Solflare: The Painter's Secret-Chapter 68: I Let Her Win

Leon exited from the changing room, placing his steps slowly as if an invisible force was weighing him.

Whispers rose and hit him like darts.

"Hahaha... fighting with your own mother, Storm."

"...I would love to see her crush you. I’m sure she’s fed up with you. Dusthollow Rat." 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

"...As for this fight, I’m sure Zoe talked to the proctors to set it up."

When Zoe emerged onto the platform, cheers rose. Not applauding her, but blaming her for pairing with him on the first day she made that decision.

Leon exhaled sharply, turned his gaze, and focused on Zoe. She wore a standard dark pink training gear that he’d never seen her in before.

Her icy platinum blonde hair contrasted against the color of the fabric. Her face had the same unreadable expression she’d had when the incident with the treadmill occurred.

She didn’t look at the crowd. Her pale silver-grey eyes held him like a ghost in a cage.

Leon swallowed hard while his throat tightened. He saw no malice, no anticipation, just that steady, assessing look.

The countdown timer materialized in the air and on the invisible but touchable barrier.

They stood there, letting the tense silence fall like a meteorite.

10:00... 07:00... 04:00... 03:00...

Whispers rippled through the seats.

"This isn’t a place for reconciliation. Fight and take him out."

"...Let him see why you’re part of the top 100, Qing Z."

"...Yeah, finish him as you did with all the opponents you fought, Zoe."

Confusion, speculation, and a bet on the time Zoe would finish the Rat broke first, then followed by a tiny number of people betting on the other side.

Leon’s mind churned.

’I will let her win no matter what.’

His thought was clear, a decision he had forged in the instant he’d heard her name.

He smiled as memories of the time Zoe had joined in alliance with him at the Shattered Land reeled in his mind.

01:00... 00:30...

At 00:02, Zoe moved and crossed the distance in an impossible stride that seemed to warp the space between them.

There was no burst of wind or footstep. One moment, she was far; the next, her hand was a blade aimed at the side of Leon’s neck.

Leon’s eyes widened, his brain trying to register the speed, while his body committed to its own surrender.

Zoe’s strike landed with a sickening thud.

White light exploded behind Leon’s eyes. At first, it wasn’t pain, but a profound failure he’d chosen.

All sensation vanished from his limbs. The roar of the crowd turned into a muffled, underwater rumble.

He saw the stone platform rushing up to meet his face, but felt no impact when the skin on his face bounced like rubber.

Darkness danced across his eyelids.

When his consciousness returned in fractured pieces, a low murmur of voices rose at first, followed by the smell - sharp, damp concrete.

He blinked twice and forced his eyes to focus. On the third, a ring of people moved around him, from broad shoulders, skinny ones like himself, and short ones he could press on their heads.

At a distance from him, Tiger leaned against the doorframe, a satisfied smile carving his face, arms crossed.

Jade stood beside him, his expression unreadable, but having a detached, clinical interest.

And at Jade’s right, the broad-shouldered boy—the one from the elevator, the one whose spit was still vivid in Leon’s memory. His smile was wide, as if he knew who Leon’s next opponent would be.

"Pathetic." Vera pushed through the rind, her pretty face twisted in contempt.

She looked down at Leon, her lip curled. "I should have been the one on the platform with him. At least I’d have made it entertaining."

A jagged shard of anger pierced the fog in Leon’s head. It burned away the last disorientation, the strategic acceptance of his defeat.

It ignited on the fuel of Tiger’s grin, Jade’s indifference, Vera’s scorn, and the broad-shouldered boy’s wide smile.

He pushed himself up, but a deep ache throbbed in his neck where Zoe’s hand had struck, as his muscles protested.

He felt dizzy but ignored it and stood straight. His gaze swept across Tiger, Jade, and then locked onto the broad-shouldered boy.

Leon’s arm lifted, his index finger extending to point directly at the boy’s chest. "You," he said in a rough but clear voice that cut through the room’s thick silence.

"You, you, and you." He moved his finger from Jade to Tiger and stopped at the broad-shouldered boy. "All three of you are the ones I want to face. Right now."

A beat of stunned faces followed. Then the boy’s smile widened unnaturally, showing too many teeth, and he shook his head.

He chuckled in a low, grating sound. He took three deliberate steps forward, closing the distance until he was just an arm’s length away from Leon.

He loomed over him, his sea-colored eyes glinting with malicious delight.

"You wouldn’t need them," the boy said in a voice that echoed in a husky rumble. "I alone would love to see you bleed from the inside out, after I’m done with you in a few seconds."

He held Leon’s gaze for a long, promise-filled moment, then turned his head to look back at Jade and Tiger, as if seeking approval or sharing a joke.

Before anyone could speak, the sharp chime of the arena system echoed in the room, followed by the proctor’s amplified voice.

"NEXT MATCH: STORM, L. VS. AZAZEL."

The name hung in the air like a curse. The broad-shouldered boy’s smile didn’t falter while everyone turned to each other; it became something truly unsettling.

He gazed at Leon one last, lingering look, then turned and walked out of the changing room without a backward glance.

The heavy door swung shut behind him, leaving the rest of them in a thick, loaded silence.

Leon exhaled a sharp breath he had no idea he was holding.

Without a word to the others, to Tiger’s silent watching or Vera’s simmering glare, Leon turned and pushed through the same door the boy had exited from.

The corridor felt longer, the noise from the hall a growing roar. His heart thrummed heavily in his chest like a drum.

The earlier confusion that filled him was gone, replaced with a fight he wouldn’t throw away. The fight he needed, like the blood wiped off his lips when fighting with Grace.