Chapter 28: A Bleeding heart.
I waited, giving her space. The mission prompt hovered, unseen by her, a silent spectator to the delicate dance I had just, by some miracle, managed to lead. The one-star difficulty was no longer an abstract concept. It was the palpable fragility of the girl in front of me, a fortress with its gates finally, hesitantly, creaking open.
The silence that followed my invitation was long and heavy. Victoria stared at her clasped hands, her knuckles white. The noisy backdrop of the restaurant—the clatter of plates, the murmur of conversations, the soft Italian music—seemed to recede, leaving just our little island of tense quiet at the booth. I didn't push. I sipped my now-tepid tea, giving her the space to decide whether to build a bridge or burn it.
Finally, she let out a breath that seemed to deflate her slightly. The rigid, defensive posture softened a fraction. When she spoke, her voice was low, stripped of its earlier frost and fury, revealing the raw hurt beneath.
"It's... his name is Leo," she began, not looking at me. "We met last semester. He's a charming guy, he's funny. And never failed to give me lots of attention."
" Even though I'm not… I'm not great with people." A bitter, self-deprecating twist touched her lips.
' Wow, I never noticed.' I said to myself, holding back the urge to role my eyes.
"Then, about a month ago, everything suddenly changed," she said, her voice tightening.
"He suddenly stopped texting.. no, I mean he does text but gradually they got shorter, sometimes he even forgets to text me for days."
" And even if we do meet, He's always 'busy.' even when I tried to make some time for us, he'd come up with one reason or the other to stand me up."
" On his phone. If I tried to talk about it, even try to ask if something was wrong…" She swallowed, her eyes fixed on a salt shaker. Slowly moistening before me.
"He'd get this… look. Like I was being ridiculous. He's began calling me clingy. Even saying that I was suffocating him. That I needed to get a life outside of him." The words were recited flatly, but I could hear the devastation each one had carved into her.
The more she talked, the clearer the picture became. This wasn't just a fading spark. It was a deliberate, cruel withdrawal and it looked like she didn't want to accept it.
She recounted instances of him forgetting plans, of him being visibly annoyed when she showed up unexpectedly, though always at previously agreed-upon places, of him gaslighting her concerns until she began to doubt her own perception of their relationship's decline.
' I think the system wasn't clear on how far this hurt and worries of her went.' I thought to myself.
This was the deep, specific ache of emotional abandonment and psychological manipulation.
If she hadn't told me in such explicit, vulnerable detail, if I hadn't seen the genuine pain flickering behind her hardened eyes, I might have been tempted to entertain a more charitable interpretation.
Such as the facts that 'Maybe the guy is just stressed,' a part of me thought.
Or 'Maybe that he was right and she's a bit intense, and he's pulling back naturally.' But the details dismantled that.
Leo, by her account, was also a college student. And I knew for a fact, from my own looming semester schedule and the deserted state of campus when I'd passed it earlier, that all colleges in the state were in the brief lull between summer sessions and the fall term.
They were closed. There were no labs, no lectures, no group projects demanding his constant attention. His claimed "busyness" was a transparent fiction.
Which meant Victoria was almost certainly right. This guy had no legitimate reason to treat her this way. He was either checked out of the relationship and too cowardly to end it cleanly, or he was engaging in a more calculated form of emotional control.
'But there is the other possibility,' a cynical voice in my head countered, my own neck still sore from her demonstration of strength.
'The dude could've finally come to his senses and decided he couldn't deal with her… particular skill set. Maybe she manhandled him in a moment of passion or anger, and he's terrified.' I glanced at her small, delicate hands resting on the table. They looked incapable of bruising a peach. But I knew better.
'Though I can't say for sure she's ever done such a thing to him,' I reasoned. 'Our little alley tussle was born of perceived threat, not romance. I'm just a stranger in this regard.'
And then there was the most telling detail of all, the way she talked about him. Despite the pain, the confusion, the anger, there was no real malice in her voice when she described the good times. There was only longing. A deep, bewildered love for the person she thought he was. She wasn't ranting about a monster; she was practically a grieving a ghost.
'I must say, I'm quite envious,' I thought, a strange pang of loneliness hitting me squarely in the chest. My own romantic history was a blank page. The idea of someone feeling that strongly about me, even in the midst of such hurt, was utterly foreign. 'Sigh. If only I had a girlfriend who felt even a fraction of that way about me. Good or bad, at least it would be real.'
I let the silence stretch after she finished, not wanting to interrupt the fragile flow of her confession. She finally looked up, her dark eyes glistening but stubbornly dry.
I took a slow, deliberate breath, setting my teacup down softly. I knew I couldn't be inconsiderate right now no matter how much I do wanted to.
I wasn't a relationship counselor, sure, but I still did need to complete system missions, and like I said before, when pus
h came to shove, I'd need to adapt to the situation right in front of me.