His Truth

IV

CHAPTER FOUR - James
His Truth

"Okay, okay!" I chortled, struggling. Ethan is currently tickling me with his long-ass metallic nails. He rand his hands over my torso and found my ticklish spots which, to my luck, were the most obvious places of my body. With the light pressing his fingertips on my vulnerable sides, I held back a giggled mewl yet burst out laughing as he massaged further. "S–Sto—AHAHAH!"

About the tickling situation or just his metallic nails, I don't know why either.

Ethan gradually stopped tickling as he stopped to smile at me. At quite an invading distance, he hovered over my head as he lightly catched his breath from all the laughing show. His smile eventually turned into a lopsided frown as he stared, boring holes on my eyes.

"Care to tell why are you on top of me?" I fixated my gaze on Ethan's, noticing his empty yet amused gray irises, hued with a faint shade of blue. He stared back with the same level of intensity. He might say, 'the eyes are the windows to the soul.' Knowing him, he probably might have copied it from another book or a person he heard it from. Yet indeed, the phrase is right. I could get lost in them...

In his soul.

He pinned both of my wrists over my head on his bed as he smirked. Don't even question why we got to this point. This cunning son of a bitch tried to steal my damn bird prey for food and even blatantly blamed me, saying it was his in the first place! Though he always does these kind of things, it still annoyed me to the point that I want to punch him in the guts and puke out the stolen food. Honestly, he deserves it.

But I know he's just pretending this facade of his. A hidden bravado was yet to surface.

"Why do you..." He barely whispered as he nearly closed our distance without hesitation, hovering an inch over my face. I could see his pupils dilate while fixing his eyes on mine, visibly digging for thoughts as I did too. Too close...

The staring contest didn't last long, though. I felt his grip loosen as he stood up and cleared his throat. Okay, awkward...

I reluctantly sat up and scratched the back of my head. His eyes held a curious gaze onto the dirt floor of his tent. His evident lip-biting, right hand on his hip whilst slowly massaging his upper thigh, I knew something was up. It was at times like these where he would rarely yet randomly space out while I was training. He always avoided addressing anything about it, pulling out random things to talk about to avoid the topic. Though, these random things were either nonsensical or important for my training, there was no in between.

I narrowed my eyes towards him, raising my left brow in curiousity. "Okay, Ethan. Spill it."

"I–I," he huffed as he avoided my eyes, tensing a little bit. Queue incoming nonsensically important excuse, "James, do you remember the classes of attacks?"

And, there it is.

I sighed. And then there's me, chicken to even demand from him what was actually going on. Being restricted from knowledge is hard, especially in my case where I don't even know a single thing about this world when I supposedly arrived here. I stood up, whispering under my breath, "You know you could always tell me anything, right?"

"W–What?" He replied distractedly, looking around his surroundings. And he pretends to not hear it in the first place. This routine is too familiar...

"It's nothing." I retorted and subtly rolled my eyes. He nodded lightly as he rummaged on the nearby bag, still his gaze distracted and away from meeting mine. I inspected him as he was taking a seat on the dirt floor with a long metal stick, same as the thickness of a chopstick. This stick is familiar. He always brings this at the start of a new stance routine. It wouldn't necessarily be a metal stick, though. He could sometimes bring a dagger or an insanely long needle. I wouldn't even try to get close if he holds something like those.