Sebastian leaned back in his chair.
"This situation has already spread like wildfire." His tone stayed calm, almost bored. "And you're standing at the center of it."
Zekai said nothing.
His thumb pressed against the edge of the cuff, metal biting into skin, then stopped there.
Sebastian kept going, watching him the whole time. "Anyway. I'm Sebastian. Captain of the Moonlight Unit."
The name meant nothing to Zekai. He didn't react.
"Do you know what BSA stands for?"
Zekai lifted his head, tilting it slightly.
Behind Sebastian, black lettering ran across the wall in plain view.
[ Bureau of Supernatural Affairs ]
He read it once. The meaning wasn't hard to work out.
His eyes dropped again. Something inside him pulled tight, a slow-building irritation with nowhere to go.
If a department like this actually exists — one built for exactly this kind of thing — then where was it while Aron was dying?
His eyes closed for a beat. He saw all of it again: the other world, the fight, the pain, Aron struggling, Aron gone.
Bullshit. All of it. Bullshit.
He didn't lift his gaze.
"...You're asking the wrong question."
Sebastian leaned in. "We're not your tools. Reality doesn't bend because you decide it should."
"And it wouldn't take the Bureau long to put you down if it came to that."
A pause. "Anyway."
"Let's not waste time."
His eyes stayed locked on Zekai's.
"You walked out of something forty-three people didn't."
Another pause, sharper this time.
"So start talking."
"...before I decide you shouldn't have walked out at all."
Silence answered him.
Sebastian didn't blink through it.
"The boy you carried in — the one who died. Aron, was it?"
"...Ah." Barely a word.
"You held him like he mattered." Sebastian let that sit a moment. "So answer me something simple."
He leaned in another inch.
"Why is he dead."
"...and you're not?"
Zekai's mouth opened. The answer sat right there, ready.
He was like a younger brother to me.
The words never made it out. Something in his chest clamped down, some part of his own conscience pressing against his throat and refusing to let it through.
Guilt. Heavy enough to sit on his lungs.
He went still—not because he didn't have the answer, but because saying it out loud would make it real.
The silence stretched longer than silence should. Not empty. Waiting for something.
His fist closed for one second, then loosened.
None of it showed on his face. His expression gave away nothing.
His mind stayed stuck on one loop. Aron's face. Aron's voice. The exact moment Aron had stopped existing.
If I hadn't been late... Aron might still be alive.
The thought ran itself in circles without slowing down.
His jaw tightened once, then relaxed.
His fingers pressed harder against the cuffs. The metal dug deeper into his wrists. He didn't ease off.
Sebastian sighed and slid the glass of water an inch closer.
"You're clearly not in your right mind yet."
"Drink." He didn't look at the glass when he said it.
"You'll need your strength." Something sat underneath that sentence Zekai didn't have the energy to unpack.
Zekai didn't touch it.
"I don't need anything from you." Quiet. "Just leave me alone."
Sebastian's voice hardened a fraction. "Don't be stubborn, Zekai. Stubbornness just drags a person further into the pit."
The pit couldn't feel worse than this, Zekai thought. At least down there, the pain would eventually stop.
After a moment he reached for the glass anyway.
Sebastian's hand closed around his wrist before he got there.
Firm. Fast. No room to pull back.
Something moved through the contact — a dark current flowing out of Sebastian's palm and into him.
Zekai's brow drew tight.
He could feel it entering. For a second, nothing else happened.
"...Don't touch me again."
He didn't understand what Sebastian was trying to do. He didn't fight it either. He didn't care enough to.
Then something inside him moved on its own.
Not a reaction. A refusal.
"What are you—"
Sebastian's face changed all at once.
For the first time, the composure cracked straight down the middle. Real shock, eyes going wide like he'd just watched something break a rule he thought was unbreakable.
No. That's not possible.
His expression held. His eyes didn't.
Something had just moved outside every prediction he'd made walking into this room.
He tried again, forcing more of his power through the grip.
Deeper this time.
The air compressed around them — and the moment it crossed the threshold into Zekai, something rejected it on pure instinct.
Then it detonated.
Force ripped outward in every direction. Sebastian's hand tore loose from the contact, too slow to save him.
His eyes went wide. "Impossible—"
His body left the floor entirely, hurled backward like something had physically thrown him across the room. He hit the wall and slid down it, several feet from where he'd started.
The chair toppled behind him. The impact rang through the chamber.
The impact reached Zekai before his mind could process what had happened. The wall behind him cracked under the force.
He didn't get up right away. Not because he couldn't. Because he was recalculating.
The lights flickered once, like the room itself had felt it too.
Silence dropped over everything after that. Heavy. Wrong in a way neither of them wanted to name.
Zekai's cuffs cracked, faint hairline fractures spidering through the steel — not broken, just uncertain of their own ability to hold him anymore.
Neither of them moved. Even the air in the room felt like it had lost its footing.
For the first time since Zekai had walked in here, this room wasn't the one in control.
"...What just happened?"
His vision flickered at the edges, like something inside him had rejected more than just Sebastian's touch.
He didn't move. He just stared down at his own hand.
Not fear. Something closer to disbelief.
"...That wasn't me."
A pause.
"...then what was it?"
[ ARCANA INTERFACE — ERROR ]
[ FOREIGN INPUT REJECTED ]
[ WARNING ]
External System Interference Detected
Authority: Unstable
[ Access: Restricted ]
The red interface glitched hard, stuttering through the same line twice.
Foreign Input Rejected.
"I can't even feel that power anymore."
For the first time since any of this started, even he didn't have an answer for it.
Sebastian said nothing. He let out one slow breath.
"...So it rejects outside interference."
Not surprise in his voice this time. Recalculation.
He looked at Zekai again — and this time, not like a suspect sitting across an interrogation table. Like something far more dangerous.
✦ End of The chapter 31 - Anomaly ✦