Chapter 13.735 Silent Reassurance

Kallen kept her eyes glued to the windows, even as the airship already flew high enough that she could hardly see any glimpse of the Japanese soil. To think that this would be the second time she's leaving Japan by her own will.

An irony. Since in order to save her country she needed to leave her. But life's full of ironies anyway.

Kallen softly let out a sigh.

The challenges that they're going to face onwards from this, will certainly be filled with hardship. Because in order to restore Japan to the country it used to be, they needed to make happen a lot of big changes. The biggest one of all would involve Britannia itself.

Could Lelouch truly pull a miracle this big by himself? Could both of them do it?

Somehow she couldn't be too sure about this. Since in the end, the two of them were still teenagers.

Her thoughts wandered towards Lelouch. Earlier, when she saw how much Lelouch had broken down... she was very much startled. While she was aware that Lelouch cared a lot about Nunnally, Lelouch 's reaction after finding out that someone had broken into the palace was far too extreme.

That aside, when later Sir Waldstein mentioned about an assassin Lelouch 's face had paled drastically.

"Assassination? A palace break-in?" Kallen spoke her thoughts aloud as her mind tried to rapidly process all of the information that she knew. Come to think that last incident at Aries Villa seemed to be related. Seeing that Cornelia had appeared agitated when she mentioned that to her.

Could it be?

Before, Lelouch had told her that he and Nunnally's exile and being turned into political hostages had been the start of everything. Lelouch didn't say the reason for the exile but just said it was due to his mother's 'death'. Well, she knew now the truths about the exile and everything else but...

"How's all that connected? Unless—!"

"Do you want to hear about it?"

Kallen jumped and turned around to see Cornelia walking into her cabin.

"Ah! Your Highness—!" she gasped as Cornelia waved her concerns away.

"Since you seemed to be Lelouch's strongest pillar of support at the moment, I thought I should talk to you some more about it. Knowing my brother, he probably wouldn't accept the concerns that I have for his well-being. But for you, I thought he could at least open his heart to you."

Kallen frowned. "What do you mean?"

Cornelia just shrugged. "Judging from your reactions, it doesn't look like you knew about the incident prior to my siblings ' exile to Japan. At least, not the full story."

"Are you going to tell me about it then?"

The second princess shrugged again.

xxx

She knocked a few times to let him know that she's coming in. And as expected, when she came in Lelouch was already facing the door to welcome her.

"The one who first found the bodies was Lelouch. By the time I arrived at the scene the other servants were already crowding the area."

"But there's no mistaking it; the two dead guards were part of the men serving under me and Lady Marianne's lifeless body was lying on top of Nunnally at the bottom of the grand staircase. To think that little Lelouch had to witness all that—!"

Kallen gave him a weak smile as Lelouch stared at her puzzled. So that why he was so shaken back then, how he used to avoid having gone through that staircase and insisted on taking a longer route to get around the Villa.

That time, he must have thought of wanting to overcome his past at that spot...

"Something wrong? Kallen?" Lelouch started to ask as she shook her head.

"Lelouch..."

Kallen cocked her head to the side slightly to appear casual. "You ARE feeling fine at the moment, right?"

Lelouch just blinked at her cluelessly before nodding his head.

"You know that you could tell me everything's that bothering you, right?"

Lelouch nodded again. "Yeah, I know."

Kallen frowned slightly.

"Did you really get what I'm trying to say?" she asked again as Lelouch continued playing dumb. Kallen let out a sigh. "Anyway, what I'm trying to say is... I'm here for you. If right now you find it too hard to tell me anything that bogged you down—or if you still had something painful that you kept to yourself—you know if it becomes too unbearable you could always reach out to me, right?"

Lelouch continued keeping silent as Kallen turned to leave. "I'll wait until you feel ready to talk about it. If the burden on your shoulders was too much I wouldn't mind sharing that with you."

"Thank you... Kallen," Lelouch finally spoke. Kallen smiled weakly before walking out of the cabin.