小嫂子的味道

"Anya…Anya...…Anya."

"Huh?!"

Anya was snapped back to reality when Leon called her name repeatedly, she looked around in confusion before her eyes finally set on Leon. He was staring at her with a worried face.

"Are you seriously fine?" he asked.

"Well, yeah."

"You don\'t look like that though. Your face is pale white."

She didn\'t have an answer to this, nor was she in the condition to deny Leon\'s words. Her face indeed was pale and even now she was lost in her own world before Leon bought her back.

"If there\'s something troubling you then you can tell me," said Leon as he showed a reassuring smile to console her.

"N-No…I\'m fine."

She would\'ve asked for help if this was a normal situation but right now she was stuck between many possibilities which were going on inside her mind.

If Zero was really kidnapped by the person who sent her that letter then she should talk with Leon and go back to building a relationship with him and hope that the sender will leave her brother unscathed.

But if there was someone else behind all this then she would just be playing a fool. She would fall into the sender\'s trap and disobey Zero\'s words to get away from Leon.

Which one was right? She didn\'t know. The only thing she could do was wait. And she did wait and waited until it was evening and the interclass training session between class 1A and 1B had ended.

Class A won with 37 wins, the students were happy and filled with excitement while the class B\'s students were a little depressed with darkened expressions on their faces. But none of that mattered to Anya right now.

Her patience was reaching its peak. She stood up all of a sudden and ignoring everything she directly left the arena.

The training session between class 1C and 1D will be tomorrow so the other students were also slowly leaving the stadium as they chatted within their friend circle but Anya was the first to leave.

After that, she went straight to the room where she met Ryfin before. Fortunately for her, Ryfin was already out of the room and coming back when he encountered Anya in a corridor.

"Did you find him?!" was the first thing that left Anya\'s mouth as soon as she stopped just before Ryfin.

"Sorry to say this but, I wasn\'t able to find him. He was nowhere in the academy," Ryfin replied in a deep voice.

"Then…is he missing?" Anya asked hurriedly.

"I guess he is."

Anya stared at the ground for a while and her body didn\'t move an inch. Then as if she was suddenly bought back to reality she looked up at Ryfin and asked, "Now what? How\'ll we find him? And don\'t say you can\'t."

"Well, we can inform the academy and let them do the search for us, that\'ll be one option. But, will you be okay with it?" he appealed.

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean is, if the academy staff will be searching for your brother and you will be sitting in a corner doing nothing, will you be satisfied by that? Say one day the academy informs you that they weren\'t able to find Zero, then will you be able to accept that? Won\'t you think that you should\'ve gone to find him yourself?"

"What\'re you implying here?"

"If you want to go search for him by yourself then I can make arrangements for that and help you leave the academy legally," Ryfin stated.

"I can help you but the choice is yours. And let me remind you, whether you want to do this yourself or take to the academy\'s aid, I\'m fine with either."

This wasn\'t a bad idea actually—no, this was a really bad idea. There\'s no way Anya can search for Zero better than the academy and that can be said just by looking at the numbers of people the academy will send to find him compared to Anya alone.

The Zaforths academy took care of their students better than any other academy out there, if a student went missing in thin air like this then they will do everything they can to bring him back or at least find his dead body if he\'s not alive anymore.

But to Anya, who was going had a heavy emotional pressure weighing over her; she was unlikely to take the help of the academy.

Since according to that 0.0001 percent chance in which the academy somehow fails to bring him back then the one she will resent will only be her past self who decided to not go find him alone.

Her mind was also occupied by the theory that something happened to Zero because she didn\'t follow the letter, and if that was true then she had to take the responsibility also and go save him.

All in all, she was currently in an intense emotional state and unable to make rational decisions and Ryfin knew that. That\'s he made an offer like this in the first place.

After all, while he didn\'t plan to interfere with whatever Zero was doing he wasn\'t going to just sit back and watch either. And going by that mindset he wasn\'t going to miss this opportunity in a million years.

"So? What have you chosen?" he asked.

"I…" Anya trailed off as she averted her eye in the hope to get a little more time to think but, "We don\'t have much time, you know? Since we don\'t know where and in which condition Zero might be so it\'s better to reach him as soon as possible."

This was the final push she needed. Yes, if something happened to Zero then she won\'t be able to forgive him. She didn\'t know why but ever since she realized that Zero went missing this was the feeling which was slowly devouring her heart.

Due to that, "I will do it. I will go find him by myself," was her answer.