Chapter 124
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 124
The sight was so familiar that the attending physician could easily deduce this was how Oscar had spent his days and nights—without food or sleep.
Having served Oscar for a long time, the doctor had once wondered if the man was even capable of feeling despair or fear. He had assumed not. The very idea of an Oscar consumed by despair was something he couldn't have fathomed.
Despair and fear were emotions reserved for those who held something precious. For Oscar, who regarded nothing in this world as important, anger might exist, but despair and fear surely did not. Or so the doctor had thought.
Yet now, the thick shroud of despair and fear enveloping him was almost tangible. The despair of the Black Wolf—a man who held the world in his palm—seemed to manifest as this complete neglect of his own well-being.
"I will return in thirty minutes, Your Excellency."
Leaving the still-silent Oscar behind, the attending physician turned to leave.
He couldn't help but think that, paradoxically, the only peaceful person in the entire mountain cabin was the unconscious woman on the bed.
* * *
She didn't know how long she had been there. She was simply sitting.
As she always did, she sat in the shade of a pine tree, gazing out at the distant sea.
It was a perfect day to launch a boat. Sunlight danced like sparkling jewels across the calm water, and the gentle, rhythmic lapping of the waves against the cliff tickled her ears. Fluffy clusters of clouds gathered where the sea met the sky, and fishing boats with yellow sails rowed out toward the open ocean.
"You're here again."
At the low voice from behind, she scrambled to her feet, but he was already closing in.
"Do you have any idea how hard I looked for you?"
Her gaze drifted from the sea down to the ground. The thick root of a tree protruded from the cracked earth. As she idly nudged it with the toe of her shoe, her grandfather stepped closer.
"Hmm. This… Ah, yes. I remember now. This is the coat your master wore when she first arrived. Why are you wearing it?"
Only then did Seo-ah realize she was wearing Theresia's coat.
"Oh, why am I wearing this…?"
Her voice trailed off. Her mind felt choked with fog. She had no idea why she was wearing this coat or how she had even put it on.
With no answers coming to mind, a heavy, dull ache pressed down on her chest. A suffocating emptiness, larger than her own body, felt as if it had crawled inside her ribs and coiled itself tight.
Seo-ah instinctively clutched her chest.
"I don't know, Grandfather. Why I'm here, why I'm wearing Master's coat… I don't know anything…"
Unable to stand any longer, she sank to the ground, pulling her knees to her chest. She wrapped her arms tightly around her legs, curling herself into the smallest possible shape, and buried her face between her knees.
Hong-heon gazed down at his granddaughter's utterly crumpled soul with sorrowful, heavy eyes.
She had not always been this way. No soul was born into this world already broken.
But as she grew and realized how different she looked from others, Seo-ah had gradually locked herself away in a tiny, confined world. To a child who viewed her own face as a mark of sin, being told to hold her head high was nothing but an empty demand. He had wanted to tell her that none of it was her fault, but he had held back, fearing that doing so would only carve the existence of her father deeper into her mind.
He had urged her to hold her head high without ever creating an environment where she could, and so the child had quietly crumpled in the shadows, out of sight.
Hong-heon sat beside the curled-up girl for a long time, but his own time was running short.
He spoke with all the sincerity in his heart.
"My child, you owe me nothing."
Her back, so painfully thin it made his heart ache, flinched.
"So, do not look for me anymore."
"..."
"You have already given me everything, and I have received everything from you."
Hong-heon gently stroked her curled head.
"Lift your head."
Slowly, her lovely face, framed by soft bangs, tilted upward. He hoped she could understand without words how precious her transparent, soul-baring eyes were to him, and how much joy it brought him just to look into them.
'You were my greatest joy. Just like your name.'
Yet, no matter how wide he opened his mouth, the words refused to leave his throat. Perhaps words left unspoken in life could never truly be delivered after death.
In the end, this was the only truth he could offer her:
"...Lift your head, my child."
Her grandfather's voice, once so solid, scattered in all directions like dandelion seeds caught in a sudden gust. Seo-ah reached out in a panic, but like those elusive seeds, his words slipped through her fingers and vanished into the empty air.
"Grandfather!"
As she sat curled on the ground, the sky above darkened rapidly. The drifting clouds vanished, and the once-shimmering sea churned into a violent tempest. Heavy black clouds choked the sky, unleashing a freezing gale and a flurry of snow.
A bitter, biting cold swept through the world now that her grandfather was gone. In a world stripped of everyone who had ever loved her, the light died, too. The howling wind drove a blinding blizzard that whited out her vision before plunging everything into pitch-blackness.
