Chapter 107
Proméon took a small, steady breath. He had already accepted despair; now it was time to act.
He slowly approached Noxia. She did not notice his presence at all, but when he quietly called her name, she flinched and turned around in surprise.
“Noxia.”
There was even more reason for her to be startled. Not Hermane, but Noxia. It was the first time since last autumn that he had called her by the name of her present life.
Noxia stared straight at Proméon. Maintaining eye contact, he slowly knelt down on one knee. Now he was in a position looking up at her, while she silently looked down at him.
“Tell me what you truly want to do.”
Proméon pleaded in a whisper. His gaze was gentle, and his voice was piercingly sorrowful.
He had already given up. Perhaps it was the first declaration of defeat he had made in thousands of years.
He had continued calling her by the name of his past love, trying to forcibly keep a bond that had already been severed by his side, yet the honeymoon he had barely won was far too short.
If the flowing of time were like grains of sand, how futile it was to desperately clutch at them, trying not to let them slip away.
It had taken him a very long time to face that futility. Proméon looked up at Noxia with the eyes of a lamb that knew it was about to be sacrificed.
“…I want to go to Prince Elenon. I want to go and see if he’s alright.”
Noxia, who had been staring at Proméon, finally confessed in a trembling voice. The cause of the tremor was fear. She was frightened—for the prince.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m not of any real help. I just… want to be near him. I don’t expect him to remember me. I just….”
The person she loved had been caught in a terrorist attack and was hovering between life and death, and she hated sitting helplessly far away, waiting for news.
Yes. He was someone she loved. She thought she had been succeeding in slowly erasing him, but the moment she saw his name and heard he was critically injured, the desperate self-deception she had clung to shattered into pieces.
The past few days, when she had been intoxicated by ties from a previous life and called by an old name in another man’s arms, already felt like the distant past—even though it had continued until just this morning.
“I want to see him.”
Now, this was Noxia’s true heart. It had always been so.
She had merely buried it in resignation because she believed they would never meet again. She had only embraced a lover from the past because she thought it might be easier that way.
“But you’re not going to let me go, are you?”
She muttered. It wasn’t an accusatory tone. It was the attitude of someone who had assumed the answer from the start and given up before even asking.
Proméon gazed at Noxia quietly. Then, as if scraping out his own heart, he whispered softly,
“I’ll take you.”
“…What?”
Noxia looked at Proméon. He spoke with firm seriousness.
“I’ll take you, Noxia. To Prince Elenon.”
Shock filled her eyes. She was genuinely bewildered, unable to understand.
“Why would you?”
She asked in confusion, and Proméon belatedly regretted his past. Her reaction—so accustomed to his confinement and coercion that she doubted even his sincerity—dug deeply into his chest.
“Because it’s what you want.”
Proméon answered. He gently took her hand, with the aching hope that she might at least allow him this much, even though their bond from the past had already been cut.
“I want to do what you want, Noxia. Truly.”
He had bound her to him all this time just to see her smile by his side, but in the end, that smile had not lasted long.
If he truly loved her—if this was not obsession but love—then what he had to do for her was obvious.
“If you want, I’ll take you. To the hospital in Tyros where Prince Elenon is.”
Moving through space itself was not difficult for him. It was never a matter of ability, only of will. He could have taken her to where the prince was countless times before, but he hadn’t wanted to.
Even now, it was something he absolutely did not wish to do, but once he had decided that he would do anything for Noxia’s happiness, there was no reason left to hesitate.
“…Thank you.”
Noxia’s voice trembled. She tightly clasped Proméon’s hand.
“Thank you. Really.”
It was not the tender touch of someone caressing a lover. She clung to him like a person thrown into water grabbing a lifeline. A lifeline—merely a means. As if grasping a tool.
Yes. At this very moment, to her, he was not the goal but the means. The goal was Elenon Hermeon, and she was using the lover of her previous life to reach the first love of her present life.
It would be hard to call her cruel for that, considering the weight of Proméon’s sins until now. None of this would have happened in the first place if he had not forcibly reincarnated her soul.
“You’re welcome.”
Proméon replied. He pulled Noxia into his arms and stepped forward while holding her close.
The two vanished without a trace.
Even on a night when the sky was shrouded in darkness, artificial lights sparkled throughout the bustling metropolis.
In particular, the enormous royal hospital that accepted patients day and night poured bright light from its emergency room windows even at that late hour.
But the higher one went, where special wards for upper-class patients were located, the atmosphere became far quieter, cozier, and dimmer.
