"What? You need your inhaler?" Gunnar laughed "Vayne, heroes of justice don't need inhalers! Be a man!"
"B-But Gunnar, I really need--" Vayne wheezed and had a coughing fit.
Then, suddenly, Roxis burst into the room and rushed over to Vayne, whose coughing fit had caused him to fall to his knees.
"Use my inhaler, Vayne!" Roxis said, trying to force it into Vayne's mouth. Vayne's eyes widened in terror and he tried to pull away.
"N-No! Not tha--" more coughing and wheezing as Roxis continued his assault. "I want my own inhaler!"
"There's no time for that!" Roxis yelled, wrapping an arm around Vayne to try to keep him still and sighing in irritation as the boy turned his head away from the inhaler. Tightening his grip, he leaned his head closer to Vayne's ear.
"Wh-what are you doing?" Vayne managed to shriek between coughs. Roxis had tried to lend him his inhaler before, but he'd never been so forceful about it... It was scary. He wanted someone to save him. Come to think of it, wasn't Gunnar nearby? His vision was too blurred to tell, but he was sure he hadn't heard him leave. Surely he was planning a heroic rescue... He believed in Gunnar. All he could do was wait.
"What's the matter, Vayne?" Roxis whispered in his ear, jarring him out of his thoughts with another violent attempt to shove the inhaler into his mouth.
"G-Gunnar! Save me!" Vayne yelled. Something in Roxis' voice had filled him with more terror than he had ever known before, and the words had left his lips without him even realising it.
"Giving up already? What kind of sidekick are you?" Gunnar replied calmly. He was, however, quite perturbed by the way one of Roxis' arms seemed to be moving south.
"Please, Gunnar!" Vayne, who was now actually crying, pleaded.
"Well, I suppose it is a hero's duty to rescue his sidekick when necessary." Gunnar sighed and stepped closer to the pair. Roxis, who hadn't even noticed Gunnar was still there until then, leered up at him.
"What do you want?" Roxis growled. "He needs an inhaler, doesn't he?"
"I hate to burst your bubble, but he stopped coughing a while ago." Gunnar said, grinning.
"Now that you mention it..." the bespectacled madman mumbled. "But even so, just to be safe--"
"J-Just get off me, Roxis..." Vayne whimpered, and was met with no resistance when he pulled Roxis' arm from his waist and stood up. Roxis stared up at the boy, feeling a stab of guilt each time the boy's shoulders shook with a sob.
"Vayne, I--" he blurted out.
"Just go..." Vayne said, looking anywhere but at him.
"...Alright." Roxis stood up and headed to the door. Before leaving, he looked back at Vayne, his eyes filling with tears. "I'm sorry."
And then he was gone.