"I'm still reporting you to the Association." Final warning. Erinn wasn't playing around.

  Arua went quiet. The cold intimidation slowly melted off, reverting back to his default lazy expression.

  "Sigh. You hardheaded bastard." Arua scratched his non-itchy head in sheer frustration. "Listen. You want to play hard? I won't let you go. In fact..."

  Arua reached into his pocket and pulled out some strands of long blonde hair. It was Erinn's DNA sample, which he’d secretly plucked when she was knocked out.

  "...I'll grab something valuable from this house, then scatter your hair all over the crime scene as forensic evidence." Erinn's eyes blew wide. Arua wasn't done. "The homeowner is out. No eyewitness alibis." He pointed back at the guard post. "That front porch CCTV definitely caught you sneaking into the post. Cops will write the script: High school student caught red-handed burglarizing a resident's home."

  As if the forensic assault wasn't enough, Arua pulled out his phone. He showed a high-def photo: Erinn passed out in the backyard, hogtied in undignified position, with her mouth hanging open.

  "And for Plan B..." Arua continued. "I'll upload this with a highly provocative caption. Hoaxes are cheap, reputations are expensive. Imagine this dropping in the school WhatsApp groups."

  Finally, the ultimate weapon was revealed. A brutally constructed, rapid-fire blackmail combo. Arua put three options on the table: Erinn catches a fabricated felony charge, her school reputation gets obliterated by a photo scandal, or both.

  "No... Please..." Erinn begged. She went pale. The arrogant expression faded, replaced by pure fear. The perfect image she had built over the years—now in the hands of this madman.

  "Or..." Arua offered a fourth option. "We forget all of this incident. No Association reports, no information leak. Deal?"

  Erinn bit her lower lip. The offer was clearly one-sided. He walks away with absolute freedom, and she has to swallow her pride with zero compensation. She thought hard, searching for a tactical contermeasure.

  "I have another deal," Erinn stated, voice steady. "I keep you two under surveillance for one month. If you don’t act suspiciously or violate any Association rules, I will let you go."

  Arua chuckled. "Bruh? Who's the one that needs letting go right now? We're not even on equal footing here."

  "You sure about that?" Erinn glared at Arua, dead serious. "You think you can catch me in Ophema? I can Astral Project right now. With my flight speed, I'll reach Purwokerto Lounge in under three minutes. It's only four kilometers out."

  Arua went quiet. His mocking smile faded, transforming into subtle smirk—a form of intellectual appreciation.

  Eventhough Erinn was just using assumptions, her prediction was valid. Arua could levitate, sure, but he couldn’t maneuver freely up there. In dogfights or aerial combat, Erinn was still dominating.

  "Haha, there it is... I like this..." Arua was impressed.

  They just entered a Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Arua could ruin Erinn's Proteum life; Erinn could ruin Arua's Ophema life. Perfect stalemate.

  "Okay," Arua answered. "I'll take that."

  Gio, who had been observing this whole time, hesitant about the decision. "Eh, you sure about this?" he whispered.

  Arua glanced back. "You're not doing anything stupid, right?"

  "...No." "Then we're good."

  Arua walked toward the plant rack in the corner. He rummaged through an old toolbox, pulled out a rusted garden shears, and crouched next to Erinn. He reached out to cut the nylon rope hogtying her ankles, paused right before the blades hit the knot.

  "Don't bite," he said. Half warning, half joking. Erinn rolled her eyes. "Sigh... I won't."

  Shortly after, Erinn was free. The girl stood up, stretching her stiff joints and rubbing the reddened wrists.

  Arua casually yeeted the shears at the toolbox from three meters out. Missed completely. The shears clanged off the edge and hit the dirt. With no reaction whatsoever, he just turned his back and walked away. "Let’s go, Pikachu. The bike cannot fix itself."

  A chill spiked down Gio’s spine. He turned around. Erinn was glaring at him with razor-sharp eyes. In truth, Gio was still pretty terrified of her. They were literally trying to kill each other few minutes ago.

  "Hey, Demon," Erinn called out harshly.

  "W-What?"

  "I'll be watching you..." The blonde spun on her heels and stepped out through the narrow gap in the garden fence.

  Gio gulped hard.

  [23:08]

  The incident was over, but the anxiety residue was still hiding inside Gio's mind.

  Gio sat frozen in his dorm room. Main lights off, replaced by a dim yellow desk lamp. A thick chemistry textbook lay wide open at page forty-four, but his focus was nowhere near it.

