Xara sighed, seeing Aether's broken expression… Really, it wasn't Aether's problem… Well, it was kind of his, but surely she couldn't point that out.
She had already heard the story of his lonely life, where his girlfriend abandoned him simply for being infertile and… how he had been left shattered, mentally scarred, suffering endlessly with no one to catch him when he fell.
Tsk! She should have shut her damn mouth instead of running it like that!
If only her tongue hadn't slipped, if only she had bitten back those careless words…
Aether lunged back into the chair as if her voice itself was poison... His shoulders sank, his head dropped, and the silence around him grew unbearable.
Xara immediately rushed to him and wrapped her arms around him tightly, clinging as though she could glue his broken pieces together.
"It's not what you think it is… You are perfectly fine," she whispered, her voice trembling but warm, trying to pierce through the storm in his mind.
