[There's a long break between responses, there, mostly because Asch's knee-jerk reaction was to throw the journal at the opposite wall and leave it lying there as he glowers at it from his desk, trying to decide whether or not he wants to bother retrieving it. It's so obvious now that it pisses him off that he didn't realize it before; there's only one person who'd left while he was blind, who would come back and not reveal himself, who would know to ask that-
And the burning question in his mind, the one that is wavering halfway between terror and rage is simply this: which one is it?
It doesn't seem like the Guy who had nearly cleaved him in two, who had confronted him when he was blind and recovering in the clinic, who'd vanished shortly after murdering him. But it isn't much like the one he knew, the one he'd spent years getting to know, who'd cared for him as much as hated him, because apparently that feeling never truly faded. He's not sure which one's better.
He's not sure which one's worse.
Eventually he slides off his chair and moves to crouch beside the journal, turning it around again to glare at it more directly. The words stare back at him, mockingly, the language of the world he can never return to.
For Guy to say that - to congratulate him for being alive - means that he's aware that Asch has died. Maybe here. Maybe back in Auldrant. Maybe both. The chances are fifty-fifty, at this point.
He doesn't much like those odds.
But he's not a coward, either.]
It's been more than a year, by this world's calendar.
[written]
And the burning question in his mind, the one that is wavering halfway between terror and rage is simply this: which one is it?
It doesn't seem like the Guy who had nearly cleaved him in two, who had confronted him when he was blind and recovering in the clinic, who'd vanished shortly after murdering him. But it isn't much like the one he knew, the one he'd spent years getting to know, who'd cared for him as much as hated him, because apparently that feeling never truly faded. He's not sure which one's better.
He's not sure which one's worse.
Eventually he slides off his chair and moves to crouch beside the journal, turning it around again to glare at it more directly. The words stare back at him, mockingly, the language of the world he can never return to.
For Guy to say that - to congratulate him for being alive - means that he's aware that Asch has died. Maybe here. Maybe back in Auldrant. Maybe both. The chances are fifty-fifty, at this point.
He doesn't much like those odds.
But he's not a coward, either.]
It's been more than a year, by this world's calendar.