Chapter 201 | Elena

Chapter 201: 201 | Elena

Dexter looked at her.

He looked at the girl who had followed him to a rooftop because she wanted to know where he was, the girl who had remembered his birthday when no one else did. The girl who had spent what was probably a significant portion of her money on a secondhand sweater for a boy that the rest of the estate treated like furniture.

He looked at her, and he felt so thing breaking inside of him; twisting like a key unlocking an old doo.

"Jasmine," he said.

She turned her head and looked at him with her cute eyes.

Dexter held his gaze as he looked at her.

"Thank you,"

Those two words were inadequate for what she had gone through to give her the gifts but his words meant everything.

Those words that couldn’t possibly carry the weight of what he actually meant.

But Jasmine smiled as though she understood what he meant.

The quiet smile started at the corners of her mouth and spread slowly to her eyes.

"You’re welcome," she said.

Then she turned back to the sunset.

They sat together on the crumbling wall of the forgotten rooftop, shoulder to shoulder, watching the sky burn itself out in shades of gold and crimson and violet. The city hummed below them but none of it mattered.

The rooftop was ugly, but sitting there, in a blue sweater that was slightly too large, beside a girl who had remembered his birthday, Dexter Ashford felt something he had never felt before in his fourteen years of life.

He felt like he belonged somewhere.

---

The weeks that followed were the happiest of his life.

They developed a routine. Every evening, after their respective duties were finished, they would meet on the rooftop. Sometimes they talked about everything, about nothing, about the heroes they admired. About the places they wanted to visit. About the lives they dreamed of living once they escaped the Ashford estate.

Sometimes they didn’t talk at all. They simply sat together and watched the city change colors as the sun moved across the sky.

Jasmine told him about her family. Her younger brother, who wanted to be a hero when he grew up. Her older sister, who had married a merchant and moved to another city.

Dexter told her about his mother. About the fragments of information he had gathered over the years from servants who had been present when she was alive.

Her name was Elena. She had been brought to the Ashford estate as a servant when she was sixteen. She had been quiet. Gentle. She had sung while she worked, soft melodies that the other servants remembered years after her death.

She had died giving birth to him.

That was all he knew.

Jasmine listened to every word. She didn’t interrupt nor did she offer hollow platitudes. She simply listened, her hand finding his, interlacing with his and holding on.

---

One evening, three months after the birthday sweater, they sat on the wall watching a particularly spectacular sunset. The sky was doing something unusual. The clouds had arranged themselves into long, thin bands that caught the light and glowed like rivers of molten gold flowing across a violet sky.

Jasmine leaned her head against his shoulder.

"Dexter?"

"Yeah?"

"When you leave this place, and you will leave this place, where will you go?"

Dexter was quiet for a moment. He had thought about leaving. Every day. Every hour. The desire to walk through the Ashford estate gates and never return was like a real demon whispering in his mind.

But the Ashford family would never let him go, knowingl he was still connected to them by blood. Even if he ran away, he had no money, no resources, no education, and an F-Rank mana affinity that made him less valuable than the lowest hired servant.

"I don’t know," he said honestly. "Anywhere. Everywhere. Somewhere far from here. Somewhere quiet. Maybe a small house. With a garden. And a kitchen where I can cook whatever I want."

"You like cooking?" Jasmine lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him with genuine surprise.

"I love cooking," Dexter said. He had never admitted this to anyone. In the Ashford estate, cooking was a servant’s job. A menial task. Not something a person did because they enjoyed it. "When I was younger, I used to sneak into the kitchen after everyone had gone to sleep. I would take whatever ingredients were left over and just... cook. Experiment. Try different combinations. See what worked and what didn’t."

He paused. "The head cook caught me once. She didn’t report me. She just gave me a recipe book and told me to clean up after myself."

Jasmine stared at him.

Then she smiled.

It was the widest smile he had ever seen on her face. Bright. Unfiltered. The kind of smile that rearranged everything he thought he knew about the way faces worked.

"What?" he asked, suddenly self-conscious.

"Nothing," she said. "I just think you’re full of surprises."

She leaned her head back against his shoulder.

"When you open your restaurant," she said, her voice drowsy and warm, "I want to be your first customer."

Dexter looked down at her. Her eyes were closed. Her lashes were dark crescents against her cheeks. Her breathing was slow and even. The sunset painted her face in gold.

"When I open my restaurant," he said quietly, "you’ll be more than a customer."

He wasn’t sure what he meant by that. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to say. He was fourteen. He had never been on a date. He had never held a girl’s hand before Jasmine. He didn’t know the right words for the things he was feeling, because nobody had ever taught him the vocabulary of tenderness.

But Jasmine smiled without opening her eyes.

"I know," she whispered.

---

They stayed on the rooftop until the stars came out.

The city below had transformed into a sea of lights. Towers and streets and homes, each one a small point of illumination in the vast darkness. From above, it looked like a reflection of the sky. As if the stars had fallen and settled on the earth, creating a second constellation that hummed with life.

Jasmine had fallen asleep against his shoulder.

Dexter sat perfectly still, not wanting to disturb her. The blue sweater kept him warm. The stars kept him company. The weight of her head on his shoulder kept him grounded.

He didn’t sleep. He didn’t want to and he wanted to stay in this moment for as long as it lasted.

The Ashford estate would surely notice and someone would see them and would report.

But Dexter at that moment didn’t care. Be just wanted to stay up there with her.