Chapter 91
An eighteen-year-old girl who had fallen into her first love was as clumsy as she was brave and honest, and she confessed to the prince despite all realistic worries. She revealed her heart and accepted his.
It was bravado that had only been possible because she was a fresh young girl filled with the fiery vigor of youth, believing she could do anything—not a worn and weathered adult battered by the storms of time.
If she had regained the memories of her previous life earlier, if she had recognized the ancient, worn-out soul trapped within her body, would she have rejected the boy?
Who was she to take the boy’s first love? Who was she, how dare she? He deserved to date someone more whole. Not someone like her, torn to shreds by lingering attachments to a previous life and covered in countless scars.
She bore the name Noxia Dekan, yet carried the soul of Hermane—an uncanny being that was neither one nor the other. A ghost of the past, living like a shadow after being forcibly reincarnated despite not being fated to be reborn.
Moreover, in this life she was of humble commoner status. In many ways, she was the worst possible match for Elenon. Not only did she not wholly belong to the same era, but the difference in status caused her to be nothing but a burden to him.
‘Even so.’
And yet.
‘I miss him.’
Because she had truly loved him.
‘I miss him….’
Because she still loved him.
But after becoming the target of crime simply for dating the prince, she no longer had the courage to be with him and had even erased her memories—there was no way she could return to him now.
She could only earnestly hope that the boy who had forgotten her would be happy. In this life—her first and last—she hoped he would be loved for a long, long time and live in good health.
If only that much were granted, she felt she might be able to forget him as well. Perhaps. Someday. After tearful effort.
No, in truth, she had no certainty.
Even so, Noxia tried. Now she strove to focus more on the ties of her previous life than on the identity of her present one.
‘I should have done this from the beginning.’
If she hadn’t rejected Promeon at first and had cleanly followed him, wouldn’t she have suffered less?
In her past life as well, instead of ending her life to escape him, if she had accepted him—if she had turned a blind eye to the fact that he had kidnapped and confined her in the name of love—perhaps it would have been easier.
Now it was a pointless hypothesis. Noxia folded away her regrets about her previous life and decided to focus on finishing this life as smoothly as possible.
She traveled to many places with Promeon. Thanks to that, she no longer needed to work to make a living, and there was no reason to stay in one place every day for work.
For someone like him, who had accumulated countless strange abilities over long ages, turning dirt into gold was not particularly difficult.
At times, they did not even need money. It was enough to bewitch people. For example, if they brainwashed a hotel owner into mistakenly believing he had already been paid, they could continue staying there with free room and board.
“Isn’t that too shameless?”
Once, when Promeon heard Noxia muttering as if to herself, he wore an expression like a puppy watching its owner’s mood again. He asked cautiously,
“Then should I get a job and earn money?”
Noxia stared at Promeon. For someone who did not officially exist in this world, getting a job would require all sorts of forgeries, and in her view that was not a very good solution.
“…Forget it. After killing people, it’s strange for me to suddenly argue about conscience over something like this.”
What was this, really? What was so significant about deceiving someone and staying at a hotel for free? After all, they did not even officially exist on paper. Such crooked thoughts came to her.
In the end, Noxia gradually became colored by Promeon’s abnormal standards. From the start, his common sense had been quite different from that of ordinary people. His very existence was not ordinary.
When she had lived as Noxia Dekan, she had been a diligent, law-abiding ordinary citizen. Now she began to change herself little by little, slowly, yet surely.
At times, it was hard even to realize that she had changed. In a world that seemed to contain only the two of them, everything else lost meaning. In this era, only the two of them were outsiders.
In truth, besides the two of them there was also Pellene, but Noxia tried not to think too deeply about Karnen Holvie, her friend from this life.
Thus, spending each day idly wandering in unfamiliar places with oblivion as her main goal, before she knew it, the seasons changed.
“It’s winter.”
One day, Noxia said it suddenly while staring blankly out the window. It was a rather belated realization, yet also something she had completely forgotten until now.
“That’s right, it’s winter.”
Promeon replied calmly beside her. In fact, it had already been quite some time since autumn ended, but he did not bother to point that out. The change of seasons was rather meaningless to him anyway.
Noxia wore an uncomfortable expression. It was the look she made whenever a memory she had failed to forget surfaced while she was living solely to forget.
“…Is there a sea near here?”
Noxia asked abruptly. Promeon shook his head.
“No. But I can take you somewhere that has a sea.”
Noxia sank into thought for a moment. At last, she pleaded softly.
