CHAPTER 20…………………………………………………….
In the eerily quiet office, only the sound of Karthys Perdian’s pen could be heard.
His face, as he signed the documents, looked utterly exhausted.
His dry expression was listless, and the skin around his eyes was deeply sunken.
He looked as though he had barely slept, exhaustion etched deeply into him.
Even the knights guarding the office were suffering.
Their master was so sensitive to the slightest movement that they were not allowed to shift even an inch.
In the end, they had reached a transcendent level of communication—speaking only through eye signals.
‘Damn it. When is this going to end?’
‘How would I know? It’s already been five hours.’
For five hours straight, they stared at their unmoving master with a hint of resentment.
Then, a bird flying outside the window slipped through the open gap.
It lightly fluttered in and perched on the edge of the desk.
Karthys, who had not taken his eyes off the documents, broke the silence and took the letter tied to the bird’s leg.
He gestured with his hand, signaling them to leave.
The knights quickly exited the office, fearing he might revoke the order.
Now only Karthys and the bird remained.
Unlike ordinary birds, it sat calmly, spreading its wings in relaxation.
Karthys’s indifferent expression softened slightly.
A faint smile appeared on his usually dry lips.
So slight and brief that he himself might not have realized it.
His hand, opening the letter with a paper knife, was uncharacteristically hurried.
His silver-white eyes flickered with something unusual. His gaze never left the letter; he read it once, then again.
The fact that Psyche had not left his thoughts filled him with uncontrollable joy.
Suppressing a laugh threatening to escape, Karthys sealed the letter again and quietly called the bird’s name.
“Harper.”
The bird that knew its own name, Harper, fluttered noisily.
“You don’t have to pretend to be just a bird in front of me.”
Harper immediately spread its wings wide.
Its eyes were sharp and anything but ordinary.
“Even if you say that, you’re still a beast.”
[Hey, do you even know how powerful I am among beasts?]
Harper flew around indignantly, chirping loudly.
It would have looked ridiculous in the form of a small bird.
Harper was not an ordinary bird—it was a beast.
Beasts and monsters were different. Monsters had no intelligence and could not think properly, but beasts possessed intelligence comparable to humans.
They did not randomly attack humans like monsters; instead, they lived while protecting their territory.
That was why it was extremely rare for a beast to form a master-servant relationship with a human like Karthys and Harper.
Beasts were proud creatures and rarely bowed their heads to humans.
Karthys and Harper were exceptions.
Watching Harper boast in front of him, Karthys frowned.
“Stop making noise and come here.”
[Why should I listen to you? You human.]
“You’re the one bound to me, that ‘human,’ remember?”
Harper pecked aggressively at the desk.
[To think I’m being used as a messenger bird!]
“You’re a bird anyway. That’s your original form.”
[Still, I don’t feel dignified at all.]
“Stop complaining. How is Psyche doing?”
As Harper hopped around the desk, Karthys grabbed it by the neck and lifted it.
Harper let out a strange screech.
“Speak.”
[Ps… Psyche, was it? Anyway, that kind human woman? Her complexion wasn’t good. She looked pale and drained. Are all human women that weak?]
“Her condition… is not good?”
Karthys’s face darkened instantly.
His anxious expression turned serious.
He exhaled repeatedly, clearly worried.
“Go check on Psyche right now.”
[How dare you order me around—!]
Harper grumbled, annoyed at having to act like a real bird again.
But seeing Karthys’s serious expression, it gave up with a defeated chirp and flew out through the window.
Karthys rested his chin on his hand, then placed his chain-dangling glasses on the desk and closed his eyes.
Even he knew the order he had given Harper was impulsive.
An unsettling sense of anxiety kept growing inside him.
Restlessness, trembling, worry…
Feelings unfamiliar to Karthys.
His heart sank heavily at this unfamiliar emotion.
He wanted to see her. It had not even been a full day—how ridiculous and pathetic was that?
