Chapter 60: Confession

“When did I ever think you were causing me any trouble?” Ewan frowned, confusion filling his goose gray pupils, not wanting to admit to the hat Baylor had put on him.

The lights in the training ground were incandescent, and Baylor found the brightness a little dazzling and annoying.
He hadn’t wanted to make a point of telling Ewan about it, as if he cared.
But the way Ewan was playing dumb was really irritating.

So Baylor said with a scowl, “Sean says you clean up my messes all the time, including the mental strength test.”

Ewan: ……? Wouldn’t a normal person be touched to hear this? Why would Baylor associate himself with disliking him?

Baylor saw that Ewan still did not respond, pursed his lips, “then after the mental strength test, you did not start to avoid me?” Baylor grunted, his voice impatient, “Isn’t that because you’re afraid I’ll keep getting you into trouble?”

Ewan was strangely silent, and his eyes were fixed on Baylor for a moment, his expression unpredictable.
He seems to have a thousand words to say, but he doesn’t know where to start.

Baylor clutched his arm, which has been torn open, his displeasure of these days suddenly found a vent, a gush out.
“If you think I’m a pain in the ass, you can just say so, no need to beat around the bush.
But I didn’t ask you to help me either, you want to do it yourself, and you want to dislike it.
And you’re throwing me away like a burden.”

The dim sky and wet streets flashed before his eyes, and the thin, bony woman crouched there with her face covered, her eyes numb with grief, “I’m sorry, but you’re already a burden we can’t afford.”

She took a rag and dabbed it with standing water, wiping the dirt from the skinny boy’s face with great force, “You’re still good-looking, and there are a lot of ’guests’ passing by here, someone will surely pick you up.
You’ll survive, Baylor.”

The extremely unpleasant memory came out of some nook and cranny, like a ghost lurking in the darkness.
Baylor was extremely indifferent to that memory, even mocking the woman in his mind, across time and space, across the world, with disdain.
Of course he can live, even if no one helps him, he can still live just as well.
Even if he dies one day, it has nothing to do with their abandonment.

Baylor said in a cold voice, “I’ve never been anyone’s burden.”

He also hates being seen as a burden.

As soon as Baylor’s words left his mouth, Ewan’s low, magnetic voice rang out from the empty training ground, cutting through the noise, “I don’t see you as a burden.”

Ewan’s mind was cluttered with thoughts, but he knew one thing very clearly.

“And I’ve never been in too much trouble for you.
Not to mention-” Ewan’s eyebrows twitched, “-throwing you away.” 

The mere utterance of the statement made him feel repulsed.
After all, he knew very well for himself how much he wanted to hold on to this man.
That desire was so strong that it made him cringe, made him feel out of control, before he wanted to go running away.
Ewan remembered the overwhelming desire for Baylor in the middle of the night.
His voice was slightly dry, his eyelashes drooping slightly, covering his goose gray eyes, covering the crazy possessiveness in them, leaving only the calmness in his voice.

“As you said, I handled those things voluntarily, if I disliked you, I would not have helped you handle them in the first place.
What’s more… I didn’t want to tell you about those things.”

That was the truth, Ewan never wanted to use those things to claim credit in front of Baylor.
If Baylor hadn’t told him today, he wouldn’t even have known that Baylor knew about what he had done.

Ewan’s tone did not seem to be a lie, but also reasonable.
Baylor thought about it and indeed no one would be so bored to do what he chose to do, and then to complain and anger after doing it.
In addition, the recent attitude of Ewan also really makes Baylor feel conflicted.
The anger in his heart dissipated a little, or perhaps was covered by doubts.

Baylor frowned and asked in confusion, “Then why did you avoid me before?”

Wasn’t the starting point of everything that Ewan suddenly shunned him? If it wasn’t because he was too much trouble and wanted to get out of his way, then what could it be?

He didn’t answer Baylor’s question directly, but asked instead, “Before that, I need to ask you a question.”

Raising his eyelashes, his gaze, which had gathered all his emotions, looked deep and dark as Ewan took a step closer to Baylor’s direction, two steps, and he asked in a slow, deliberate voice, “Why is it so special for me to see Dragon Hunter? So special that… You risked your life to protect me.”

Whenever Ewan followed his hidden and noisy desire to find the source, he would always see the thin figure standing on the battlefield for him in the corridors of the overturned ship, like a moth to a flame.

No one would have been so desperate and still have a heart of gold.
He was also only ordinary because of Baylor.
This was not the first time Ewan asked this question, only this time Ewan asked more specifically.

The last time Baylor avoided it, but this time he was staring straight into the eyes of the approaching man.

Ewan stood a stone’s throw away from him, and Baylor could even feel the body heat of the other side.
Ewan’s pheromone was like the top of a snowy mountain, cold and cool, but his body heat was hotter than normal.

Extremely contradictory.
But also extremely harmonious.

Baylor restrained himself from wanting to step back, he hesitated for a few seconds, then blurted out, “Because I need the pheromone of an S-class alpha.”

The clear voice was like a cold spring, resounding in the space that smelled a bit of dust and ash.

Baylor doesn’t like people lying to him, and likewise, he doesn’t like lying to people either.

