One Week

Back at the apartment, Dylan was spending some time alone in the guest room. He sat in a daze, not thinking about anything in particular. The world felt so quiet and still, stagnate even. It was just the sound of his thoughts filling in the silence.

He fell back against the soft bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. In Dylan's mind, Sherry once again occupying the vast majority of his thoughts. A little montage of her silly moments played through his mind. Visions of Sherry's cute and loveable smile, her quirky giggles and her various expressions just playing again and again like a gif. A small smile could not help but to creep up, it was a truly happy but lonesome smile.

This was Dylan's first time being apart from Sherry for so long. From the moment he arrived on Earth, there had never been a night that he spent away from Sherry. Even when separated by a wall, he felt reassured that she within his reach. Now, she was somewhere else, somewhere that was not beside him.

Dylan shook his head and sat up with a straight back. He looked sharply ahead, "Stop being so whiney, Dylan. You're acting like those noblemen you hate so much. You survived a year, surely you can go a week without her." He scolded himself.

Taking a deep breath, Dylan closed his eyes and decided to train his magic for once. He had been focussing on his body too much and had been neglecting magic due to its redundancy in modern society. However, he used quite a bit of magic to clean Janine's apartment and hadn't replenished it for half a month already. Dylan decided that now was a good time to do so.

Calmly, the man circulates his mana around his body. Starting from the magic organ in his body, the heart, his mana travels around his body like blood in veins. It flowed smoothly through his arms to the tips of his fingers all the way down to his toes. After fully circulating his mana a few times, Dylan finally starts to take in the mana from outside in order to refill his own. This process on Earth was a little more complicated than on Diva. Due to Earth's thin and contaminated mana, it needed to be purified. It was a time-consuming task. Even after an hour had passed, Dylan still didn't manage to refill all his mana.

Dylan opened his eyes and let out a small sigh. It was getting late and he wasn't in a rush so he decided to sleep. The knight lazily utilised magic to close the light switch and drifted off to sleep. Just like that, Dylan's first night apart from Sherry came to an end.

The next morning, just before dawn, Dylan woke up purely out of habit. Sitting up, his hair was messy and his eyes dazed from having just woken up. Dylan rubbed his eyes and looked around, the simplistic but homely room he had grown accustomed to was not in sight but instead, a room that looked unlived in.

Dylan ruffled his hair, running his fingers through his fringe. "…Janine's house." He mumbled in a lethargic low tone. Absentmindedly, Dylan changed into his workout clothes and quietly left the house after washing up.

It was cold outside and most people were still sleeping or just about to sleep. Dylan was lightly jogging outside, running until the sun rose. Only when he was sweating did he stop and head back inside. When he came back, Janine and Charlotte were still sleeping and didn't seem like they will wake up any time soon. Shaking his head, Dylan showered and made breakfast as he waited for them to get up.

After breakfast, Janine called Sherry on her phone and gave Dylan the opportunity to talk to her.

"Hey." Dylan greeted.

"Hey." Sherry replied with a soft voice. "My mum and dad want to take the kids out to play on the weekend. I'm afraid we won't be able to meet up then. Sorry about that."

"It's fine. You should spend more time with your family." Dylan smiled and said. Silence befell them. It was like a blanket that wrapped around them, not allowing them to speak. But the two relished in that serene silence.

"Yeah, uhuh, mm, bye." Dylan hung up the phone and gave it back to Janine. He then wasted the days away by watching TV, helping out around the house, training his magic and running. He repeated this every day during his stay Janine's.

When Dylan was in his room, he heard a knock at the door. "Come in." He said.

Janine opened the door and found Dylan sitting cross legged on the bed. "You should go outside or something. You seem really depressed."

"I'm fine. I'm just recharging my magic right now." Dylan dismissed and replied. He continued to replenish his magic as Janine spoke.

"It's only been a week man. Seriously, you act like you haven't seen her in a month."

Dylan smiled wryly and just ignored her.

"Hey, don't ignore me. You two lovebirds need to get your act together. It's frustrating seeing you like this. It's so obvious that you like each other, why don't you just make it official? Urgh."

Unfortunately for Janine, Dylan wasn't currently listening to her. He knitted his brows together and frowned. His mana was being absorbed by something at a rapid rate and was almost going to be depleted. Frantically, Dylan gathers mana from around him and tried to keep up with the speed in which it was being used. Sadly, he was unable to.

"What the? Your shoulder's glowing, is it supposed to do that? Are you doing some kind of magic show?" Janine asked, concerned. Dylan was gritting his teeth, sweat flowing down his head and an intricate pattern on his shoulder was glowing. It resembled that of a feather combined with other cool things.

Just as Janine was about to approach Dylan, she heard him mutter something under his breath and a black hole suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Dylan shoved his hand into the hole and retrieved multiple bottles of clear blue liquids. He bit the lids open and chugged them within a skip of a beat. Then he was back to silently frowning with closed eyes.