“I don’t know how much you know about me, but I don’t get hurt easily. So, I won’t tolerate risky actions like earlier twice.”

“It’s my body. Whether I get hurt or not doesn’t matter to you.”

Feeling unfairly treated for some reason, I retorted sharply without realizing it.

I expected Askan to respond with something about the mission, but unexpectedly, he remained silent.

He stared at me with a stern expression as if he had been struck in the heart. Then, in a lower voice than before, he spoke.

“That’s how it was before. You showed interest in me.”

“…If you’re trying to say you want me to stop showing interest, don’t bother. I’ll figure it out on my own.”

Zen appeared in the distance. He seemed to have come here to find me.

Not wanting to cause unnecessary worries, I waved my hand to signal that I was here. And that was when I moved in that direction naturally.

“Ah!”

For a moment, my ankle twinged.

I had felt a bit uncomfortable from a while ago, but now I could clearly feel the pain, indicating that I had somehow injured it.

It seemed that when I dodged the arrow with Askan and rolled on the ground, I twisted my foot by mistake.

I noticed that my gait was strange, and Askan, looking somewhat concerned, asked with a questioning expression.

“Did you injure your ankle?”

“I think I twisted it a bit.”
Hobbling towards Zen, my body suddenly floated into the air. Startled, I turned my head and found myself embraced by Askan.

“As…!”

Almost instinctively, I was about to call him Askan, but the warning he gave me not to call his name came to mind, so I sealed my lips.

However, Askan seemed oblivious to my words. He just looked at me with an unreadable expression.

“Let me down. I can walk.”

Even with my words, Askan didn’t flinch. His eyes just held an emotionless gaze towards me.

“I don’t care how significant our memories are, to the point where you were willing to take an arrow for me. I have no intention of being bound by forgotten past events.”

It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand. From his perspective, the emotions I felt now might be burdensome.

Although it was a fact I already knew, hearing it again from him made my heart twinge. The man standing before me had been the Askan I searched for desperately for ten years. And at the same time, he was not the boy from back then.

But his words didn’t end there.

“However, if your actions are for the present me and not the past, it might feel a bit different.”

I couldn’t grasp the meaning immediately, so I pondered over his words repeatedly. And the more I thought, the more my mouth opened unintentionally.

To me, the Askan from the past and the present were the same person. Yet, he drew a line as if he were a different person.

Askan seemed to perceive the past as if it were someone else’s, someone he couldn’t remember. Was he asking me to see him in his current state?

Looking at Askan with a puzzled expression, I asked, “What do you mean?”

Until now, I couldn’t decipher the look in his eyes when he looked at me.

But not this time. His eyes, resembling moonlight, gazed down at me with the first clear emotion.

“If your interest is directed towards the present me, regardless of the past, then I won’t decline.”

It might be curiosity, perhaps even interest.

What was clear was that something had changed.