  He zoned out, spending every moment with worst-case scenarios. What if Erinn lied and actually reported us? What if, tomorrow, our face was on the Association's most-wanted list? The sheer worry was paralyzing his logic.

  Gio hadn't dared to speak to his cousin since the incident. He felt guilty. Arua's secret identity got leaked just because he carelessly wandered the school's South Courtyard.

  But between the layers of dread, another emotions surfaced: hope and curiosity. There were still unanswered questions. There were still necessary steps that had to be taken. And none of it was getting solved until he faced his cousin.

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  Finally, Gio gathered his courage. He was ready to take the consequences. He stood up and stepped toward Arua's room.

  The door was closed.

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  Soft knocks, but no response came from within. Gio grabbed the knob and twisted it. Click. The door opened. A wave of musty, dusty air greeted his nose.

  Inside, Arua was lying flat face-down on the bed. His face was illuminated by a laptop propped on some thick books—the only light source. He was watching a Western movie with earphones in, while his hand was digging into a plastic bag of spicy-salty crackers. No wonder he ignored the knock.

  Gio stepped inside nervously. "Aru..." he called out softly.

  "Hmmm?" Arua popped out one earbud without looking away or hitting pause. Eyes still locked on the shootout scene playing on the screen.

  Gio took a deep breath, head bowed. "I'm really sorry about what happened earlier..."

  Deep inside, "Oh man, here it comes... I will definitely get punished. Please don't lock me in the chicken coop again..."

  "For what?" Arua asked flatly. He turned his head slightly. Gio was taken aback by that ordinary response.

  "Your identity was exposed because I was careless—..."

  "Hmmm. Yeah, that was indeed your fault." Arua pressed the spacebar. The movie paused. "But, it's my fault too."

  He rose from his prone position, sitting cross-legged on the bed. He pulled the earphones out and tossed them by his pillow. "I lacked information."

  Gio's eyebrows shot up. Half confused, half relieved he wasn't getting yelled with angry outburst.

  "Gio, do you know what Aura is?" Arua suddenly changed the subject.

  "Eh? Ummm..." Gio thought hard. He had never studied this topic before. "Aura is... Soul energy radiation? Psion residue?"

  "Wrong." Arua wagged his index finger. "That's what the Association and their ancient cults believe. They treat auras like mysticism, but it’s not."

  Arua hopped off the bed carrying his crackers, then moved to the office chair and turned on the desk lamp. "Mind does indeed generate Psion-waves. But those waves have an Anima—a unique encryption that prevents interference from other waves."

  "It’s mean?" Gio just stood there, attempting to digest the new terminology.

  "Sit down," Arua commanded. Gio dropped onto the carpet, cross-legged. The dorm room just shifted into an impromptu lecture hall.

  Arua took a spicy-salty cracker into his mouth. Crunch. "Detecting someone solely by their Psion-waves is impossible. So, what exactly is a demon's aura?"

  Arua offered the crackers. Gio held his hands out like a bowl. Arua poured four crackers into them.

  "Auras come from smells, body particles, brainwaves, specific organs—" Crunch. "—or the residual passive Nexus around your head. Demons have a unique signature. That's how Venators detect them."

  "Ohhh..." Gio nodded, even though he only half-understood. Unconsciously, he tossed the spicy crackers into his mouth.

  "Here's the problem," Arua swallowed. "While inhabiting a human body, you shouldn't be emitting a demon 'aura'... Why?"

  Arua pointed at Gio's head. "Your brain, human organic structure." Finger dropped to Gio's chest. "Your body, human." He circled his hand, gesturing Gio's entire existence. "Even your Ophema projection takes a human form. You shouldn't be leaving any trace."

  Gio gazed off blankly, trying to visualize the concept. Arua kept the midnight lecture going. "However..." Crunch. "There is one variable that I missed: Antinoi."

  "Antinoi?" Gio repeated. He knew the definition. He just didn't get how that Gehenna substance leaked his identity to the enemy.

  "When you're in demon mode, you're a parasite. You leech Antinoi from the Psychonegative of human consciousness just to exist..."

  Arua grabbed another cracker. Crunch. "But now, you have a human brain. You generate Antinoi. Meanwhile, your hyperconsciousness still holds all your demonic information. It’s a closed-loop energy cycle. You're an autotrophic demon consuming your own Antinoi."

  Crunch. "Perhaps the Antinoi you generate has a unique pattern."

  Arua looked down at his ankle. A mosquito had just landed, preparing to suck his blood. Smack! He slapped hard, but his reaction time slower than the bug's reflexes. He lifted his hand. The mosquito had already gone.