Seo-ah squeezed her eyes shut and curled herself even tighter. Covering her ears, she braced against the onslaught, simply enduring. The wind howled so fiercely she couldn't tell where the pain was coming from.
Something began to pour over her head. She could see nothing, feel nothing. It all happened in the blink of an eye.
When she opened her eyes again, she felt as though she were trapped inside a grave.
Am I dead?
The absolute, pitch-black darkness brought a swift sense of resignation.
Yes, I must be dead.
She accepted her demise and closed her eyes, only for a voice to echo from the far reaches of the void.
"Han Seo-ah!"
It took her a moment to realize that was her name. Was it because hearing her childhood name spoken with her family name felt so foreign? No. It was because the voice crying out her name sounded so utterly desperate.
Seo-ah let out a hollow laugh.
There was no one left in this world to mourn her death.
No one to say goodbye to, no one to ask how she was doing, no one for her to wait for, and no one to wait for her.
They had all vanished like scattered dandelion seeds.
Therefore, that desperate cry she had just heard must be nothing more than a lingering attachment she was projecting onto the world.
A lingering desire to have meant something to someone. A foolish, pathetic wish that at least one person out there might be waiting for her.
It was an auditory hallucination born of foolish longing. Yet, the voice that should have been a mere illusion only grew louder.
"Han Seo-ah!"
She heard the sound of heavy debris being cleared away from above her, piece by piece. The invisible weight crushing her was slowly lifting.
"...Oscar."
She breathed his name without realizing it. She didn't even know why his name had come to mind. Yet, like a magic spell, the name swept away the thick fog clouding her thoughts.
Oscar.
Just like his name—unfamiliar yet striking—he was a man whose very shadow was captivating. But he was out of reach, someone she should never have dared to touch.
She had deceived him. But even if it meant resorting to deception, she had to stay by his side.
Sensing another person's presence was usually as natural as breathing, but Oscar's presence was different. Whenever he moved, every single one of her nerves seemed to hyper-focus on him.
Was it out of fear? Or was it because his presence carried such an exceptionally heavy weight?
Only now, in this moment of accepting her death, did Seo-ah finally understand why.
Those vivid blue eyes.
In the rare moments she had dared to meet the gaze she usually avoided… deep within those seemingly icy blue eyes, she had seen a searing, smoldering desire directed entirely at her.
A smoldering desire?
Had she ever spoken those words aloud, anyone listening would have laughed in her face. In fact, she had been so unable to admit it to herself that she had never even allowed herself to fully form the thought.
But now, she finally understood.
He appeared as cold as frost, yet the desire buried deep within him burned hotter than the sun, threatening to consume her.
She didn't know what that desire was, nor did she understand the emotion behind it. Yet, like a foolish moth diving into a flame despite knowing it meant death, she had been helplessly drawn to his scorching heat.
Ever since her grandfather—who had been like a great, sheltering tree—vanished from her life, she had felt like a hollow shell, merely surviving on emptiness. But this man, who approached her with a burning intensity and laid bare the raw desire from his depths, was like a massive tidal wave. He flooded every crack and crevice of her being, leaving no empty space behind.
Wherever his gaze lingered, it felt as though a brand had been seared into her skin—even if, in the end, his interest was nothing more than an obsession with a key or a passing curiosity.
"Lift your head."
Perhaps that was why her throat had tightened so painfully at his cold command, so starkly different from her grandfather's gentle voice.
How incredibly foolish she was.
"Just go…"
A choked, raspy voice slipped from her lips.
The space above her was a chaotic din of stones being cleared away. The suffocating darkness that had threatened to crush, oppress, and ultimately kill her was slowly thinning.
And finally, when the last stone pressing down on her was lifted—
A faint light pierced through, feeling as blindingly intense as the sun. It was merely the glow of a lantern, yet it dazzled her eyes.
Even in the gloom, Oscar's blue eyes were burning. His gaze remained as searingly hot as a brand.
He leaned down toward her. Reaching out, he pulled her from her confinement in one swift motion.
In that instant, the heavy ache that had been pressing down on her chest vanished as if it had all been a lie.
Her eyes drifted shut.
How much time had passed?
When she opened her eyes once more, the world had changed again.
This time, a soft, hazy light poured over her from nearby. Dazzled, she blinked repeatedly. Once her vision finally adjusted to the brightness, an unfamiliar ceiling came into view.