Lensa felt truly flattered by Eren’s compliments.
It was truly what everyone always said about her. But coming from him, the words struck a different chord with the elf. Plus, a part of the reason Lensa found herself in her element talking with Eren was the way he said those things.
Eren had plenty of experience handling women of different temperaments at this point. Thus, he would adapt himself to his company’s liking. A character trait much like his bloodline powers.
Eren finally decided to ask what he always had in mind after seeing Lensa.
“So what’s up with you and Ken these days? Does he come to meet you often?”
Eren asked while leaning back into the sofa. Lensa chuckled before answering his question.
“It seems you don’t know. Our engagement broke up.”
Eren was surprised when he heard Lensa’s engagement had broken up with Ken. But before he could express his surprise, Lensa carried on.
I only met him once after your entire team left Silvermoon. My uncle had kept an eye on him throughout the meet so we couldn’t really talk freely with each other.
So I guess there’s not much to discuss between us anymore. Things just didn’t work out the way our families wanted them to.
I mean, Ken is a nice guy. That much is clear to me. He really cares about people and his friends. But…. For some reason, I didn’t want to be with him.
Have you ever felt this way, Eren? Like something is missing in your life that can’t be explained? It’s just a feeling that can’t be put into words.
It’s this abstract regret in life that you are not sure how to describe. Did you ever have them? And how did you deal with them?”
Lensa asked, keeping her eyes fixed on Eren’s expressions. The latter didn’t respond immediately. He had so many questions to ask the elf in front of her. But first, he decided to answer her question.
Eren could feel with his soul sense that Lensa was confused about her current stage in life. He could also sense that she had taken a liking to him.
He could read her emotions to some degree as well. The girl was having all sorts of thoughts at once. Most of them wanted her to approach him and ask if he was available for her. But she was afraid, thinking about what he might think of her. Especially after breaking up her engagement with Ken, who was supposed to be Eren’s friend and teammate.
Lensa was also afraid of wearing her heart on her sleeves these days. The last time she did that, the Ken incident happened to her. After all, it was her who had approached him first. She didn’t want to make the same mistake again.
Eren was not sure how to describe his relationship with Ken. He had thought that he had hated the guy. But at this point in life, when he was as capable as Ken if not more, Eren wasn’t sure if he had the same kind of hate towards him.
Just as Lensa had said, Ken was a good guy. But his goodness had ended up hurting him big time. In his past timeline, he couldn’t care less about the guy’s intentions. It was Eren who had received the full brunt of Ken’s way of handing out the textbook definition of justice.
Eren also was unsure how to answer Lensa’s unspoken emotional demands from him. He was surprised she could feel this connected to him despite his vile actions toward her. Even she was unsure of what kind of connection she had shared with him.
This time, Eren didn’t want to lead Lensa to a path she didn’t want for herself. So he decided to clear her doubts using his experiences in life as a guiding light.
He chuckled and remembered the key moments of his past and present life before answering.
“My feeling of being lost was at its peak when I only lived inside my head. My thoughts were like wild mushrooms that kept on growing over the dead bodies of my hopes and desires.
Sometimes, in life, you don’t always know what you are looking for. You can’t always customize your life’s experiences exactly the way you want them to be.”
Eren said and quickly sent his mana sense into his storage. He was looking for his Sativa Stick because he felt the need to smoke. But apparently, he had run out of them.
To see if he had any Stick in his pockets, the butcher tapped on them hastily. In the end, he sighed when he couldn’t find it.
Lensa couldn’t understand the reason behind it. But she knew that she connected with Eren way more than she could ever with Ken. It was as if he was saying all the right things to her without admitting the fact that it was him who had set things in motion in the wrong direction in the first place.
Meanwhile, the butcher made a mental note to buy another pack of Sativa Stick before expressing his final thoughts on the subject.
“You push away a thousand thoughts and ten thousand push back. They grow from each chopped piece the more you slash and hack at them.
So here’s my answer to your question– yes. There are a lot of regrets in my life. More than you can ever imagine.
However, I’d come to realize something, Lensa.
One would always end up having regrets because, to get to something, one must move away from something. To get somewhere, one must leave the place they were at. So having regrets is normal. It’s natural.
The only way to find peace is to stop giving more power to your regrets. Once you have this control over yourself, you won’t be afraid to have regrets.
The aim of not having any regrets in life is foolish and a child’s dream. How can anyone ever live with that kind of self-imposed pressure?
The aim should be not to be afraid of regret. Your goal should be to achieve something even greater than what you are liable to end up giving up. Because that’s when you truly start to live your life.”