  Arua returned to the topic. "Just a hypothesis, though. I need to conduct more research. Relax, I'll find a solution eventually."

  Gio wiped the cracker crumbs off his mouth. "But... How could Senior Erinn detect my Antinoi?"

  "Exactly..." Arua pointed a seasoning-coated index finger at Gio. "That's what makes her exceptional. Only ancestral bloodlines can detect Antinoi, and even their sensitivity is usually garbage. But Erinn? She tracked one specific Antinoi through a massive crowd. That's abnormal." He shook his head, amazed and horrified. "—She's a monster."

  Gio fell silent, pondering his destiny of being hunted by a monster disguise as school's angel. He popped the last cracker into his mouth. "Ummm... You really believe she won’t report us?"

  "Chill. I'll keep an eye on her." Arua grabbed a 1.5-liter water bottle from the desk. It wasn't mineral water; it was the cheap, five-thousand-rupiah refill water that tasted like a metal. He drank it.

  "Okay, ummm." Gio looked down, tracing invisible lines on the carpet with his finger. "I still have one question."

  Arua lowered the bottle, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. "What?"

  "Why did your Nexus fail against Erinn's?"

  The man placed his bottle back onto the desk. "Good question." He spun his chair to face Gio again. "Now, lemme ask you something. What do you think her ability is?"

  "Uhh..." Gio recalled the glowing swords and arrows. "Light Magic, right? Light element manipulation?"

  "Nuh-uh." Arua scoffed. "Have you ever seen light being physically held? Light is an electromagnetic wave. Photons have zero rest mass. You can’t condense light into a solid object capable of clashing against steel. There is no light saber, Pikachu. Physics forbids it."

  "If it's not light, why does it glow?" Gio asked, totally lost.

  "If I knew, I would've just destroyed that arrow." Arua tapped his index finger on the desk, rhythmically matching his analysis. "Her Nexus isn't molten metal. Not amber or solid polymer. Not hot gas. And not plasma." He stopped tapping.

  "It has the combined properties of all those matter phases, yet it's fundamentally different. By the way—" He kicked off the floor, rolling his office chair across the carpet right up to his laptop on the bed.

  "I just finished my research on every identified exotic particle and state of matter." Arua spun the laptop toward Gio. He alt-tabbed from the movie to his browser. Dozens of tabs were crammed together, squeezed down to just their icons. It was a massive dump of the latest physics journals. Titles like "Quark-Gluon Plasma," "Time Crystals," and "Strangelet Stability" displayed on the screen.

  Gio gaped. How did his cousin devour such massive and complex scientific data in just a few hours? He’d no idea Arua has automation tools.

  "Well, honestly, I don't understand 100% of this," he admitted. "But I guarantee you, no physics theories can explain Erinn's Nexus. It’s a particle that can only exist in the Conscientiuum Realm..."

  Gio gulped. "Is that... dangerous?"

  Arua looked Gio dead in the eye. "If you think I can beat her in open combat, you're wrong... Nah, dude. My abilities can still be explained by Consciology, but hers is a literal irregularity..."

  Gio's eyes widened. First time ever hearing Arua admit to his own inferiority. Gio's mind flashed back to when he still bore the name "Giou." He witnessed his Master one-shot a mid-end-tier demon. A literal behemoth that could demolish buildings like a Jenga tower. And now he was saying Erinn was stronger than him?

  "No need to worry, she hasn't even realized her true potential yet. Just look at her primitive combat style..." Arua smirked. "Rank 16 in the city? That’s bullshit. If she as genius as me, she'd easily take the number one spot in Indonesian Association... So, for now, we're safe."

  Arua pushed off the chair, dropped back onto his bed, and popped his earbuds back in. "Any other questions?"

  "Ummm..." Gio tried to filter through the thousands of questions in his head. But before he could even choose one, Arua cut him off. "If we're done, go back to your room."

  Arua waved him off, shooing Gio like a stray cat. A second later, he was already laid face-down on the bed, unpausing his movie.

  "O-Okay... Thanks..." Gio backed out, gently pulling the door shut. He headed back to his room. Honestly, a few major mysteries were still bugging him. Like: Why did the girl cover her eyes upon seeing her own physical body? How did Arua track the location of Erinn’s body when she was Astral Projecting? And why was Arua being called “The Disturbing Content”?

  But Gio decided to bury his curiosity. He didn't want to disturb his cousin any further. Maybe this wasn't the right time.