“Serbia!”
It seemed like the whole world had stopped except for him. How did it come to this? No matter how much he pondered, filled with self-reproach, there was no answer. So, Ruth simply ran. He ran and ran, like that was all he could do.
He had to save her. Now that he had finally discovered her true identity.
He had planned to tell her who she really was once this hunting contest was over. He couldn’t let it end like this.
His mind was filled with tens of thousands of thoughts. An emotion similar to obsession filled his heart.
His mind, which had remained calm while facing monsters, began to shake at the realization that she could die by the hands of a monster.
Yes. It certainly started with the desire to see the beautiful flower garden he had seen in a long dream just one more time. Having the girl, that child, by his side seemed like it would bring peace to his unstable mind.
But as time passed, the essence of that reason changed. He was happy just looking at the child, and he wanted to protect her innocence from being tainted by the world.
He wanted to share in what the child saw, and he wanted to ensure that what made her laugh didn’t disappear. Thus, Ruth had come to love the child without even realizing it.
Love is like death; it comes so quietly and changes everything. The fact they couldn’t avoid the incoming wave was neither his fault nor the child’s. It was just that love was such a thing. Love towards another person was like a bud waiting for winter.
Since ancient times, it has been said that love comes in many forms. None of them are right or wrong, but still, various forms of love exist. To Ruth, his love was one that he wanted to protect.
Thus, when Lancelot broke his expectations and came to tell him that it was time to go and help others, he followed.
He needed strength to protect that child. Only by changing this chaotic world could the child live in a world that was not difficult.
His failure to properly say goodbye to the child when he left, and his enchantment on his mother’s keepsake promising a next meeting, were all based on the premise of ‘returning’.
However, reality was cruel. While he was gradually gaining strength under the help of the Abyss Duke’s family, the child’s family was annihilated.
Every servant working at the Duke of Obelton’s house, including the head of the family, lost their lives. The remaining members of the Obelton family were demoted to commoners and even exiled.
Only then did Ruth realize that time does not wait for him. There is no guaranteed tomorrow. To gain something, you must give up something else. There is no such thing as a perfect adult.
After gaining this realization, Ruth no longer had the same look in his eyes as before. His once small dream, which had been solely focused on that child, now grew to encompass the empire, and his mind, once stuck in the past, grew to envision the future, or even beyond.
10 years later, having succeeded in a rebellion with Abyss and ascended to the throne, Ruth revived the family of that child, whom he had never forgotten for a moment. And he waited. For the moment he could return to that child.
He loved the child and wanted to protect her, so Ruth spent about a year just watching over her. Then, he sent a proposal. He believed that the child would recognize him. There was an implicit confidence in that belief. And when he received a positive response to his proposal after a few weeks, it was the first time in a while he could sleep properly through the night.
Everything had come full circle. He seemed to have been prematurely reassured at some point.
However, just as it had been 11 years ago, reality was cruel. When he went to the bedroom to see the child, a completely different person was standing there.
She resembled the child, yet not quite. It was not just her hair and eye color that were different; what caught Ruth’s attention was her gaze.
Unlike the child, who always had a straight and pure but profound gaze, this woman’s eyes were eroded by reality. Therefore, Ruth was certain she was not the child.
He was mistaken.
“Ru… th,”
A low murmur drifted from behind him as he momentarily escaped his continuous thoughts. Following this, his legs lost all strength, and he slowly began to collapse, feeling as if he had sustained a significant injury with a numbing sensation spreading around his abdomen.
“No.”
It felt as if he had experienced this sensation in the very distant past. Yet, had he ever been this close to a death so tranquil? He couldn’t tell.
It seemed as though hot blood was leaving his body, dying his brain in a crimson flood.
Ruth slowly moved his eyelids and looked up at Serbia, who was embracing him, but with a blurry vision. No, to be precise, he couldn’t see anything.
He could hear sounds clearly, but he couldn’t see anything in front of him. It was as if he was enveloped in something pitch-black.
“Don’t joke around. This can’t be happening, right?”
