Someone to trust (Books of the beginning fanfic)

Chapter 38-Returning

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Emma's pov
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The soup we ate, despite the fresh ingredients I had bought for it, had tasted horrible. But knowing that we needed all strength we could get we ate it all. Agnes, however, had found it delicious and after her satisfying feast, she had closed her eyes and had fallen fast asleep. Leaving me and Renna to talk. And we did, for hours on end. But despite all this, I hadn't acquired much information about her. The only thing I had found out was that she had lost her family, that they were the ones she had looked for in the land of the dead after regaining her memories and had by now given up on ever seeing them again. Yet despite the little content of our chit chat, it seemed to do me good. The conversation had a feeling of safety and normalcy in this chaos. And without knowing her past, I felt like I know who she was already. A girl with an even bigger love for sarcasm and sass than me, one where you didn't need to take her taunts and teasing all too seriously. But that, of course, wasn't enough to silence my curiosity. And I put it into words as we stared at the fire.

"I still know nothing about you," I stated.

"What you need to know I'll tell you. And I did. You know what to call me."

"But that's it. I don't know why you were in that burning house, why you died in the first place, what are your family members' names? I need to know that as well."

"You don't need to, you want to. And I haven't pressured you into letting me know anything other than necessary."

"You don't know anything about me," I spat. The girl reminded me more of a psychologist than a peer.

"I know that your name is Emma Wibberly. That you have a brother and sister and just by your absence of mentioning them not a good bound to your parents. You are reckless and some, if I had to guess that includes your brother, would call you dumb. Yet you have an admirable sense of bravery." The last part stuck with me. She said it in such a neutral way that it didn't appear like a compliment. Yet at the same time, it was so genuine that the positive remark held much more weight then I felt as possible.

"You think I'm brave?" I tried to make it come off as sarcastic but the amused look in her eyes let me know that she was aware that I was flattered.

"It was brave of you to spend your strength on helping me get away from that inferno. You could have used that energy to escape on your own instead."

"About that, shouldn't you thank me?" I asked.

"Thank you? Shouldn't you be thanking me? Now, you have an awesome new friend. After all, I suppose you don't have a lot of those, right?"

"Tschh, and you then?"

"Not an answer to my question. Am I right or not?"

"You don't have any friends either do you?"

"Am I right or am I not?"

"I- I don't need any other friends. I'm fine with the ones I've got." She just hummed, as if expecting it. "And you then? You don't seem like the social one either."

"Kinda the same as you. Every friend I had ditched me. I'm fine with my family... But for some reason, you didn't ditch me. Why?"

"What? Should I just have let you burn?" She shrugged.

"You could have."

"... No, I couldn't have." It came out almost as a whisper, like a confession I didn't want to make. She looked at me, clearly thinking about what I said. Her eyes were on me as if she was studying me, like a weird scientist would stare at a monkey after pumping it full with experimental drugs.