Chapter 125
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 125
Where on earth was this? The afterlife?
His desperate cry of her name, the sensation of being pulled back from the brink—it must have all been an illusion.
Staring up at a strange, exposed-wood ceiling, Seo-ah smiled faintly. The air was temperate and refreshing, the surface beneath her soft. It felt as if she had slept in some wonderful place. If this was what came after death, it wouldn't be so bad.
Where would she go now?
She turned her head, taking in a rustic wooden wall, a window, and the curtain draped over it. Then, a sudden gaze fell upon her, so intense it felt as though it burned her skin.
She turned her head in the opposite direction.
There, a truly surreal sight greeted her.
“…”
“…”
It was the first time she had ever seen him with a beard. Dark stubble shadowed his jaw, making his face seem thinner than usual. His deep blue eyes were like bottomless wells.
“…Did you wait for me?”
She didn’t know why she asked. The words simply slipped out. Oscar, who had been staring at her blankly, answered after a moment.
“I did.”
“You waited for me?”
“Yes.”
His calm reply made her smile for some reason.
She had always averted her eyes, lowering her head to avoid his intense gaze, but now she felt no need to. Had she ever been the type to bow her head in the first place?
Smiling softly, she held his gaze, her eyes fixed on the sun-like heat in his blue ones.
“Why?”
“…”
Oscar didn’t answer. He just stared at her, his gaze unwavering. The heat dwelling in those deep eyes, fixed solely on her, seemed to banish the soul-deep chill that had clung to her. That was why she didn’t want to look away. Just meeting his eyes seemed to warm her.
“Are you hurt?”
“…Not at all.”
“I’m glad.”
“…”
“Thank you.”
“…For what.”
“For waiting for me.”
“…”
“I… I always wished someone would wait for me. I always thought that.”
A world with no one to wait for is lonely, but a world where not a single person waits for you is lonelier still.
A faint chuckle escaped her lips.
As it did, sleep began to wash over her again. Drowsiness crept in. She slowly blinked, and each time she opened her eyes, his deep blue ones were still fixed on her.
If this was the end, there was one more thing she wanted to say.
“…I’m sorry.”
A whisper, as delicate as a butterfly’s wing, drifted into the warm air. Then, Seo-ah’s eyes fluttered closed.
*
He didn’t know how much time had passed. He had just been sitting there.
His life had never amounted to much anyway.
Oscar had always known he held no great affection for his own existence. At first, he had moved forward with the belief that everything would fall into place once Reinhardt was rebuilt. But after realizing there was no “right place” to begin with, he saw no reason to die, as his death would only benefit his enemies.
He had no reason to live, but no reason to die, either.
Paradoxically, that might have been why he rebuilt his house with such dazzling speed—he had nothing to lose. He threw himself into situations where failure meant losing a limb. He felt no anxiety about what might happen if things went wrong. He had nothing to lose in the first place.
But it seemed there was something like this at his very core.
A lethargy so profound he couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger seeped into him like water into a sponge. Having long stopped tracking time, Oscar simply kept watch by her bedside.
The attending physician visited every thirty minutes. Though Oscar had ordered him to wake her, the physician only parroted the same useless words and brought food she couldn’t eat.
“If you continue without eating or sleeping, even a constitution of steel will collapse.”
He wanted to tell the man to mind his own business, but even speaking felt like too much effort. The arc of the sun and moon, the transition from day to night—it was all meaningless. At some point, even the irritating voices of the Wolves faded from his hearing.
The world began to turn gray, the color leeching from the edges of his vision until his entire world was monochrome. Objects were distinguished only by the contrast of light and shadow.
His thoughts, stagnant as spoiled water, drifted through time and space. They wandered into the distant future, strayed into the far past, and plunged into the abyss again and again.
Who was this woman, to appear one day and render him unable to so much as lift a finger? If she were to disappear just like this, would he be fine?
Oscar leaned back in his chair, staring at the sunlight that now appeared as nothing more than a stark, white glare.
Well. To answer that, he would first have to redefine what it meant to be “fine.”
