The two were stunned for a second as they stared at Sophie silently. Her face was completely serious and her eyes were flaring with determination. No matter how they looked at it, she wasn't joking around at all.
"You want to go with me? Why?"
"I want to help out since I'm here." She replied.
Raising his eyebrows, Talon thought about it for a moment. No matter how he looked at it, Sophie's reason for this request wasn't simply her desire to help. He knew that it had some kind of thing to do with their previous conversation.
'Why is she trying to be with me? I already told her what happened. I thought she would just want to leave this place as soon as possible.' He thought to himself.
He was almost certain that what he said was going to sever their relationship forever. Yet, Sophie somehow came back and seemed like she had made up her mind about something.
But, in the end, he couldn't really figure out what she was trying to do. Even with how much he knew that girl, apparently, the last five years did change some things about her.
"Sure, if that's what you want." He replied.
"Talon..." Hyun-Jae turned her head around when she heard him. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I was gonna tell you that I will bring Shin-Il or Young-Soon with me but since she wants to go, there is no problem. We can't stop our plans for this small problem. We already are behind our estimated schedule."
'I want to leave Seoul in one week at most. Staying here any longer would be a huge problem.' He frowned. Sophie had already told him that his parents weren't in the Human Society yesterday and that fact alone made him feel an even stronger urge to leave Seoul as soon as human possible.
"Sigh, ok." Hyun-Jae rubbed her temples tiredly as she replied.
"Thank you." Hearing that response, Sophia's face lit up a little as she nodded her head. "So, what's the idea?"
Approaching the table, she looked up at Talon.
"Ok, listen carefully..."
***
Then, for the rest of the evening, Talon explained what he wanted to do. By the time he finished, both girls had shocked expressions on their faces.
"That's..." Hyun-Jae blinked speechlessly.
"That's very clever! It might actually work!" Sophie exclaimed.
"And it's not as ridiculous as I expected," Hyun-Jae added with a thoughtful look. "If what you said goes perfectly, then the time needed might not even exceed a day."
"Yeah, that's what I'm going for. A few hours should be more than enough to get this over with."
"When are we going then?"
"Tomorrow, early in the morning. Let's meet in front of the warehouse." Talon replied.
"I understand. But umm, where am I supposed to spend the night?"
"We already prepared a place for you and your group. Ask one of the students there, they will lead you there." Hyun-Jae replied as she pointed away.
"Oh, I understand. Well, I think I'm going to go get some sleep. You should sleep too, Talon. Hopefully, your habit of staying awake late is gone after all these years."
"It is gone. Every day I would end up completely exhausted by the time the sun sets."
"... I can't remember either." Sophie shook her head awkwardly.
Talon: "..."
Sophie: "..."
The two stared at each other dumbfounded for a few seconds before they started laughing.
"What the hell is that? Why did we forget what we were going to say?!" The girl giggled.
"I really don't know."
Even though the moment was awkward, it somehow helped defuse the tension a little. The two then continued moving till they were a few streets away from the warehouse.
"Here, we're going to enter the sewer system through this manhole," Talon said as he pulled out the map to make sure this was the exact location.
"Oh, this one? Why did we choose this one again?"
"Because it's the closest entrance to the first possible location of the rats' nest. It's all about luck though. We're just enhancing our chances of finding some roaming rats."
"Makes sense," Sophie said as she looked down. "Well, this is going to be stinky."
"I'm sorry, we have to bear with it for a while. Here, put this mask on, it might help." He said as he gave her a small gas mask he collected from the warehouse earlier that morning.
Sophie took that mask and wore it before she gave him a thumbs up.
"Well, off we go." With that, Talon pulled the lid off the manhole before he threw it to the side and looked down. The place was naturally dark and nothing could be seen. After a few seconds of mental preparation, he finally leaped inside the hole.
Sophie quickly followed after him a second later.
"We're going to keep that lid off so that we can know where we came from. It might get a little too complicated really quickly." With his muffled yet deep voice, Talon pointed up.
'Although I doubt we will really know our way around here with ease.' He mused.
Even with his extremely sharp spatial awareness, walking through a city-sized maze was bound to be very hard.
"Wait, I have a better idea." Sophie snapped her finger. Then, without waiting for Talon to react, she channeled her Aetheris and created a white thread.
Then, that white thread started floating before it went up in the air and out of the hole.
"I linked that string to the lid. We should be able to know our way around the place like this."
"Good idea. This is really going to help."
"Hehe, thank you! My ability is useful in such occasions."
"It sure is."
With that, Talon turned around and pulled the map out. "Where should we begin then..." He murmured to himself.
Meanwhile, Sophie stood behind him with a small smile on her face. However, that smile was rather murky and clouded rather than the usual bright one that she would have on whenever she was near Talon.
'Well, at least I got some alone time with him... I want to tell him something...'
A//N: Don't forget to support the book if you enjoyed reading ????