sister while he sat waiting on some star system.

Fortunately, the thing he had feared most, coming home to find Aisha hollowed out and wasting away in some dark corner of the house, hadn’t happened.

Still, he couldn’t stop the worry gnawing at him. There were more things he needed to consider, and the matter with Aisha’s annulment with the prince was still far from being over.

Upstairs, Aisha stepped into her room and shut the door quietly behind her.

She looked down at her hand and slowly clenched it into a fist, feeling the tension still lingering there.

That had been too close.

If she hadn’t remembered Zenick standing right there, she would have killed Irene without a second thought. She wouldn’t even hesitate.

Not that she particularly cared whether Irene lived or died. The girl had deserved it somehow in Aisha’s opinion. But for some reason, she hadn’t wanted Zenick to see that side of her fully unleashed. She strangely didn’t want him to look at her the way everyone else in this family looked at her.

She pressed a hand flat against her chest.

She whispered, "So you still want to look good in front of your brother."

She had felt this before, this strange sensation of her chest tightening whenever the Novalis family was involved. It had happened before, and it happened again now.

This had to be some lingering feelings of the original Aisha Novalis, buried deep enough in this body that they still surfaced after she transmigrated, slipping past her control before she could stop them.

She couldn’t fathom how it was possible, but then gain, neither was her transmigration. In the end, perhaps it all came down to one thing...

Aisha rubbed her chest with her thumb and muttered, "I’ll try my best to fulfill whatever regrets you left behind."

She walked further into the room and stopped at the foot of her bed.

Raising her eyebrows, she stared at the bed for a long moment.

Four wrapped gifts sat waiting for her, neatly arranged and each one a different size from the other.