Servamp: Of broken bonds and sorrows

2- The first lies

Mahiru had been staring into the void for twenty minutes straight. He would sometimes bump into people as he crossed the street, reflexively apologizing as his thoughts kept straying back to that person. Despite what he told him, and although he meant it, not hurting Kuro was going to be difficult. He had been panicking internally the whole time at the cafe and he was pretty sure it had been the same for the others. Well, maybe not for Licht nor Mikuni, but Izuna had actually started blurting out incomprehensible words as the situation clearly got out of hand, and Niccolo had been biting his nails quite often as they tried thinking about a course of action. It took around two hours to establish all the advantages the enemy had compared to them and come up with a temporary decision. And they had only seen a small amount of the man's power. Which led them to think it was best to wait.

'For the time being, let's not be rash'. Mikuni had said. 'We'll have to see whether weird things do occur in the next few days or not. I suggest we wait for one entire week. If nothing has changed after this delay, perhaps we can consider telling our servamps, but I'd rather not, to be honest. He was pretty serious about the rules, but I figure you have noticed as well.'

'And what if we do become dangerous enough to be a potential threat to them?' Izuna had asked.

'I already know of a counter measure, but I'll tell you only if absolutely necessary. Resorting to that would also be problematic for me, though.'

And that was it. There had been nothing more to add, and even if some of them were far from satisfied with this 'plan' it wasn't like they could go in a battle against him. Mahiru guessed not everyone got what Mikuni had implied when he talked about his solution either, but he could. And the mere thought of having to do this to Kuro made him want to vomit, because- no, no, no. He promised himself not to endanger him, to always be there for him, so he shouldn't imagine the worst case scenario now.

Having reached the front door, he took several deep breaths and tried to calm himself down. It would be the first time he lied to his partner, and he hated deceiving people in the first place. He really needed to be composed. Putting his best smiling face on, Mahiru slowly opened the door, and tried sounding as cheerful as possible as he spoke.

-"I'm back, Kuro!"

Well, at least he didn't waver, but he couldn't tell if it was convincing enough. It sounded wrong to his own ears either way.

-" Oh, hey." Sloth's reply came at last.

He felt like it had been several minutes during which his respiration stopped.

-" What's up?" Kuro asked.

Mahiru never thought he'd be so good at lying.

-" Well, you see, everyone's been feeling pretty down lately. Especially Tetsu, since, you know..."

"Hn."

"... And anyways, Misono texted me saying we should talk to him and relax for once."

Now it felt like he was using his friend' s problems as an excuse. It was the only one he could come up with, though.

-" Okay. This is a pain, but I hope he's not having it too rough."

"He needs time, I think..."

Mahiru wanted this tension in the air to be gone already. He still couldn't believe he was doing this to Kuro, someone so important to him. He had to find a way to get out of this mess before he got involved.

-" Ah, I was finishing a race on Mario Kart. Wanna play one on one next?"

"Sure !" He would try keeping the act up.