Chapter 298 The Morning Comes

Lee Seng's eyes fluttered open. His arm freed itself from the bedsheets. He could feel the perfect temperature. He let out a small yawn as he pushed himself up.

'Where am I?' Lee Seng wondered. He was back in the hospital. 'Dammit… What happened?' Flashes of the battle appeared in his head. He remembered the fights. The stalemates. The large flaming magma ball that came out of Kaleb's nunchucks.

"It did happen!" Lee Seng said a little too loud.

"Huh?" Manny shot up from his slumped spot. He was sitting in the corner to Lee Seng's right. "Lee? What's wrong?" Manny shot out of his seat and over to Lee Seng.

"Wh… Aren't you supposed to be in quarantine until tomorrow?" Lee Seng's groggy voice asked. He watched Manny rub the eye boogers off as he leaned onto the bed.

"Are you okay? Liz told us what happened. Are you okay?" He began to check Lee Seng for injuries, pulling the bed sheet that was covering his legs off and starting to forcefully look around. Lee Seng tried his best to peel off Manny, but he furiously looked around. Lee Seng's tail pushed Manny off of him, extending to hold him against the hospital wall.

"Calm down." Lee Seng rubbed his eyes. He pulled his tail back to normal length and yawned, again. "I'm fine. How's Ritsuka?"

"He's fine." Manny came back to Lee Seng's side. "They said you guys didn't pass out from any injuries. You guys passed out from the extreme heat of that enchantment rune. How the hell did Kaleb get his hand on an A-rank enchantment rune?" The ball of fire and magma flashed in his eyes. He had judged the situation to the best of his knowledge and decided to cut the magma. It seemed like that just made everything even more sweltering out.

"Ahhhh," Lee Seng put his hands to his face, leaning over. "Did I make the right choice in cutting that ball of fire in half?"

"Hey," Manny put a hand on Lee Seng's back. "You guys are safe. You guys miraculously didn't get hurt at all even though you guys fought against each other. I'd say that's a miracle."

'But you don't know that I healed everyone while trying to suck all of that Dark Matter energy…' Lee Seng thought. Manny removed his hand and Lee Seng wiped his face and straightened his back. He turned his attention onto Manny.

"If you're here, are the others here, too?" Lee Seng asked.

"Oh," Manny raised his eyebrows. He began to nod. "Evan and Olivia came with me. We were gonna meet you guys at a Korean BBQ place after your match. Liz was going to bring you guys out to celebrate and we would just be there when you arrived. It was supposed to be a surprise, but things didn't go as planned." Manny tried to give Lee Seng a reassuring smile. Lee Seng nodded, removing his attention from Manny.

"Who's with Ritsuka? Did Kaleb and Jake get help, too?"

'He still secretly cares about others' well-being before his…' Manny smirked. 'You might've closed yourself out to me, but you still care about people even if they did you wrong.' Manny moved over to the foot of the hospital bed. He grabbed the railing and nodded.

"Evan and Olivia are with him."

"Where's Liz?"

"She, uh…" Manny's voice trailed off. "She was crying a lot about you two, so I had to stay with her for a long time before she fell asleep. She's actually sleeping past that curtain." Manny nodded at the curtain. Lee Seng looked over. He could definitely hear someone's breathing.

"She cried?" Lee Seng's voice had a tinge of sadness to it.

"Mmm," Manny set his hand onto Lee Seng's foot and shook it. He pulled Lee Seng's attention away from the sleeping Liz. "She may seem strong but she cares deeply about her friends. It's been awhile since I've seen her this worried. It just means she thinks of you and Ritsuka as good friends."

"Good friends?" Lee Seng let the words escape his mouth.

"You should be glad. You wanted to restart, right?" Manny shook his foot, again before setting it on the foot bed railing. Lee Seng nodded. He had gotten a restart. A very complicated restart, but one he didn't regret so far.

The sound of Liz groaning alerted Lee Seng. He turned as Manny mimicked afterwards. Liz yawned and stretched. She stood up and moved past the curtain, rubbing her eyes. She looked up and noticed Manny and Lee Seng were both awake. It was the dead of night and the three of them were now awake.

