"You told him what?"

  She tilted her head. "I told him that we went to a restaurant together. What's the issue?"

  "You—you're being purposefully obtuse, you know how that sounds! Mara was there as well—"

  "She left after ten minutes."

  When Chad had greeted Nathan at the town gates, he had been expecting a smile, a slap on the shoulder, or even a simple hello. He definitely hadn't been expecting for Nathan to take him aside, threaten him at fishing pole point, and say that if Chad did anything untoward with his sister, that he would find himself in a coffin at the bottom of the ocean.

  The next morning, Chad had knocked on Sarah's door (she'd been given a house by Gius due to her relation to Nathan) and demanded answers. Having the full picture, he now understood a little bit why Nathan was reacting the way he was.

  On the one hand, there was no denying that Nathan was probably a little bit overprotective of his sister.

  On the other hand, said sister seemed to have made it her life mission to ruin Chad's reputation. So who's fault was it? Natan for being tricked by his sister? Or his sister for being a provocative troublemaker?

  "So, are we going to finish that tour?" she asked.

  Chad scrambled for an excuse… only to find absolutely nothing.

  He adjusted his sunglasses, took them off, then pinched the bridge of his nose.

  "It is way too early in the morning for this," he muttered.

  "What was that?"

  "Nothing." He slipped his sunglasses back on and put on his best grin. "Fine, let's get going."

  "Well? You said you wanted to try it."

  "I—I know, but I thought you were messing with me."

  "What would make you think that? Come on, eat it."

  The girl looked between the mushroom skewer in her hand and the mushroom man who just sold it to her. She gulped, then took a bite. Her eyes lit up and she started devouring the skewer whole.

  Chad scratched the back of his head. He'd taken her to a weird stall in an alleyway in order to mess with her a bit. To his horror, he found out that it was a mushroom person selling… skewered mushroom.

  Based off how the mushroom person had spoken, Chad had a very good idea of where he was sourcing mushrooms from.

  And that was as far as his thought process would go. Better not to think about the implications.

  What was more interesting was that Sarah had quickly overcome her fear of where the mushrooms come from and had ordered three more skewers in the five seconds that Chad had been thinking.

  Chad watched her and shook his head. "I guess it runs in the family."

  She looked over at him, her cheeks stuffed and popped out like a chipmunk. "What was that?"

  "You're a lot like your brother," Chad said dryly.

  Sarah swallowed the food that was in her mouth and cocked a hand on her hip. A smirk appeared on her face along with a grin.

  "Wrong," she said. "Nathan is a lot like me. I'm the original."

  Chad stared at her pose, then snorted.

  A look of mock offense. "How dare you laugh at me? The beautiful, the magnificent Sara Lee. She who is without compare. Water mage of the setting sun. Grand poobah of—"

  "Normally I'm supposed to be the one making statements like that. When did you go and steal my personality?"

  She laughed into her hand. "Who do you think I got it from?"

  Chad stared at her.

  "You watch my streams?" he asked.

  "Yup! After all, I had to keep an eye on my darling little brother, didn't I?"

  When he realized that she'd been watching Nathan, Chad started to lift his lips into a smile before it stopped, the motion frozen like a lagging image on a screen.

  "You know—" He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it. "Never mind."

  Perhaps sensing that the mood had abruptly turned, a small frown appeared on Sarah. It disappeared as quickly as it appeared, and she shrugged.

  "You got it, chief."

  The two continued walking through the city while Chad tried to get a handle on his slight bout of frustration.

  He knew why he was annoyed. Mara had articulated the same reason when he'd asked why she was so rude to Sarah.

  Even so, Chad felt like Sarah had been through enough. She didn't deserve the enmity of two strangers who were close friends with her brother. No need to make things more complicated.

  "You've got a funny look on your face."

  Chad tilted his head. He looked over toward the building where a mushroom person and a werewolf were haggling about something.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "Man, you're really stealing all my lines," he said.

  "You're pretty good at reading people, from what I've seen," Sarah said. "But your face is like an open book, even with those stupid sunglasses."

  Chad bit the inside of his cheek. "Is this what I sound like when I do this stuff?"

  She barreled on. "Not to mention, you're acting like a total weirdo. I've seen how you are with Nathan. All flash and pizzazz. But right now, you're acting more like him. And I like my brother, but I don't need another one of him running around."

  She stepped in front of him and stood still. Chad was forced to either go around her or stop. He forced his feet to cease their movement and stood in front of her.

  "I think I know what this is about," she sighed. "You and that gun girl—I'm a stranger, but I'm sidled up next to Nathan and I'm treated well. Is that it?"

  "I think you're just imagining things."

  "No, no, no," she said. "Don't try to play those games with me. You think I can't tell? That girl hates me. Every time I look at her, it's like she's trying to kill me with psychic energy. And while you don't have the same level of enmity, it's pretty obvious that you're on edge."

  Chad took a deep breath. He really didn't want to get into it with Nathan's sister at the current moment.

  "My best bet is that you're pretending because of Nathan," she said. "That you don't want him to get bothered with social problems, because he has enough on his plate."

  She really wasn't going to let this go, was she?

  "Fine," Chad scowled and his eyes narrowed. "Yes, I have a problem with you. But it's not because you're a stranger."

  Sarah seemed startled by this, her eyebrows furrowing and a single blink as a response. "Really? Then why—"

  "Because you abandoned him."

  The noise on the street faded away.

