Even if Your Regret Holds Me Back (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 14
Her body felt light. So light, in fact, that it felt less like walking and more like floating.
Yet the soil beneath her feet was so cold it froze her skin, and the biting wind cut right through her.
Somewhere nearby, a sorrowful sobbing sound reached her ears. Helena soon realized that the one crying was herself.
More precisely, her younger self.
“I can’t stand the sight of your face! How can you mess up something so simple?! Is it really that hard to just sit and keep watch?! Don’t even think about coming home tonight!”
Matilda slammed the door shut and went inside. Little Helena slumped against the shabby outer wall, curling up into herself. A red liquid trickled down her forehead.
“I said you’d come… hic… you said you’d come if I waited… sob… I just have to wait.”
Little Helena buried her face deep between her bent knees and kept muttering. Her words were muffled by her tears and hard to make out.
“You promised… you have to find me… —.”
Just as she leaned in to listen more closely,
the scenery around her began to waver. It twisted violently, blurred together, and finally collapsed into a single point—then, all at once, her body felt heavy again.
‘…Was that a dream?’
After several attempts, Helena barely managed to open her eyes.
The first sensation upon stepping from the realm of dreams into reality was unbearably heavy. Her whole body creaked, her head throbbed, and it took her a while before she could move her muscles at will.
Once she finally regained her wits, she saw a man standing beside her.
It was the same man she had last seen by the seaside.
“Are you awake? How do you feel?”
He hadn’t changed at all. With the same anxious expression and voice, he behaved as though she were his lover.
“The doctor said you’re fortunate—there’s no danger to your life—but you shouldn’t overexert yourself for a day or two. Still, if anything feels uncomfortable, please tell me right away. I’ll call the doctor immediately.”
“…”
Helena swallowed hard to suppress the discomfort rising in her chest. His gentle voice grated on her—precisely because it was too gentle.
Instead of answering, she turned her gaze toward the ceiling.
The wallpaper, typically found in inns, bore a plain, single-color pattern. There was nothing special to see, yet she kept staring at it for a long while.
Her clothes, which surely should have been soaked, felt perfectly dry. When she slowly raised her arm, a deep green linen fabric followed. It wasn’t what she’d originally been wearing.
Even this gentleness irritated her. All she could manage was a hollow laugh.
“…Must feel quite proud, saving someone foolish enough to throw their life away, huh?”
Helena finally sat up with a soft groan. Ian reached out to help her, but she sharply brushed his hand away.
Before he could even open his mouth, her anger burst forth.
“You must feel like you’ve done something noble—so proud of yourself for saving a precious life! Your selfless kindness rescued this poor, ignorant woman! Isn’t that right?”
“…”
“Don’t you dare even imagine that.”
Helena hurled her resentment at him fiercely, yet Ian didn’t so much as blink.
“…Rest. I’ll bring your medicine.”
He simply turned away with a somber expression.
Helena roughly kicked off the blanket and swung her legs out of bed.
Her sudden movement left her legs weak. A dizzying wave of vertigo hit her, but she clenched her teeth and endured it.
After staggering just a few steps, Ian happened to turn back toward her. He caught her just as she nearly collapsed, rushing forward as if to dive for her.
The momentum pushed his body slightly backward, knocking against the nightstand and sending a medicine bottle clattering to the floor.
In the heavy silence, pills spilled out as the bottle rolled across the floor.
Helena gripped Ian’s collar tightly and began shouting.
“Nothing ever goes the way I want! Who do you think you are, forcing me back to life against my will? Did you expect me to thank you for saving me? I’m already exhausted just from breathing—everything hurts, everything wears me down. Because of your ignorant kindness, must I drag myself through life again? Am I not even allowed to decide my own fate?”
“Getting up suddenly will strain your body. Please return to bed.”
Ian spoke gently, but her words poured out like a bursting dam, unstoppable.
“I never asked you to save me. I never wanted to wake up only to fail at dying properly. You should’ve left me alone like everyone else. Then I wouldn’t be this miserable. At least I wouldn’t have to feel this… knowing it wasn’t my family or my husband who saved me, but a complete stranger…”
Tears blurred her vision. She had to swallow hard several times to keep them from spilling over.
She was furious—angry enough that she couldn’t possibly cry. That would have been too foolish.
Amid the taut tension, Ian gently but firmly pulled her hands away from him.
“…It’s alright. You can resent me as much as you want.”
Helena disliked how calm and even his voice was—so unlike her own turmoil. And it seemed he intended to keep behaving that way.
“But I’m not sorry. I won’t regret it. And even now… I still don’t hate you.”
Hearing such incomprehensible words,
Helena lifted her head again, which had been drooping lower and lower. Her disheveled hair obscured her view, but she clearly saw his face.
He truly wasn’t sorry at all.
He hadn’t gotten angry at her, even though she’d lashed out after he’d gone to the trouble of saving her.
He simply reached out—steadfastly, without hesitation—to support her waist, as if afraid she might collapse.
His unshakable composure only made her angrier at herself. She couldn’t bear the relentless kindness pressing in on her.
Her fingers gripping his collar whitened from the force.
“How clearly must I say it for you to understand? For some people, living *is* hell. Right now, you didn’t save a life—you killed me.”
“I’ll save you.”
“I said you *killed* me. You *killed* me.”
