Michelle silently stared at Alexander, the pupil of her right eye shrinking a bit. Because the left eye was made of glass, its pupil couldn’t shrink. The unevenness of the two eyes could be clearly seen. "Are you angry?" Alexander’s smile widened. He loved angering Michelle. "No," Michelle said so, but a slight tint of red had already appeared in her right iris. "Then why the change in your eyes?" Alexander felt like pushing Michelle’s buttons even more. But Michelle wouldn’t entertain him. Since she already had the strength to sit up, she could do some easy movement. So she was able to turn to her side, ignoring Alexander. Standing behind Michelle, Alexander’s eyes narrowed a bit. Usually, Michelle would never turn her back on him, no matter how annoyed she was. She didn’t trust him enough. "Isn’t this a bit reckless of you?" He placed his hand on the side of her neck, rubbing it a bit. Michelle didn’t like having her neck touched. Especially since it was wounded. Her hand flew out and grabbed Alexander’s by the wrist. "How about we make a deal?" she suddenly spoke. "Oh? What deal?" Alexander was curious. He pulled his hand out of Michelle’s grip and instead took a hold of her hand, intertwining his fingers between hers. Michelle let him, not really caring. "I will cure your Void Plague, and you will leave me alone until I recover." Alexander turned his gaze to Michelle’s face. The subtle red in her eye had disappeared. She wasn’t angry. "You know you can’t exactly make me leave!" Alexander smiled. "I know." Michelle closed her eyes lazily. "I’m not asking you to leave. I’m asking you to leave me alone. I know you won’t leave even if I tell you to." Alexander stared at Michelle. He didn’t like the deal. He wanted to keep bothering Michelle. But the Void Plague was already turning his insides upside down. It would soon reach the stage when he wouldn’t be able to use the full extent of his shadow essence. And then, the progress would only speed up. He wasn’t exactly worried about it, but he still had things to take care of in the heavenly realm. There, the Void Plague would be unrestrained, so it would consume him within a matter of days. And he had to go there for a few weeks. So, before leaving, he needed Michelle to cure him. For a while, Alexander kept staring at Michelle before opening his mouth again. "But you will cure me even if I don’t leave you alone." A smirk was on his lips. "You won’t let me die." Michelle frowned a bit. "Don’t you have things to do?" Alexander shrugged. "I’ve taken care of most of it before coming here." Michelle’s eyes opened and her lips tightened into a straight line. After a moment of silence, she spoke: "Get out..." That answer surprised Alexander. There were quite a few times when Michelle showed that she didn’t want him around. But it was never in such a way. At the moment, it looked more like Michelle was annoyed that she had nothing more to say to Alexander, so she kicked him out. But she wasn’t the type of person to do that. So what was going on? Alexander was curious, but there was no way for him to know unless Michelle told him. Or he could leave, but stay close by to observe. Knowing Michelle, she must have known that he wouldn’t just leave when she told him. That meant she just didn’t want him in her line of sight. Whether he stayed nearby to observe wouldn’t bother her. "Very well!" Alexander’s eyes glinted before he disappeared from the room. The door nor the windows moved. They stayed locked. ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ 𝗻𝗼𝘷𝗲𝗹•𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮•𝕟𝕖𝕥 That could only mean Alexander opened a tunnel through space for a moment and left through it. He did it so quickly that Michelle didn’t even register it. When Alexander was gone, Michelle sat up on the bed. She didn’t care that the towel fell off her. She was way too deep in her thoughts to even notice it. Something was wrong. Extremely wrong. But Michelle couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. When she was interacting with Alexander, a strange urge grew within her. The simplest way to describe it would be that she wanted to overpower him, but that wasn’t exactly the case. "Hu-" letting out a sigh, Michelle flicked the back of her hand against the wall. She wanted to punch it to clear her mind, but she was too weak to even do that. That frustrated her even more. Her thoughts were a mess, and she couldn’t exactly concentrate. All of that was mixed in with the annoyance of not being able to recognize what she really wanted. For quite some time already, Michelle wanted to surpass Alexander, or at least reach his level, to give him a good beating. But slowly, the desire was getting replaced by the urge to poison him. Not to kill him. Just to make him suffer. It could be because she was getting better at making poison than before. Maybe, as her passion for poison grew, she wanted to use it more than brute force. For a while, Michelle’s thoughts steered that way, but she quickly dismissed them. When she imagined someone else angering her, the first reaction would be brutally ruining them, whether by beating them up or torturing them, both physically and mentally. Standing up slowly, still weak, Michelle didn’t care that the towel fell to the ground. She walked to the bathroom while supporting herself against the wall. There, she saw her bloodied clothes on the ground. Summoning a ball of her ice element spirit energy, she let it form into an ice flame before throwing it at the clothes. With cold spreading around the room, the clothes burned away, leaving only a bloodied, nearly translucent cloak behind. Originally, it was invisible, but upon contact with Michelle’s spirit energy, it showed itself. Michelle picked up the coat and put it on. Instantly, the coldness she loved so much washed over her. She had her Everfrost Mantle back on. Sending her spirit energy into it, Michelle controlled it to turn visible, turning into a thin white coat covered in blood. "I should wash it..." Michelle mumbled, taking it off. So she filled up a basket with water and put the coat in. To get rid of blood stains, cold water needed to be used. After a while, the water had turned red, and the coat was clean, but Michelle didn’t stop washing it. Her hands kept moving in the same rhythm. She was clearly lost in thought while subconsciously washing the coat. When she realized that, she pulled the coat out of the water, and without even caring that it was soaking wet, she put it on. Just like that, she laid down on the ground, staring at the ceiling. "Something just isn’t right..." she mumbled. When even after a long time of thinking Michelle couldn’t think of anything more, she got up. But then, the coat was already mostly dry, and her movement had once again improved. Her wounds were healing slowly compared to the speed her normal wounds healed at. But considering what kind of wounds they were, compared to others, she was healing rapidly. Properly covering herself with the coat, Michelle walked to the window and opened it. Then, without giving it much thought, she sat on the window frame. From a distance, she felt a gaze on her. It wasn’t hard to guess who it belonged to. Alexander wasn’t trying to conceal himself. He was just giving Michelle space to think while undisturbed by him. Michelle glanced in his direction. When she spotted him, she retracted her gaze. It had been a while since she had noticed Alexander’s feelings for her. His mind was similarly twisted to hers, so it would have been stranger if she didn’t notice. But she never really cared about his feelings. She didn’t ask for them. But at the moment, she started considering something. She knew she didn’t love Alexander. It would be wrong to even say she liked him. Her view of him was far from positive. But maybe her feelings were no longer negative. Did her view of Alexander change into a neutral one? It seemed to be possible. She didn’t exactly care when he was around, and his disappearance never bothered her. Once again, Michelle looked in Alexander’s direction in the distance. "It can’t be neutrality..." she shook her head. If her feelings for Alexander were neutral, she wouldn’t get so annoyed by him all the time. That meant her view of him was both positive and negative. A smile crept to Michelle’s lips. She suddenly wondered if Alexander was able to read her so much that he knew how she felt about him. Dangling her legs out of the window, Michelle turned her gaze to the street below her. Normally, in a situation like that, she would have jumped down and gone somewhere to get rid of her boredom. But she was still too weak to do something so reckless. She would definitely end up like a bloodied mush on the ground if she jumped.