There were no doctors rushing busily through the corridors here, nor noisy visitors disturbing patients’ sleep.
All treatments and visits were completed during the bright daytime, and once night fell, the hospital strictly controlled access to the upper floors so that wealthy and high-ranking patients could rest.
Prince Elenon Hermeon, who had been brought to the hospital barely clinging to life, was admitted to one of these upper-floor special rooms.
Had the medicine of this era been even slightly more underdeveloped, he might truly have lost his life. But after swift surgery, he was diagnosed as being out of danger.
Kairon, who had been farther from the explosion site at the time of the incident, had not been injured severely enough to lose consciousness. After receiving emergency treatment, he was staying not at the hospital but at the Tyros royal palace.
His current role was to pressure the Tyros royal family by warning that if his younger brother failed to recover quickly, there was no telling how the Hermeon royal family might respond.
Kairon was that furious—and terrified that his youngest brother might die.
If something truly went wrong with his brother, he felt he would never have the face to return home and see the rest of his family.
While the elder brother agonized, the younger lay unconscious in bed.
His limbs were secured with splints, and thick medicinal ointment had been applied to prevent scars from forming on his noble body, filling the room with the sharp smell of medicine.
In the adjoining room connected to the hospital chamber, an attendant caring for the prince was asleep, while guards of the Tyros royal family stood watch outside.
Unbeknownst to them, a change stirred in the air of the sickroom. Though even the windows were closed, a soft breeze seemed to pass through, and two people who had not been there moments before stepped out of the darkness.
“…Your Highness.”
The woman among them murmured. She let go of the man’s hand without hesitation.
“Your Highness….”
Her gaze was fixed solely on the bed where another man lay. Her eyes were filled with desperate concern.
Proméon stood silently where she had just left him, watching Noxia’s back. His eyes, dark as the deep sea, held no expression.
Noxia carefully approached the bed. At the sight of the prince’s pale complexion, she felt as if she might burst into tears.
She did not even notice Proméon quietly disappearing behind her. He moved so instantly and soundlessly that she would not have realized it even if she had been paying attention.
Standing before the bed, Noxia looked down at Elenon.
It was a face she was seeing again after about nine months.
Aside from the pallor befitting a patient and the bandages attached here and there, he looked much the same as before.
Beneath hair that appeared faded in the darkness were his neat forehead, orderly brows, straight nose, and slightly asymmetrical lips.
Each time he breathed shallowly, his Adam’s apple moved, and his long eyelashes—long enough to cast shadows on his cheeks in daylight—trembled faintly with each breath.
As she took in the face of her former lover after months that felt like years, Noxia became newly aware of the true nature of the burning emotions rising from deep within her chest.
Ah… I….
I had missed you. Far more than I ever thought.
The feelings she had hidden because she could not bear to admit them, the truth she had forced herself to ignore—were, in the end, longing for you.
Because it hurt to still desperately want someone she believed she would never see again, she had tried to convince herself it was for the best, that it was a bearable farewell, that someday she would grow numb.
Simply for being the prince’s lover, she had been kidnapped by a hostile force. Six people were burned to death, and under the pretext of resolving the incident, Proméon erased everyone’s memories.
Elenon Hermeon forgot Noxia.
The man who had once been so tender forgot her—the one who had taken her first kiss, her first relationship, her first love.
Even if her status had been nothing more than a facade, the wall between them had still felt impossibly high. Yet when they finally overcame hesitation and their hands met, how happy she had been. How fulfilled.
Even if she tried now, with her meager vocabulary, she would probably never fully describe the joy of that moment.
“Prince Elenon.”
Noxia softly whispered the name she had missed, quietly enough not to wake anyone, pouring her earnest heart into it.
“Elenon.”
My heart was always turned toward you. Even while embracing another man and whispering words of love, overwhelmed by lingering ties from a previous life, I—
“I missed you.”
In the end, the lingering attachment from a past life was only that—lingering attachment. The yearning tormenting her in this life was something else entirely.
“I love you.”
It might have seemed meaningless, saying this to someone who had forgotten her—and who was now unconscious and unable to hear—but her heart overflowed, and she had to confess.
“Please… you must get better soon….”
She had come here impulsively after hearing that Elenon was injured, but now that she stood before him as she had wished, Noxia trembled at her own helplessness.
She could sneak in at night like this, but she could not visit openly during the day. She could not reveal that she had come. And since she was not a doctor, she could offer no real help at all.
