Aeon Nether & Idol Effigy

Chapter 63- Light

Gaab's day was going fine, he only hated the fact that he was now not able to watch Aeon nearly as much as he wanted as he had also entered Idol Effigy. He didn't even have the comment wall or ability to comment any more. Gaab occasionally wondered if Aeon had felt like he did, but realised that he shouldn't be trying to drag her down to his level.

Day after day, he'd go back after training to watch Aeon or go out dungeon diving trying to follow in the footsteps of his idol. He was always worried that he was studying too much now, because he'd been watching Aeon study like crazy nowadays.

He had gotten to find out what his ability was before he entered Idol Effigy. It was really plain and annoying to use in his opinion. A type of cold fire that he saw as useless. Sure it warmed him, but not anyone else. He'd seen many people with cold abilities go into science or the food industry. Some went into beauty which he was more interested in, or he would have been if it weren't for his idol who was a year older than him. To be honest, he wouldn't even have found out his ability if it weren't for Aeon and her safe tips to gaining rare treasures in the empty dungeons. He'd found his ability name strange, but he didn't outright tell people about it until he was tested for the idol Effigy show. He did so proudly, happily giving all the credit to Aeon in a moving tale to bring up her viewership.

Today, he'd met with almost no resistance from the other contestants who'd finally known he was a crazed fan who'd obsessively watched a contestant from a year after this one. They all thought that he might explode one day if Aeon exited the competition. No one would be surprised if he'd call out the show and simply dropped out or did something that would give his gossipy parents something to talk about. His parents being the ones that loved Aeon for helping him through a hard period in his life. If Aeon did something dangerous, they'd let Gaab try. It was a strange relationship in some ways, but it worked.

Gaab was smiling from ear to ear in the training room that everyone came into to listen to their songs nervously before their performances. Gaab, however, was watching Aeon on loud speaker again from his phone. Every now and then you'd hear the chatter of Aeon who didn't seem to talk much, something that allowed Gaab to not cross the line in annoying everyone in his vicinity.

The wide eyed Gaab's smile soon changed after a while. A change that everyone in the loud training room noticed, even the instructors. Naturally, the training room wasn't loud anymore. There were also some of the previously well known troublesome staff members who'd Gaab was pissed off about on Aeon's account. They were all on the outer edges of the room watching Gaab carefully, because they weren't allowed to watch the live streams of any show on Idol Effigy until that specific season was over. So having someone like Gaab who was an avid watcher had its perks.

Gaab started crying. It was a sudden change and without warning he left the room with his phone still in front of him in landscape mode. He ran in the direction that he worked out that the second year school building was by the nearest bus station. Everyone in the room just went quiet and let him leave as he'd always been the one who wanted to perform first. He'd already finished doing his performance, so why not let him leave. A lot of people were still curious as to what happened, so even the nervous ones who'd yet to do their performances searched for Aeon's live stream.

...

The blood that was dripping on the table made me subtly dizzy. I didn't realise that I went over my limit. That was all. But putting my habitat option down with a content expression seemed to have made the problem bigger, because when I looked up everyone was looking at me with a frightened, almost angry expression. The anger didn't seem to be angry at me, but moreso an expression of anger you'd expect from a worried loved one.

They couldn't really say anything now, since we were all technically in an exam for four hours. It would do us all no good if I were to suddenly leave. So I used some of my personal healing energy that seemed to stop my flow of blood and changed out of my species half form. From there I wiped my blood away with some paper towels placed on every desk in the room and reached out to take some dried rubber like hay substance called dried rubber grass. There was a technical name for it, but I've always found the obvious descriptive names for things more useful.