Wednesday remained silent for a moment, the stillness of the forest seemingly amplified.
She spoke again, her tone carrying a trace of imperceptible embarrassment:
"So, in the plan to return to the academy, the priority of 'hiking via princess carry' is higher than 'summoning a taxi'?"
Victor answered loudly:
"Sorry! No money! Venom has all my financial power! And it's currently sleeping like a dead pig!"
He paused, as if knowing what she was about to ask, and added,
"The cash on you... well, it was just enough to buy this top-tier chocolate lava cake."
"Just consider it an advance payment for my 'severance pay' and 'workplace injury condolences,' former Employer Miss?"
Wednesday pursed her lips tightly.
That word—sorry—was like a hard stone stuck in her throat.
She had never found organizing her language so difficult.
"My previous... behavior," she began to try, her voice deeper than usual, "in a specific context, based on incomplete information and incorrect predictions, the expulsion strategy adopted... regarding the unintended emotional harm consequences it produced, I believe... its appropriateness is open to debate..."
She stumbled through a long string of academic-sounding nonsense like a formal self-criticism, her cheeks heating up slightly, simply unable to utter those three simple words.
Thing listened until its fingers seemed to slow down by half a beat.
It froze on the cake box, seemingly processing this lengthy encrypted message.
After several seconds, it suddenly jumped up as if having an epiphany, then solemnly knelt on one finger, placed the other hand over its 'heart,' and lowered its head deeply—
An extremely exaggerated posture of apology.
A very blunt expression of being sorry.
Victor froze, his footsteps coming to a halt.
His eyes widened as he looked down at Thing in disbelief, then looked back at Wednesday, his voice rising even higher, filled with dramatic shock:
"Whoa!!! Wait! What did I hear?! In this moment of my total deafness, my soul seems to have heard heavenly music!"
"Did those words really come from the mouth of Miss Wednesday Addams?! Or is this just the improvisation of our dear, artistically gifted little translator?!"
Wednesday glared fiercely at Thing; if looks could kill, Thing would have already been disassembled into a pile of spare parts.
Thing shuddered in fear, feeling it had kissed the wrong end of the horse. It looked left and right aggrievedly, and finally, huffily flipped both of them the middle finger simultaneously.
Then it pattered away quickly, escaping back into Wednesday's small bag to play dead completely.
Wednesday subconsciously looked up to see Victor's reaction, only to run straight into his smiling eyes.
There was no mockery, no triumph, only a gentle, knowing warmth, as if he had long since seen through all her clumsy disguises.
"Alright," he said with a smile, his voice slowing down a bit even though the volume was still out of control, "I forgive you, Miss Wednesday Addams."
A strange, warm emotion suddenly struck Wednesday's heart, making her quickly lower her head and stare at the chocolate cake box.
"To be honest," Victor continued walking forward with large strides, as if talking to himself.
"Those words of yours were quite hurtful; they almost smashed my heart, which was cobbled together from chocolate and madness, into pieces."
"If Thing hadn't just 'vividly' told me—"
"That a certain young lady stands by my bed every night like a melancholy ghost, staring at me with that 'frog dissection' level of focus for over half an hour, I might not have forgiven you so easily."
Wednesday's body instantly froze.
He knew.
He knew everything. Including those late-night stares she thought no one knew about.
An unprecedented, intense sense of shame and social death instantly crushed Wednesday.
She wished the ground would split open right now and swallow her along with this damn guy holding her who knew everything.
Or at least let this chocolate cake in her arms melt immediately and drown her.
Victor seemed to feel her petrification and let out a light chuckle, the vibration of which was transmitted to her through his chest.
"Don't worry, I'll keep the matter of the 'addams Brand Surveillance Camera' a secret, and..."
He paused and added a sentence, his tone carrying a tenderness she had never heard before.
"Thank you."
Wednesday buried her burning face deep into the box of chocolate cake.
Victor held Wednesday, feeling the rare, almost rigid silence of the person in his arms, the smile at the corner of his mouth deepening.
He could clearly feel her action of burying her face in the cake box, a clumsy embarrassment of trying to hide herself.
It formed a massive contrast with the Wednesday Addams in his cognition, who was always cold and sharp.
This contrast made his heart go inexplicably soft, even overshadowing the inconvenience of deafness and his physical fatigue.
He deliberately adjusted his hold, letting her lean more steadily in his arms, his movements careful to the point of being precious.
Wednesday felt the steady heartbeat vibrating slightly from Victor's chest as he walked, and the indisputable protective strength from his arms.
A strange, scalding heat continuously spread from her cheeks, burning all the way to the tips of her ears, forming an absurd contrast with her usual cold body temperature.
And her heart, an organ she had always believed merely pumped blood efficiently, was now uncontrollably and forcefully striking her ribs.
The rhythm was so fast it was distracting, as if frantically pounding on some truth she had been trying to deny and suppress.
Here it was again.
She groaned silently in her heart.
This uncontrolled physiological reaction... elevated body temperature, arrhythmia, facial capillary dilation... it was like a terrible viral invasion.
She almost subconsciously began to use rational analysis on this strange wave, trying to categorize it as some pathological phenomenon.
But another clearer voice calmly overturned this self-deceptive thought.
After going back, I must... must carefully study that book 'Analysis of Youth Romantic Psychology' again.
She thought somewhat desperately, trying to grasp the last straw of rationality, even if the author of that book was an emotional moron in her eyes.
However, the moment this thought surfaced—
All analysis, all denial, all cold barriers collapsed with a crash under Victor's unconscious movement of shielding her tighter in his arms.
The truth was like lightning splitting the dark night sky, clear, sharp, and indisputable.
She, Wednesday Addams, was in love.
The object was this madman who was holding her, ears bleeding yet still grinning, head half-filled with madness and half with chocolate, marked as a 'failure' by the lab yet braver than anyone...
There was no romantic moonlight, no elegant confession, not even normal auditory communication.
Only the mess after an explosion, physical pain, the embarrassment of deafness, and an overly sweet chocolate cake.
Absurd, chaotic, and extremely lacking in aesthetic sense.
But... certain beyond doubt.
This conclusion brought no panic; instead, it was like a cold stream, instantly dousing those scalding emotions that made her helpless, bringing a strange peace.
She had finally found an accurate pathological name for all these abnormal symptoms—Victor Black Syndrome.
When Wednesday diagnosed her tachycardia as 'Victor Black Syndrome,' she completed the ultimate definition of Gothic romance—
Love is not an ethereal feeling, but an observable, categorizable, and nameable objective fact.
This is a rationalist's most sentimental confession:
I used all scientific methods to verify, and finally diagnosed that I love you.
From an unnoticed angle, her arms extremely slightly and tentatively circled his neck in a more secure and intimate posture.
Victor's footsteps faltered imperceptibly for a moment, and then he walked even more steadily.
Stepping through the twilight, he walked step by step toward the flickering lights of the academy, the smile at the corner of his mouth more real and bright than any time a prank had succeeded.
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