  She stared at him, her face still and frozen.

  Chad growled and grabbed her arm. "Let's go somewhere else. We don't want to make ourselves into a public spectacle."

  They went into an alley and turned a few corners.

  "This looks all sorts of bad," Sarah gave a strained laugh. "Taking me off alone like this—"

  "Save it."

  Her mouth snapped shut.

  Once they were far enough away from the street, Chad released her and crossed his arms. Sarah rubbed the spot where he grabbed her.

  "What do you mean by abandoned?" she asked.

  "He was looking for you from day one," Chad said. "He did everything he could to hunt you down. He overcame challenge after challenge, just for you. But as far as I can tell, you haven't done a single thing to repay him."

  She bristled. "I never asked for his help. In fact, I told him to screw off."

  Chad scoffed.

  "Did you really expect your brother to just not give a shit about you? To just stop caring?"

  "I expected him to listen to what I asked him to do," her words came out fast and pointed, each one like a needle. "I knew that if he got involved it would be a mess, that everything would escalate even further."

  "Are you serious?" he asked.

  Her teeth gritted together, her spine hunched while her head remained pointed at Chad, like some kind of wounded dog backed into a corner.

  "Where do you get off on talking to me like this?" she said. "It doesn't even matter anymore. Nathan didn't care. He let me back in here like nothing happened. You're not family, you're just his friends! It's none of your business."

  He said that he felt the same when Mara said we were the closest thing we had to family.

  The words stopped on his tongue. It felt too bold to say what he was about to say, too presumptive.

  "I'm still his friend. I'm still worried about his well-being. I'm allowed to get mad on his behalf," he said. "And for your information, Mara basically considers him to be family at this point."

  "What, so she's jealous? Mad that the sister always been taken by his actual sister?"

  "You are just a special kind of asshole, aren't you?" Chad said. "No, she's not jealous. She's angry about the fact that you came back into his life like nothing happened. After running away from him for ages, after dismissing and ignoring every offer of help he made, after all he wanted to do was to see you in his life again—you walk back in and everything's fine. Newsflash, that's not how life works. There are consequences for what you do. Nathan might be content to try to pretend like nothing's changed, but it has."

  Sarah chewed her lips. She backed into the wall and a little bit of the fight seemed to leave her body.

  "…It's not like I didn't feel bad," she muttered. "You don't—Gabriel was so much to me… I didn't know what to do. I was panicking. Nothing made sense anymore."

  "That doesn't give you the right to—"

  "I know it's not an excuse!"

  Chad jolted back form the force of her shout.

  "I needed time, okay? Time to work out my feelings, time to deal with the fact that… me and my brother killed my fiancé. Is that…" Her voice turned to a low, small mutter. "Is that so much? Is that really so much to ask for?"

  She sunk to the ground and put her head into her knees.

  A small thread of guilt pierced Chad's chest. He looked away and frowned. He still stood by everything he said. He thought the fact that she hadn't had a serious discussion with her brother—the fact that she ghosted him for months when all he wanted was to help her and protect her—it was really messed up.

  But at the same time… this wasn't particularly productive. All he was doing was just beating down on somebody who had already given up. He just felt like an asshole at the moment.

  "I'm sorry," the words came out tasting like sandpaper on his tongue. "I was too harsh."

  "No, you were right. This talk has been a long time coming." She said into her legs. "I need to talk with him and set things right. Just—just not now. He has enough on his plate. Too busy trying to save the world to deal with these sorts of issues."

  As much as Chad wanted her to hurry up and apologize to Nathan, she was probably right about that.

  "You can't put it off for too long," Chad said. "You might not get the chance to say anything."

  She flinched. Her hands tightened around her pant legs. "Soon. On the next circle, I promise."

  They remained in silence for nearly a full minute.

  I guess Nathan would hate me for life if I didn't do something right now.

  Chad bent down and held out one hand. "Come on, let's get out of here."

  Sarah peeked out and looked at his hand with an eye of suspicion.

  He stared at her, then waved his hand in the air. "My arm is gonna get tired."

  She stared at his hand for a full minute. Finally, she reached out and took it. Chad tugged her to her feet and scratched the back of his head.

  "What on earth was that?" he said, more to himself than her. "I can't believe I went off like that out of nowhere. Seriously out of character."

  A brittle smirk appeared on Sarah's face. "What a terrible job you did—you'd never make it in a real performance role."

  Chad couldn't hold back a snort. "Have you been reading my comment section?"

  "On occasion. Did you know that people think you and Nathan are in a love triangle with Mara?"

  What? They think I like her?

  "That's… an unusual—"

  "No, no," Sarah said. "I don't think you're understanding—they're saying both you and Mara are in love with Nathan."

  Chad's glasses slipped down his nose. His eyes were completely blank, dead to the world.

  "I—I see," he said.

  She was laughing, but he could tell that it was all a fa?ade. Quickly trying to staple back her emotions into something resembling a normal person.

  His mouth was already moving before he could stop himself. He cursed his altruism even as he spoke.

  "Tell me about Gabriel," he said.

  She froze. She looked at him, an unclear expression on her face. "You really want to know?"

  "Yeah." Chad committed himself to the decision. "Why not?"

  Her eyes fluttered and her mouth opened and shut multiple times. A look of resolve appeared on her face and she nodded.

  "Okay, I…" Her voice turned steady. "It's… it's kind of stupid, but I first met him at the water cooler where we used to work…"