Reality hit Leon hard when Persie dragged him away to the other end of the lobby. “Okay, ow.” He reacted as he wrestled his wrist out of her grasp, rubbing it when it was free. She began lecturing him about not cheating on Yeong-Mi again, which he was never planning to do, and how he didn’t ask the important questions when he saw Atlas which honestly, just made him roll his eyes.
“First of all, I’m not going to lie to my pregnant wife nor am I going to cheat on her. I learned that lesson the hard way and Yeong-Mi knows who Atlas is. Second, I have spent the last three years convincing myself that Atlas was dead. Do you have any idea what that did to my already sh-tty mental health? You’ll have to excuse me if I didn’t react rationally but I’m kind of in shock and really overwhelmed right now. He asked about my perfume and mentioned my hair, I was just responding. Third, how about instead of lecturing me, you tell me what this awful situation is so that I can help!” He responded, defending himself against her. His expression softened when he saw how worn out she was, blaming him for making her pregnant, which was unfortunately true. “Are you okay? Do you need to sit down or something?” He offered, looking around the lobby for a chair or something else she could sit on.
She shrugged him off, saying that he could tell her what he wanted to later, but that cat was kind of already out of the bag, thanks to his careless mouth. “I promise I’ll stay focused. I just needed to get that out of my system.” He responded, already starting to gain control over his emotions and turning them off like he usually did.
They returned back to where Atlas was standing, he looked a little confused. Persephone spoke first, expressing her confusion about the whole thing.
“Well, I guess now I can tell you that my name isn’t actually Étienne, it’s Atlas. Atlas Choi. Kaori figured that someone would report me missing, so she had me use a fake name here to make me harder to find.” Now it was Leon’s turn to be confused. Who the f-ck is Kaori? He asked himself. “Leon, do you know where my parents are now?” Leon nodded.
“They still live in Beryl Heights, in the same house. Couldn’t bring themselves to move.” Leon explained. He didn’t want to tell him that the reason he knew this was that Leon frequently went there to make sure his parents were doing okay and to mourn him.
@raviola - Persie