He secretly checked and continued to check until he could meet her as a powerful emperor.

“I want to see you right away, but I’m too useless.”

As Rue worried and withdrew herself, so did he.

“If I approached you rashly, Carlos would have known, and it wouldn’t have been just one or two things… Above all, if I suddenly appeared, would you be happy to see me, believe my words, or even have the leisure to listen to me before that?”
He meticulously planned and designed the situation, controlled the politics, and moved the wall to open the door at the most appropriate time. He waited, waited, and waited again.

“After a long effort, we could meet again. For me, that was too…, too long, Rue.”

When will they meet again? Sometimes, momentum came to the western end, and he secretly watched Rue, who had flipped her hood and was organizing around the cabin or teaching children letters from a very distant vantage point. Today, she’s alive; relief flooded him.

“I don’t want to be separated anymore. Where are you? I worried so much that I couldn’t sleep, wondering if something went wrong somewhere I don’t know, so you’re coming here, every day.”

But Rue left him. Even though her body was torn apart several times, she left him while worrying about him, waiting until it was okay. In the end, he found her like an obsession and left her.

“I don’t want to be separated from you anymore. I can’t help it. I’ll make sure nothing that worries you will ever happen. I can do it. Still anxious? Huh? I can prove anything to you.”

His tone quickened, and his voice became intense. The one anxious was not Rue but Hayden.

“So, please, Rue.”

Begging and pleading to the weeping person, he touched her back. He even embraced her narrow shoulders.

“Why did I endure this here?”

If he left, there would be no reason to survive, torn apart by monsters surging pitch-black in this place without day or night. If he left, he would have no reason to live.

“You can hate me, but don’t leave.”

Don’t give in, don’t look around, don’t be anxious about when he’ll leave, and don’t worry about an impossible imagination.

Rue held her painful rib and cried until her breath passed. Hayden somehow thought that something must have broken in one corner since he came here.

Even when she cried like this, when would she promise not to leave, when would she nod her head not to leave, and he, staring through, waiting for it, seemed unnatural no matter how much he thought about it.

However, Hayden patiently waited for Rue to respond. He wouldn’t say that he wouldn’t leave until he heard the answer today.

He would show the bottom to get sympathy, and if that didn’t work, he would hold her ankle and twist it, if necessary.

But the unnecessarily kind Rustica Genesis would probably show some sympathy. Hayden, with rationality, leaned more towards the former. Still, the veins in the back of the hand that embraced her swelled.

Far away, lightning struck silently.

Rue groped through the darkness. As she couldn’t see well in front of her, fear gripped her even more. The brave genius knight era now seemed to have been nothing more than ignorance and dullness to the fear. As people know more, they become more cowardly and weak.

“Hayden?”
Rue reflexively called the person she relied on the most. She tried hard to open her eyes somehow, but her vision did not clear. Her hand groped through the empty air.

Hayden, who was watching Rue doing that, ironically felt a sense of satisfaction. It was quite exhilarating to be the first one she sought as soon as she woke up.

How good it would be if he could exist only in Rue’s world. If he had known Rue from a very young age, he would have stuck closely to her, preventing her attention from being scattered to unnecessary places.

He held her hand, which was trying to grab the empty space. In an instant, without realizing it, Hayden smiled at her relieved expression. Rue shouldn’t smile because she was anxious, but she smiled too happily.

“My eyes are weird.”

Ah, the voice was strange too. He gave her water to drink on the parched lips.

“That’s right. Drink more water.”

“My eyes won’t open.”

“You cried a lot in your sleep. They’re incredibly swollen.”

Goodness. Rue immediately let go of his hand and covered her eyes. Somehow her head hurt.

“Did, did I sleep?”

“Yes, you cried so much that it was awkward. You just collapsed and slept. About ten hours.”

“Isn’t it too long to leave the place?”

“No. It hasn’t even been 10 seconds since you left.”

Hayden looked down at Rue lying down and said, covering her face.

“But, you’re saying that only now.”

When he woke up after sleeping for about nine hours last time, he thought he would make that sound right away. If it were Rue, she would have worried about the emperor leaving his seat first.

“But I didn’t want to.”

Since he got hurt, his stamina was poor. He barely survived relying on the strength Hayden gave him. He didn’t want to say this in this situation. She just said that and closed her mouth.

“Why?”

But he, asking dryly, seemed to have no intention of just passing it by.

“Why didn’t you want to say that? Not like you.”

A hungry person is sensitive to the smell of food. An emotionally starved person reacts sensitively to every word the other person spills.

If given the slightest opportunity, they will grab it tightly, pull it in, and be ready to suffer all over their body. They bet on hope that would ultimately become poison to other words, unlike usual. It was an unbreakable habit.

“…I’m not a person who is so kind or affectionate as you say.”

At Hayden’s casually thrown words, he briefly smiled as if he had heard such words for the first time.

“Really.”

Rue said firmly.

“Why did you think that?”

It was absurd to talk like this, even though he didn’t mind lying under trees that collapsed for one stranger. Still, Hayden calmly listened. Hearing Rue’s voice in this desolate place was a very enjoyable thing.

Rue pulled the blanket all the way up to cover her face. But Hayden lowered the blanket and covered her eyes with his hand instead. His hand, much larger than Rue’s, felt cool.
“If you talk like this, I can’t hear your voice.”

“You can hear everything.”

“I want to hear it clearly. Keep talking.”

She definitely had something she wanted to say. It looked vividly apparent in Hayden’s eyes, who knew Rue better than anyone and was confident. Under his hand, lips that repeatedly bit and let go, turning red, quivered.

“I thought it was better this way.”

Soon, his voice trembled again, and moisture could be felt under his palm.

“I got hurt, not because you lost interest in me but because you said you would confine me. We don’t have to break up, and we can still be together a little longer…”

It was a cowardly sense of relief and momentary satisfaction.

“But I decided not to say that you might be busy. I don’t have the right…”

Hayden refrained from saying something at the last words. He just wanted to listen to what Rue had to say without stopping her.

“I’ve always been taken away, destroyed, and lost.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Yeah, blame it on Carlos. I was just afraid that because of me, you would end up like that too. You didn’t want to lose that way.”

She squeezed out her sincerity with a tight voice. There was no dignity even to speak, but she had to say it now.

“How can you say that? How can I stab your heart again, hurt you.”

Even once, it was too painful to be unforgettable for a lifetime.

“…So I thought it was better to get hurt a lot. With this body, I won’t be able to inflict a fatal wound on you.”

Hayden looked at Rue silently. It was not about holding back words now; he lost the words to say.

“I just don’t expect anything more from this. I hurt you too much, sorry. I didn’t realize that being together with you is more important than your life.”

Someone who always seemed to be looking at a distant place grabbed his hand and cried like a child.

His hand was shaking.