“What are you looking at so intently?”

For a moment, the hair on the back of her neck stood up, but Helena tried to answer calmly.

“A bluebird seemed to have lost its way, so I gave it some directions.”

“…?”

Ian’s eyebrow raised at the puzzling response.

It was such a rare expression that Helena stared at his face longer than usual.

“…Is there something on my face?”

“No, I just… wanted to look at you.”

Though it was the simple, intuitive truth, Ian’s earlobes turned slightly red. As if trying to dispel his embarrassment, he rubbed his eyebrow with his thumb joint.

The paper bags in his hand rustled as they bumped together. Helena’s gaze, which had been fixed on Ian, scattered.

‘He said he was going to the general store… Did he need this many things?’

Helena inadvertently glanced inside the paper bags and saw a long rolled-up parchment. Though he seemed to have bought other odds and ends to avoid suspicion, it was clearly a map.

She had the map of Futua, which she had just given to the man she met earlier, so this was likely a map of another region.

Moreover, this morning she had overheard him telling the innkeeper he would only pay for the room until tomorrow, though he always paid in advance for longer periods.

‘Is he finally leaving?’

Helena fidgeted with the strap of her bag.

She should feel happy, but she didn’t.

‘Surely he doesn’t intend to take me along even after leaving this place.’

This time she should feel bad, but she didn’t.

Without either of them speaking first, they began walking towards where dark clouds loomed, the setting sun at their backs. The inn lay beyond.

As the scent of grass and earth grew stronger, Helena glanced furtively at Ian.

His hands were full of paper bags containing clothes and other items he had bought today. Even after she had forcibly taken a few, there were still many.

Perhaps misunderstanding her sidelong glances, he held out his hand.

“It’s heavy after all, isn’t it? Give them back to me now.”

“Don’t treat me like a paper doll.”

“If I really did, I’d fold you up and keep you in my pocket.”

“That’s creepy.”

Instead of retorting further, he just smiled softly. The paper bags eventually returned to his hands.

Helena suddenly became aware of his traces that had already seeped into her being.

The clothes she wore, the food she ate, the space she occupied, Basil’s painting, her stabilizing delusions.

Even the pace at which he now walked to match her stride. It was all his devotion and consideration.

Indisputably, he was the giver and she was the receiver.

She had at least given Yujin love in return, but now she couldn’t even do that.

‘This is… this is wrong.’

He had said they should help each other whenever they fell, but digging into his true intentions, it was merely a pretense to prevent her from having thoughts of dying again.

‘I can’t even see my own future, how could I help him?’

Helena chewed on the inside of her cheek. The anxiety that had occasionally pricked at her nerves since meeting him became even more certain.

No matter how much he tried to soothe and embrace her, this was her problem. Clearing away the emotions that had been hazy due to recent events, she could see the present clearly.

This insignificant peace and monotony did not belong to her. Her life had always been one of gritting her teeth and enduring, lest she be pushed off the edge.

To live as Yujin’s wife always required the pain of cutting away parts of herself.

That’s why Helena couldn’t bear this situation of only receiving without clear compensation.

‘No. Be more honest.’

More precisely, she couldn’t leave herself as she was, having allowed his intrusion even for a moment.

She had to do something before being completely swallowed up. Helena didn’t want to create another Yujin, Basil, or Balter in any form.

‘I can’t get used to this. He’s someone who will leave someday.’

And cruelly, the only way she knew to fix relationships was to sever them.

If she had stepped onto an irreversible path, she just had to cut off that path.

So she couldn’t go any further.

Night had fallen. Yujin stood motionless before the darkening sea.

With each layer of waves crashing, someone’s afterimage grew more vivid.

⌜I don’t remember exactly since Shönne was drunk at the time… but about ten days ago, as if possessed by something, she ran and jumped into the sea.⌟

The image of a woman slowly walking into the black sea kept flickering before his eyes.

It seemed so vivid, as if he could reach out and grab her, but she would vanish when he tried. Not even her scent remained.

Only then did he realize it was an illusion.

‘Helena. Did you know a day like this would come?’

Like waves receding and surging again, Yujin was constantly confronting the memories that remained within him.

‘Or… did you hope for a day like this?’

Yujin put a cigar, which he rarely touched, to his lips out of habit now. As he lit it, a small flame burst and faded in the darkness.

His mind was uncharacteristically chaotic. Even after exhaling smoke into the sea breeze several times, it wouldn’t settle easily.

He didn’t want to believe or understand this situation.

He had never imagined he would end up chasing after Helena, of all people. The idea that she had truly left his side because she disliked him seemed even more like a dream.

