Nicole didn’t stop feeling Kairos up, even as she spoke.
“I… I guess we can go. But I just want to hold on for a little bit longer.”
Kairos blinked a few times.
“And how long is that?”
Nicole pouted.
“U-Um, a few minutes.”
Kairos took a deep breath.
“How many minutes?”
Nicole froze when she heard that. After a few moments, she responded rather frantically.
“F-Fifteen! Er- no thirty! N-No one hundred!”
Kairos sighed.
“That’s not a few minutes.”
Nicole became a little frantic, scratching the side of her face.
“I-It isn’t?”
Seeing this go down, Kaede slowly backed up towards the corridor she came through before running through it. Quite a few swords flew at her, but she was able to dodge all of them. Chen’s eyebrow twitched when he saw that.
As for him, he just looked to the side, pretending that he wasn’t in the room.
Kairos just smiled bitterly. He gently placed his hands under one of her shoulders before gently lifting her. Surprisingly, despite being so clingy before, Nicole didn’t resist and let him carry her. He got her off of him before setting her down to face him and stared her down.
“Didn’t I tell you before? You’ve already become an important person to me. So you don’t have to worry so much. I have no plans of leaving you.”
Nicole simply stood there with a dumbfounded expression, almost like she couldn’t really understand what was happening. While she was standing there, Kairos gently hugged her, while she left her arms at her sides, almost like she had become a tree.
Eventually, Nicole seemed to break out of her stupor and did so with tears.
“I… I know. B-But I’m just so scared. I-If you were gone too, then I don’t know where I can turn anymore.”
Kairos took a deep breath.
“Well, that should start by working our way out of here. There’s not much point in lingering around. There’s no staying together if one of us dies.”
Nicole took in a shaky breath.
“O-Ok…”
Kairos nodded before looking in the direction that Kaede had left.
“She said before that she wasn’t worried about being stuck here. That probably means the direction she came from is where the exit is. At the very least, it should be somewhere that way.”
Chen narrowed his eyes slightly.
“What if she was just making it all up?”
Kairos let out a sigh.
“At the very least, it’s a path we haven’t been on. If she really was making it up, then I guess we’ll have to deal with it.”
He turned to Nicole.
“Are you ready to go?”
Nicole took several deep breaths before nodding.
“Yes.”
By now, Kairos only had faint scars on his body, the only proof that his body had taken quite a beating beforehand. Without thinking about it too much, he began sprinting down the corridor, with Nicole close behind.
Chen seemed to hesitate, but ended up following them.
When Kairos stepped inside, he noticed that extremely thin wires would form just in front of him. If he didn’t focus hard, then he wouldn’t even be able to see them in the first place.
He noticed in his future vision that if he touched one of them, they would suddenly light on fire. He let out a sigh as he leaped over the wire, then went to the left to dodge another one.
As for Nicole, she was directly walking through all of it, using her ability once more. Kairos wondered if he should’ve stopped her, but Nicole wasn’t crying out in pain unlike when she normally overused her ability.
On the other hand, Chen was also performing swift movements to dodge swords. His eyes were wide open, and he was keeping up. He didn’t even actually notice the wires that Kairos was dodging, but thankfully for him, they disappeared before he could come into contact with them.
The wires gradually raised in number, making it hard for Kairos to even find a location for him to fit through, but he was still sprinting without abandon. He was nearly set ablaze, but he was able to catch onto the location of the wires before anything happened.
In the end, he was able to make it without a scratch. As for Chen, when he got into the room there were a few minor cuts on his skin, but was otherwise fine. It more so looked like he got scratched by a cat, rather than getting cut up by swords.
The moment they got back, Nicole began clinging to Kairos once more, but this time it wasn’t as obsessive. In fact, she ended up letting go on her own after a couple of seconds.
“Did we find the exit yet?”
Kairos looked down each of the corridors before noticing someone far in the distance going down another path. It was Kaede.
He pointed towards her.
“Let’s follow her.”
Chen rubbed his chin.
“But didn’t she say she had no plans of leaving? Plus I don’t want to get involved with her anymore.”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“She’s probably going to the exit at this point. I’m pretty sure she ducked out because she didn’t want to deal with us.”
Chen furrowed his brows.
“Hm. That does make sense.”
Kairos did a quick scan.
“It looks like everyone is fine. Do either of you need a break?”
