Extremely Heavy Secrets

For the next couple of days, everything went on as usual. The group did their training, a few small missions, etc.
Even the next couple of weeks were normal. And over those few weeks, Makoto noticed he was getting better at fighting.
He could dodge Ryu and Chihiro's attacks much easier now, and he could even throw a few of his own attacks.

"You're getting stronger," Ryu said. "Yeah, had you caught me off guard, I wouldn't have been able to dodge your attack!" Chihiro said with a smile.
"I-I haven't gotten that good, hehe," Makoto said, looking away in embarrassment.
"No, you have gotten much better," a Paladin-in-training said to Makoto."You really think so?" Makoto asked.
"Yep!" The whole group said in unison.
But that night, before Makoto went to bed, the Apex Master called him to his study.
"I have something I want to tell you, but I would rather others not hear it," he told Makoto.

"Uhm," Makoto said, opening the unlocked door to the Apex Master's study. "Apex Master?"
'His chair is empty,' Makoto thought, looking around the dark room. 'Maybe he's busy right now?'
Suddenly, the door slammed behind him. "EEK!" Now he was starting to worry that something might've happened.
... until he saw the Apex Master, who had lit a candle so he could see.
"Suzuki Makoto," he said, "please close the door when you walk into a room where you're going to have a private talk."
"O-Oh, right," Makoto said, calming down a bit.
"Now, about earlier when I said I wanted to talk to you," the Master started. "I'll get straight to the point:"

                               "The Abyss King you've seen up until now is a fake."

Makoto's eyes widened in shock. "W-Wait a second," he stuttered. "You mean... y-you mean that what Takeo said was true?" The Apex Master just nodded. 'This is bad,' Makoto thought. If the "Abyss King" wasn't actually the Abyss King, then who was? Was it Naraku? It couldn't be, he was just a rich kid who lived all alone in a tower. Was it someone Makoto knew well, like Ryu or Chihiro? It couldn't be them either, because they would have to be extremely good actors for that, to be able to talk bad about themselves and not break out of character even once.
"I don't know who the real Abyss King is yet," the Apex Master continued, "but I do know that what that former Abyss Warrior said is completely true. I've looked into every possible detail, and there's no evidence that says he was wrong."
"But then," Makoto started, "how do we figure out who the real Abyss King is if we don't have any leads at all?"

"Well," the Apex Master sighed, sitting down in his chair, "I'm not sure. But what I can say for sure is that if you have any  information about this at all, you HAVE to tell me RIGHT AWAY when you find it."
Makoto nodded slowly, now suddenly thinking about all the things Naraku had said those months ago. Even if the things he said had nothing to do with the Abyss King, it still made Makoto think.
"And Makoto," the Apex Master added firmly, standing up from his chair, "do NOT tell ANYONE about this talk."
Makoto stayed quiet and looked at him.
"Not even Ryu and Chihiro," the Apex Master said, his look less firm than before.
Makoto nodded after a few seconds of silence, and then left the Apex Master's study.

'What do I do?' Makoto thought, his mind racing, thoughts going in and out of his head. 'If that guy was right, then who's the real Abyss King?? Could it be someone here in the Tower? Or someone out in the village? O-Or maybe, maybe... m-maybeー!'
Makoto fell backwards onto his butt. "Oww, my butt!" He said under his breath. "Oh my gosh, I'm sorry!" The person who bumped into him said. It was a Paladin trainee, one of the healers.
"No worries, I'm OK," Makoto assured her after standing up.

After going back to training Arena, Makoto sat down and ran his hands through his hair, visibly stressed by the situation. 'If I don't figure this out,' he thought to himself, 'I won't be worthy of that uniform that Iduna gave me. I have to figure out who's behind all this, and fast. Otherwiseー?'
Before he could keep worrying, Makoto saw Ryu and Chihiro coming back from sparring. 'Oh no,' he thought. 'The Apex Master said I couldn't tell anyone, but I can't just lie to them, they're my friends!'
"Oh, hey there, Makoto!" Chihiro called out as he jogged over to where Makoto was sitting.
"O-Oh, hey guys," Makoto replied awkwardly, trying to seem calm. But Ryu wasn't buying it. "Makoto," Ryu began softly, sitting next to him, "you... you seem... I don't know how to describe it, but you look like you've just been on the losing side of a fight. What happened?"
"I-I, uhm," Makoto stammered, the looked away. "I-I just... I'm just a bit tired, is all. I'm just not used to training this much."
"Ugh, I hear you," Chihiro said, seeming to believe him. "Even though I've been training like this for almost 3 years now, it's still pretty annoying..."

The next day, while Makoto was training, he heard someone walking towards him.
It was Shiro.
"Salve, puer! " Shiro said with his usual smile. "I see you're training pretty hard. Any reason for that?"
"Uh, just to get stronger so I can fight the Abyss King when the time comes," Makoto replied as calmly as he could, trying to keep his secret safe. "I know I still have a long way to go til I get to your level, hehe."
Shiro nodded. "I know that feeling," he said. "Back when I first got here, I needed another Paladin's help to get any better than your current skill level. I remember, he said 'if you want to get better at anything, the first thing you must improve is your self-confidence, because without that, you'll feel down, and won't do anything'. Heh, he was right."

Makoto thought about this for a few seconds before Shiro got up and started training a bit. "Uh, Shiro?" Makoto called from where he was sitting.
"Yeah?" Shiro replied after kicking a training dummy. "So um," Makoto continued, "who was that other Paladin? A-and what were they like?"
Shiro punched the training dummy, then pushed his bangs out of his eyes and looked at Makoto.
"Uhhm," he started, "heh, puer, you always ask complicated questions, you know that?
"Well," Shiro continued, "the Paladin I mentioned was a friend of mine back then; Nakabayashi Shinsuke was his name. He was the strongest Paladin at the time, but he wasn't arrogant or a jerk about it; he actually liked helping his subordinates, myself included."

Makoto listened as Shiro spoke. 'Shinsuke must've meant a lot to him,' he thought to himself. "I guess you two were really close?" He asked.
Shiro chuckled. "We were more than close, he told me himself. But then, uhh..."
Shiro's voice trailed off and he stayed quiet for a while. Makoto didn't say anything, but he was a bit worried that he had asked too much. But then Shiro just shrugged it off. "Y'know what? Never mind, it wasn't anything important."

But, little did any of them know, someone was watching. Was that someone the Abyss King? Well, who really knows?