#62
The moment of touching and then pulling away felt so unfamiliar again that I couldn’t help but have a slightly awkward expression.
How should I describe that emotion?
Was it surprise, joy, or… anxiety?
“Hmm… it seems like you still have a slight fever. I’ll bring a wet towel again! Just a moment!”
He shot up abruptly, and I followed his retreating figure with my eyes.
“Ahaha, go ahead then.”
Really. He’s so consistent.
Full of worries, quick to act, and deep in thought.
I quietly watched Sercil as he left.
His retreating figure was smaller and more slender than I’d expected.
The silhouette of an ordinary young man, like someone’s younger brother or friend, hidden behind the strength and determination I always felt from him.
‘…It’s upsetting how kind he is.’
If this kindness he shows me truly comes from a pure heart.
The more pure it is, the more it upsets me.
Because I know better than anyone that I don’t deserve to receive that heart completely.
Why are protagonists always so kind?
As someone who was once a writer, I know.
Such characters are loved by readers.
But now… that purity frightens me.
He has no idea that I’m the person who once ruined his life.
I remember that fact.
That final scene before my regression.
His appearance as he withered away because of me.
Remembering him before regression, withering away yet not resenting me, I couldn’t help but feel bitter.
* * *
Sercil stopped short as soon as he came out.
Because the Prince’s expression looking at him was subtly bitter.
He had definitely been smiling until just before leaving the room, but the moment he closed the door and turned around, his changed complexion was so stark—it couldn’t be dismissed as mere illusion.
That smile looked like a familiar expression crafted while pressing down on an old wound by himself.
The corners of his mouth were curved, but the edges of his eyes were strangely lonely.
He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was different, but the sensation that ‘something was strange’ remained vividly.
His gaze was clearly gentle, and his tone was peaceful as always, but the emotion hidden within was completely unidentifiable.
Like frost quietly settled on cold water.
Sitting quietly as if nothing was wrong, but an atmosphere that would suddenly take your breath away if you approached.
Even though every word and breath was subtly soft and affectionate, there was some unknowable ‘distance’ seeping through it.
That ambiguous distance that seemed within reach if you got closer, yet not even a fingertip could touch.
For the first time, Sercil felt that the Prince’s emotions were ‘invisible’ to him.
A small, momentary crack formed in himself, who had believed he understood all of the Prince’s words and actions.
Like a landscape hidden behind thick fog, something whose form couldn’t be gauged yet whose texture could be felt.
That texture was sharp.
Not the moist fog of dawn, but a sensation like the smell of blood spreading in darkness.
Whether it was memory, pain, or perhaps irreversible loss.
Sercil couldn’t know its identity, but he instinctively realized that it wasn’t simple acting or a calculated expression.
Standing for a moment in the air where that emotion had seeped, he suddenly looked at the cloth in his hands and blinked once.
In that moment alone, time seemed to flow a little slower, and some instinctive sense within Sercil stirred as if trying to capture that expression.
He felt like he would face that expression again someday.
Since he felt he wouldn’t be able to smile then, he wanted to remember it more precisely now.
Sercil slowly exhaled and sat in front of the basin filled with water.
There wasn’t even the sound of water. It was quiet, as if all the air currents in the room had stopped.
Alone in the space, Sercil was continuing his thoughts when he unconsciously stopped his hand.
The piece of cloth slipped from his fingertips and remained still on the water’s surface.
As it floated on the water and lost its weight, a piece of Sercil’s heart also quietly surfaced.
The piece of cloth crumpled in the cold water.
His senses gradually returned.
The sensation of cold water seeped into his fingertips, and that chill climbed up his hand and to his wrist.
But Sercil didn’t raise his head.
Though his hand in the cold water felt numb, Sercil was lost in thought and didn’t notice.
His consciousness wasn’t focused on his fingertips.
All his nerves were fixed on one expression of the Prince remaining in the room beyond the door.
‘What was that expression, really?’
Sercil had seen countless faces.
Smiling faces, angry faces, hiding faces, concealing faces.
But Prince Ersen’s expression didn’t belong to any of those categories.
An emotion that had never been spoken to anyone, that wasn’t connected to any memory.
It was something unexplainable.
