Chapter 286: Finally...

Atlas remained stunned at the sudden movement Seraphiel had made.

"Mph!" She pressed her lips against his even more as she leaned toward him, and before she consciously realized what she was doing, she had already sat down on his lap. After remaining like that for a long moment, she finally pulled away from his lips, and the tears that had been coming from both of them had stopped.

She looked at Atlas's completely stunned face, and only then did realization finally dawn on her.

'W-Wait! What did I do?!!!' she screamed in her mind as her face immediately turned red, her cheeks burning from embarrassment. She quickly got off his lap and turned away from him while brushing her own lips with her fingers, still able to feel the lingering sensation of his lips against hers.

Atlas, on the other hand, was completely shocked.

One would think that someone like him would have no knowledge about what a kiss even was, but the truth was that Atlas knew about it. He had seen many adults in the slums kissing each other, and he had even seen things beyond that, although he had never bothered to keep those memories clearly because they had been completely irrelevant to him at the time.

The single tear that had been escaping from his right eye had already stopped as Atlas stared at Seraphiel. For the first time, he was not utterly clueless about what was happening around him. His hand slowly reached toward his chest, where his heart was beating much faster than usual, and along with the excitement, there was a strange warmth spreading through him.

'What's this...?' He questioned the unfamiliar sensation as he looked at Seraphiel trying to awkwardly hide her red face from him.

'Why do I feel...cared about? And this warmth?' Atlas continued questioning his own feelings as he watched her. 'Why...do I feel delighted?' He did not understand any of it, but for some reason, his mind was not trying to force an answer this time.

Instead, he remembered the future he had once seen, where he had died, and how the closer he had gotten to death, the more he had realized a certain feeling within himself and accepted it.

Atlas finally came out of his reverie as his right hand moved toward his lips, brushing them lightly with his fingers while the lingering sensation of the kiss remained there.

THUMP THUMP.

His heart began racing again as he remembered that strange softness, and another thought entered his mind. 'Is this my "Desire" or what they call "Lust"?' He wondered if this was the same feeling that drove men to do those strange things with women, but the moment the thought appeared, his own mind rejected it.

If this were simply 'Desire' or 'Lust', Atlas felt that he would have already gone out of control and his mind would not even remain calm as he had seen how a man behaved when they were taken over by lust of desire.

He did not feel an urge to lose control or do anything like that, and the warmth inside his chest was completely different from what he understood those feelings to be.

'...Is this perhaps "Love"? But how can I love someone?' His mind returned to the same question once again. He had despised Nobles throughout his life, yet after he had gained enough power, he had never truly felt the need to stay away from them.

Maybe it had been because of his overconfidence, or perhaps his instincts had guided him without him realizing it. Whatever the reason was, he had somehow remained close to this Household, and especially to Seraphiel.

'Did I love her from the beginning?' The answer came immediately. 'No, that is certainly not the case...' He still remembered meeting her for the first time, and there had not been even an ounce of such a feeling inside him.

At that time, it had simply been curiosity about why she had approached him. 'Then...now I love her? But how?' He continued questioning himself, and those questions slowly brought him closer to the truth he had been trying to find all this time.

'...Ah!' Realization finally appeared in his mind as he lifted his head toward Seraphiel.

'It was not that I wanted to find the answer as to why she loved me...my subconscious mind was trying to convince me into thinking that was the case, but...' He paused for a moment before continuing his thoughts. 'It was to see if that future I saw and all the things that happened afterward were really because she could see the future...'

'My mind had already processed the possibility that if she could really see the future...what if she had seen the future where she blocked the attack, and everything after that had brought us to this point?'

'In other words...My mind was still questioning whether her "caring" about me was real.' Atlas finally realized how much of a fool he had been. Even after everything that had happened, he had continued looking at his own emotions through the same mind that had been built around logical calculations and understanding situations.

'I...needed to "feel" these emotions, not "think" them. My way of understanding this matter was utterly meaningless...' His heart suddenly felt overwhelmed by the emotions that had been held back for so long. It was a sudden realization, but what Atlas had finally come out of could be described as invisible 'chains' around his heart, chains that had kept him from properly accepting his own emotions.

Now that he had finally understood that he could not calculate these feelings like everything else, those restraints no longer held the same meaning and they began to crumble.

With that realization, Atlas finally stood up from the floating seat created through his Spirit Weaver Trait. 'I cannot avoid these emotions, never...they are mine, just like these powers are.' He moved forward, and Seraphiel, sensing his approaching figure, instinctively turned toward him.

The moment she did, she felt Atlas take both of her hands into his. Seraphiel arched an eyebrow at his sudden behavior, but Atlas simply looked at her with a calm expression before speaking. "Thank you again, Seraphiel. If it were not for you, I would never have been able to realize my own feelings and emotions."

"I would have remained a dull machine who only knew how to "Think", never being able to "feel"."

With that, Atlas leaned slightly forward and pressed his lips against her cheek. "Although I am still unable to completely understand these emotions, I can at least reciprocate them with just this." He pulled back and looked at Seraphiel's stunned face, leaving her unable to immediately respond to what he had just done.

After taking a moment to process his words and actions, Seraphiel finally nodded as a small smile tugged at her lips. 'I succeeded, Mother.' One last thought crossed her mind calmly before she spoke. "Th-Then let me hug you a little, alright?" Atlas arched an eyebrow at her request before answering, "That thing you did back then? Alright..."

With his positive answer, Seraphiel immediately hugged him without hesitation. Tears once again came out of her eyes as she held him, but this time they were tears of relief and happiness rather than fear or distress.

Warmth filled her heart as she held Atlas closer, and she could not stop herself from feeling that she had finally managed to reach the part of him that had always struggled to understand emotions, 'Finally...Finally he understands it.'