Lazy Salvation Private Contract

"Go…BACK."

It was faint… strained… like it barely clawed its way into his mind.

At first, Ashen thought it was just his fraying nerves playing tricks on him… until the next words drove a knife right through that doubt.

"Choose… HER!"

His body tensed.

Roland glanced back, noticing Ashen had stopped. "Sothing up?" he asked, brow raised.

"...No." Ashen's reply ca out distant and automatic, as his mind was still reeling from that voice.

But now that he'd heard it clearly, twice, there was no mistaking it.

It was his voice.

More specifically, his other self's voice.

'...Hey, you there?' Ashen reached out ntally, but only hollow silence answered him. Whatever strength his twin could have mustered must've gone into forcing those last words through.

Roland fully turned now, his voice sharpening with impatience. "Oi, don't tell … you're backing out now?"

Ashen barely heard him.

'Choose her…?'

His thoughts raced, images flashing, Lucia, the contract, her lingering cold stare.

'Her had to be Lucia… but why?'

Rage and bitterness churned in his gut.

The urge to spit in his twin's face flared at the re suggestion, but instinct won—gnawing, suffocating dread coiling around his chest.

Maybe the first pang of anxiety he'd felt earlier could be dismissed.

But even his resident ti regressor was urging him to go back now.

That alone was enough to clear his head of the emotions clouding his judgnt.

Ashen clenched his jaw.

"…Yeah. I changed my mind after all. Sorry."

Without waiting for Roland's reply, he turned his back on him.

The man's face flushed red with anger or humiliation, who knew… but in the end, Roland only cursed under his breath, spitting out so slur about Esperrian apes as he stord off.

❖

Ashen made his way back to where he'd left her. Lucia was still sitting there like a statue carved from exhaustion.

Her vacant stare hadn't moved an inch.

'Looks like her career ant to her more than I thought…'

He pulled out a chair and sat down. That simple action was enough to pull her back to reality.

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Slowly, Lucia turned her deadened gaze toward him. Her voice ca flat, almost chanical. "Mr. Hart… if you've co to mock , save your breath."

Ashen's own stare wasn't much better, hollow and tired, but behind it, gears were turning.

It was almost laughable.

The woman who dragged him into this ss.

The woman he hated.

The woman he was about to sign his life away to… again.

"No," he said quietly. "And just call Ashen. Or Ash, if you want."

A beat of silence.

His lips twitched, like the words themselves tasted rotten.

"I'm here to sign with you."

Lucia's breath hitched, not enough to show emotion, but enough to show her mind was struggling to reboot.

"...Oh."

That was all she managed.

She blinked slowly, as if trying to process the absurdity of his words… or maybe just trying to rember how joy was supposed to feel when she'd long since forgotten.

Silence stretched between them. Not tense, not awkward, just… empty.

Ashen leaned back on the chair, one arm draped over the backrest, posture loose, but his eyes were calculating as he watched her.

Lucia finally exhaled through her nose. "...You must be either braver than most n or dumber than all of them."

Ashen huffed a humorless laugh. "Maybe both."

For a brief mont, a faint glimr, a ghost of the recruiter she used to be, passed through her weary gaze.

"I take it Roland didn't gut you for walking away like that?"

"Nope. He stord off. Guess that's as close as he gets to guts."

That earned the smallest twitch of her lips.

Lucia straightened her posture, professionalism sliding back into place. "Then let's not waste ti."

She reached into her briefcase, slowly pulling out the contract folder like it was a funeral shroud.

Ashen stared at it.

This is it.

The weight of his twin's warning still pressed at the back of his mind like a bruise that refused to heal.

'Choose her, huh?'

He didn't know if it was instinct, fate, or sheer cosmic cruelty that brought him back here.

But for better or worse…

He would make sure things went on his own terms, this ti.

"Wait," Ashen said, voice cutting through the stillness. "Before you show whatever hell you've prepared in that contract of yours, give a pen."

Lucia paused, her eyes narrowing with quiet curiosity, before she wordlessly slid a pen and a blank sheet across to him.

Ashen didn't hesitate. He twirled the pen once—a faint echo of an old habit—then set it to paper.

Line after line filled the page, until at last he pushed it back toward her.

Lucia took it without comnt, eyes scanning his crude list of demands.

Her expression stayed unreadable, more impossible to guess than a coin toss in the dark.

Until she reached the last two clauses.

Finally, her gaze flicked up. Sothing strange in her eyes.

"You want to allow you to return to Esperra regularly. I can grant that… once a month, at most, within my capacity as your recruiter."

She tapped the next line.

"And you want to answer any of your questions honestly. Reasonable enough. Provided you stay out of my personal life."

But then, she tapped the final two clauses. Her gloved finger rested on them like the weight of judgnt.

"But these two..." Her voice lowered. "Explain."

Ashen followed her gaze.

— Neither party is allowed to harm the other, whether physically or psychologically, directly or indirectly.

— Both parties will always be tied to the sa faction or group. In the event one party is forced to leave, the other must follow.

Lucia raised a brow. "I can understand the first. Caution. Paranoia. Fine."

"But why insist on the last?"

Ashen leaned back and gave her a nonchalant look,

"Well, after your last stunt? Signing contracts has been a bit traumatic for ."

A faint edge of dry sarcasm bled through.

"I'm no expert in this... so I figured I'd tie you to as tightly as possible, and pray it works."

Then, quieter, just enough to make her strain to hear:

"Besides... just imagine if I end up on the opposite side of a battlefield down the line."

His eyes t hers… cold, sharp, and far too calm.

"Being enemies while also not being able to hurt each other?"

His lips curled faintly.

"Awkward."

He let the word hang between them like a blade.

"After all, this isn't about whatever leash you've got hidden in that folder. This is a private contract."

"Between you and ."

"..."

Truthfully, Ashen had added that clause with his twin in mind more than out of paranoia or trauma.

The regressor in his head had been clear; he would only interfere when it involved soone dear to him.

He didn't know how associating with Lucia would guarantee the security of his loved ones down the line, but he wasn't about to gamble with their safety.

That was why he was doing his damnedest to bind her to him now, even if five minutes ago he'd been ready to storm off.

Lucia stayed silent, mulling over his words, but Ashen didn't give her the ti to think for long.