It wasn’t simple embarrassment or regret. It was an emotion arising from something deeper, older, and perhaps already irreversible.
It was the gaze of someone who knew something.
Not hiding something, but the trajectory of an emotion that only someone who possessed it could reveal.
That emotion made Sercil uncomfortable.
It was the first time the Prince’s expression, kinder than anyone’s, felt so distant.
Sercil couldn’t understand.
Why he found himself trying to remember those eyes without realizing it.
Why he kept ruminating on that scene in his head instead of erasing it.
Why, even at this moment, his chest felt coldly painful.
That ‘guilt’ was directed toward himself.
However, Sercil didn’t know.
What kind of emotion that gaze was, who that expression was directed toward.
Only his instincts urged him to remember it.
That strange sign disappeared quickly, but Sercil couldn’t easily pass it by.
A premonition that this small, subtle emotion would become a clue to something bigger someday.
He knows.
His premonitions are generally not wrong.
‘Did he say he had a constitution for wielding emotions? Is that why?’
If that were true, it was a terrifyingly quiet and frightening ability.
This anxiety he was feeling now, this ambiguous emotion—if it was because of that constitution…
If that’s the case, it’s a frightening constitution.
Whether it’s sincere or acting.
The power to make even oneself unable to distinguish.
That was a more dangerous weapon than magic.
To become so concerned over an expression whose truth was unknown.
Just moments ago, he believed he understood him completely.
Now he felt like he was in a fog where he couldn’t see an inch ahead.
The same peaceful face as before, the same faint smile as usual. But Sercil knew he had definitely seen that momentary expression.
Eyes that capture moments.
Precisely in that instant, a piece of Prince Ersen’s heart had momentarily been exposed at the bottom.
Whatever it was.
Even if it had passed by fleetingly.
It hadn’t disappeared.
Rather, it remained in Sercil’s chest more vividly, more sharply.
Sercil’s gaze became mysteriously profound in that moment.
His always warm and steady eyes wavered strangely.
He didn’t know if it was fear, compassion, or—something else.
He couldn’t get his bearings, not knowing how to understand this person.
Ersen Mayer.
Who is he?
Someone’s shadow wearing the mask of a prince.
Sercil knew that he harbored something unknown.
“Your Highness, I don’t know what kind of poison it was, but they said no one knows that Your Highness drank poison at that ball.”
That statement was the truth he had confirmed with his own eyes.
There was no more room for doubt.
When he returned and began chatting quietly again, the Prince smiled drowsily with half-closed eyes and nodded slowly.
“Mmm. Really?”
The Prince’s response was peaceful.
That voice, whose depths couldn’t be fathomed, was like a deep well whose bottom couldn’t be seen.
Though it seemed lightly dismissed, there was definitely some firm resolve contained within it.
“They said that would be better for Your Highness. Do you understand what that means? I couldn’t figure it out no matter how hard I tried. Does it make sense to hush up and gloss over the fact that a member of the royal family was poisoned?”
Sercil continued speaking rapidly as if changing the subject.
Hasty speech, busily moving hands, yet somehow anxiously tangled breathing.
Like someone chattering urgently to cover something up.
He instinctively felt he needed to continue talking before this flow deepened further.
Sercil grumbled and turned his head slightly. Throughout his talking, his hand movements were practiced, but his face was tilted away from the Prince’s view.
His hands were wringing out the wet towel again, and those movements showed more than a day or two of experience.
However, unable to focus on his fingertips, he couldn’t fix his gaze and kept letting his eyes wander.
Even a small breath, a single ray of distant light spreading beyond the curtains, was stimulating Sercil’s senses.
It was unconscious behavior.
Without even knowing the reason himself, he averted his gaze from the Prince’s face.
As if looking at that face any longer would make him read something.
Or as if the unfamiliar emotion he was feeling might leak out through his expression.
He turned his back very quietly, very slowly.
Without even realizing it himself, perhaps afraid his sincerity might be discovered, perhaps afraid to face that expression from earlier any more.
Sercil doesn’t know what that expression means.
But he knew it wasn’t a light emotion.
That’s why he didn’t want to look into it any further.
He wanted to just act normally like this, pretending not to know, pretending not to feel it.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
