Chapter 160………………………………………
[“El. You will definitely regret the choice you’re making now. The human heart is as light as a sheet of paper—blown away by even the faintest breeze. That is what human love is. I don’t understand why you don’t know such an important fact.”]
At Rysma’s words, I lifted my head and stared blankly at the ceiling, then closed my eyes.
I wondered briefly whether my feelings for Kyle were also as light as a sheet of paper, and then slowly parted my lips.
“So you’re trying to stop me because you don’t want to regret it, Rysma. Are you afraid? Afraid that I’ll be completely ruined by love?”
[“……”]
Rysma didn’t answer. I opened my eyes to check if he had left, but he was still there.
“Rysma?”
[“Yes. I’m afraid.”]
In that short reply, Rysma’s voice sounded heavy and subdued.
Thinking it was just my imagination, I reached out a hand toward him.
“Everyone regrets things a little. There’s no need to lose heart over it. I’m probably one of those people who doesn’t want to step forward because I hate regret too.”
The real me was the kind of person who avoided things out of fear of regret.
Even as a child, when everyone had dreams, I never consistently held onto one.
Seeing my parents worry that even the three-year-old next door had a future dream while I didn’t, I thought I simply wanted to live a life without failure.
The reason someone like me could move forward with an engagement so confidently was because I knew Elupe’s true life.
Even if it wasn’t Kyle, Elupe was destined to be engaged to Rekanon in the original story.
The choice I made was merely to avoid a worst-case scenario I already knew.
So there was no way I would ever regret getting engaged to Kyle.
[“For someone who says that, aren’t you being swayed an awful lot by things that have nothing to do with you?”]
Rysma snorted, clearly unconvinced by what I was saying.
Oddly enough, I wasn’t irritated.
Rather, I felt grateful and apologetic, as if he were genuinely worried about me, the contractor.
Thinking about it, Rysma seemed to have remarkable patience.
If he wanted to, he could see straight through my thoughts, yet he kept his promise to me to the very end.
“To be honest, this engagement is the best choice I could make to avoid being controlled by anyone.”
[“How can you be so sure?”]
Because I saw it myself.
[“There’s no proof that no one intervened in this matter.”]
If someone intervened in this, it would be me, Rysma.
I answered him that way in my mind, but said nothing out loud.
How could I explain that this was a game world and that I made this decision after careful thought because I knew parts of the storyline?
Even thinking about it again, it wouldn’t be respectful to Rysma, who had to live an eternal life unlike humans with their short spans.
“Think whatever you want. I don’t mind.”
[“Then how about actively looking into your bloodline? If you do, you’ll realize just how ridiculous this choice is.”]
At Rysma’s firm voice, the headache I’d thought had gone away throbbed again.
At this point, it felt like the reason memories needed to be found wasn’t because of me, but because of Rysma.
Then what exactly is Rysma trying to find in me?
If there was something this spirit desired, wasn’t it leaving my side?
Come to think of it, the thing he regretted might have been the very day he contracted with me.
“If I find it, does that mean our contract ends or something?”
Rysma flinched at my curt words.
The swirling cluster of light that had been spinning so smoothly suddenly froze like a paused screen.
It looked so much like a toy that I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
[“El, I’ll say this one last time. Neither of us can break the contract. It will continue until one of us dies.”]
Rysma’s gloomy voice tightened around my chest, making it hard to breathe. My throat felt dry, and for no reason my eyes grew hot.
Was I always this emotional?
[“I’m afraid of regret, but I still want to move forward.”]
The Rysma who I thought would leave suddenly appeared in front of me in human form.
He looked like a sturdy man, gazing at me with deep, steady eyes.
Rysma’s vibrant hair, full of life, and his clear eyes were more than enough to leave me dazed.
“……”
He gently brushed my hair back behind my ear, his face full of anxious concern.
“There may be a future ahead that we can’t see even an inch into, but I don’t intend to retreat.”
“…Yeah.”
“You should be the same.”
I thought it was strange how Rysma spoke as if it required tremendous resolve.
Yet I didn’t want to argue. The look in his eyes as he watched me was far too tender.
Spirits did not use their days the way humans did.
They didn’t wake because it was morning or sleep because it was night.
They weren’t beings who recovered strength through short naps or generated energy through meals.
Originally, spirits were born one day from the great forces of nature, and just as suddenly, one day they returned to nature’s embrace. That was their fate. But Rysma’s body had changed.
[“Spirit King! Do you know how worried we were when you suddenly disappeared? We thought you’d vanished after using up all your power again. Sob, sob.”]
[“Are you feeling all right?”]
The clusters of light—no one knew where they came from—found Rysma as he returned to the forest after meeting Elupe and immediately began circling him noisily.
Ignoring them, Rysma frowned and pressed a hand to his forehead.
“I’m dizzy.”
At his words, the clusters of light slowed their movements.
Rysma squeezed his eyes shut, as if even that was unpleasant to look at.
Whenever he met his contractor, Elupe, a drowsiness that only humans felt washed over him.
This sensation weakened Rysma. Once he collapsed as if drunk on sleep, he would dream brief dreams like those ordinary humans talked about.
Thud.
When Rysma finally succumbed to drowsiness and fell, the clusters of light gathered closer around him.
[“A spirit said they recently smelled a dragon nearby. Leaving the Spirit King in a place like this is dangerous.”]
[“Why would a dragon come here…?”]
[“A spirit claimed to have seen one, so we went to check. They said it looked like it was searching for something. Who knows what’s inside that pitch-black heart. Let’s move the Spirit King somewhere safe for now.”]
In an instant, as if protecting their king, Rysma’s form vanished.
The remaining spirits busied themselves erasing their king’s scent. Their movements were tense, as though a dragon might appear here again at any moment.
After Rysma left, I tried to close my eyes just for a moment. But my eyelids were so heavy that it didn’t feel like it would end with just a brief rest.
I thought I needed to force my body to move to get up, but strangely, it felt as if I were a bodiless soul, flailing uselessly.
[“I hope you’ll love him freely in my place.”]
[“If you could gather all the love I couldn’t give until now and give it to him, I’d be so happy…”]
It was far too clear a voice to be mistaken for a ghost.
Only after hearing it several times did I realize that the real Elupe was speaking to me.
Love?
I had no idea who she meant by love.
At first, I thought she meant Rekanon, but something about her voice made it impossible to tell who that love was directed toward.
“Who is the person you love, exactly?”
[“……”]
The only response to my question was the sound of sobbing.
I tried desperately to wake myself up to escape the sound of crying, but I failed every time.
That was when I realized that to wake from this unconscious state, I needed her consent entirely.
“Then… may I ask another question?”
[“A question?”]
“Someone asked me about my biological mother. Do you know anything about her?”
It was something I had always wanted to ask if I ever met the real Elupe.
Rysma didn’t seem willing to tell me, and the count had no reason to be honest with me.
The only one I could cautiously ask was the real Elupe Inferna.
[…“I don’t remember very well. I can only vaguely recall her form.”]
So she didn’t really know anything?
[“But I do know that she carried the blood of a spirit.”]
“Then… does that mean you were born because Count Inferna met a spirit?”
[“To be precise, I heard she was a descendant of spirits… but what good does that do? In the end, she met someone like the count, gave birth to me, and died.”]
At that moment, it felt as if a black hole had formed in my head.
It felt like my soul was being sucked in whole, and a wave of nausea and dizziness washed over me at the same time.