Helena repeated the words obsessively.
“You killed me again—the most wretched, unbearable kind of death!”
CRACK! BANG!
A deafening thunderclap split the air like a scream, leaving deep shadows in its wake. The oil-filled lamp flickered out instantly in the flash of lightning.
Darkness swallowed the room in an instant.
Only their ragged, heated breaths echoed intermittently in her ears, loud as if her heart had moved right beside them.
Thump-thump-thump. It sounded like someone pounding fiercely on the door.
In the suffocating loneliness, an unknown heartbeat whispered to her.
Please abandon me quickly. Leave as if nothing ever happened.
Let me hate this world without regret, and let me discard you again without hesitation.
Just go.
Helena blinked slowly until her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Her small shoulders, which had been heaving with breath, gradually stilled. Only then did her mind begin to clear.
Her grip on his sleeve slowly loosened. She exhaled a trembling breath, laced with desperate longing.
‘Please… just go.’
Helena wished he would simply turn and leave the room. She hoped her furious outburst had truly wounded him.
She wanted him to leave, thinking her ungrateful and beyond saving.
Not because he was tired of her, not because he’d grown weary of her.
But from the moment they first met until now, he had never once done what she wanted.
His large hand slowly traveled up her arms, past her elbows, as if soothing her with his warmth. Ian stopped gently at her wrists, applying soft pressure.
“I’m not used to losing someone precious to me. Even if I had to go through it dozens or hundreds of times, I still wouldn’t get used to it.”
Carefully, he peeled Helena’s hands from his sleeve and met her eyes.
Then he rubbed his thumb over her pale, trembling knuckles. Of course—it was gentle again, Helena thought.
“Just as your desire is death, this is mine. So even if you end up hating me for the rest of your life because of this, I’ll save you again and again. Call it an obsession born of fear of loss—I can’t help it.”
Helena felt the faint tremor traveling through her captured wrist.
After a brief pause, Ian continued.
“I want you to live—until the very end.”
Even in the darkness, his violet eyes remained vividly clear, fixed on her alone with unwavering resolve.
So Helena turned her head away. She didn’t want to know a man who could look at her like that, speak to her like that, say things like that. She never wanted to understand him—ever.
But then… why
‘…does it feel so unbearably familiar?’
Helena pulled away from him as if fleeing. It was only a single step, but it created a little space between them.
Only once he was certain she could stand steadily on her own did Ian finally release her wrists.
The moment she was free, Helena instinctively gathered her hands together. It felt as if the warmth of his large palms still lingered.
She tried her best to stay composed as she spoke.
“…Fine. I’ll just chalk it up to bad luck—getting stuck with someone as meddlesome as you. But I’m not your ‘precious person.’ Or is your sense of preciousness so shallow that it forms the moment you meet someone new?”
“…”
Ian stayed silent for a long while.
Even so, Helena could keenly feel his gaze boring into her. She couldn’t bring herself to look up.
The silence stretched longer and longer. Since she’d never planned to wait for him anyway, she moved past him toward the door.
But the moment she turned the doorknob and cracked the door open, a heavy wooden panel slammed shut again with a loud bang.
She sensed a solid presence behind her. His hand, tendons taut, pressed firmly against the door.
“I told you… not to overexert… yourself.”
He sounded slightly annoyed now.
So was she. Helena immediately turned to face him.
“My anger easing doesn’t mean I want to stay with you. You said you don’t hate me—but I still hate you.”
“You’ll only benefit by following the doctor’s instructions.”
“Who gave you the right?”
“If you insist on pressing the matter, I suppose I’m your temporary guardian.”
“So you enjoy seeking out trouble, then?”
“…Because you did the same.”
Again. Again.
Helena groaned inwardly.
It was only a fleeting moment—too brief for her to notice at first—but he kept making that expression throughout their conversation.
Some emotion he couldn’t fully suppress, no matter how hard he tried to hold it back.
It couldn’t be explained in just a few words. Ignoring it seemed the only solution.
‘Or… confront it head-on.’
Helena swallowed hard.
Male lead is a Love-Obsessed Merman
When he discovers she has gone, he risks everything to pursue her on land, enduring agonizing pain to transform his tail into human legs…
One-line summary: Male lead chases female lead. The male lead’s love is a bit sick, an invincible love brain.
Synopsis
During a voyage at sea, Jiang Yang accidentally captures a merman.
Servant: I heard that mermen are fierce and brutal.
Jiang Yang looks at the merman obediently rubbing her palm like a puppy: “You call this fierce and brutal?”
Servant: I heard that mermen have no human nature.
Jiang Yang looks at the merman with wet puppy eyes, obsessively calling her ‘A Yang’ like a childish infant: “You call this having no human nature?”
With great difficulty, she releases the merman back into the sea and returns to shore.
Who would have thought that in less than half a month, the merman, who should have been freely wandering in the South China Sea, would shed his scales, endure the pain of losing his tail, transform into human legs, and come ashore to find her?
He kneels at her feet, rubbing her palm, with merman tears rolling down: “A Yang, don’t abandon me.”
_____
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Who cares? 😒 That mf deserves a lot of pain 😒😒😡😡
EXACTLY! She’s with someone else …now you aint shit
Me too 😒 she should have kicked his balls and cut them 🤔