The day her presence disappeared from the mansion became a day that needed to be forgotten entirely, from the moment he opened his eyes after an extremely restless sleep.

Yujin ran his hand through his hair irritably.

‘I shouldn’t have had to take action like this in the first place.’

She should have been in his arms before he even reached out. She was always in her place.

She had unfailingly returned as if he were her final destination.

His indignant feelings were gradually tilting towards anxiety. At times, he even felt afraid at the thought of never finding her again.

‘How did I end up in this state… Ha.’

The half-smoked cigar fell and was buried in the sand. He ground out the faintly glowing end with his shoe before turning away.

As if turning his eyes from the black sea would erase her phantom as well.

Not thinking about Helena any further was all he could do for now.

Helena quietly spoke up between the sounds of their shuffling footsteps.

“You said you came looking for me because you owed me a debt.”

“…That’s right.”

Ian looked down at her as he answered. Helena briefly met his eyes before turning her gaze forward again.

“But don’t worry too much about things long past. I was foolish when I was young, even sharing my bread with stray cats in the village while going hungry myself.”

“I can imagine you doing that.”

It wasn’t the response she had hoped for, so Helena became a bit more anxious. As if reflecting her mood, the dark clouds drew even closer.

Under the dim sky, Helena continued the conversation.

“You say you’re repaying a favor, but I probably didn’t do anything that great. How much could a teenager have done?”

“…”

“So what I’m saying is, you don’t need to keep doing this.”

“What have I been doing?”

At that moment, Helena’s steps abruptly halted.

His utterly nonchalant tone finally caused that reaction. Helena couldn’t believe his innocent face as he looked at her.

Did he really not know, or was he pretending not to?

“What have you been doing? Everything up until now. All these actions, whether it’s surveillance or protection or observation, I don’t know what.”

Her words sped up due to increasing anxiety.

“Favor or whatever, it’s already enough. I’ve received more than I deserve. The situation doesn’t look good either, so you don’t need to stay by my side anymore.”

“It’s because I’m still lacking. I’ll leave when I become sufficient.”

Why, why.

“You can say that easily because you don’t know. Everything is tangled and wrong, there’s no way to untangle it, and there’s no one to help, let alone enemies all around. You don’t know the feeling of being trapped in such perfect misfortune that you can’t even tell where it begins or ends.”

“Then do you think you know me?”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Why, because I don’t even deserve the right to understand a woman so thoroughly pickled in such feelings?”

Is this person simply not giving me the answer I want?

“You don’t need to bear the burden of me!”

“And you have neither the right nor the need to decide that.”

Why won’t he say what I obviously should hear?

Why does he insist on stirring everything up?

Helena poured out the rising heat through her trembling lips.

“Don’t try to understand. You and I can never be the same. If it were just a passing feeling for me, I wouldn’t be in this state. But what do you think it’s like when such feelings become your life?”

“Don’t make assumptions on your own.”

“Then, no, now it feels like I myself am misfortune. It’s not that unfortunate things happen to me because I have terrible luck, but that I was just misfortune from the beginning. So−.”

“So you’re saying I should stop approaching if I don’t want to become unhappy too?”

“…!”

“I decide my own unhappiness. Right now, leaving you would be my unhappiness.”

No, no.

Helena exhaled a suppressed breath with a shudder. It seemed that once again, she was the only one being swept away by emotions.

Though she had stirred up this entire whirlwind, he remained as calm as the eye of the storm. Calmly dangerous.

Helena spread her arms and pointed at Ian as if in protest.

“Look at yourself now. You didn’t come looking for me just to be my porter, did you?”

“Then if I do something other than being a porter, can I stay by your side?”

“Are you joking?”

“Does it sound like a joke?”

Helena had to revise her assessment of him once again.

He truly had no words he couldn’t say, and he defeated people with those words alone. She was on the verge of resenting her past self.

‘How did I end up entangled with such a man?’

A dry sigh of lost resolve escaped her involuntarily. She needed to change her approach.

Helena brushed back the hair covering the side of her forehead. A scar about the size of a pinky joint was there.

“Can you see? I don’t remember much from before I was injured as a child. Plus, 20 years−.”

She hurriedly changed her words.

“−It’s been like 20 years for me, so I don’t remember you at all.”

She couldn’t know which way her feelings would lean in the future. She just hoped he would give up on her before it was too late.

So that she too could forget him as a dream, as she had done until now.

However, he seemed to want to engrave his presence upon her at every moment.

“It doesn’t matter.”

He insisted on becoming reality after all.