Chapter 377 What’s In A Team?

Lee Seng didn't sleep much that night. He was plagued with the same nightmare. He was taken to Limbo and met the Hat Man, Cain. The strange corrupted version of himself showed up at the end after he had met with the other Lords and Ladies of the Realm and was forced out by the deimon that called himself, Eleven.

Lee Seng passed time by working out. He had mainly focused on listening to his body and figuring out what he could and couldn't do. He ran for an hour and felt discomfort after an hour and slowly came to a stop.

He lifted weights and did a full body routine and found out he was perfectly fine upper body and arms-wise, but his legs weren't doing so well. Lee Seng stretched to end it and took another shower.

He changed into sweats and a t-shirt and went to grab his phone but remembered he smashed it to bits last night.

"Shit. I smashed my phone and probably Olivia's…" Lee Seng shook his head. He grabbed the tablet out of his bag and went upstairs. There wasn't much noise in the house.

He sat on the couch and turned his tablet on. It was only almost 8am and he had been awake since 4:48am. He was used to getting little sleep form the last week but he could definitely feel how exhausted he was becoming.

He went on the internet and decided to look for a phone to buy. He didn't have enough money to replace the adventurer grade phone so he bought a regular phone for himself.

"I should probably buy Olivia a phone too…" Lee Seng quietly told himself. "What was her phone again?" He pondered about what phone she had but didn't remember the name so he bought her a high tech flip smart phone like his.

He finished the order, setting up the phones with new phone numbers and putting them under his account name. He would pay Olivia's as a way of saying "sorry" about the whole incident.

'Fuck, that means I can't call Sara to talk about…' He shook his head and shut the tablet off. He stood up and wandered into the sunlit kitchen. He let some music play off his tablet while he made some breakfast.

"You're here. Didn't think you'd come back til later today.." Manny spoke. Lee Seng turned and saw the wet haired Manny smiled at him as he dried his hair with the small towel wrapped around his neck. "What're you making?"

"Eggs." Lee Seng answered. He turned his attention back onto his cooking. His emotions felt oddly strange about Manny. It wasn't positive or negative. It wasn't what he thought he would react.

"Came back home last night because a lot of shit happened." Lee Seng told him. Manny parked himself onto a barstool and nodded.

"What happened?" Manny asked. Lee Seng scoffed and shut off the heat. He moved the pan away and started to dig for a bowl.

"Migraine. Sara was there with Olivia." Lee Seng began. "I exploded a room. Sara cheated on me with some freshman dude."

"You exploded a room? Is everyone okay?" Manny asked. Lee Seng took out some leftover stir fry and put some of it in the bowl. He closed the fridge door and put the bowl in the microwave and let it run for a minute and a half.

"They're all fine. I have to buy a new phone for me and Olivia cause I crushed all of those inanimate objects." Lee Seng answered, turning.

"That's good… but what about Sara cheating on you?"

"Apparently she's dating a freshman." Lee Seng sighed. He folded his arms and shrugged.

"And you're…?" Manny looked at him with concern. Lee Seng shook his head as he closed his eyes.

"I'm fine. Honestly wondering why I even got with her in the first place. She and you came back into my life and helped me with physical therapy but never said sorry."

"What?" Manny raised an eyebrow. He was confused and Lee Seng realized he had accidentally let it slip out. "I apologized to you about what happened. Sara cried about it but that's not even the point." Manny waved. The microwave beeped and Lee Seng turned to take out the stir fry and dump the eggs in.

"We had a long discussion about what happened. Don't you remember?" Manny asked.

'A fake discussion.' Lee Seng thought as he grabbed a spoon and moved over to the rice cooker and opened it.

"Well, I don't really wanna see Sara so that's that. We have bigger things to worry about than my memory when it comes to us." Lee Seng scooped rice out and closed the rice cooker. He stirred the contents of the bowl as he sat down at the end of the island.

"What?" Manny asked like he didn't know what Lee Seng was even hinting at.

"November." Lee Seng looked Manny dead in the eye. He could hear people coming to the living room. "We have to all talk about November."

Lee Seng stood in front of the TV as the rest of the group sat on the couch and armchairs. Olivia and Liz had made some tea while Evan was sipping on coffee. Ritsuka was avoiding Manny and munching on toast as Lee Seng scooped up another bite of food.

"We gotta talk about what happened during the Field Group Test, alright?" Lee Seng started. He looked at each one of his teammates and could feel the uncomfortableness in the air. "All of you wanted to find me. I'm grateful for that, but!"

He watched as Manny and Ritsuka glared at each other.

But the mission obviously didn't go that way." Lee Seng finished.

"Because of Manny." Ritsuka added. Manny started to stand when Lee Seng sighed.

"You wanted to save him just as badly as I did! What's wrong with not being able to keep my emotions in check when my friend is gone?" Manny shouted. Ritsuka started to stand when a pressure washed over the two boys. They dropped to their seats and Lee Seng sighed.

"Shut up and listen to me first." Lee Seng spoke. The pressure let up and the boys looked at him as he scooped another bite of food into his mouth.

"I get that you all wanted to save me. I get that Manny pushed the hardest for it and Ritsuka wanted the same thing too. I get it that Evan didn't want to do anything." Lee Seng spoke. Evan squirmed in his spot whole Ritsuka and Manny stared daggers at each other. The girls watched the drama unfold in front of them as they quietly sipped their tea.

"I get your actions. I can put myself in all of your shoes. You all did what you thought was best. Don't feel bad you didn't wanna find me, Evan. Rules are in place for a reason, right?

"Just like rules were created for a reason, they're also meant to be broken, sometimes. Finding your teammate and friend isn't a bad thing. The most strong headed person or the girl who has her emotions in check can lose their shit when it comes to someone special, Ritsuka." Lee Seng glanced in his direction.

"Just cause Manny got emotional and was willingly – no is willing to break the rules, doesn't mean the outcome was what he wanted either. I was eventually found by Chan-Yeol anyway. I'm safe. I know for a fact I would've gone through physical therapy either way. Don't blame yourselves and each other because of what happened. I followed the orders because that's what I thought was right."

"Wait, you remember this?" Liz asked. The group had their eyes on Lee Seng as he nodded.

"Of course. At the hospital yesterday, I remembered the incident." Lee Seng told them. "I know me saying this stuff won't clear how you feel right now, but actively try to not blame yourselves and each other, okay? We're supposed to be a team. We're a team that probably got the worst roll when it came to teamwork and the situation in November, but I wouldn't trade any of it away for something better.

"'Things will go wrong in the field. You must be prepared for situations like this. If you aren't, it could quickly answer the question, "Am I gonna live or die?"'" Lee Seng quoted. "Our instructors have told us this many times. It isn't your lack of leadership, Manny or you following his orders and taking the Techs back to the surface first, Ritsuka. We all followed orders because we all agreed Manny would be the leader.

"You all chose to try to find me even after you were probably told no. Even after Evan didn't want to break rules. Et cetera, et cetera. The point is we must climb over what happened in November and prepare ourselves so the next time we go on a mission, it won't happen again to me or one of you guys, alright?"