It was while he was enduring this silent, gray world, not even blinking, that a small movement stirred the scene that had been frozen like a pencil sketch.
Oscar’s gaze lowered.
His breath caught in his throat.
The woman, who had been softly blinking at the ceiling, slowly turned her head. She looked at the wooden wall, then the curtain. In the hazy, white sunlight, the fine peach fuzz on her earlobe shimmered, a stark contrast to the black hair covering her slender neck.
Was this a dream?
After staring at the hazy sunlight for a long time, she slowly turned her head toward him.
Her face turning to his, her round eyes meeting his gaze without flinching—it all felt utterly surreal.
“…Did you wait for me?”
Her raspy voice pierced his ears. It took Oscar a long moment before he could force his own mouth open.
“…I did.”
At that, her eyes widened slightly, as if in disbelief. “You waited for me?” she asked again.
This time, he answered without delay.
“Yes.”
Her wide, round eyes curved into crescents. A tiny wrinkle formed on her straight nose, and her pale cheeks puffed slightly. Her lips, always so tightly pressed, parted to reveal a glimpse of white teeth.
Han Seo-ah was smiling.
He found himself wondering what color that smile was.
The world, which had slowly faded to gray, began to regain its color, starting from the eyes that met his. Like watercolor spreading across a canvas, rich hues bled back into the frame.
The sunlight, once merely white, now flowed like gold across her hair, like ivory on her rounded cheeks, and like a warm, woody brown in the eyes that looked at him.
As the colors returned, the world that had receded from him came rushing back.
The breeze slipping through the open window rustled the thin curtain. The chirping of birds outside the mountain cabin mingled with the smile that bloomed on her pink lips.
With the return of this vivid, water-soaked world, he forgot the anxiety that had thrummed under his skin, the chill that had crept down his spine, and the lethargy that had left him unable to move.
The mountain cabin, filled with soft light and birdsong, and the woman looking at him from the simple bed—they were the only things that filled his senses.
She, who could rarely meet his gaze, now stared at him quietly, as if lost in thought. Looking at him with those clear, transparent eyes he had feared he might never see again, she kept smiling. Her smile was like a soft breeze, brushing against his heart.
After smiling for a long while, she asked, “Are you hurt?”
When Oscar finally managed to reply, “Not at all,” she said brightly, “I’m glad.”
Then she thanked him for waiting, murmuring that she, too, had always wished for someone to wait for her. Leaving those words behind like a final will, she seemed to drift back to sleep.
Her eyelids fluttered a few times. When they finally closed, Oscar, who had been sitting in the same spot for days, shot to his feet. He placed his fingers on the nape of her neck.
Thump… thump…
The steady pulse beneath his fingertips spurred the man who had been rotting alive into motion. He strode resolutely out of the cabin.
As he flung the door open, a chilly wind swept over him. The Wolves lingering nearby turned toward him as one. None dared to approach; they all just watched, gauging his mood.
Taking a few steps out of the cabin, Oscar stared blankly at the sky.
Whether this was a dream or reality, whether what he had just seen was an illusion or not… he needed confirmation.
Oscar growled at the Wolves, who were treading on eggshells around him.
“Where is the physician?”
It was the eleventh day since he had shut himself away with Seo-ah.
*
The attending physician of Reinhardt was a sinner.
Just as Oscar von Reinhardt’s day wasn't twenty-four hours long, neither was his. The check-ups, scheduled every thirty minutes, were such an ordeal that a single minute felt like a thousand years.
He was practically at death’s door.
If a gaze possessed physical force, he would have been reduced to dust long ago.
He didn’t know how pathetic he looked to the man who insisted on staying by the patient’s side around the clock, but a physician was meant to help a patient recover. If there were a laceration, he would tend to the wound, but this was a situation where they could do nothing but wait for her to regain consciousness. Yet Oscar, who at some point had stopped even rising from his chair, would glare at him with sharp intensity every thirty minutes.
What an incompetent, useless bastard.
The man had a knack for projecting his thoughts straight into one’s mind without saying a word.
But that, too, was about to change.