Chapter 620: A Teenage Girl’s Room

"Mhm. I don’t blame you." Sophia nodded firmly, still holding her posture as if she had just delivered a profound and necessary truth.

Her chin was lifted, and her shoulders were squared. "It almost sounded as though they just wanted to make an item or something together. But remember: Benjamin is always sexually aroused by the curse! She must have struck a deal with Katana, which explains why Katana has been so docile since this afternoon."

"Ah, that makes perfect sense." Sapphire lowered his hands, his expression shifting from shock to dawning comprehension. "Sophia, you’re sooooo smart~!"

He praised his twin without a single trace of doubt in his voice.

And he watched as she gloated, her non-existent chest puffed out in pure pride at her own brilliance, her chin rising another inch.

[Eh...? Curse...? Don’t tell me...] Erica trembled slightly. A cold little wave ran down her spine. [Some of my party members truly believed my and Heka’s lie?!]

But she stared at her hands, folded in her lap, and said nothing.

***

After Katana left, Benjamin followed her to her room, leaving the rest of the party members downstairs to assume they were going to do something intimate.

The wooden stairs creaked softly under his steps as he climbed. Each board gave a low, familiar complaint.

The warm light and voices of the dining hall faded behind him with every step he took, dimming by degrees until the corridor above was lit only by the faint glow of a single lamp near the landing.

He counted the doors as he passed them. He knew which one was hers. He had already memorized the layout days ago, during the long, quiet afternoons when no one was watching.

Pushing the door open, Benjamin was met with a familiar sight.

Familiar, because he had already snuck into every room in the mansion for the fun of it.

The hinges made almost no sound.

"Y-Your room is really... girlie." Benjamin decided to break the ice a bit, glancing around as he stepped fully inside and closed the door behind him with a soft click. "I did not expect it to be like that."

"Are you insinuating that I am childish?" Katana gave him a sharp glance as she mounted her bed.

The mattress dipped slightly under her weight, the pink bedspread shifting with the movement.

Her eyes met his for only a fraction of a second before sliding away again, unable to hold the contact.

Benjamin quickly waved both hands in front of him, the motion a little too fast and defensive, then he denied all accusations.

"Sit." She gestured to the open space on her bed beside her.

Her voice was quiet. She still could not look at him for a whole second at a time.

Her gaze kept drifting toward the far wall, or the dolls stacked near the headboard. Anywhere that wasn’t his face.

He sat down.

The mattress gave a soft, quiet sigh under his weight... and the atmosphere became terribly awkward almost at once.

The silence between them stretched, thick and heavy, broken only by the faint sound of the house settling somewhere below and the occasional soft shift of fabric when one of them moved.

His eyes roamed the pink, teen-ish room Katana lived in while the quiet continued.

A small wooden table sat beside the bed. Its surface was mostly clear, empty except for a single neatly folded cloth and a small ceramic dish.

The walls were painted in alternating panels of soft pink and clean white, a pattern that looked almost hand-done, the edges slightly uneven in places.

The rug under the bed was a deep, saturated pink that matched the bedspread almost exactly. It was thick enough that it muffled the sound of any footstep, swallowing noise before it could travel.

Not to mention the sheer amount of dolls and plushies.

They filled the head of the bed and spilled onto some parts of the floor, soft shapes in various sizes, some upright and some lying half-buried under the blankets.

Some of them were clearly old, their fabric worn thin in places, their stitched faces faded from years of handling. Others were newer, brighter, with ribbons and buttons still intact.

They occupied the space as if they had been there so long they had simply become part of the furniture.

Benjamin looked at them. Then at Katana. Then back at the dolls.

The room itself was well arranged and tidied.

Everything had its place. Not in the rigid, military way that some people kept their spaces, but in the quiet, natural way of someone who simply preferred things to be where they belonged.

Except that the theme was unmistakably that of a teenage girl.

Katana did look like a teenage girl.

Her face, the slightness of her frame, the way she sat on the edge of the bed with her shoulders drawn in just a little; all of it gave the strong impression of someone much younger.

Her hands rested in her lap, fingers loosely curled, and the soft pink light of the room made her look even smaller than she was.

But she was quite older than Benjamin if the years he had lived on Earth were counted as well.

"Let me say this." Benjamin spoke again, unable to bear the silence that had settled after he sat down. "I am sorry once again for what happened in the weapon shop... I was too excited to have new friends I could be this casual with."

Katana’s brows involuntarily rose.

The small movement opened her expression for a brief moment before she controlled it again.

Her face smoothed back into its usual stillness, but something in her eyes had shifted.

She reached out and picked up a stuffed cat doll from the cluster near the headboard, pulling it against her chest.

Her fingers sank into the soft fabric, gripping it, holding it like a shield.

She watched the person sitting at her left, but still could not hold his gaze for long.

However, she no longer looked completely away either. Her eyes would meet his, flick away, and then drift back.