First Person: Seeking Silence in a Bottle
I left the grotto feeling as if I had run a marathon with my soul. My body was exhausted, but my mind was on hyperdrive, replaying the moment that almost happened in an endless loop. Her eyes closing, her hands on my neck, her whisper... I want to get burned.
It had been insane. A monumental recklessness on my part to let it go that far. My job, my only job right now, was to survive. And survival depended on control. Control of the situation, control of my emotions, and above all, control over my captors' perception of me. And for a moment, in the gloom of that waterfall, I had lost control of everything.
Ichika chattered something about towels and Chifuyu's concern, but his words were a dull, distant noise. I nodded and smiled at the appropriate moments, my body functioning on autopilot while my mind struggled to re-erect its walls, to rebuild the fortress of the cynical, professional agent.
"I need a drink," I had told him. It wasn't a lie.
It wasn't a drunkard's craving, but a soldier's need after battle. I needed the sharp, clean burn of strong liquor to cauterize the memory of her closeness, to anesthetize the strange, dangerous warmth that had bloomed in my chest. I needed an anchor to pull me back to the reality of my situation: I am a prisoner, and she is my jailer. A very complicated jailer, but a jailer nonetheless.
I walked Cecilia and Ichika back to the suite in tense silence. Ichika, bless his density, waved cheerfully at the door. Cecilia, however, didn't look at me. She entered her quarters and closed the door, leaving me alone in the parlor. The silence was deafening.
I went straight to her bar. It was a work of art, a dark mahogany cabinet with crystal decanters gleaming like jewels. I didn't recognize most of the labels, but I found a bottle of single malt Scotch that looked promisingly expensive and, therefore, strong.
I poured two fingers into a heavy glass. I didn't need ice. I needed the pure impact. The aroma of peat and oak filled my nostrils, an earthy, timeless scent that reminded me of a world that no longer existed for me.
I held the glass, watching the light refract in the amber liquid. This was my reset. One sip, and the man who had almost kissed Cecilia Alcott in a grotto would disappear, replaced again by the survivor. By Leon S. Kennedy.
I raised the glass to my lips. The rim was cold. I was about to take the first purifying sip.
"What do you think you're doing?"
Cecilia's voice, sharp and tense, startled me. I hadn't heard her enter. She stood in the doorway, arms crossed, still wrapped in the towel over her swimsuit. Her face was flushed, her eyes gleaming with an emotion I couldn't decipher.
"Calming my nerves," I replied, my voice rougher than I intended. "It's been a... long day."
"You are not permitted to touch my bar," she said, advancing into the room.
"Add it to my tab," I countered, and again raised the glass to my lips.
Before I could drink, she moved. With surprising swiftness, she lunged and snatched the glass from my hand. A little of the whiskey sloshed onto my hand, cold and sticky.
"If anyone here needs their nerves calmed," she declared, her voice trembling slightly, "it's me!"
And to my complete and utter astonishment, she brought the glass to her lips and downed the two fingers of whiskey in a single gulp, as if it were a glass of water.
Third Person: The Lady's Recklessness
The 18-year-old single malt, with its complex notes of peat, smoke, and 43% alcohol by volume, hit Cecilia Alcott's system with the subtlety of a jackhammer.
Her first reaction was a violent, choked fit of coughing. Her eyes filled with tears as the liquid fire scorched her throat and esophagus. She doubled over, bracing a hand on the bar to keep from falling.
"My goodness!" she gasped, her British accent becoming almost incomprehensible through her coughs.
Leon stood staring at her, momentarily paralyzed by the sheer stupidity of the act. Then, his caretaker instinct, or perhaps simply his sense of responsibility for the unfolding disaster, kicked in. He stepped closer and patted her back.
"Are you insane?" he asked, a mix of exasperation and concern in his voice. "That's not lemonade! It's a single malt!"
"I'm... I'm perfectly fine..." she managed between coughs, though it was evident she was not.
The effect of the alcohol was almost instantaneous. Unaccustomed to strong spirits, and with her stomach practically empty, the whiskey went straight to her bloodstream. When she stopped coughing, she straightened and blinked, looking at Leon with slightly unfocused eyes. A strange, goofy smile appeared on her face.
"It's... spicy," she slurred, her diction losing its usual aristocratic precision. "And it makes the room spin. It's... fun."
The wall of her composure had completely crumbled. The haughty Cecilia Alcott had been replaced by a giggling, dizzy teenager.
"You..." she said, pointing a wavering finger at him. "You did this. You made me feel all... effervescent. Like champagne. Bubbles in my brain!"
