Nefarious Hell // Project SEKAI // Villain/Hero AU

>05: Connections With an Old Friend<

I stayed close to Rui as we left the palace. I couldn't risk anything again. There were still battles between the villains and guards but all I knew was that we needed to get the gemstone to safety.

"Tsukasa-kun, are you alright?" Rui asks as he pulled me aside. Nobody seemed to notice our absence which gave him the perfect chance to speak with me.

"If I weren't, why would it concern you?" I mutter.

Rui chuckles before leaning towards me for a hug. I push him away as I didn't have much appeal to touch right now. He scoffs. "It's only a worry for me because you do seem a bit distraught. Perhaps it is because you're upset about the loss of the home you had only ever known?"

I was speechless at his (correct) assumption. It wasn't often that I surrounded myself with people who could guess exactly why I had been upset. Maybe he was able to always get it right from his powers? He could manipulate the mind so maybe it related to that.

I avoided eye-contact as much as I could but he forced us to lock eyes by lifting my head to face him. "I know how hard it must be to see your home get destroyed like this, but trust me it's for the best." he says.

I hated that he was always right. For the span of a month that I've known him, he knew everything about me. Of course, I knew him for a while now since some how I was his vassal but it still was a surprise to me.

I stayed quiet. I didn't have the words at that second. I searched for them but couldn't grasp them whatsoever.

"Tsukasa-kun?" Rui blinks a few times. I never realized how long his eyelashes were, it genuinely surprised me. Now that I thought about it, his movements were much more feminine rather than masculine. No matter how the public described him, he always was the opposite to what people said.

"Tsukasa-kun?" Rui repeats.

"S-sorry." I murmur, glancing downwards.

Rui places his hand down to my shoulder and sighs. "You don't need to apologize all the time, you know?"

I frown. "Why shouldn't I? I have a reason to say sorry," I state.

"Do you though?" He says, "In my opinion it seems more like a response that you'd often say in the past, more like a trauma response."

Trauma response?

I didn't have trauma, right? I mean not trauma that I was aware of? "Trauma? I don't have-"

"At what age did they start forcing you to train?" Rui snaps, removing his hands from my shoulders and putting them to his side.

"Age seven, why?" I cross my arms.

"When you made a mistake, did they hurt you at all?" He asks.

I hesitate to think about it for a minute. Anytime I had made a small mistake while training as a kid they would smack me and yell at me. I guess that could count. "Yeah? But how would this relate to-" Rui cuts me off.

"How much had you apologized during those incidents?"

"A ton, but seriously how does this relate!?" I grunt.

"Whenever you made a mistake you'd apologize and that has interfered with you now. It's a trauma response." Rui explains to me.

"Oh."

How hadn't I realized it before? God, I really was stupid.

"How messed up was the kingdom for you not to realize that?" Rui sighs.

I shrug. "We were taught to believe whatever they said," I mutter.

"And nobody found any wrong in that?"