Kairos pondered over what he could possibly do in order to test Chase. Realistically, he could think of quite a few things. However, most of them would at the very least hamper Chase’s trust in him, or his teammates instead.
Most of the plans he came up with would also irreversibly shift their views of him if he decided to carry them out. There were a few that he would almost go through with, but at the end of the day, he would have to put everybody through a fake crisis.
Kairos had no plans of outright lying to the others, so if he did such a thing he was definitely going to tell them afterwards. And at that point, when they faced another crisis, there might be a seed of doubt in the back of their mind, that it might just be another test.
And that might very well be enough for them to let their guard down just a little too much, and let something terribly bad happen.
Realistically speaking, Kairos was just overthinking it, and he felt that he was doing so a little bit as well. However, he couldn’t just take those concerns out.
Regardless, he was doing this because he felt Chase had the potential to become a crucial part of their team, but Kairos had serious trust issues, so he was unwilling to fully entrust his back to him.
Kairos let out a sigh. He was also wondering about something else.
There was Chase’s inborn ability, “Hero”. Although it was locked, it would surely be strong if it was eventually activated, if Nicole’s and his own were anything to go by.
That made him wonder what exactly allowed Nicole to activate hers. Though, he doubted that she would know herself.
The only thing he could think of was some sort of mentality shift to unlock it. He doubted it was related to raising one’s rank, as he had gotten his before the apocalypse, while Nicole just randomly got it at some point.
That meant the most likely thing was some sort of event triggering it.
Kairos grabbed onto the side of his head and closed his eyes tightly. He was trying to think if there was a time when he actually didn’t have his future vision, and it was some sort of event in his childhood that activated it.
Unfortunately, his memories just didn’t go back that far. He could hardly even remember the times before he got his glasses.
As Kairos was getting more frustrated, he had a sudden enlightenment.
“…Ha. Good thing I’ve been a little bit more open with my thinking recently.”
He realized that if he could see future events in his dreams, then he could just test Chase in those dreams. Even if the things he did rubbed some people the wrong way, none of it actually would happen.
And on top of that, Chase wouldn’t even be able to know that he had been tested.
For whatever reason, Kairos felt like there might’ve been something flawed with his thought process. That doing something like that could be morally wrong in some way, using his future vision to do what he wanted without repercussions. But after just a few seconds of thinking down that path, he discarded it.
He was not a philosopher.
And it wasn’t as though he cared about being morally correct in the first place.
Kairos continued to watch over the rest of his group killing the monsters, but his thoughts were somewhere else.
In the end, nothing too big happened. After a few hours, everyone was beginning to run out of stamina. Chase was also beginning to run out of mana. It seemed like whatever ability that increased his regeneration wasn’t permanent.
And so, Kairos led the group back to the city.
Upon getting back, they all separated, except for Nicole and Kairos, who were still in their room.
The very first thing that Kairos did was go to the table and continue observing the diagram he had previously drawn. Though he was technically able to cast the frost spell, it was still not to the point of being practical. His goal was to learn enough to make it at least usable.
However, before he sat down, Nicole couldn’t help but speak up.
“Kairos?”
He turned to her.
“What is it?”
Nicole looked down to the floor.
“Um… I don’t think we really feel like a team.”
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
“What do you mean by that?”
Nicole smiled bitterly.
“When all of our lives counted on it before, I felt like we all had each other’s backs. But now that we are strong enough to hold them off, and we even have this city to fall back to…”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“Just say it bluntly. I won’t take offense.”
Nicole took a deep breath.
“I-I mean, everyone immediately broke off after we finished with our business. Nobody even offered to stay for a little bit longer. My own mother even treats me like a stranger.”
Kairos stared at her blankly.
“…Huh? Isn’t that normal? We finished with business, so then they can just do whatever they want with their time.”
Nicole clenched her fists.
“That’s not normal! Maybe it isn’t too strange for Chase and Tori since we only met them a little while ago, but my own mother is alienating me!”
Kairos sighed.
“Isn’t that taking it too far? She just left to her own room.”
Nicole shook her head.
“How is that normal? She would always be the type of person to do fun things with me and… Dad. When my relationship with my dad was really bad, it was my mother that patched it up by having us do random fun things together!”
Kairos couldn’t respond for quite a while.
Nicole glared at him.
“What? Don’t tell me your parents always just shut themselves into their room all the time!”
Kairos furrowed his brow and didn’t respond.
