Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 345. Redemption

I leaned back and closed my eyes, soon getting swept away by sleep as well.

When I woke up again, it was night outside, and it was still raining.

I felt a heated stare and turned to my side to look into intense blue eyes.

"Awake?" I asked with a smile, still a bit dazed.

The bundle on me was snoring softly, and so was Henrietta, as the rain outside pitter-pattered continuously.

"Yes, and you?" He asked back, his eyes burrowing a hole inside me.

"Obviously." I closed my eyes and leaned my head back again, softly thumping it against the tree as I remembered the bunch of shit that was still left unsaid.

"Are you hungry? How are you feeling?" I conjured up a cup of hot tea and a soup that I held in front of his eyes.

"Yeah, hungry. Weak." Henry looked at what I held before him a second longer before he took the tea and food over.

I swallowed down the question of whether he wanted to drink my blood, because not only did I not want to dirty him any more with it, but also because I didn’t want to steer the topic back to sin number two.

Henry drank his soup in one go and gave me the bowl back, then he sipped on the tea while I put it back.

"Does she have to sleep on you?" He stared at his tea, and I broke into a chuckle at his ever-the-same dumb jealousy.

At the same time, I was scared and wanted to run the fuck away.

Everything seemed grey; everything seemed to have developed to a point of no return.

My thoughts spiraled south speedily as I broke into a cold sweat, having all my fears bared in front of me. The first and foremost was that the relationship with Henry had changed forever.

You can always conjure his old self up again.

No, it wouldn’t be real; it would be a mirage of the past.

You can always lock him up.

I can, and I probably will, yet it wouldn’t be the SAME, and the SAME is what I want, what I NEED.

"Out with it." Henry’s resolute voice, sounding more like a command than a question, ripped me out of my thoughts.

I snapped my eyes open and turned my head to look at him.

Licking my lips, I contemplated the next step, the words I could use to find out what he had pieced together from the things he knew of the giant, if there was some lie I could serve him—but I didn’t even really remember what I had told him until now; I can’t even remember the lies I haven’t yet told.

"Then I’ll start. What exactly happened? What is it that you are so scared of?" His eyes met mine, and I shuddered from fear and unwillingness.

"..." I tried to open my mouth, but it was as if my jaws clammed shut.

"Kenny." He whispered, his expression so overwhelming, his eyes so believing and devoted.

"..." I clenched my teeth, trying to speak, trying to get it together.

He waited for me, giving me time as he sipped on the tea and stared at the rain outside the tree.

Finally, I managed to open my mouth, speaking hushedly and hastily as I fought out what I had swallowed down to never face again.

"I was on the dead planet; I forced Henrietta to send me there because I had a vision of the giant evading the commander’s world..."

"It was full of ash, ash trees; there was no sun or moon. It was fucked up, scary, and dark..."

"I knew the giant would come for me, so I planned to die when the fucker showed up..."

"But then I didn’t want to die... So I remembered the dreams where I had been swallowed and eaten..."

"In his teeth were holes, so..." I took a deep, shaky breath, trying to ease my choked-up throat as my eyes filled with tears.

"I dug the ash and trained with the teeth I made... The coin had lines, and it turned out the lines formed a hangman. I thought it was fucking ME who would hang." Fuck, FUCK, FUCK!

"Ah, I trained because I wanted to kill him from the inside after he swallowed me."

Only now did I notice that I was holding onto the girl in my arms, stroking her back repeatedly.

But I couldn’t stop, forcing the rest over my lips.

"He came... he came, and I pissed and shit myself—that’s how fucking scared I was..."

"He picked me up, and the way to his mouth was endless ..."

"I heard a voice, instinct, and it told me when to jump and when to teleport. Ah, yeah, I got teleporting figured out before he came."

"I moved, and shortly before I got swallowed, I was swept back by his saliva, and my leg got caught between his teeth and..." Short on hyperventilating, I steered my thoughts away.

"I didn’t look... I didn’t look down; I didn’t want to know..."

"Swallowed, I was on the vocal cords, then I climbed up into the nasal cavity, then to the brain. Oh."

"That was when I conjured you up, but I did it on the dead planet as well."

"Then I climbed up near the brain, and then I sliced and shot at two red things. Later, I found out that it was the carotid artery." I didn’t want to find out, but I saw it when I looked for information regarding the pineal gland.

"Blood spurted out, the giant died, and then I saw scenes of his memory."

"Ah. It turned out, by the way, that the hangman was the giant and that the coin was leading me to the place I had to attack."

Now was the time to come clean. Henry promised he wouldn’t care.

He promised.

"There was Henrietta, and you were there as well. He knew you two, and Henrietta was his childhood friend." I had stoically looked outside while stroking the child’s back, and I continued doing so, unable to face him.

"He was the boy who fell, and his pineal gland got activated or something. He could open portals. He knew about awareness and layers; he made his Henrietta, Emily, aware. His Henrietta wanted to come with him when he set out to wander through the parallel worlds. But he said no. And she was the one contacting the other Henriettas in search of him." I knew it all along, because it matched the clues I had gathered, but the Room-Counterpart searching for Kenneth confirmed it.

"He started it. My counterpart is responsible for the Henriettas becoming aware and contacting each other and the cause your sister went to the place where your parents died."

"It’s my fault." I pressed out between my nearly closed mouth, wanting nothing more than to stop it and take back each and every word I had said.

"It’s all my fault."

I stared outside; the way I stroked the child’s back had become faster, and my hold on her tighter, as I needed to hold onto something, anything, that would stop me from disappearing inside these shitty memories.

"How is that your fault?" Henry’s husky voice came with a chuckle.

I turned to him and found that his hands were trembling hard. Fuck.

Fuck.

"No. This—" He followed my eyes to his hands.

"-is because I am trying to stop myself from going on a killing spree—not because of my parents, but because of what you had to experience."

I didn’t dare to meet his gaze, so he raised a trembling hand to his face, and when I followed it, I met his eyes through his fingers.

"If you had told me before, I could have assured you earlier."

I saw small specks of shadowy energy seeping through his trembling hand while his eyes blazed in a silvery-blue.

I was sucked into the feelings that spilled out from him, as he looked like a demon from hell thirsting to butcher humans and monsters alike if it allowed him to turn back time.

Turn back time to come and save me.

"Kenny, at this point you could kill my parents in front of my eyes, and I wouldn’t mind." He chuckled.

He freely and openly showed the same possessiveness, the same obsession I was feeling but had tried to bury deep inside me, too scared of the harm it could cause.

"Although none of this was ever, not even once, your fault..." His lips trembled as he spoke so earnestly and convincingly that I found myself in the midst of believing each and every one of his words.

"I don’t give a fuck about what your counterpart has done, what you have done, or what you will do. I don’t care as long as you don’t leave my sight."

The shadowy energy around him was vibrating, his eyes turning between silver and intense blue back and forth, as I was stunned, shell-shocked, and in disbelief by the beauty he displayed as well as by each of his words that sounded to my ears like the redemption I so desperately craved.

"Damn..." He laughed, held his forehead, tilted his head, and looked away before his eyes turned back to me, binding me in place.

"...I should have locked you up the moment I met you."