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On one hand, I was just about to start cultivating…

\'Okay, who am I even trying to fool?\' I asked myself as a small smile of self-aimed irony flowered on my mouth.

"Sure, come in."

Relaxing down on the floor, I breathed out, allowing the tension of the focused state of non-emotional motivation to go away.

Hearing the doors turn, I opened my eyes and looked up…

Only for my jaw to nearly dislodge and fall down to the floor.

I\'ve seen Claire naked more times than I could count. I\'ve seen her scantily dressed, wearing sexy lingerie or clothes that only pretended to serve the purpose of covering up one\'s nakedness. I\'ve even seen her in a cute onesie, but right now?

Right now was the very first time for me to see her in what had to be a mix of comfy loungewear and outright pajamas.

"H-hi…" she said, turning her eyes away, still stuck on the awkwardness that was there when we parted ways to give her some room to think things through.

"Hi, sweetie," I greeted back, leaning to the back on my hands as I made sure to appear as relaxed as I possibly could.

It was clear to see how hard of a time she had approaching me after what we went through… or rather, after dealing with the emotions that my breakthrough invoked in her soul. And while I have long since forgotten about the whole situation…

I couldn\'t exactly expect Claire, a girl, to deal with emotions the same way I, a man, did, could I?

"I…" Claire grabbed with her right hand at her left shoulder, still keeping her eyes off to the side, as if she was too shy to look directly into my face.

Then, as if to exceed my current expectations and prove just how little faith I had in her, she forced her head to move, making it harder and harder for her eyes to keep avoiding me, all the way to the point where she had no other choice but to look straight ahead.

"I-I was wondering if…" Claire looked up to me for a moment, only to quickly look away, unable to bear the look of my calm smile for more than just a few seconds, "if there was anything I could do for you to a-apologize…"

My left eyebrow moved up as Claire managed to find the angle I, by no means, expected her to take.

"Wait, is this what I think it is?" I asked, now raising my other eyebrow to form the honest look of surprise on my face.

"Y-yes…"

Claire looked off to the side again while pulling on her elbow so hard, I was starting to get worried she would outright break her arm right here and now.

"Haa-ah…" I sighed, only to stand up and move towards the pajama-clad girl.

The closer I came, the more she appeared to shrink into herself, as if my mere presence only amplified all the emotions that she clearly has yet to make her peace with.

"Then I\'m sorry, but no, not yet," I said as soon as I stood close enough for her to be within my arm\'s reach. "Instead…"

I reached out and gently grabbed Claire by her shoulders, only to then move up just half of a step, taking care to be as gentle as I could as I both pulled her into a hug and stepped into it myself.

"I\'m not really sure what you are going through, but I\'m here to support you, mkay?" I asked while using one of my hands to lightly pat Claire\'s back and the other to gently massage the back of her head.

"Mhmm…" Pressing her face into my chest, Claire muttered something the meaning of which I\'d lost to just how muffled her voice was.

For the next while, we simply just… stood there, doing nothing but hugging each other, slowly recharging our social batteries drained by all the time we spent apart from each other.

No, that wasn\'t the right way to put it. Not when I\'ve never felt so drained even though there were times when I just happened to be nowhere near where Claire was. And while rare… those moments served as proof that it wasn\'t something as simple as lack of physical contact or simple intimacy.

We\'ve recharged the batteries that we started draining the moment we pulled apart, not physically… but emotionally.

"Can you tell me what\'s troubling you?" After a good chunk of time had passed, I finally gathered enough courage to ask the big question. "I\'m just a simple man, so unless you tell me, I will be left clueless."

Claire didn\'t respond right away. I didn\'t try to force the answer out of her either.

A few moments later, Claire slightly shifted in my embrace to the point where she brought both of her hands to my chest. Yet, rather than pushing me away to get out of my hug, she pressed against my chest to push herself down instead.

Surprising as it was at first, when she slid her hands down my torso and reached out to wrap them around my hips, however, I couldn\'t claim to remain clueless anymore.

"Claire, stop," I requested, only for her to ignore my voice and grab at the coiled material that kept my robes together.

"No, seriously…" my voice quickly grew urgent as she didn\'t seem to have any intention of stopping. "Claire, stop!"

Only when I raised my voice did it reach Claire\'s ears, causing her to freeze…

"Ah, I\'m sorry for shouting," I instantly apologized, only to bend down my knees and plummet down, quickly matching the level of Claire\'s face with my eyes, allowing me to reach out and bring my hands down onto her cheeks. "It\'s not that I don\'t enjoy the idea of what you were trying to do, but…" I bit down on the inside of my cheek, struggling to find the right words to properly express my feelings.

"It\'s just…" The more my face filled with frustration at my inability to voice my concerns, the more and more courage Claire gathered to actually peek up and look into my eyes.

"I don\'t want to use sex to just… ignore all that happened and artificially force us to be as close as we were before we arrived at the border."

