There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL) novel Chapter 426

Chapter 426: Chapter 419. A Thousand Days

Zein felt like his heart dropped to his stomach when he saw the crack. The sound was eerily loud in the quiet pavilion, and as his chest got heavier from worry, the orb shattered.

"What--"

Zein opened his mouth and almost choked when something--someone--dropped onto the floor from the shattered orb.

"Ugh--" Bassena, in a dusty, tattered coat, coughed and wheezed into the floor. He pushed himself and wobbled slightly as he stood up, shaking his head from the impact. He winced and pressed the heel of his palm onto the throbbing vein in his forehead.

And then, as if he snapped out of a stupor, he gasped, looking up, and the amber eyes locked into his one and only guide.

"Bas--"

Before Zein could finish uttering the esper’s name, he was already getting enveloped in a tight, almost scalding embrace. Bassena was hot, like he was in a fever, but the moment their silhouette touched each other, the heat dissipated as if Zein was pouring water all over the esper’s fire.

Hands clutching the guide’s back and head tightly, Bassena buried his face in the crook of Zein’s neck, inhaling the guide’s scent as if that was the only brand of air he needed. "I almost thought...I would start to forget your face."

Zein raised his brow and asked while stroking the esper’s back. "How long did you--"

"A thousand days," Bassena said with a clenched jaw. "I can’t go back before the thousand days is up."

Zein pulled the esper’s head back and frowned. "Are you telling me you’re going to forget my face in just three years?"

Bassena paused at the guide’s annoyed reaction and laughed softly, almost inaudibly, as he pressed his forehead to Zein’s. As he heard the esper’s contended sigh, Zein couldn’t help but smile and patted the bronze cheek gently.

"So you really do come back older than me."

Bassena froze; amber eyes widened, before pulling himself back and blinking repeatedly at Zein’s amused smile. In the next second, he had grasped the back of the guide’s head again, pulling Zein into a heated kiss full of longing.

A thousand days of longing.

And while Zein only waited for a hundred hours, he took the kiss as if he had waited for a hundred weeks; clawing into the Bassena’s upper arms like he wanted to damage the coat even more.

They would have probably kept at it, kissing until the day lost its light and regained it back if it wasn’t for the sound of coughing and throat clearing. Only then that Zein remember where they were.

He pulled away with a slight gasp and took a half-step away from Bassena. He wouldn’t care much, usually, but there was a little girl there, whose eyes had been covered by the Saintess. Elena was protesting and whining about wanting to ’see the avalanche’ while the Medium covered her flustered face with the innocent white rabbit.

Even the Templars averted their eyes bashfully.

"Look at you tainting the priests," Bassena whispered playfully, and he was rewarded with a flick on his forehead.

"You must have been exhausted," the Saintess smiled at the couple. "Why don’t you have some rest? We will send a meal to your room, Luzein."

"Thank you," Zein nodded and pulled Bassena out of the pavilion to relieve everyone from embarrassment.

Before completely stepping away, he glanced at the remnant of the shattered black marble, which was in the process of evaporating.

"It seems like you can’t get back anymore?"

"It’s a one-time use only," Bassena shrugged.

"Good," Zein muttered, low enough for it to be inaudible--unless the listener was a high-ranking esper.

Bassena raised his brows and smiled, intertwining their fingers as he leveled their walking speed. Cheekily, he whispered. "I still have another marble, though."

The blue eyes glanced at him coldly, but Bassena felt happy about it instead. Zein was rather indifferent when he entered the marble, but now the guide didn’t seem to want to let him go. Even after they entered Zein’s suite, the fingers holding his hand were now moved to shed the pathetic-looking coat.

"I thought dragon leather is supposed to be durable?" Zein dropped the coat which had gotten singed and ripped to the ground.

He dropped Bassena to the couch too, while at it.

"Maybe the dragon used for that hadn’t traveled to the place I went through," Bassena chuckled, taking a deep breath as the guide straddled him on the couch.

"Where were you training in, anyway? Hell?"

Surprisingly, Bassena just shrugged in agreement. "Close enough, I think. Lots of fire, and then lots of ice--really bad for garments..."

The last word was uttered in a sigh as he felt Zein’s lips on his neck. "You don’t seem corroded," the guide muttered between kisses, and Bassena grasped the guide’s waist while taking a sharp breath. "Was the time stopped inside?"

Zein stopped his ministration on the esper’s neck so he could watch the slightly flushed face. He stroked the clean jaw with the back of his fingers. "Too bad; I was hoping I could see you rather rugged."

Bassena laughed and pulled the guide even closer to him. "Am I not rugged enough, right now?"

"No," Zein rubbed the jaw that only had a thin stubble instead of a full-grown beard. Honestly, he had a playful thought of imagining Bassena coming out with an untrimmed beard and long hair; like a wandering mercenary. "Not enough."

There were a lot of things that were ’not enough’ when Zein said it; the time, the space, the feelings intertwining through their touching lips and roaming fingers. The kiss nor the touch wasn’t enough to fill the gap created as they were apart. Be it a hundred hours or a thousand days, they knew now that being apart for that long was agonizing.

"I know, baby," Zein shifted his gaze to the esper’s face. Just looking at those amber eyes, he already knew that this Bassena was still his Bassena.

He loved his Bassena--the one he met in the Deathzone, who was valiant and a little bit arrogant, but also fumbling adorably while trying to earn his heart. The one with an innocent mind and harsh outlook. The one who was rational and trustworthy, but also childish and whiny.