My Milf System

Chapter 394 - 394: 394. The witness

An hour Ago{Asher's POV}

After coming from Sad Mat and grabbing a quick breakfast back in my own quarters, I decided it was time to head over to Loona's apartment.

I just hoped to hell she had actually managed to stay awake last night like I'd explicitly ordered her to. Her firsthand intel was the missing link I needed to figure out how her husband, Josh, managed to bypass my entire surveillance grid every Friday night, why he was handing off a duffel bag to an unknown courier, and what exactly drove his obsession with bringing home a fresh box of those Labubu dolls every single export day.

I strode through the empty corridor with anticipation and knocked at Loona's door.

No answer. I frowned, throwing a heavier, louder sequence of knocks against the wood. Still, absolute silence. A cold prickle of worry hit me. I turned the handle, it wasn't even locked and stepped right inside.

"Oh, there you are. Why the hell haven't you been responding when I was knocki—"

The sentence died in my throat the exact second I registered the suffocating atmosphere of the room.

Loona was curled on the far end of the couch, hugging her knees tightly against her chest like they were the ones keeping her tethered to reality. Physically she was there, but mentally she was completely gone, vacant, hollowed out, and entirely catatonic.

A dense wave of dread hung heavy over the entire room. It felt like walking into a crime scene before the bodies had even been discovered.

I rushed straight toward her, dropping onto one knee at her feet. "Loona... hey. Look at me. Are you okay?"

Her eyes were wide, bloodshot, and staring blankly into space, barely blinking as her pale lips twitched, muttering completely inaudible syllables.

It was the unmistakable expression of a human being pushed into severe psychological shock—the face of someone who had looked a ghost dead in the eyes, or witnessed something infinitely worse.

My heart rate immediately spiked.

I reached up, gently cupping her face. Her cheeks felt like ice beneath my palms, cold and entirely devoid of life, like a corpse that hadn't quite realized its heart had stopped beating.

'What the hell happened here last night?' My mind raced.

Even with my hands flat against her skin, Loona barely registered my presence. Her pupils didn't dilate; she didn't flinch away or lean into my touch. She was completely trapped inside her own mind.

I stood up, rolling the sleeves of my shirt up past my forearms to give myself some breathing room, and strode into her small kitchen. A quick glance told the whole story: the pots, pans, and plates were spotlessly clean, completely untouched. She hadn't even attempted to make a single scrap of food today.

Recognizing her body was running on pure adrenaline and zero fuel, I immediately set to work. When a human is severely broken down or physically compromised, my go-to remedy is a traditional rice porridge. It doesn't possess any supernatural system properties or magical stats; its true power lies in its basic warmth—soft, familiar, and intensely comforting. Besides, the baseline carbohydrates would manually force some clean energy back into her system.

After brewing the porridge and infusing it with a few calming, medicinal herbs to soothe her nervous system, I dished it into a ceramic bowl and brought it back to the living room. I sat down right next to her on the cushions, keeping my voice incredibly soft, smooth, and grounded.

"Hey... look. I made something warm for you to eat."

She slowly tilted her head up toward me, her features still heavily distorted by that paralyzing terror. "He... is... he..." her voice was a raspy, fragile thread as her fingers trembled violently, pointing toward her bedroom.

I gently caught her hand, lowering it back down to her lap and rubbing her icy fingers. "You don't have to say a single word right now. Just eat a few bites first. Everything is going to be fine, Loona. I'm right here. I'll protect you."

At the sound of my promise, a faint, instinctual flicker of absolute trust finally cut through the fog in her eyes.

I began feeding her myself, spoon by spoon, gently blowing on the hot porridge to cool it down before offering it to her lips. She complied silently, swallowing down half the bowl until her breathing finally began to stabilize.

I offered her a calm, reassuring smile, wiping a stray drop from her chin. "Good girl. Proud of you."

She looked up at me, a fragile, deeply exhausted smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she nodded. "Thank you for... for actually caring about me, Asher."

"It's my duty," I murmured, holding her gaze.

She took a long, deep breath, the fragile warmth vanishing from her expression as a heavy, grim shadow reasserted itself over her face.

