There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL) novel Chapter 406

Chapter 406: Chapter 398. Only With You

Bassena also stared at the swarm of children playing on the ground; the healthy visitors and some of the patients who were well enough to still play outside. If someone were to ask, Bassena would say he didn’t hate children. In fact, he quite liked them. They were cute, they were little devils that needed to be guided, and they were people who he had to protect the most.

But liking children and having them was a separate matter.

"We can be a family without children," Bassena muttered. He didn’t sound dry or bitter; he was just stating the fact.

"That’s true," Zein agreed.

After all, there were couples that had no means of having children, or had no intention of having them. Would that mean they couldn’t be called families? There were people who came together for a cause and called each other family without involving children, and in Zein’s eyes, it was still an eligible bond.

Bassena leaned back and tilted himself slightly so his shoulder touched Zein’s. He shifted his gaze from the playing children to the blue sky, to memories rooted in his soul. Slowly, he opened his mouth to speak his mind.

"While I was growing up, I always thought that I wouldn’t have any children," he confessed. The hardened eyes reflected all the bitter things he had to endure during his childhood. "I don’t want to sire a child that would only live in misery."

That’s why Bassena said he didn’t care about Zein not having a womb, and honestly, Zein thought the same. From the moment he held the twins’ tiny toddler hands, he cursed the people who let their children be born into a harsh reality that even adults had a hard time enduring. A lot of children were left without ever knowing their parents, and died before they could question it.

But that was why Zein decided to build the orphanage. He couldn’t care less about the adults, but children shouldn’t bear the responsibility of the life their parents shoved into them. As one of the children who had to suffer since birth, Zein understood well the sentiment of not wishing for a child to suffer the same way he did.

"With time, that thought only grew," Bassena continued. "I realized that blood could be toxic, and that bonds could be made outside what people called family."

It was a justified view from someone who had to annihilate his own family because that so-called family had killed his mother and tried to kill him too. Someone whose semblance of familial bond was only found through two strangers who were forced to subdue him in the academy.

"For me, a harmonious family is like a myth," Bassena chuckled bitterly. "I know--of course, I know, knowing Radia--that there are people with nice families who love each other and are willing to protect each other, but..." he took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through his mouth. "It’s hard to see it as a norm when I was surrounded by upsetting experiences."

The bitter feeling of pessimism was amplified when he met Han Shin, whose father was beyond neglectful and abusive to boot. Seeing Han Joon, who had to endure the abuse while protecting his little brother, holding on to the hope that perhaps, one day, he would be recognized.

It was hard to come out of his dark bubble when the people he cared about weren’t being cared for by their parents. Calix and Laurel were there to make them feel like they had an umbrella in the harsh rain of reality, but it merely made him think that only people with good, bright, wise dispositions like Radia’s parents had the right to have children.

And Bassena knew he didn’t have that. He was harsh and had a bad temper. He couldn’t even control himself from falling down the pit of darkness every time October rolled in. How could he have the confidence to raise a child when he himself was still a brat?

"I see," Zein nodded. In that regard, his view wasn’t so different from Bassena, although the reasoning was not the same. But he managed to overcome that fear and self-deprecation after he tasted love, so he wondered if Bassena might change too. "And now?"

"Now..."

Bassena pondered the thought in silence. What about now?

What about now, when he had met Zein and wished for a future together?

What about now, when he had learned to control his emotions and temperament better, and even had a stopper by his side?

What about now, when his beloved told him he might want to build a family, had he the way?

"I...still don’t see a child as a necessity," Bassena told the guide in a restrained voice.

Zein looked at the esper without saying anything, because he felt like Bassena still had something to say. And he was right.

Bassena turned his head and stared at the keen blue eyes, holding the sightly cold hand of the guide to share his warmth; the warmth that was also present in the smile forming on his lips. "But I also didn’t mind having them if you want it."

He didn’t want kids. He wanted Zein’s kids. Their kids. The proof of their bond and union.

Zein raised his brow. "Them?"