'It's my insecurities that prevented me from taking any steps toward her. By the time I decided to fight the demons in my head, it was already too late.'
Alephee liked Eren being honest with his feelings. This random encounter with Kat had made him take a trip down memory lane. Yet, it couldn't shake him from what he had set out to do in the present. Alephee tried to see if the butcher was nearing his breaking point and asked him another question.
'Are you capable of loving someone now?'
Eren didn't answer Alephee's question immediately. He located a bunch of Goblin Soldiers and one Goblin Lord and killed them all after a short span. He then collected his drops and changed location.
Tuan then found himself sitting leisurely on a giant tree's branch that was located about 12 meters away from the ground. His back was against the tree's giant trunk. He could feel the evening sun's light brushing against his skin from the shadows of leaves above him.
Tuan looked around and stretched his mana sense. Alephee also didn't warn him about anything. So he took out his Stellar Sativa stick after what felt like an eternity to him and lit it up.
'The fallacious affair only lasted a while,
Sucking the life out of my soul, tearing my beliefs asunder.
The endless sins now bind my heart,
It cannot love back, it cannot love any further.'
The butcher said to himself, answering Alephee's question after giving it much thought. The afternoon breeze created a windy noise as it blew and ruffled the tree leaves. Eren stared blankly at the light and shadows playing a game of tag all around him, becoming lost in his thoughts.
Alephee stayed silent and let him enjoy his smoke for a while.
Even after making so many connections in this timeline, Alephee could still feel that Eren felt lonely. Reen's separation from him only made matters more difficult for him on a psychological level.
Eren tried to find some sort of relief from his addictions ever since she was separated. That's why he always seemed to be either smoking or drinking more often than previously. The condition he had after meeting up with Eliza became the medium he could use to make sense of his overindulgence.
Knowingly or unknowingly, Eren's vices became his answer to processing the same feelings he had been battling within the previous timeline. So even now, when Alephee reminded him of fond memories, he chose to process them with his newfound addiction.
Suddenly, when he was lost in his thoughts and emotions, Eren felt like he was connected to the world around him on a deeper level. He could feel that he didn't need his normal senses or his mana sense to observe what was happening around him.
He felt that his body had become formless. His soul had seeped into every matter near him, be it the wooden trunk, tree, the ground beneath it or the wind encompassing the void. The picture of that experience imprinted in his mind was like blank paper.
But he knew that the moment he asked it a question by infusing it with his thoughts, that blank paper was able to answer his question with more profundity than he thought the paper was capable of.
This experience was brief and expired as suddenly as it had arrived. In the next moment, everything became normal. Eren's vision returned to normalcy. There was no white nothingness spreading in all directions in front of him.
This random experience made the butcher confused and lowkey scared. He thought that he had lost control of his body during that time.
This was akin to a near-death experience for him. He could say that with certainty because he remembered the moments before he was dead in his previous timeline after all.
"What the fuck was that?"
Tuan got up from his seat hurriedly and spoke up– his eyes constantly looking for threats nearby him. He suspected that somebody had used an illusion spell on him. But Alephee's next words eased his worries.
'Don't worry. That was not an illusion spell you had fallen victim to.'
The miracle of Alephee's lowkey laughter occurred again before she added on.
'Congratulations, Eren. You had the first sign of your soul sense awakening just now. It is only a matter of time before you can fully awaken it.
Frankly, I'm shocked that you could awaken your soul sense this early. Even if it was Eliza's era, you would be called a monstrous prodigy for achieving something like this at your current level.'
'Soul sense!'
Eren repeated that term a few more times in his head to make sense of the out-of-body experience he just had. He wasn't sure how experiencing something so freaky would mark him as a monstrous prodigy.
But that experience itself indicated his growth as a ranker. So he considered that as a positive sign and sat back down to enjoy the remaining smoke that he had almost dropped.
Eren once again tried to invoke the same phenomenon by closing his eyes and remembering the experience he had. But it didn't get triggered this time.
But he wasn't disappointed. He chuckled to himself and remembered the chain of thoughts he had before the sign of soul sense awakening hit him. The butcher couldn't help but sigh when his thoughts circled back to Reen and the memories that were invoked by Katalina.
Alphee understood Eren's mood. He was trying to find solace by letting his mind wander off to things he found pleasant from the past.
But trying to stay in the past is not healthy for the present. Therefore, Alephee decided to put all his directionless wandering to rest by saying something she came up with.
'It runs ahead and slips away.
Yet it remains the same as it has always been.
It kills you a thousand times,
Only to wash away your endless sins.
Time is, after all, a different kind of medicine.'
Alephee said to Eren, bringing a light smile to his face. She was trying to tell him that time would heal him. That it would serve as the medicine for the heart and cure his heartaches and longings one day.
It won't be today. It won't be tomorrow. But he just has to wait long enough till it works its magic on him.
