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Kevin's silence was tantamount to an answer to Annie's question.
Annie, on the other hand, laughed even more happily, so much so that she couldn't straighten up, leaning on Kevin's shoulder, her body trembling non-stop, trying her best to suppress her laughter.
Annie's laughter was too uninhibited, making Kevin quite speechless. He felt a bit embarrassed and said irritably:
"Alright, alright, I've never had a girlfriend, and I've never slept with anyone, okay?!"
"?"
As soon as he said that, Annie stopped laughing and looked at Kevin with eyes like she was looking at an alien, asking:
"No... wait a minute, you... you just meant that you've never... oh my God, oh my God, Jesus..."
Annie looked as if her worldview had collapsed, her face full of astonishment.
Her reaction was very exaggerated, and the look in her eyes as she stared at Kevin was even more like she was staring at some magical creature that didn't exist in this world at all.
Kevin felt a chill run down his spine from Annie's gaze, but he didn't know how to respond.
After a long while, Annie finally sat down next to Kevin again, pulling a little distance between them, and said very properly:
"Honestly, I'm already feeling a bit guilty now, no... very guilty. I'm sorry, I neglected your feelings. Let's start over now."
Annie's words were inexplicable, leaving Kevin full of question marks:
"Start over? What??"
Guilt?
Why the guilt? What did you do to feel guilty?
Kevin was confused, but he saw Annie pull some distance from him and reach out her hand to him, saying:
"How about we start with holding hands?"
"..."
Seeing the hand extended towards him and the faint smile on Annie's face, Kevin immediately understood what Annie meant.
Feeling 'insulted', Kevin rolled his eyes, grabbed Annie's hand, and pulled her into his arms, his expression fierce:
"Lady! Don't think I don't know anything. Although I've never had a girlfriend, I've watched romance movies, okay?"
"What kind of romance movies?"
Annie's sudden teasing question made question marks appear on Kevin's head again:
"?"
Seeing Kevin flustered, Annie laughed again. She hugged Kevin's arm again, leaned on his shoulder, and asked:
"Alright, I won't tease you anymore, but seriously, have you really never had a girlfriend?"
"...No."
If it only refers to humans, then no, he hasn't.
He did have two dolphins, though.
But that was something Deep had done before; the current Kevin truly hasn't had any girlfriends.
Kevin wondered if it was his imagination, but in that instant, he felt Annie's gaze become full of tenderness and love.
Her fingers traced circles on the fabric over Kevin's chest, and she asked in an almost seductive tone:
"Then, would you like me to teach you?"
"You teach me?"
Kevin felt insulted again, turned around, and pinned Annie to the sofa:
"Don't think I don't know anything!"
"So you know a lot?"
"Of course!"
"Then want to try?"
"Try it then!"
This is unbearable! Annie's disbelieving expression was too insulting, Kevin couldn't take this grievance!
And so...
Before dinner, Kevin made Annie's eyes light up three times.
...
Lying in bed, Kevin was too lazy to move.
Annie was beside him, her fair arm drawing circles on his chest.
Kevin, already in a state of post-coital clarity, ignored Annie's 'teasing' and lay there contemplating Reality.
A moment later, he heard Annie say with a sigh:
"You know, Kevin, it's hard to find a man like you in this era."
"Uh, Miss Annie, are you complimenting me?"
"Of course! Look at you, you don't mess around, you don't use your current resources to find girlfriends, you don't even smoke?
"Oh my God, you know, when I was in school, even the so-called 'good girls' would smoke when they hung out with us!"
Not only smoking, sometimes they would also smoke something stronger.
And this was not strange in school; on the contrary, if you didn't do it, you would seem out of place.
Even Annie herself, before joining The Seven, almost always smoked some tobacco.
It's just that she's cut back a bit now.
"Speaking of that, I actually smoked in college too, but then I thought the taste was too strange, so I gave it up."
Kevin said.
He was talking about Deep's experiences.
Annie smiled and said:
"Even so, you are already an incredible good man in my eyes, which is why I feel guilty. I feel like I'm a devil leading someone astray, defiling a pure angel."
"Pfft—"
Before Annie could finish speaking, Kevin couldn't help but burst out laughing:
"Me? An angel? If you said I was the Ocean Emissary, I might agree, but an angel...?"
Kevin was in stitches, but Annie didn't laugh. She leaned closer to Kevin and said seriously:
"I don't care what you think, but in my opinion, you are the angel who saved me. If you weren't in The Seven, if you weren't by my side when I learned about Compound V, I don't know what I would have done...
"You saved me, Kevin."
