Chapter 262: 262. Just Keep Talking About Apollo With Her (It’s Boring, but I Want Her!)

Amelia turned to Rex.

“I’m sorry… it looks he’s really in a tight situation right now.”

“It’s okay,” Rex said in a low voice. “Don’t push him too much.”

The look she gave him at that moment was one he had been anticipating, reflecting the expression of someone whose trust in another person had shifted from provisional to more settled.

“I really am sorry,” she said. “You came this far just to check on him.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Rex said. “He needs all the time he needs, and the rest will come when it does.”

[AMELIA BRIGHTSOUL — DESIRE LEVEL: 31 → 47/100]

They left the hallway and went to the main sitting room. Amelia easily put the kettle on, as if she were someone who ran her house well and without fuss.

The sitting room now had the feel of the afternoon. The light had changed since they got there, and Rex realized they had been talking and walking for longer than the morning felt like it should have.

He sat down, and Amelia sat down across from him. The tea came, and the afternoon went on.

Before she spoke, she cradled her cup with both hands and let out a sigh. “Hahh…”

Then she said, “You know, he wasn’t always like this.”

“He’s now closed off, with the door shut. That’s not who he was at first.”

“Who did he start as?” Rex asked.

She talked about Apollo with the kind of love that comes from someone who isn’t performing it but just has it. The love manifested in specific ways, such as the actions Apollo took during his childhood and the moments she cherished, similar to how parents preserve memories that they want to last forever.

“He used to follow me into the garden just to point out the things he saw,” she said. “Not to engage in conversation.”

“He’d say that’s a wren or that stone is limestone, and then he would fall silent again. It was as if he needed to frame things before he could feel comfortable being near them.”

“He really was a shy boy,” Rex said.

“Terribly.” She smiled, but it was the kind of smile that showed she was sad.

“He was the kind of shy that turned inward rather than outward. It was as if he built entire worlds in his mind.” She touched her temple. “This made it difficult for him, particularly with other children. Especially with girls.”

Rex set his cup down. “That must have been isolating.”

“For a while.” She stopped for a second and turned her cup in its saucer. “He eventually found ways to get around it.”

“I believe that more people sought him out than he sought them. He possesses that quality—people are drawn to him, even when he doesn’t offer them much to grasp.”

Rex was interested in this because it answered many questions he had, especially about the arrangement of Apollo’s harem, which was a group of women who all seemed to be truly devoted to him but weren’t in a clear romantic relationship that would have come naturally from their interactions.

“They love him,” Rex said, his tone indicating uncertainty rather than posing a question.

“They do,” Amelia said simply. “And he lets them.”

“He just doesn’t always know what to do with it once it’s there.”

The distance made sense because of the shyness. Apollo didn’t know how to bridge the gap between being cared for and caring back in the way that was needed, often feeling overwhelmed by the expectations of reciprocation in relationships.

Rex put this in the part of his mind that said “useful information for future reference” and kept listening.

“I used to worry I’d done something wrong,” Amelia said after a moment. “When he was younger….”

“That I’d somehow taught him to receive love without learning to return it.” She wasn’t looking for sympathy when she said it.

She was the kind of person who stated difficult things plainly, as if naming them kept them from getting larger than they were.

“You didn’t,” Rex said.

She looked at him.

“Some people are built that way from the start,” he said. “It isn’t made.”

“It’s just the shape they come in, and they are the ones who feel everything deeply and have no idea what to do with the fact that other people feel things too.” He paused. “It doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you back.”

“It means he loves you in the only direction he currently knows how to aim it.”

Amelia was quiet for a moment. Then she set her cup down with the careful motion of someone buying themselves a second to decide whether they were going to say the next thing or not.

“He told me once, when he was about fifteen, ’I know people care about me. I just can’t always tell if what I feel back is the same thing or just thanks.’” She let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I didn’t know what to tell him, but I said, ’Thank you is a kind of love,’ and I hoped that would be enough.”

“It was,” Rex said. “More than enough.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“No,” he said. “But I recognize the look of someone who is still trying to understand how to be worthy of the people around them.”

“Apollo has that look, and it’s not indifference… it’s someone who believes the debt is too great to repay and hasn’t discovered how to stop counting yet.”

Amelia was a good talker in the sense that she noticed things and told them correctly. It was nice to listen to her because it was always nice to listen to people who really paid attention.

But she was also, Rex noticed, someone who had been carrying this particular burden for a long time without anyone to share it with. Not because she lacked people around her, but because she was the type of person others turned to for support first, which meant there was rarely anyone available to support her when she needed it.

He engaged in the conversation as he always did when his contribution stood on its own rather than serving a greater purpose: by asking genuine questions, making precise observations, and listening in a way that ensured others felt valued and appreciated.

“Do you have people you talk to about him?” Rex asked. “Outside of this house.”

She considered it honestly rather than quickly. “Not really.”

“Most people who know him know him through me, which means that anything I say about him reflects on my parenting. And for those who don’t know him—” She paused. “It’s difficult to explain Apollo to someone who hasn’t met him.”

“I’ve met him,” Rex said.

She looked at him across the table with the expression of someone who had just remembered that was true.

“Well, yes, of course,” she said quietly. “You have.”

“Then you can tell me whatever you need to,” he said. “I’ll keep up.”

The look she gave him was subtle, yet it held significance. It resembled the expression of someone who had received something they hadn’t realized they were anticipating and were now thoughtfully weighing the decision to accept it or not.

She picked up her cup again.

“He used to leave notes under my door,” she said. “When he didn’t know how to say something out loud.”

“Little folded pieces of paper, and he still does it sometimes.” She smiled into the tea. “I keep every one of them.”

Rex remained silent; he understood it was unnecessary to respond.

That was another aspect of paying attention: recognizing when the most valuable response was to simply remain present.

[AMELIA BRIGHTSOUL — DESIRE LEVEL: 47 → 58/100]

’Oh yeah… this is working, even though I’m so fucking bored talking about him.’

The afternoon slipped into the night much like enjoyable conversations do: quicker than you remember.

Rex refilled her cup before she had a chance to ask. She noticed but chose not to comment on it, which spoke volumes in its own way.

“Can I ask you something,” he said, “that might be harder than the ones before it?”

Amelia regarded him with the calm assurance of someone who had, over the past few hours, come to trust the person sitting across from her enough to agree to such a difficult question.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“It’s about reincarnation,” Rex said. He didn’t dress it up. “And I assume that you probably know what Apollo is.”

“What he’s carried before this life, and what he’s been asked to carry in it.” He watched her face. “How do you hold that? As his mother.”

The question came across as he intended: not as an intrusion but as an acknowledgment. It was the realization that this thing was real and heavy and that someone was finally inquiring about its weight rather than how remarkable it was.

Amelia was quiet for a long moment. Outside, the first sound of wind moved through the upper branches.

“When I first found out,” she said slowly, “I felt as if I had done something wrong by loving him the way I did. In an ordinary way. With an ordinary love.”

She turned her cup once. “He was the Apostle of Life…”

“He had memories of other lives, other people, other losses. And I had been giving him warm meals and scolding him for leaving his books on the stairs.”

“That’s not small,” Rex said.

“It felt small.”

“It wasn’t.” He leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, and his voice didn’t change in volume, but it changed in the way that voices change when someone means to be heard precisely.

“The apostle of life still has to live one.”

“He still needs the meal and the scolding and the person who keeps his notes under her door.” Rex paused. “The weight of what he is doesn’t make what you gave him less.”

“It makes it more necessary. Someone had to love him as if he were just a boy. You were the only one capable of doing that.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep