I Found a Door to the Elven Realm-Chapter 76: Girlfriend-Fiancee? -Rosa

She looked exactly the way he remembered her and nothing like it at the same time.

He felt like shit while her eyes scanning his new body.

She had mid-height with dark brown hair pulled back in that messy ponytail she made when she was trying to be casuel. But that hair style was perfect for her and it was one of the reasons he had fallen for her in the past.

Her sharp features on her face made her look intimidating in photos but she was much softer in person. And her cute eyes were always giving away whatever she actually felt.

Right now they were red and swollen around the edges like she’d been crying or was in a bad mood recently.

I missed her.

Rosa was wearing an oversized sweater that Eren recognized as his old small ones. The one he’d left at her parents’ place a month ago. She’d been living in his clothes while he was gone.

The grocery bag hit the floor. Some tomatoes and other packaged things rolled across the hallway tiles.

"What happened to your face?" Her voice sounded harsh.

She was already walking toward him and her hands were reaching for his jaw, turning his head left then right like she was checking for damage. Her fingers found his ear and she froze.

"Are those... pointed? Eren what the hell did you do to yourself?" She was genuinely surprised.

"Rosa, calm d-" She slapped him.

It wasn’t hard because Rosa had never been physically strong but she put her whole arm into it.

Then she hit his chest with both fists. Not to hurt him, he could tell but because she needed to hit something.

"CALM DOWN? You disappeared for a month stupid asshole!!

I called the police and they said you weren’t officially missing because your parents told them you were traveling! Your parents, who apparently know something I don’t, very calm about their son vanishing from the face of the earth and they didn’t say anything to me! I cursed to your father on the phone by the way, just so you know..." Her voice changed with some embarrassment at the end.

Wow..She cursed to my father.

He would laugh if she wasn’t crying now. Angry crying, the kind where tears and words came out at the same time and neither was under control while she was punching his body.

"I came here every week. Asshole!!.... I cleaned your bathroom. I bought food so you’d have something when you came back. I charged your stupid phone. And now you show up looking like a completely different person and tell me to calm down?!"

Eren stood there and took it. He deserved every word and he knew it.

This is the part where old Eren would’ve made excuses or cracked a joke to change the subject. But I can’t do that anymore. I actually did something terrible to this woman.

"You’re right." He kept his voice low. "About everything."

That stopped her. Rosa wasn’t used to him agreeing without a fight. Their entire relationship had been built on arguments that went in circles until one of them got tired enough to apologize for the wrong thing.

She wiped her face with the sleeve of his sweater. "What happened to you? And don’t lie. I swear to God Eren if you lie to me right now I will never come back."

They sat down on the stairs. She stood in front of him with her arms crossed and mascara running down both cheeks-probably it was mascara, he didn’t know it’s name.

Her eyes dropped to his chest where the baggy t-shirt showed everything underneath and stayed on his ripped arms and neck for a lot of time.

"Stop looking at me like that." He was amused but didn’t show it.

"I’m not looking at anything!" Her face went completely red on top of the crying mess and didn’t accept what she did.

The contrast between her anger and the involuntary attraction was so human it actually made his chest hurt. Emily would’ve just stared openly and told him to take his clothes off. Rosa denied it with her whole body while her eyes kept drifting.

Eren admitted that even like this messy state, she was too beautiful. That had always been the problem with Rosa. She was the kind of beautiful that made Eren spend three years convinced she’d leave him for someone better any day now.

Being an insecure man always harmed their relationships. He lacked self-confidence.

Tell her something. Not everything but something real.

"I found a place." He started slow because there was no good way to say any of this.

"Through a door in the bathroom upstairs. It opens into a different world. A forest, a village. I’ve been living there for the past month.

And I know how stupid it sounds by the way. I didn’t lose my sanity or tricked and not trying to lie to you..."

Rosa stared at him. She blinked twice, wiped her nose and stared some more.

"Different world." She repeated it completely flat.

"I know how it sounds."

"It sounds like you had a psychotic break and checked yourself into some experimental clinic that does illegal body modifications." She pointed at his ears. "This isn’t natural Eren. People don’t grow muscles and pointed ears in one month."

"It’s not a clinic."

"Then what?" She was getting louder again. "Because from where I’m standing it looks like my boyfriend disappeared for thirty days, came back looking like a movie star with elf ears, and he’s telling me fairy tales about magical doors!"

He almost smiled at "movie star" but this was absolutely not the time for that.

She doesn’t believe me. Of course she doesn’t. I wouldn’t believe me either.

