The energy swept across the planet like a raging storm…

Everyone could see it coming, but they didn’t care because they weren’t arrogant enough to think they could escape from this…

Ironic, considering there hadn’t been a storm in thousands of years…

Zeel was rushing through the crowd who was desperately trying to save themselves, but unlike the current him, this Zeel felt nothing…

Catherine, his sister, came along, and Tom, his father, just followed behind, a cryo-pod on his back…

There was no feeling of love between them…

Zeel wanted to use Catherine, and Tom was just there because the man was powerful…

Soon, they were standing in front of gates that would lead to new Universes… clean and undetectable even with the absolute…

They could live…

The largest gate had the greatest chance of success, but Zeel knew it needed further calibration so he wanted to test the two nearby gates on his father and sister…

He tossed them inside and it seemed to work…

Zeel felt nothing from using his family members to ensure his own safety…

He left next, just as the world was destroyed by the absolute…

-----------------------

Zeel smacked his head in the hospital’s wall, wanting to get rid of that disturbing memory…

Zeel didn’t even know when he had fallen asleep, but after running out of Nara’s room, he just naturally found a place to sit and fell asleep…

He had his head tucked in his arms as he sat on the chair provided by the staff…

Zeel was also not the only one…

Everyone in the waiting room turned their heads in his direction, but there was no judgment in their eyes, and Zeel didn’t like that…

People always had judgment in their eyes…

It was something he learned to detect on an instinctual level…

Then, Zeel examined the people closer and could tell they pitied him more than anything…

They were all there because they were sick or coming to say goodbye to someone who was sick…

Sickness had never been real for Zeel until this moment…

After all, he was more likely to die from being hunted and not sickness…

‘Do they think I am like them?’ Zeel thought disdainfully before the realization struck him…

Wasn’t he like them, after all?

They were mourning the death of someone soon to die, while he was only now mourning the death of his entire civilization…

Maybe, in some ways, he was mourning the death of himself…

These memories flowing through his mind…

These memories that came to him in dreams as fragments…

It felt like someone else’s…

“Fucking funny!” Zeel giggled, wiping the tears from the corner of his eyes…

When had he been crying, he didn’t know, but there was a sense of relief that came with crying the pain away…

‘Should I cry more?’ He thought, but dismissed the idea…

Crying was a sign of weakness and Zeel was not weak…

“You’re the person who helped Henry, right?” A voice asked, and Zeel raised his head to greet the outstretched hand of someone vaguely familiar…

A somewhat beautiful human female with dark hair, seeming as if she wasn’t comfortable in her own skin…

A quick check through the school’s record using his Quantum Armband and Zeel identified the girl as Henry’s step-sister, Jenna…

Zeel took Jenna’s hand, shook it, and mustered a smile, even if he didn’t feel like it “I didn’t think you’d be the first to arrive… where is the girl’s mother?”

Obviously, he was referring to Henry, and Jenna knew that…

“My dad is driving her over…” Jenna replied, eyeing Zeel strangely “Are you and Henry familiar? I kind of heard that you just helped her out…”

At least, that’s the impression Jenna got from the students at school, specifically Abner, who was bragging about saving Henry’s life…

“Well… she called me here, so…” Zeel shrugged, letting Jenna interpret the matter however her mind saw fit…

After all, Henry’s unconscious release of power was indeed what brought him to the school, and being vague was a good way to not deal with headaches…

“Mind if I?” Jenna gestured to the seat next to Zeel, and he shrugged…

It wasn’t his chair to begin with…

Jenna sat and they enjoyed a moment of silence together before she inquired “Were you crying for Henry’s health or another reason entirely?”

Zeel quirked his brows “Does it matter?”

“My mother used to say that there’s a story behind every tear…” Jenna replied, looking both happy and sad…

Zeel took a deep breath and smiled somewhat painfully “I guess I am only now mourning something that I should have gotten over a long time ago…”

“I know the feeling…” Jenna comforted…

‘So, you are hopping Universes to play keep-away from the Cosmic Being that destroyed your Universe too?’ He thought, but what came out of his mouth was “Trust me… you don’t know the feeling…”

Jenna reached out subconsciously and took Zeel’s hand into her own as she stared him in the eyes “Trust me when I say I do!” she replied, very strongly…

Zeel and Jenna stared into each other’s eyes for a couple of seconds…

Jenna searched for the pain buried within Zeel’s eyes, while Zeel was wondering if he should break Jenna’s hands for touching him without permission…