Nicole was about to confidently announce her victory, that she was right for once. But then she noticed something off about him. It was definitely a look that seemed defeated, but it just… felt a little too sad to her.
“…H-Hey, um, we can just forget about it.”
Kairos shook his head.
“No, I have no plans of hiding behind a pretense that all is well. I’ll tell you.”
He took a deep breath.
“I do remember when I was very young, I talked to them a little bit, but most of the time I was on my own. I would only see them occasionally if we decided to eat together, though they wouldn’t really talk to me unless I forcibly inserted myself into the conversation.”
He tapped his chin several times.
“Back then, I wasn’t allowed to leave the house, and other than a few old children’s books, I had nothing else to do. So… I just sat on the ground during those times. I remember trying to knock on their doors to get their attention, but they got really mad at me for that. I then decided just to stay outside the door so I could overhear their conversation, but that made them mad too. Though I guess that’s fair enough, since nobody wants an eavesdropper.”
Kairos cracked his neck.
“Thankfully, it didn’t feel too boring at the time because I didn’t really understand what being not bored was like. And soon enough, my parents eventually let me go outside on my own, so I went out for nearly the entire day all the time.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I quickly got familiar with the entire neighborhood and even met with a few other people. I don’t exactly remember, but I know Edward was one of the earlier ones. I remember spending a lot of time with him back then.”
He crossed his legs.
“Then as I got older, I would usually only see my parents when they were leaving or coming back for work. We didn’t eat together anymore. My parents offered to leave me stuff to microwave in the fridge, but I decided to cook myself instead so I could have fresher stuff, and I ended up taking the job of cooking their meals as well.”
Kairos let out a soft hum.
“Ah, but that’s a little inaccurate to say. Whenever I got in trouble with the school, my parents would scold me, so I would also see them at those times. I guess my parents were a little less talkative to me, so I’m more used to isolation, but what’s happening right now is still more or less normal, no?”
Nicole stared at him in bewilderment.
“…No, no. Your parents… how could they?”
Kairos rolled his eyes.
“You make it sound like they beat me for all my life or something. Sure I got hit sometimes for doing dumb things, but it’s nothing compared to all those kids that get beat and yelled at every day.”
Nicole frowned.
“That… the fact you think that’s normal… no wonder you…”
She began mumbling to herself like she had gone insane.
Kairos stared at her blankly, feeling like she was making a big deal out of something that didn’t really matter.
“Look, your family was definitely way more involved with each other than normal, so you feel like this level of isolation is weird, when really it isn’t too far from the norm. Remember, this isn’t a time of peace, but rather an apocalypse. People do different things while stressed.”
Nicole slowly shook her head.
“Maybe. Maybe I’m the one that’s wrong, but I know my mom. Before dad died, she might have been afraid during the apocalypse, but she would still try her best to keep the group together, smoothing out problems that nobody even realized existed!”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“…I suppose she is still grieving.”
Nicole grabbed onto his shoulders.
“And I’m still grieving too! Do you think I can just forget about it? I can’t!”
Kairos gently closed his eyes.
“Sorry.”
Nicole shook her head.
“But even though I’m still sad, I didn’t lose myself. I’m still trying my best, and a big part of that is probably because of you.”
Kairos was about to respond, but she spoke up before he could.
“I know you said before that I’ve already done a lot for you, and I shouldn’t worry so much about it, but I really didn’t! Now that I look at everything, it all now makes so much sense. The reason why I always felt a bit of resistance when I touched you was because you weren’t used to someone touching you.”
She began panting.
“The reason why you never invited me to anything was that that concept was foreign to you in the first place. The reason why you never let yourself get just a bit closer to so many people wasn’t that you were putting up walls, but because you never understood what it meant to be close to a person.”
Kairos smiled bitterly.
“Sorry, this is my fault. I probably glossed over a lot of details that made the situation seem a lot worse than it seems. My parents really didn’t treat me that bad. People tend to remember the bad things more than the good anyway.”
He couldn’t help but think of Ling. He was a person that saw his parents get eaten by monsters right in front of him. Yet, he said that the only thing he felt was emptiness. Though Kairos was unsure of how exactly Ling’s parents treated him, it was at the very least enough to shed all familial love that he felt.
Though it seemed like Ling only realized that fact when his parents died in front of him, he must’ve been treated very badly to feel that way.
As Kairos was lamenting on others, Nicole grabbed onto his hand tightly.
“…I will help you understand. There are other problems, but for now, this matters most.”