Serbia murmured sadly, as if denying the reality that suddenly confronted him. He wanted to say that it couldn’t be as you say, that he wouldn’t play such pranks in the future, but he couldn’t open his mouth. The feeling of his entire body stiffening from his toes up was terrible.
Ah, now even the sounds are becoming blurry.
Ruth strained his ears as much as possible to Serbia’s voice, which was becoming distant as if he was listening to someone’s voice outside while being underwater. He wanted to stay in this world by doing so.
For the first time, he thought he didn’t want to die. He desperately wanted to live. He wanted to live with this person.
“Please. Please… wake up, Ruth. Wake up. Please wake up.”
It was a plea that wasn’t merely a plea. He felt sorry for making someone with such a tender heart endure this. Suddenly, the scent of various flowers wafted from somewhere. The strong smell of blood that had been pricking his nose disappeared without a trace.
Ruth instinctively sensed the end and internally conveyed his last goodbye to Serbia.
I’m sorry for recognizing you too late.
I’m sorry for hurting you so much.
Apologies that may never reach the party involved keep leaving regrets, making it impossible for Ruth to get intoxicated by the oncoming fragrance of flowers.
He recognized Serbia for what it was during the slave auctions. In truth, there had been several suspicious things even before that. The most decisive moment among them was the way she looked when he had collapsed.
From then on, the accumulating suspicions were resolved the moment the slave auction ended and she called him “Ruth.”
However, he pretended not to know on purpose. There must have been a reason Serbia was deceiving him about her existence—whether it was because she found him unreliable or for some other reason, he didn’t know.
Therefore, Ruth decided to wait until Serbia came forward to tell him first.
He had already planned what to do on the day she disclosed everything to him. First, he would give her the most beautiful bouquet of flowers as a gift. That child, Serbia, liked flower rings, so she would surely like a bouquet as well.
Then, he would go to the lake they had visited together in the past. If the lake wasn’t satisfying enough, they would go to the beautiful sea located at the edge of the empire.
He would also have to apologize for causing her pain all this time and promise to do better in the future.
But all of that had now become nothing more than a vain daydream. Ruth found this deeply sad.
He hoped that Serbia wouldn’t cry too much.
He gradually sank into the swamp as he wished, sinking deeper and deeper, until he reached the void he had once visited in the past.
The place where nothing existed was empty. In the lightless void, Ruth thought of the child. Serbia. Serbia. His love was the kind to protect, leaving scars that would never fade because he wanted to protect her. But he was certain Serbia would soon be okay.
That child would shake off such an incident and live well. She would meet a good partner, have beautiful children, and live a harmonious life.
And perhaps, she might think of him from time to time. Then, as an old man filled with white hair and wrinkles, he would welcome a peaceful death and come here.
Then, he must hear about the life without him from Serbia: what kind of person her husband was, how she raised her children, what she did as an elderly woman, and whether her death was fraught with lengthy suffering.
After such a conversation, he would apologize to Serbia for everything from disappearing without proper goodbyes 11 years ago to the hardships caused over the last three months—all of it.
And then, and then…
Ruth incessantly thought in the void. He planned for the future and reminisced about the past. Emptiness was a dreadful thing. The feeling of a heart no longer beating was profoundly lonely.
Then, at some moment, Ruth came across a memory that felt utterly foreign.
“How did I end up here?”
…Ah.
“Still, there are so many stories of mine I haven’t told you, what if you close your eyes too soon.”
Ah.
“My name is Selena. Selena Obelton.”
Ah.
“So, when you open your eyes again, that’s when you’ll listen to my story.”
Ah…!
In an instant, Ruth collapsed, shuddering from an indescribable sense of terror. A headache, strong enough to feel like his head would split, stimulated tear glands he thought had long since dried up. Finally, cold tears trickled down his cheeks, dropping heavily.
Serbia.
Selena.
Which of these is the real you?
No, in the first place, how did I forget you?
You, you…
“…”
Soon, light seeped into the darkness.
Following that light, Ruth lifted his heavily shut eyelids.
He, once again, came back to life.
Thud.
A single transparent tear drop landed on the back of his hand as he raised his upper body.
Soon after, a severely cracked voice called out a name.
“…Se.”
At last, it was ‘return’.
