The Lustful Villain: Every Milfs and Gilfs are Mine!-Chapter 192. Two Girls at a Waterfall, One Man Grilling Fish
"Well... he caught a piece of cliff," she said, "with just one hand... while he was still running and carrying both of us!"
"Yeah... I was there," Aisella said.
"And in the collapsing dungeon that could kill us all," Talyra said.
"I know," Aisella said. "I was there too."
"He held all eleven of those constructs in the air at once," Talyra said.
Talyra’s tone resembled her usual way of discussing topics she was still sorting out, as she expressed her thoughts aloud to gain a clearer understanding. "It was almost like a breathing exercise...!"
Aisella raised an eyebrow, intrigued by Talyra’s perspective. "Maybe that’s what gave him the upper hand."
"It was as if the crowd were just a minor annoyance he had already anticipated."
Aisella’s feet moved a little in the water.
"He took us out of a dungeon that was crumbling," Talyra said. "He managed to hold the gauntlets and clear the constructs without dropping either of us or slowing down."
"He carries us so gently, almost like we’re both princesses!"
"Yes," Aisella said. "But that last statement was out of line... it feels exaggerated."
"And that’s not even the part that—" Talyra stopped again.
"The part," Aisella said in a tone that was an invitation.
"The part that really got me," Talyra said, and her voice was more careful now, the careful voice she used when she was being honest with herself instead of putting on a show for others. "It was the refraction..."
Aisella turned to face her.
"Refraction?" Aisella asked with curiosity.
"When we were fishing," Talyra said.
"I corrected him about the refraction angle, and he just—he stopped and thought about it and said I was right." She paused. "Not ’you might be right’ or ’I’ll consider it.’ He just accepted it like it was a useful piece of information that he was glad to have."
For a moment, Aisella was quiet.
Finally, she said, "He does that, huh?"
"Does what?"
"He pays attention," Aisella said, emphasizing those three words with the same precision she used when assigning exact value to something instead of an approximation. "Not to the surface of what you’re doing... but to the thing underneath it."
"The actual mechanism."
Talyra looked at her.
"He told me," Aisella said, "that the gentleness was calibrated to what was actually there."
She looked at the waterfall. "He said I respond well to gentleness not because I need it but because most people respond well to being treated as precisely themselves rather than as a general approximation."
Talyra looked at her for a moment.
"He said that to you...?"
"Yes," Aisella said.
"Oh wow..." Talyra stared at the water for a long time without saying anything. "He said something like that to me too... about the shooting, and about how fast the math is so that it doesn’t feel like math anymore."
She moved her feet in the water. "Most people who watch me shoot tell me I’m talented, but he told me I was skilled, and those are not the same things."
"No," Aisella agreed. "They’re not."
The waterfall made the sound that waterfalls made in the specific quiet of island interiors, which was the complete sound, the one that filled the space between conversations without demanding anything from them.
Talyra said, "Apollo’s good at caring," and her tone was not mean.
"He truly cares about everyone all the time, but his feelings for you are the same as for everyone else; they are broad and genuine, and I don’t think he always—" She paused to choose the right word, "notices."
"No," Aisella said softly.
"He didn’t notice what happened to Kaelira until it was already critical," Talyra said.
The way she said these words didn’t sound like she was blaming him; it sounded like she was just telling the truth about what she had seen and how she had formed an accurate picture.
"He was there; he cared, and he would have done anything for her, but he still didn’t notice until she sent up a signal flare from the bottom of the dungeon."
Aisella remained silent when she made that statement.
"As for Rex, he noticed something was wrong on the beach within three seconds." Talyra said, "He was already in formation before either of us had finished thinking about the movement in the trees."
"And when things went wrong in the dungeon, he didn’t react... but he had already planned for it."
"He knew the extraction window before we knew there was a collapse sequence," Aisella said. The way she said it made it sound like she was finishing a thought instead of adding to one.
"Because he knew," Talyra said. "He told us it was from the system."