"I stayed awake late, just like you told me to," she began, her voice dropping into a tense register. "But around eleven o'clock, this suffocating urge to sleep hit me out of nowhere. It wasn't natural, Asher. It felt completely artificial, like a physical weight was violently pressing down on my eyelids, forcing my brain to shut off entirely. The only thing that kept me anchored was a single, repeating thought: 'I have to stay awake for Asher.' Because of that... I fought it. I didn't close my eyes."

An unnatural, forced drowsiness?. That sounded exactly like a localized biochemical sedative or an airborne chemical agent meant to clear out any domestic witnesses. And her psychological loyalty to my command was the only thing that overrode the dosage? Fascinating.

"What I witnessed after that... it belonged in a horror movie," she continued, swallowing hard as she fought back a sudden wave of tears. "I thought I was dreaming. Honestly, part of me still thinks I'm trapped in a nightmare right now. Because what he did... it's physically impossible!!"

Her breath hitched sharply. Whatever she had looked at had completely shattered her understanding of reality.

Despite the intense curiosity burning in my chest, I didn't pressure her. I kept my composure entirely steady. "Take your time."

"Maybe I'm just completely losing my mind," she whispered frantically, gripping her own hair. "Maybe I was hallucinating. There's just no way... you won't even believe me if I say it out loud."

I reached forward, firmly cupping both her cheeks again and pulling her face inches from mine, forcing her to lock onto my steady, unchanging gaze. "You are not crazy, my love. I promise you, whatever your eyes saw last night is exactly what happened. I believe in you more than anyone else in this world."

"In this world?" she blinked, momentarily thrown off by my phrasing. "You say that like you've actually been to other worlds before."

"I meant in 'our' world," I clarified smoothly, brushing past the slip of the tongue without breaking my authoritative focus.

Loona looked down, drawing a deep breath as she summoned every ounce of her remaining courage. Finally, she looked back up. "Last night..."

I leaned in closer. "Tell me."

"Josh just... he literally materialized out of thin air!"

"Out of thin air?" I echoed, my eyes narrowing as I feigned genuine shock.

"Yes! I told you it sounds insane! It's crazy even hearing myself say the words out loud. It feels like my own mind is playing tricks on me."

"I believe you, Loona. I truly do. Trust me on this," I assured her, my mind already calculating.

She raised a shaking hand, pointing directly toward the master bedroom again. "It happened right in there. He just popped into existence out of nowhere, startling me so badly I almost let out a full scream. I had to bite down on my own lip until it bled just to simulate sleep so he wouldn't realize I was conscious. He cast a long look over at my side of the bed, and I kept my eyes tightly shut. Then, he turned around and walked straight into the bathroom."

I nodded slowly, letting her empty her mind. "Go on."

"What terrified me the most... was that he was completely, entirely naked," she whispered, a shudder rippling through her skin. "He materialized right in that far corner near the bathroom threshold. His entire body was dripping with this foul sweat, and he looked entirely drained, like he had just run a marathon. Up until last night, I always thought the rumors about real-life demons operating in the dark without clothes were just urban legends... but after what I saw? Josh isn't human. He is a literal devil."

'Sweetheart, if you think appearing out of thin air makes someone a devil, you have absolutely no idea what I'm capable of,' I thought silently.

But practically speaking, this was an alarming confirmation. A mere human appearing out of thin air?

But why that specific corner of the bedroom? Did he know the structural layout provided a visual blind spot for potential hidden cameras, or was it a mechanical anchor point for his infiltration?

Wait... did Josh already suspect the existence of the hidden surveillance apparatus, or was his pathing just a fluke? I needed to dismantle the inner workings of this Shinigami syndicate immediately. Ever since Karen had lied to my former friend that I was part of the Shinigami, the stakes had been escalating exponentially.

"Oh, and there's one more thing..." Loona whispered, suddenly standing up and clutching the fabric of my shirt. "Please... accompany me into the bedroom. I'm too terrified to step foot in there alone. I keep feeling like he's going to materialize out of the dark again and kill me for stealing his precious stuff."

I raised an eyebrow. "Stealing?"

She nodded quickly, a tense but triumphant look crossing her face. "Strictly per your orders, of course. While he was in the shower... I managed to slip one of his Labubu dolls out of the fresh box."

'Beautiful.'

I was about to find out the grand mystery behind those dolls and what the Shinigami and Akira were hiding.

To be continued...