Fairy Tail Adventures Await Volume 2: Undercover Investigation

Chapter 20: Memories...of Water?

"Wendy induced a short coma so I could actually recover."

'She still hasn't questioned me about Needleworks. Maybe she's waiting until after I'm discharged?'

A soft chuckle escaped Cal's lips.

"That doesn't surprise me. In any case, I'm glad you're feeling better," she stated.

Reiki bit his lip. He closed the book and looked directly at her face.

"Calypso. Why did you come here at all? If Eli finds out, he's gonna kill me!"

"Eli knows I'm here. In fact, I brought him. However, he went into town, presumably looking for Cris and Nashi."

The redhead took a shaky breath.

"And why did you forgive me?" he whispered.

"I thought I told you this?" Cal wondered.

"No, you didn't. On April 26th at 5:30am I screamed as I asked how you could forgive me and you responded 'because I've forgiven myself' in a very nonchalant tone. So why? Why did you forgive both of us??"

"Because I'm moving forward. And out of the shadows."

Reiki blinked.

"But forgiveness and moving forward aren't the same thing," he stated.

"They're not. But they can overlap," she gently reminded him.

Reiki sighed and looked right. Trees waved at him through the window near the foot of his bed.

He slowly shook his head.

"I still don't understand how you could do that. Or why," he muttered.

Cal half-chuckled.

"It's definitely not easy. You have to be open-minded and understand where you want to be in five years, ten years, and so on."

He looked at her again.

"So why did you want to move out of the shadows? You live in them."

Cal let out a soft, hollow laugh.

"Reiki. Living in darkness is a constant and exhausting fight. Since I was a child, I've had endless cycles of depression. Armies of whispers have fueled my anxiety. After July X817, everyone in Sabertooth was tense at the mere thought of Fairy Tail, myself included. In fact, I didn't leave my house for a solid two months after I woke up. My sixteenth birthday was celebrated, if you could call it that, with nothing more than brief spotlights in an abyss. In fact, all of my previous birthdays had been similar. As I pondered death after life, I realized I wasn't really 'living'. So I decided to fight the shadows."

"How??"

"How what?"

"H-how did you...you know, fight it?"

"I reached for the spotlights. It turns out they were closer than I remembered. Mom. Dad. Selene. Frosch. Eli. Eli's family. The Founders. The Stone Gang. Carmine."

Reiki blinked away dust in his eyes.

His gaze drifted to the end of the bed. Both feet shuffled under the sheets.

"You make it sound easy," he muttered.

"If you think it's easy, you're naive! Just because I'm here now doesn't mean I won't move backwards! It's a constant work in progress!"

The redhead crossed his arms tightly.

"Tch. You've said that before. And that sounds like a lot of work," he huffed.