“Ahem!” Thomas faked a couch to get the attention of his daughter who was staring into the eyes of a strange young man he had never seen before…

“Oh…” Jenna snapped out of her trance, and released Zeel’s hand, backing away apologetically “I am so sorry… I didn’t mean to touch you or—”

“It’s fine…” Zeel replied, eyeing every micro-expression on Jenna’s face…

‘She is genuinely sorry… and she isn’t attracted to me…’ He thought, listening to her slightly rough breathing ‘But she is a bit flustered…’

Zeel stared at Jenna’s awkward stance and couldn’t help but comment “You’re a strange person…”

“And I am her strange father…” Thomas interrupted, extending a hand to Zeel “Nice to meet you…”

Jenna seemed confused by her father’s sudden interruption, but nevertheless, she was relieved…

To Jenna, talking with Zeel felt like speaking to a mountain – something that was way larger than her life…

Zeel stared at Thomas’s hand, and then at Jenna until he finally looked past them both and laid eyes on Henry’s mother…

He was observing… or at least, Zeel was trying to…

Sadly, he found that no matter what, for the first time in a long time, he couldn’t focus on just one thing…

Nara still lingered at the back of his mind…

Directly ignoring Thomas’s outstretched hand, Zeel walked to Cleo, Henry’s mother, and extended his hand “Nice to meet you…”

“Uhmmm…” Cleo mused for a couple of seconds before deciding to shake Zeel’s hand…

And as soon as she did, Cleo had the illusion of electricity coursing through her body, but it was only for an instant…

“Nice to meet you too…” Cleo responded, unsure of what just happened…

“And I – you…” Zeel replied, internally shaking his head in disappointment since Henry’s mother was a normal human…

He thought that the daughter was special so the mother should be too, but Henry’s mother was so normal that it seemed almost impossible she could give birth to Henry…

‘Maybe she got it from her daddy?’ Zeel internally joked…

“So, you helped my daughter I heard?”

“More like she helped me…”

Cleo slowly leaned forward, close enough that she could whisper into Zeel’s ears “Did Henry steal anything from you?”

Zeel giggled, already having an idea of what type of person Henry was – definitely a special type of troublemaker…

“Does my heart count?” He replied, feeling a bit more at rest than previously…

Cleo stepped back, adding some respectable distance between herself and Zeel…

“Sadly, your heart does count…” she replied jokingly “Henry has broken a lot of those in every town we visited…”

Zeel raised his head in the direction of Henry’s room and smiled “Of that, I have no doubt…” he whispered, thinking about all the people Henry had probably killed over the years…

Little did he know that Cleo was referring to the affairs of the heart and not literal killing…

“And this is my father, Thomas…” Jenna slid to Zeel’s right, dragging her father along “He tried to shake your hand earlier but you—”

“I am so sorry…” Zeel quickly said, shaking hands with Thomas “I was so concerned about Henry that I felt the need to talk to her mother first…”

“And you are?” Thomas allowed the question to linger in the air…

“Uhm… Zeel Croft…” Zeel replied, “My family comes from a long line of Treasure Hunters so we move around a lot…”

“Ah…” Thomas and Cleo muttered simultaneously, already mentally dismissing Zeel as something close to a psychotic patient…

“Well, thank you for helping my daughter, and may you have a safe journey home…” Cleo said, though her thoughts continued the statement ‘Home to the medical institution you came from…’

Zeel smiled since he could very much guess what Cleo and Thomas were thinking from the expression on their faces…

Jenna was a bit harder to read, but she seemed more confused than anything…

Knowing he was no longer welcomed, Zeel excused himself from the family, and walked around the corner, warping away as soon as he was out of sight…

An instant later, Zeel rested on the branch of a huge tree outside the hospital…

The tree had a direct line of sight with Henry’s and Nara’s room…

“Henry’s family are wonderful people…” Zeel mused, thinking about his own family as his mind ran comparisons…

Catherine, his sister, was probably looking for a way to make him her slave since he did the same to her in the past…

Tom, his father, was probably sitting on a beach somewhere, hiding from powerful enemies and dropping hints about Zeel’s whereabouts so he didn’t have to bother fighting anyone…

Clara, his mother, was probably with his father, creating new perfect babies since she was obsessed with perfect things…

“Yup…” Zeel reached an inevitable conclusion “I fucking hate my family!”