"There’s something else Rosa."

She went quiet because his voice had changed. She always could tell when he was about to say something real versus something stupid.

"I met someone there."

The silence after that sentence lasted maybe three seconds but it felt like the room dropped ten degrees. Rosa’s crossed arms tightened against her chest.

"You met someone." Her voice was very controlled now. "While you were in this other world."

"Yes."

"You cheated me while I was waiting for you!!!" She looked at him like she was ready to pick up a knife and stab him on the neck. He really felt some bloodlust from this tiny and gorgeous young woman..

Eren could’ve lied by the way.

He was looking right at her face and he could see exactly which answer she wanted to hear. The smart play was to ease into it, explain the circumstances, talk about how things were different in Evon and how he’d been trapped with no way home.

But he filtered his stats and all charm skills to absolute lower limits and faces her real emotions.

For some reason he felt how to completely close all charisma stat and class passive skill effects on that moment.

Maybe he had to man up before learning it, and this was the right moment.

It was a bit sad...

"Yes."

Rosa’s mouth opened and closed once. Then she turned around, picked up her grocery bag from the floor where the oranges had rolled everywhere and put the oranges back in one by one. Her hands were completely steady which was worse than if they’d been shaking.

"Is it serious?" She asked it to the grocery bag, not to him.

"She’s pregnant."

Rosa stopped putting things in the market bag.

She stayed crouched on the floor for about ten seconds without moving. Then she stood up with the bag and walked to the kitchen and started putting the groceries in the fridge like she was on autopilot. Milk on the shelf. Eggs in the door. Oranges in the drawer.

Eren watched her do it and felt like the worst person in any universe.

In Evon it made sense. Everything made sense over there. Emily was beautiful and kind and I was trapped and scared and she was the only person who gave a damn about me. But standing here in my apartment watching my girlfriend put milk in my fridge while I tell her I got another woman pregnant...

I’m the biggest piece of shit.

Rosa closed the fridge door carefully, picked up the key from the counter and walked past him toward the front door. She stopped with her hand on the handle.

"I can’t stay at the same place with you or I will kill you..." She really meant it. "Tomorrow. Call me and come find me at the usual cafe we- used to hang out behind that school."

"Yeah I will be at my grandmother’s place in the morning but noon. Yeah we can sit and talk aroun noon. I won’t vanish again Rosa.."

She was getting worse and close to crying.

"Don’t come to my parents’ house." Her voice was hoarse from the yelling. "We’re going to sit down and you’re going to explain everything from the beginning. And I mean everything!"

He didn’t want to let her go like this for some urge. "Rosa wait-"

"Don’t." She opened the door. "I can’t even look at you right now."

The door closed behind her. He heard her footsteps going down the stairs and then the building door and then the street and then nothing.

Eren stood in his hallway.

He walked to the window and looked out. Traffic on the street below and car horns stacking on top of each other in the distance. Somewhere a few blocks away the evening ezan started playing from a mosque and the sound mixed with the city noise.

If he focused his Wolf Eyes he could see details that shouldn’t be visible from this height, license plates and faces and the text on shop signs three blocks away.

Somewhere inside his head he could still feel Evon’s forest. The quiet mornings and Emily’s warmth against his back and the sound of Rury arguing with Fury about food. It was all still there like a second channel playing in the background.

He was living in two worlds now.

What the hell have I done?

The guilt hit him in a way it hadn’t since arriving on Earth. In Evon everything was life or death and survival and Emily was there.

And when he was there it all felt natural and right. But here, standing in his apartment where Rosa had been charging his phone and buying groceries for a man who wasn’t coming home...

I buried all of this on the other side and pretended like I forgot this side.

He walked around the house and brushed his teeth with his own toothbrush for the first time in a month. It felt strange because the misvak-like plants in Evon worked fine but nothing beat actual toothpaste.

Who fu*ing cares about a fu*ing toothpaste... Get your shit together man!

His body was still buzzing with energy because forty-plus stats didn’t care about emotional distress. He could’ve run a marathon right now and not broken a sweat. So he grabbed his wallet and the keys to his little motorbike from the bowl by the front door.

He had a few hours before dark and a shopping list that Emily had made him memorize. Salt, knives, rope, nails, lighters, antiseptic, painkillers, bandages, flashlights, batteries.

He put his earphones in like he always used to before, started the engine and pulled out onto the street.

The shopping could wait a little bit actually. But the list wasn’t going to buy itself and Emily and Evon side was waiting.

He had two worlds to live and two different responsibilities..