"No, that's called alcohol intoxication," he corrected dryly. "And now, if you'll excuse me, I think today's 'rehabilitation' is over. You need to go to bed."
"I don't wanna go to bed," she whined, her tone now childish. "I wanna... I wanna find out what's with the bubbles."
She swayed towards him, and he held her by the arms to keep her from falling. The contact made her pause. She looked up at him, her goofy smile fading, replaced by a raw vulnerability.
"Why do you make me feel like this, Leon Kennedy?" she whispered.
Leon sighed. The situation had gotten out of hand in a way he never would have foreseen. It was no longer a power game. It was a duty of care. He was the only adult in the room, and he had to act like one.
"Come on," he said softly, putting an arm around her shoulders to support her. "I'll take you to your room."
The journey down the short hallway to her bedroom was an ordeal of forced proximity. She leaned heavily on him, her head sometimes resting on his shoulder. He was painfully aware of her warmth, the scent of her hair, the feel of her skin still damp from the pool. It was a torture of a completely new kind.
He opened her bedroom door—a sanctuary of cream silk and antique furniture—and guided her to the enormous bed. Carefully, he helped her sit down, then eased her back, removing her shoes and covering her with a down comforter.
"Get some sleep," he told her, his voice softer than he intended. "You'll feel awful tomorrow, but you'll be fine."
He turned to leave, to escape the dangerous intimacy of the room.
And then, her hand shot out and grabbed his.
"Don't..." Her voice was a sleepy but insistent murmur. "Don't go."
First Person: The Final Fall
I froze, her cold, surprisingly strong hand clamped around my wrist. I turned. She was looking at me from the pillow, her blue eyes clouded with alcohol but fixed on mine with desperate intensity.
"Stay," she repeated.
My brain and body were at war. Every survival instinct screamed at me to get out of that room, to put as much distance between us as possible. The situation was a ticking time bomb.
"Cecilia," I said, trying to make my voice firm and reasonable. "This is a really, really bad idea. You're drunk."
"I... don't care," she whispered. "When you're not around, the silence is too loud."
I tried to gently pull free, but her grip tightened. "Please, Leon."
The use of my first name, the plea in her voice... it broke something inside me. But the red line, the one line I couldn't cross, was still there.
"I can't," I said, my voice a husky whisper. "You're sixteen, Cecilia."
I let the words hang in the air between us, a barrier of morality, of law, of plain and simple decency. In my world, this was a crime. In any world, it was wrong. I was a man. She was a child, however mature and dangerous she was.
"I'm sixteen and I pilot a multi-billion dollar weapon of mass destruction," she countered, a spark of her former lucidity cutting through the alcoholic haze. "Do you really think age is the most important thing here?"
"To me, it is," I insisted, pulling my hand harder. "There are lines a man doesn't cross. And this is one of them. Now, let go."
My pull was sharper than I intended. Her refusal to release me threw me off balance. And then, my foot slipped.
The polished wooden floor beside her bed was damp. A small puddle of water from her towel, which had fallen to the floor when I helped her lie down. An insignificant detail. An accident waiting to happen.
My Rank A Luck, in its infinite and chaotic wisdom, decided the situation wasn't complicated enough.
My feet slid out from under me. There was no time to react. Gravity claimed its victory. I tried to correct my fall, but only succeeded in making my momentum carry me forward, towards the bed.
Towards her.
I fell.
The world became a tangle of soft sheets and the yielding mattress. I landed on top of her, my fall cushioned by her body and the bed. My hand braced on the pillow beside her head, and the other on the mattress on the other side, effectively caging her beneath my weight.
Our faces were inches apart. I could feel the warmth of her whiskey-laced breath. I could see the shock, the fear, and something deeper in her wide eyes.
Time stopped.
All the barriers, all the rules, all the justifications... shattered on impact. The red line I had drawn so firmly had been erased. The accident, the twist of fate, had put us in a position from which there was no logical or moral escape.
All my self-control, all my discipline, vanished. There was only the man who had been alone for too long, and the girl who clung to him as if he were her only anchor in the universe.
No one spoke. There was nothing to say.
Slowly, as if inevitable, I lowered my head. She raised hers.
And in the silence of a princess's bedroom in an otherworldy academy, our lips finally met.
It was not a soft kiss. It was a collision. It was desperate, clumsy, hungry. It was the taste of whiskey and chlorine, the sensation of surrender and triumph, the acceptance of a mistake we both knew we were making. It was the sound of the last barrier falling, and the beginning of a game infinitely more dangerous than either of us could have imagined.