No matter what Kevin thought, in Annie's eyes, he was the 'angel' who saved Annie.
what if Annie didn't have Kevin as a role model in The Seven, what if Annie investigated Compound V alone and learned the truth.
Then Annie would certainly be completely disillusioned with Reality and would have given up on doing anything.
But precisely because of Kevin, Annie still had the brilliance of a dream in her heart. She didn't completely fall, and she didn't truly accept the company's arrangements to engage in under-the-table dealings with certain important figures.
Kevin saved Annie, even if he didn't know it himself.
Annie was very serious, Kevin could feel it.
The smile on his face gradually faded, and he gently stroked Annie's golden hair, sighing:
"I... actually never thought that much. I don't even know what I did."
Kevin smiled self-deprecatingly.
Annie said he saved her, but in Reality, Kevin felt he hadn't done anything.
He had never proactively done anything; at least in Kevin's view, besides the things he did to gain skill points, Kevin truly hadn't proactively done anything.
So, Kevin felt he couldn't bear Annie's praise.
"Perhaps you didn't think so yourself, but you really saved a lot of people, Kevin, and that includes me."
Annie said again, and once more hugged Kevin, uttering a rather saccharine remark:
"You are a hero, Kevin, you are my hero."
"..."
Hero...
Starlight Annie had also been saying that Kevin was a hero before this, but Kevin had never truly taken it seriously.
But today, Kevin, having confirmed his relationship with Annie, heard these words from his girlfriend again and felt a different sensation.
Kevin had never thought about proactively doing anything. He went with the flow, letting things develop naturally, and believed in the 'lying flat' policy.
If something came up, he would deal with it, but if no one actively sought him out, Kevin wouldn't go looking for trouble.
But now, Kevin found that even if he didn't actively manage those things, he had already changed many things.
Centered around himself, he had already become entangled with many things, deeply immersed in the world's vortex, almost unable to escape.
Kevin is Annie's hero, and also the hero in the eyes of many people on Flight 37, and even the hero of Indira Shetty's family.
Even if Kevin himself doesn't think so.
He had a relationship with Annie, and with many high-society individuals on Flight 37, and even became Indira's colleague, the person in charge of The Woods.
Now, even if Kevin wanted to escape the vortex, he simply couldn't. No matter what he thought, he was already deeply entrenched here, unable to break free.
Kevin once again thought about what he had considered before, why he didn't leave The Seven.
While there was certainly the reason that he wanted to easily gain skill points through The Seven, more than that, he was already unable to extricate himself.
Kevin was pondering, and Annie saw that Kevin seemed to be thinking about something, so she didn't disturb him further.
She quietly got out of bed, tidied up briefly, and then went into the kitchen to make dinner for Kevin.
The scent of cooking drifted from the kitchen. Kevin walked out of the room, looked at Annie busy in the kitchen, and then thought about Vought that turned Annie and the original Deep into Supes. Some special thoughts began to sprout in his mind.
In this world, no matter what Kevin did or how he did it, he couldn't bypass the massive mountain called 'Vought'.
Its tentacles spread across the globe, and its hands reached into every industry.
Medical, pharmaceutical, education, weapons, security, entertainment...
Such a behemoth, even if Kevin truly left, they would certainly come looking for him again one day.
The idea of simply earning enough money and then living in seclusion was simply not Reality.
Even the former chief scientific officer of Vought, the doctor who raised Homelander, wasn't he also brutally shot in the head in the end?
To live better, to enjoy life freely, what Kevin needed to do was not to simply avoid things and do nothing.
Instead, he had to actively confront it, become a high-level executive of Vought, or even become the helmsman of Vought, which is Edgar's current position.
If he made the entire Vought his own, then no matter what Kevin did in the future, Vought would not stop him.
After all, it would already be his.
"...I understand."
"Hmm? What are you saying? I didn't hear you clearly."
Kevin mumbled to himself. Annie, in the kitchen, couldn't hear Kevin's voice clearly due to the loud exhaust fan, so she couldn't help but ask.
Kevin didn't intend to tell Annie his thoughts. He casually replied 'nothing' to Annie, then returned to the laptop and opened the files of The Woods' members.
Looking at the files of these Supe children, Kevin narrowed his eyes slightly, and finally picked up his phone to make a call:
"Hello? It's me, Deep. I'd like to meet Mr. Edgar. Please help me schedule a time."
Since he couldn't escape the vortex, he would actively delve into it, stir up the waters, and finally bring it under his control.
Kevin simply wouldn't believe it; he, a future King of the Oceans, couldn't even handle a small vortex!
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