Chen and Nicole both shook their heads. Kairos looked down the pathway once more and saw that Kaede was simply slowly walking down it. This made him wonder what exactly was down that path, but he would find out the moment he walked in, so he just went down it.
At first, absolutely nothing happened. In fact, they made it roughly a third of the way and it was just an empty corridor. Both Kairos and Chen were still looking around the room, not letting their guard down.
However, Nicole noticeably seemed to relax.
That was when Kairos felt everything suddenly turn black. He froze in place for a while, but decided to keep moving nonetheless. He could no longer see the corridor or his destination, but that wasn’t enough to discourage him. After a few moments, he was able to see himself, but he appeared to be a bright white for whatever reason.
A second later, Nicole also appeared.
He saw white letters gradually form in the distance, which spelled out a sentence.
‘You have a choice. You can choose either to kill the person next to you, or you can sacrifice yourself.’
Just below it was the number sixty. Then, it turned to fifty-nine, then fifty-eight. It was a countdown.
After seeing this, Kairos turned to his left and noticed that Nicole was similarly looking at him. From there, he simply turned his head forwards and kept walking, ignoring the whole choice thing entirely.
Nicole watched him go up ahead, but then quickly ran up to catch up to him. As the two of them continued, the timer continued to count down, eventually reaching thirty seconds, then ten seconds.
The entire time, Kairos’ expression didn’t change. He simply walked on ahead without worrying about it.
Even more words began forming.
‘Please choose quickly, or else both of you will die.’
Kairos couldn’t help but smirk when he saw that. He continued on with even more confidence than before. Nicole glanced at him a few times before continuing as well. As she walked, for whatever reason a silly smile began forming on her face. It looked as though she wanted to stop herself, but was unable to do so.
As Kairos watched the countdown reach three, he felt even more confident in his decision.
In reality, he had no idea what the hell was going on. This was nothing like the normal traps that he had seen before. As for this choosing one person to die type of thing, it shook him up a little.
However, he remembered the memory he got after limit-breaking his willpower.
He wouldn’t sacrifice himself. That was the decision that he came to. However, that didn’t mean he would sacrifice someone else for the sake of his own. If the both of them really did end up dying, then so be it.
He refused to live on after sacrificing someone else and wasn’t going to leave Nicole on her own. Especially after she showed how badly she was relying on him. The strangest thing was that his biggest worry was that one of them would somehow end up dying randomly.
However, after the white letters stated they would both die, Kairos’ steps somehow felt lighter.
Then the countdown reached zero.
Kairos stopped in place for a moment to see if anything would happen. But then, the black gradually faded away, revealing that he was in the exit room. There was a bright blue pillar in the center, which he recognized as the exit. After looking around, he saw Kaede, who was crouched in a corner with both hands on her head.
She was breathing erratically, clearly in the process of having a breakdown. Before he could think about it, Nicole threw herself at him, hugging him tightly.
“I’m so sorry.”
Kairos looked at her strangely.
“What are you talking about?”
Nicole rubbed the side of her face against his.
“I doubted you. I’m sorry.”
Kairos smiled bitterly.
“Huh? What happened to you?”
Nicole tilted her head to the side.
“Um… everything turned black and it said that you would kill me if I didn’t kill you first. I thought it was all fake, but I still thought that maybe you would hurt me. But… you did nothing.”
Kairos gave a small nod.
“Huh. Mine was saying that I had to kill one of us. I didn’t do anything and we both seem fine though.
Nicole let out a gasp.
“E-Eh? You couldn’t decide?”
Kairos shrugged his shoulders.
“Not choosing was my decision. If we both die because of that, then whatever.”
Nicole frowned.
“You should’ve just sacrificed me! You… you can’t die!”
Kairos rolled his eyes.
“I’m not going to do that.”
Nicole looked to be on the verge of melting down once more. Her fingers were jittering slightly, while her breath was getting a little heavy.
“Why? Why? Why!?”
Kairos took a deep breath, feeling how unhealthy Nicole’s mental state had gotten.
“I don’t want to live a life without you. And I don’t want to leave you alone either, so that was my choice. You said not to leave, right? So no matter what, I will search for a way for both of us to live.”
Nicole took a second to process what he had said before calming down.
“Ah… I get it now.”
She smiled before quieting down, but there were still other strange sounds.
Kairos turned around to see Chen, just staring at his hands with widened eyes. He called out to him.
“Um, are you alright?”