Finally, our eyes met. Or rather, finally, our eyes not only met, but neither of us attempted to look away. The moment I looked into Claire\'s eyes, however, the corners of her eyes started to fill up with moisture.

"Oh dear me," I whispered, my heart already melting from the moment she appeared, clad in her cute pajamas, in the doorway. But now? Seeing her on the verge of tears?

"Dear, first off, I don\'t hold anything against you. If anything, I\'m frustrated with myself over how I allowed something so meaningless, something so unimportant, to happen and drive a wedge between the two of us!"

Rather than shouting to convince the girl of my convictions, I raised my voice a bit to show just how certain I was of this belief.

"But it\'s not!" Finally, Claire snapped out of her state, her tears properly brimming in her eyes as she reached out and grabbed at my wrists, only to then stare right into my eyes, a sense of mostly self-aimed frustration brimming out of every corner of her face.

"A natural breakthrough?! How could it be a small deal?"

With her frustration peaking, Claire let go of my wrist, only to slam the bottoms of her fists at my chest, soon pressing her forehead just below the base of my throat as well.

"And it\'s not you that I\'m frustrated with! How could you be at fault for something you have no control over!" she cried out in anger. "It is myself that I\'m hating! My jealous self that, rather than celebrate your growth, ended up pitying my lacking talent!"

It was with a heavy heart that I had to listen to Claire\'s cries. Hearing her teary voice and feeling the moisture of her tears on my undershirt brought me pain much worse than anything I\'ve ever experienced physically. And all of it became even worse over how powerless I was to soothe her worries.

"Wait," I suddenly reached out and grabbed at Claire\'s shoulders much tighter than before, as if to snap her out of her current state to at least temporarily bring her attention to some other, much more pressing issue. "You were frustrated with how your first thought wasn\'t what you would want it to be?"

This revelation was to me like finding the missing piece for a puzzle that I didn\'t know was missing a piece. A subversion of what I thought was happening so great, it flipped everything on its head, pretty much rendering all of what I thought about the whole issue to this point completely and utterly useless!

"Yes…?" Not sure what I was getting at, Claire answered with hesitation, struggling to figure out what kind of face she was to make now that I pushed her away just enough to look into her teary eyes.

"Oh damn…" I sighed out, only for my shoulders to drop when I felt the massive weight lift from them. "Dear, just like you couldn\'t blame me for the natural breakthrough, how could I blame you for something that you have no control over?" I asked, turning Claire\'s very own words against her. "Wait, no, that\'s not it," I quickly shook my head and, by the factor of losing control over my strength in the moment, Claire\'s shoulders. "How can you blame yourself for something you have no control over?"

Staring into Claire\'s eyes, I could see how my words led her to rethink the whole issue from the new perspective I just offered.

"Claire, listen…" I shook my head again. "Your first thoughts are meaningless, for they are but a primal reflection of our instincts. It is how you react to those thoughts that matters, for it shows the true value of your character."

I took a deep breath.

"You see," I looked up to the room\'s ceiling as I started to recount several different things at the same time, "there are times when people experience something called the call of the void. It is when you are driving a car and suddenly get the desire to just… drive off the road to your death. And while the roots of this kind of mental behavior are not exactly well researched…"

I hesitated for a bit, struggling to find all the precise details of what I wanted to say.

"As far as I remember, those thoughts are nothing more than our instinctive way of picturing the situation, for us to better understand the dire consequences of allowing it to happen. We get the desire to drive off the road and plunge into the abyss not because that\'s what we really want or desire at the core of our soul. It\'s merely a projection of what can happen if we allow ourselves to lose control, so that we can reinforce our focus and keep the car steady."

Looking back down, I could tell with just a single glance that Claire didn\'t really get the example.

"Look at it like this. There might be times when a scantily dressed woman will walk by me, leading my eyes to follow her for the short moment before I even realize what I\'m doing," I switched the example to one that directly involved me and, by proxy, Claire. "But this drift of my eyes doesn\'t mean that I\'m going to drop everything and chase after a short skirt like a dog in heat. It\'s merely an instinctive reaction, left over from the times when humans could operate only on their instincts. But just like I wouldn\'t give two fucks about another girl, I don\'t think you came to despise me over my advancement either, did you?"

Faced with such a long lecture, Claire, already in a turbulent emotional state, took a moment to carefully nod her head.

"And just like that, it doesn\'t matter what your first, instinctive thought was when I broke through. Maybe it was just an innate fear that by advancing beyond your level, I would be stupid, blind, and outright crazy enough to forget about you? Maybe it was your fear you would be left behind?"

I shook my head.

"I don\'t know what it was that brought forth that first thought of yours," I stated, only to reach out and caress Claire\'s cheek with my thumb. "What matters is what you did with that thought. And seeing how you ended up blaming yourself…"

I shook my head.

"I couldn\'t be more proud of you."