Realizing even a fraction of his feelings, he clenched his fist tightly.
“Love, huh.”
No. No… it had to not be that.
Absolutely not. He did not believe in something like love.
His mother had been that way. His father had been that way.
Karthys bit his lip.
Unpleasant memories pierced through his mind, slowly resurfacing.
This feeling never became familiar, no matter how many times it returned.
Perhaps because the memories were still so vivid.
His mother had been frail, always sickly.
She hated his father to the core—and also hated Karthys, who resembled him.
The reason she despised his father so much was their forced marriage.
She had originally loved someone else.
But under pressure from her family, she was married off to the Duke of Perdian, a man rumored to be a monster.
His father, on the other hand, had fallen in love with her at first sight.
But her heart already belonged to someone else, and she never opened it to him.
His father’s one-sided love exhausted her, and when Karthys was born between them, everything spiraled into the worst ending.
Already weak, his mother eventually died of illness when Karthys was nine.
Afterward, his father also fell into despair and soon died as well.
After their deaths, Karthys realized something.
That love was an unnecessary emotion.
Something meaningless—neither helpful nor needed in life.
He understood this at the age of thirteen.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Everything disappears in the face of time anyway.
Once he understood what strange force was tied to Psyche, he would lose all interest.
Then erasing any lingering feelings would be easy.
“If I just find the spirit stone…”
He could return north with light steps.
Karthys resolved to remain rational and returned to his documents.
But his hands would not move properly.
A sudden pain, as if a blunt weapon had struck his heart, made him clutch his chest and gasp.
“Ugh…”
Painful groans spilled from his lips.
The sensation of his heart burning black was unbearably cruel.
The throbbing discomfort was nauseating.
Even Karthys—who was accustomed to pain from torn flesh and bleeding wounds—could do nothing against it.
“Damn it…”
A curse slipped out naturally.
Why was Psyche’s face floating before his eyes as his head pounded?
A hallucination appeared.
Psyche stood by the window of his estate, crying.
She looked unbearably sorrowful.
Her reddened eyes were filled with transparent tears.
Wearing a white dress fluttering in the wind, she cried as though her heart were breaking.
Her pale face had no color left, making her look almost dead.
She didn’t seem human anymore. She murmured something, tears falling drop by drop.
She bit her lip tightly—pitifully so.
What was she crying about so desperately…?
Karthys widened his eyes and focused on her lips.
‘I love you… and I’m sorry…’
And as she finished those words, she fell—down… down from the mansion.
Even knowing it was a hallucination, Karthys reached out.
He called her name desperately.
But the illusion vanished.
And he was left staring blankly.
His chest ached, and the pain slowly subsided.
It felt unreal—yet terrifyingly real.
The image of her falling slowly refused to disappear.
As if demanding to be remembered.
“Strange.”
Psyche… who was she?
Had they really met before?
Otherwise, why did his breath catch and chest ache whenever he thought of her?
What had he forgotten?
“…A person you met a very long time ago.”
According to her, where had they met?
Karthys frowned, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu.
Was the reason he thought of her because of fragments of a forgotten memory?
It felt like a piece of memory had been tightly locked away.
He couldn’t remember.
Yet he couldn’t bring himself to think her words were lies.
No—he knew they weren’t lies.
“I… damn it.”
He hated feeling like he knew nothing.
Why was I drawn to Psyche in the first place? The spring-like energy around her? Or… another seasonal force I vaguely sensed? Or maybe that necklace with its strong resistance? And why did she hide it?
The energy from that necklace had felt familiar.
But he had never actually crossed paths with Psyche.
Even when he came down to the capital, he used the Perdian estate’s gate—there was no way they should have met.
Then… was Psyche Benoain truly in a forgotten fragment of his memory?
Why couldn’t he remember her?
The more he tried to dig deeper, the more his head throbbed in pain.
Karthys exhaled softly. Something was clearly blocking his thoughts.
As if an invisible force was telling him not to remember.
