There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL) novel Chapter 140

Chapter 140: Chapter 135. No Rest For The Wicked

"Who’s that?" Bassena tilted his head at the name Zein mentioned suddenly. His eyes narrowed slightly, a little bit peeved that Zein uttered a random guy’s name in the middle of their ’date’.

Although of course, it was only Bassena who considered it as a date. For Zein, they were just coming out to pick up the autumn limited-edition chocolate that they ordered a few months before, and driving to the riverside to eat them. Using the same inconspicuous black car owned by a lot of people, they parked among other cars in the parking lot overviewing the river, watching people hanging out on the riverside while sampling the chocolate.

"An A-class guide," Zein told the guild’s vice-guildmaster, giving the esper a side eye while popping a cube of sweet potato-flavored chocolate.

"Oh, I don’t interact much with guides, since I always used the Temple before," Bassena shrugged. He took a chocolate from the box between them and fiddled with the wrapper, staring at the distant sky and a distant time, before adding with a wry grin. "Ever since I made the first batch of guides experience burnout every time..."

It wasn’t just the issue with his massive mana core, but also with his darkness. Most of the guides, who were delicate in nature and mentality, couldn’t handle the size and pressure of such darkness. Only the guides in the temple, as well as the Saints and Saintess, could handle guiding him.

Well, until he met Zein.

"Anyway, I agree," Bassena bit into the black-colored chocolate, tasting a hint of clove and faint tingling of black pepper within the slightly bitter dark chocolate. He frowned for a bit, before nodding and putting the whole thing in his mouth. "It’s a cute prank, he should do it more often," he ended it with a smirk.

Zein rolled his eyes in response. He already knew that Bassena was actually having fun with all of the speculations about their relationship. The first thing the esper did after finishing his press conference regarding his trial was to collect all kinds of articles and sent some funny and outrageous ones to Zein’s account. "Next time a rumor like that appears again, you’ll be my top suspect," Zein said with a flat tone, prompting the esper to laugh merrily.

"But the other one, who became the scapegoat..."

"Nora?"

"Mm, that--" Bassena paused to watch Zein rummaging through the box, looking for another one with sweet potato mousse inside. "You seem to trust him..."

Finally finding the dark purple wrapper, the blue eyes perked up for a bit before Zein mulled for an answer. "Do I look like I trusted him?"

Bassena raised his brow in surprise. "You don’t?"

"You can’t really recover once you were tainted by the red-zone," Zein chuckled bitterly. The blue eyes dimmed for a bit, although they soon recovered with the help of the chocolate. He looked toward the sparkling clear river, which reflected the reddish leaves and the blue sky. The red and the blue will turned dark once the sun was setting, but it was always clear, inherently.

It was different from the red-zone, which river infused with miasma. It would always be dark, no matter what manner of things reflected there. Just like its dwellers.

Most of the guides in the red-zone were a victim of human trafficking or blackmail. Some of them would die for failing to adapt to the harshness, and the rest needed to either numb their feeling or embraced the wickedness. Nora was the latter. Zein had no idea what kind of hardship the guide had to endure before he joined Trinity, and how much of that wickedness had he abandoned, but there was no way Zein would outrightly trust him.

But that was why he knew it wasn’t Nora. "I already told Alice to watch him from the start, before any leak even happened. Since we knew there was no suspicious movement from him, I knew it wasn’t Nora from the start. But..."

"But it’s not like you start to trust him either," Bassena finished the guide’s thought while unwrapping a dark purple one, smiling happily for no reason. "Got it."

Zein narrowed his eyes at the little purple packaging in the esper’s hands. "That’s the last one..." he muttered with a slightly dejected tone, prompting Bassena to pause. The blue eyes were fixed on the little cube, and Bassena suddenly got filled with a mischievous thought. Slowly, he brought the cube upward, and the blue eyes followed the movement until both men stared at each other.

With a playful smile, the esper asked in a loud whisper. "You want this?"

The blue eyes narrowed, brows knitted slightly. There was a battle happening inside the guide; one that protested that it was the last of his favorite flavor, and one that said it was just a piece of chocolate, that he was an adult, and that it was bought with Bassena’s money.

"Come and get it," when the little cube ended up lodged between the esper’s smirking lips, and the amber eyes stared at him with eyes gleaming in challenge, Zein felt his eyes twitch. In the next second, Bassena got a fist on his collar, and a tongue between his lips.

It was a short battle that was bound to be won by Zein since Bassena was too stunned to do more than just let the guide take the sweet cube. In the first place, he was unwrapping the chocolate for Zein, but the guide’s adorable dejected reaction when he thought Bassena was going to eat the last piece flamed a mischievous thought inside the esper’s mind. Hence the little prank.

But honestly, he thought Zein would just strangle him or straight out snatch the chocolate with his hand. Or, in a very Zein sense, just ignored Bassena’s prank and moved on to the other chocolate. He wondered if Zein liked the sweet potato flavor that much, or if the guide just becoming more and more open in indulging him.

Licking the leftover taste on his lips, Bassena smiled and watched the guide get back to his seat with a triumphant expression. Whichever the reason, it showed that Zein had started to be more relaxed than before, and it pleased him.

Mm...whatever it was, Bassena was sure this could be counted as a ’date’ now.

"I thought you don’t like sweets?" Zein glanced at the esper with narrowed eyes after he finished savoring the taste of mana-infused sweet potato mousse.