In most cases, lying was for the stability of relationships, and lying was a very exhausting thing, and he did not want to expend his energy on such things.
Baylor’s honesty and straightforwardness was even more of a coolness to others, and he doesn’t care if they stay away from him, so he doesn’t need to whitewash the situation with lies.
But at this moment, his honesty has a separate meaning – he does not want to lie to Ewan.

Just as Baylor has always had a much lower tolerance for Ewan’s lies.

The topic went beyond Ewan’s expectations, and Ewan was stunned, eyebrows raised, and asked, “What does that mean?” 

What does ‘need’ mean?

Baylor put his hands down, tucked them in his pockets, and said brokenly, “My mental energy is occasionally unstable, but the S-alpha pheromone helps smooth it out.” 

Of course this was something he only recently discovered, before he always thought it was the guide element.

Thoughts rolled in Ewan’s eyes, and then he thought of Baylor’s powerful, almost bizarre, mental power.
Could this be a side effect of that powerful mental power?

Baylor looked at Ewan silent, the air became anxious, he did not know why he was like a pot of boiling water inside, restless so that he could not stand.
He simply went to pick up his training jacket, which he had casually thrown on the ground, and was probably unable to continue training today anyway.
But as soon as Baylor took a step to walk away from Ewan, he was grabbed by the wrist.

Ewan turned his head sideways, his eyes deep and quiet, and he asked in a serious and insistent tone, “… So you just want my pheromone?”

Baylor doesn’t know how Ewan managed to get this out of his mouth, but he nods hesitantly, “… Yeah.”

Ewan’s eyes narrowed slightly, “You want Julius and Aynor’s pheromone too?”

Baylor frowned, “… Also?”

Baylor always found the question a little strange, somehow inexplicable, but on second thought there was some connection to what he was saying.
But none of it was the question he had expected.
He expected Ewan to ask why the S-class alpha pheromone could stabilize his mental powers, to ask some… more important questions.

Then Ewan’s next words went even further beyond Baylor’s expectations as he asked in a tentative tone, “So what if I told you that my pheromone is only for people I like?”

Baylor froze slightly, his mind subconsciously recalling the other man’s famous quote and much-talked-about philosophy of life, and he asked, “… You don’t like people?”

“I don’t like people, what do I like?”

Baylor was puzzled, “Then how do I know? Didn’t you say so yourself?”

He didn’t understand what he was saying.

Ewan realized this and a strong feeling of powerlessness climbed in his heart.
He really didn’t understand what was going on in Baylor’s head all day long.
Releasing Baylor’s hand, Ewan said in a slightly tired and helpless voice, “… Forget it, you leave me alone.”

Baylor was about to nod, but suddenly realized that Ewan hadn’t answered his initial question until now, and he frowned, dissatisfied, “Hey, I’ve answered your question, it’s your turn.”

What could he say? He said he was in love with someone who just lusted after his own pheromone, and then was torn there and then, wondering if he should tell him that he actually liked him too and then join hands in love together?

Ewan took a deep breath, a calm tone of voice with a little bitterness of doubt in life, “because that time… I was being stupid.”

Baylor: ?

 

The mecha training ground was not the same as the normal training ground, as it was in the C section of the military.
Ewan had his own separate training ground, which Sean then commandeered.

“The mecha operation relies on sensing connections, which simply means that it connects directly to your brain, and then transmits external information directly to your brain through the connection line.
All instructions will be sent directly from your brain.” Sean considered Baylor’s background, the probability was that there was no system to understand the principle of mecha operation, so he started directly from the most basic introduction.
“The moment you sit in the cockpit, your brain is not only your body, but also the computational mastermind of the mecha.
This is why there are extremely high requirements for the operator’s mental power, otherwise the brain could easily be overloaded directly when the mecha transmits data to your brain, leading to damage.”

And it was not just about accepting a lot of data in a split second, but also about making a lot of output.

“Today is the first day, this is the mecha training module, you can simulate mecha driving…” Sean said as they stood in the small room where the mecha training pods were located, patting the pods that looked much the same, and he said, “Your first stage is to get the mecha moving.”

Baylor felt that Sean was belittling him, “What kind of a task is that?” 

Is that hard?

Sean gave the long hair on the side of his neck a little twist, “You try it first.”

Let’s try.
The moment Baylor sat down in the training pod and was about to start up, Baylor, who had endured it for a long time, turned his head uncomfortably and glared at Ewan, who had been standing next to him in silence.

Ewan: …

Sean saw Baylor sitting in, he turned to Ewan and said, “I don’t blame him for glaring at you.” He patted Ewan’s shoulder, “Keep your eyes closed, your lustful gaze is making me feel jittery today.” Then he asked curiously, “What’s going on between you two?”

Ewan coughed lightly and simply said, “He started.”

The comment was a successful distraction for Sean, who turned his attention to the display next to the training bay.
The mecha Baylor simulated piloting was the E-1 human mecha that beginners were often exposed to, smaller in size, less physically taxing, less functional, and less mentally taxing.

One minute…

Three minutes…

Ten minutes…

The humanoid mecha stood on the open flat ground, unmoving.

Sean shrugged, surprised and unsurprised by the result.

The training pod opened again and Baylor looked at them with a black face and swore, “This thing is broken, fix it.”