"Lee Seng!" Liz ran to him, tackling him with a bear hug. "Are you okay?" She began to barrage him with questions. She even tried to make sure he was physically fine.

"I'm fine, I'm fine." Lee Seng smiled. He liked that someone else was worried about him. Liz took a deep sigh of relief. He noticed her eyes were beginning to water. "I'm okay. Honestly, I think I just passed out from how hot it was. Now that I'm in a way cooler room, I kinda wanna get out and walk around."

"You wanna walk already? You just woke up." Manny commented. He didn't like the idea of Lee Seng wanting to walk already. He knew Lee Seng was impatient when it came to recovery.

"We have barely a week to train before the expedition."

"And speaking of that," Liz wiped her eyes. "I found out what it is."

"You did?" Lee Seng looked at her. She nodded.

"I think we should wait until Ritsuka's up. We can have a group meeting when he's awake."

Hours Later

Lee Seng and Liz sat on one of the benches outside while Manny leaned against one of the pillars. They watched the sunrise. It slowly climbed into the sky. Lee Seng's stomach rumbled.

"Hungry?" Manny asked.

"Yeah." Lee Seng chuckled.

"Let's find you some food, okay?" Liz stood up and began to help Lee Seng up. He took her help, only because he felt bad that she cried for him and Ritsuka. He was perfectly fine, just a bit sore, but she insisted on helping him.

"You think Ritsuka's up yet?" Lee Seng asked.

"If he was, we would've gotten a reply from Olivia and Evan about it. Evan said he was still sleeping an hour ago." Manny replied. They made their way to the hospital cafeteria. Manny and Liz's phone pinged while they got in line for breakfast.

"Ritsuka woke up." Manny told them.

"Tell them to come eat breakfast if he can move." Lee Seng told him.

"They say they'll try. He seems a bit… gloomy and moody." Manny typed away on the phone and then hit send. "I told them to tell him you were fine and insisted on walking around for a bit early in the morning until the sun came up."

Lee Seng nodded. He added a whole bunch of protein onto his plate. Mounds of eggs and sausages. Five pancakes and loads of maple syrup packages. Manny ended up taking the tray of food and letting Lee Seng decide where they sat. They sat near the window of a long lunch table.

Lee Seng began to dig into his mound of food. About fifteen minutes passed and Liz noticed Ritsuka, Evan and Olivia looking for them with their trays of food.

"Hey, over here!" Liz stood up and waved. Olivia waved and wandered over, letting Evan hover behind Ritsuka, holding his tray of food as they moved over to them.

"Hi!" Olivia happily smiled at them. She looked over at Lee Seng and waved. "Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah." Lee seng answered with a mouthful of food. He chewed quickly and swallowed his food, washing it down with water. Ritsuka lowered himself next to Manny while Evan sat next to him.

"You doin' okay, Ritsuka?" Manny asked. Evan slid Ritsuka's food over to him. Ritsuka nodded.

"Yeah. Just sore." Ritsuka answered. He glanced over at Lee Seng who was happily eating. "How can he be so carefree?"

"You should take notes, Yamada." Olivia poked at him with her words. "Be more carefree about the situation. You just passed out from the heat!"

"But we could've died." Ritsuka frowned.

"But you didn't." Evan reinforced. "Consider yourselves lucky. You even made sure the other two weren't so heavily injured as well."

"How'd he even get a hold of that enchantment rune?" Ritsuka stabbed his pancakes. Lee Seng looked over at Ritsuka.

'It seems like he's more upset about this than I am.' Lee Seng thought.

'Sometimes I think you downplay the severity of the situations you're in.' Keng insulted him. Lee Seng turned his head away from everyone, looking off into the window.

'What do you mean by that?'

'You don't value your life or something?' Keng asked. He could see his reflection raising his eyebrow. Lee Seng moved his hand to cover it.

'What the…'

'You're already embarrassing yourself by trying to argue with yourself. You should probably turn around before they ask.' A smirk appeared on his reflection. He turned around, noticing everyone but Ritsuka was looking at him.