"He informed us of his decision on how to use it after he had already made up his mind." Aisella said, "He was sharing the plan, not making it."
Talyra looked at her, feeling both confused and curious as she tried to understand the unspoken feelings hidden beneath the surface. The silence between them grew heavier, full of secrets and questions that weren’t asked.
Aisella stared at the water. The soft waves reflected the afternoon sun, just like the chaos inside her. She took a deep breath and prepared herself to say the words she knew she had to say but didn’t want to.
"I find that," Aisella said with the careful precision she used when the words mattered, "a lot more affecting than I thought it would be when I first met him..."
Talyra looked at her the way she did when she heard something she had been thinking from someone she trusted.
"Yeah," she said. "I agree with that..."
The water moved around their feet like cold, clear water that had just come down from a volcanic rock shelf and hadn’t had time to pick up anything from the area around it.
Talyra said, "He’s not Apollo," which was a statement that pointed to something specific rather than making a comparison.
Aisella said, "No."
"Apollo makes you feel like you’re part of something," Talyra said. "But Rex... makes you feel like you are precisely where you are supposed to be."
Aisella was quiet for a moment, like someone who had heard something that was true and was taking a moment to think about it before responding.
"That’s the difference," she said.
"It’s a big difference," Talyra said.
Aisella said, "It is."
Talyra moved her feet slowly in the water, watching how the current bent around her ankles and then straightened out downstream.
After a while, she said, "I still keep thinking about the cliff... well, it’s not because of the strength."
"Anyone who was strong enough could have caught it."
"But he didn’t slow down," Aisella said.
"He didn’t even look surprised." Talyra said, "It was as if catching a falling cliff with one hand while carrying two people was something he had already considered."
"Maybe he did," Aisella said.
Talyra let out a small breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. "That should be terrifying."
Aisella said, "It isn’t."
"No," Talyra agreed. "It really isn’t."
The waterfall kept making noise. A bird in the middle of the room called out for a short time and then stopped, as if it had said all it needed to say.
Talyra said, "When he set me down after the dungeon, he made sure my feet were on solid ground before he let go."
Aisella looked at her.
"Not just by a glance," Talyra said. "He actually looked... just to make sure."
"Yes," Aisella said in a soft voice.
"And then he just... moved on," Talyra said. "It was as if it were automatic, like ensuring I was steady was merely a step that needed to happen before the next thing could occur."
For a moment, she was quiet.
"Most people don’t do that," she said.
"No," Aisella said. "They don’t."
Talyra tilted her head a little, like she did when she was trying to figure something out and was almost there but not quite.
Talyra said, "I don’t know what to do with someone like that." Her voice had changed.
It wasn’t the loud voice she used when she was being honest; it was the quiet voice that came out only when she stopped acting. "I’m used to people noticing me, but I’m not used to people... seeing me."
Aisella looked at her.
Talyra said, "There’s a difference," and it sounded like she had just found out that this was true.
"There is," Aisella said.
Talyra looked at the water for a long time. The afternoon was slow and leisurely around them.
"I think—" she said, and then she stopped like she always did when she was telling the truth.
Aisella waited.
"I think I might be falling in love with him," Talyra said.
She said it carefully, like when you say something out loud for the first time to see if it sounds true. After that, her face revealed that she had just discovered her feelings were true.
The sound of the waterfall was there. And Aisella didn’t say anything.
She didn’t move her feet in the water, and she didn’t look at Talyry. Her eyes were fixed on the spot where the waterfall met the pool below, and her face was very still, like when someone is trying diligently to be still.
Talyra looked at her.
"Hey, Aisella?"
"Yes," Aisella spoke evenly, demonstrating effort that was not apparent.
"Did you hear what I said?"
"I heard you," Aisella said.
She didn’t say anything else after that.
They sat by the waterfall in the quiet that comes from saying something true out loud and then sitting with it. The afternoon stayed the same, the water stayed cold, and neither of them said anything else for a while because there was nothing else to say.