“Take me to the sea.”
An old promise came to mind. No, in truth it was not that old. Yet it felt distant, as if it had been made a hundred years ago.
“Alright.”
Promeon spoke gently. He held out his hand to her.
Now very accustomed, Noxia clasped it. They had been staying in the same hotel room for days, but there was no need to pack or check out.
Promeon lightly lifted Noxia into his arms. As he swept through space with his fluttering hem, the scenery changed in an instant.
Blinking, Noxia looked around. Before her stretched yellow-brown sand and a jade-colored sea. It was a long bay where only the two of them existed.
Though she did not know the exact name of the place, it was clearly a warm region where the winter climate was not very harsh. Even though a sharp wind blew hard enough to toss her hair, it was not as cold as expected.
Promeon gently set Noxia down on the sand. Without sparing him a glance, she looked only at the sea and slowly walked forward.
She stopped just before the line where the waves dampened the sand. The seawater that had rushed in broke into white foam at her feet, then gradually disappeared, dyeing the fine sand coffee-brown.
Fixing her gaze on the horizon, Noxia stood motionless like a statue, silent without end.
It had certainly been broad daylight at the hotel just moments ago, but now the golden sunset dyed the surface of the water the same color.
From a few steps away, Promeon quietly watched Noxia’s back. Anxiety welled up within him. Even as she stood firm like a rock, she looked so precarious, as though she might suddenly vanish before his eyes.
Promeon opened his mouth to call her, then changed his mind at the last moment and closed it. Even if she turned back to look at him now, it did not seem that this vast distance between them would be filled.
He simply waited. He had filled a life close to immortality with waiting; waiting a little longer would change nothing.
Even if it took weeks, months, or even years for her to fully turn toward him, as long as she remained somewhere he could see and reach, he could endure patiently.
May she, in this life, live out her natural lifespan by his side. May he accomplish in this life what he could not in the first.
‘And after that.’
Unlike the last time, when she ended her life by suicide—after she peacefully lived out her full span and her soul returned to paradise.
‘Then I, at last….’
At last, his opportunity would come.
“Promeon.”
Only when the burning red sunset was completely swallowed by the horizon did Noxia finally turn back to him.
“I’m hungry.”
That abrupt declaration might have seemed rude, but Promeon smiled without the slightest displeasure.
“Alright, let’s go eat.”
In any case, in their relationship, her rudeness could not truly exist.
Her entire life was his responsibility. It was an extra life that had come into being because he had forcibly reincarnated her.
So no matter what she said from now on, whatever attitude she showed, however cruelly she treated him, he would merely smile and obey. Like a loyal hound tamed to its master’s hand.
“Come here.”
At the same time, in that all of it ultimately stemmed from his own desire, he was no different from a tyrant even as a loyal hound. Though she was his master, she had been held by his leash since her previous life.
Noxia approached Promeon and leaned into his arms. He lightly lifted her again and vanished into the darkness like flowing water.
Pressing close to her lover from her previous life, Noxia thought, The winter sea is nothing special after all.
In the end, she could not keep the promise she had made with her first love of this life.
The year changed. Noxia said,
“I want to live mingling among people.”
Even now, there were many people around Noxia. Hotel managers, maids who came to clean, employees at restaurants, taverns, and teahouses. She had never been alone for a single moment.
Yet they were like shadows—fleeting beings who passed even more fleetingly through her already ephemeral life, meaningless and emotionless like dolls.
For a while, she had no dissatisfaction with this. After erasing the memories of those who knew Noxia Dekan and choosing to sever ties with this life, she had relied solely on Promeon.
Her lover from her previous life was both heartless and impossible to hate, the only being in this era who could understand and embrace her.
An immortal and a reincarnator. Amid ordinary people, it seemed that they could rely and depend only on each other.
Even if she had merely brainwashed herself to accept the current situation more easily, it did not matter. She only wanted to think in whatever way was comfortable. Trying any harder than this was painful.
But after spending so long with only the two of them, her sense of loneliness deepened. Though she had chosen to sever ties with this life, it did not mean she had completely lost human emotions.
“I want to live like an ordinary person too. Even if all of it is just an act.”
And humans were, by design, beings who feared loneliness terribly.
“We’re not going to die right away anyway. I don’t know how much of my lifespan remains, but it could be decades. I don’t want to spend all that time like this.”
Promeon, dulled and broken by long ages and closer to a god than a human, could endure looking at her alone for a lifetime. But Noxia could not. She needed moderate interaction with various people.
