144. Don’t Go

2024.02.21.

They say a person’s mind goes blank when they’re too angry or flustered.

Clade felt as though the boiling rage in his head had completely evaporated, leaving only emptiness, as he stood facing the woman who looked like a soaked mouse.

He could barely tell whether the voice he just heard was real or merely another one of the nightmares he’d been having all along.

Harsh words that had been swirling inside his tightly sealed mouth now wandered aimlessly, unsure where to go.

He clenched his fists tightly, hiding them—fists from which the blood seemed to have drained away.

His body was drenched, yet inside, he felt as parched as someone suffering from a long drought.

He was utterly dumbfounded by the woman before him—someone who had done the unthinkable, then dared to glare at him with indignation, breathing heavily as if *he* were the one at fault.

How on earth had he ever gotten entangled with such an absurd woman?

His distant, sunken eyes naturally revisited the past, as they had so often in recent months.

The woman who had acted as if they would stay together forever, who had confessed her love—she had suddenly left his side.

She had etched their one and only night as husband and wife into memory like a sacred ritual.

Then, cradled in the arms of the son of the man he hated most in the world, she had abandoned the estate and territory he had vowed to transform within ten years.

Even as she left, she played with the word “love” as if it were a game.

Without a trace of regret, she had flown away to the most beautiful and dazzling place in the world.

Now, months later, she meets him again and casually mentions she was worried.

She says she’ll accept any retaliation, as long as his anger subsides.

“Are you actually insane?”

And what about that black mansion he had fled from, hoping that meeting would be their last?

Wherever he turned his gaze, it was filled with traces of Yuan Pelliese.

The vines they had planted together clinging to the outer walls—he had already cut them all down long ago. But he couldn’t tear down the entire estate.

Left alone in the places they once shared.

Unable to cope with reality, he had repeatedly cut away, in his dreams, the moments he could never return to.

The dreams of a future he had briefly imagined were torn to shreds, becoming nightmares.

And where had fleeing from those nightmares led him?

He gritted his teeth.

How much time and emotional strength had he sacrificed just to say those words—*I understand you*?

Only now, belatedly, had he kept his promise to utter those words to Yuan Pelliese—if he were still in his right mind.

It had been the most rational thing he could do.

Whether nightmare or reality, just stop appearing before me.

I understand why you left me. So please, just leave me be.

But what had *she* done all this time?

Despite endless warnings and mockery, she had stubbornly followed him, stirring everything up once more.

How was he supposed to accept this?

When he tried to say what he truly needed to say, how could he face that pitiful creature—her fragile face unable to hide the hurt—or her shameless audacity?

“It’s true. You’re the kind of person who hates seeing even a single mouse die in front of you, so you cast them all outside.”

“Do I have to drag the severed heads of the pirates I killed here just to make you shut up?”

After that night-long meeting, during which he couldn’t focus at all—his mind still fixed on her wounded, shameless face.

If his brothers Rev had been here, or if Lancelot, who knew him so well, had been present, his lack of concentration would have sparked yet another all-night argument.

Then he heard she had disappeared.

He climbed the mountain desperately.

Cutting down pirates mercilessly, as if slicing through the lingering image of her wounded face that refused to leave his mind.

That pale, hazy afterimage felt like the tallest mountain he had to conquer, and he pushed forward, step by step.

Even as anxiety rose like water around his ankles, he pressed onward.

He thought he could escape.

He believed that if he severed Carso’s neck and distanced himself as far as possible from the woman, he could erase the thoughts of her that clung to his ankles.

“No trace of the former Crown Princess has been found at the foot of the mountain.”

When Eugene Kimfri said this with a devastated expression,

he couldn’t remember what he had said or how hard he had kicked the ground.

But soon, he was cutting through the anxiety that had risen to his chest, now focusing his sharpened nerves on slashing through thick underbrush instead of her face.

A creeping suspicion scratched at his broad back.

That shameless woman who kept showing up wherever he went, tormenting him.

Could it be…

Could it really be that she had followed him all the way here?

Maybe someone had already found her at the foot of the mountain.

Then all he needed to do was search this entire mountain.

Now that he thought about it, just entertaining that idea made his skin crawl.

But if he found her, what then?

Would he apologize for hurting her with cruel words back then—when she had followed him, pale and haggard, carrying a first-aid kit?

Or would he shout at her in anger—*Did you really follow me all the way up this mountain, against all odds?*

While wandering like a mad beast through the rain, those random thoughts gradually washed away.

The anxiety that had risen to his jawline had now transformed into rage.

Now, looking back,

his crushing anxiety wasn’t simply because she had disappeared.

It wasn’t even the anger toward her shameless habit of appearing before him as if she were deliberately chasing him.

Nor was it just fury at her deceitful expression—claiming she had worried about him after abandoning him.

‘Dare to die.’

Before he had heard the pirate’s scream chasing the woman.

‘Let that be the last time.’

His mind had held only that single sentence as he cut down every tree and bush on the mountain.

He didn’t even realize how crazed he had become in his search.

A firm, decisive female voice abruptly cut through his thoughts.

“Stay still and receive treatment. You can’t go out now, can you?”

It was a strong voice, like an adult scolding a child.

Her large, dark eyes stared straight at him.

“What? You want me to strip your pants off for you?”

He twisted his lips, staring into her flinching eyes.

So utterly absurd was this situation that his anger was so intense it nearly burst his head, driving half his reason away—allowing a dark, creeping emotion to slowly rise and engulf him.

His senses sharpened like a starving predator spotting a deer collapsed from exhaustion.

The woman was right in front of him.

A raindrop gathered on his forehead, ran down past his swollen eyelids and flushed cheeks, over her delicate nose, past her slightly parted lips, and finally clung to the tip of her small chin before falling.

It lingered near her hollow collarbone before slipping through the disheveled gaps in her clothes.

His dim, sinking gaze followed the droplet’s path, flowing inward with it—and without drinking any strong liquor, his stomach burned.

His body reacted before his mind could catch up.

An utterly irrational reaction.

Like fleeing from a nightmare, only to suddenly look up and find himself standing right in its center.

Clade, breathing heavily, stared back at the woman—defeated, having lost all will to argue further.

A dangerous alarm blared loudly in his mind: *You must not stay with her any longer.*

He was furious at her oblivious expression—unaware of how she must appear to a man, lips tightly pressed, face drenched in rain.

The damp scent of rain, the strange smell of herbs—

And cutting through it all, her body scent—identical to the one he had once imprinted on his senses like a permanent mark—stirred unease deep in his gut.

“That’s enough. I’m done tending to you.”

His voice came out muffled, half-rasped between ragged breaths.

As he made to rise, determined to push through the storm outside, a pale hand grabbed the hem of his soaked clothes.

“Let go.”

He remembered the moment her stubborn, dark eyes began to blur.

The same eyes that, once lost in ecstasy, had unfocused and slackened, unable even to furrow her brows, as her wet lips whispered love.

He clenched his teeth and shook her hand off.

But Yuan Pelliese gripped his sleeve even tighter.

“Right now—”

“Don’t go.”

Her drenched voice whispered pleadingly.

“Don’t go, please.”

The eyes he once secretly thought of licking like candy trembled wide open.

Throughout his entire struggle to reevaluate their relationship here, he had never understood Yuan—but there had never been a moment when he understood her less than this.

What exactly do you want?

What is your reason for doing this after leaving me?

Do you even know what I’m thinking right now?

“I know I probably look like a crazy woman.”

Yuan’s small hand slowly released his sleeve, then began to hover around his firm arm.

Just a little further, and she could reach his hand.

“But you don’t have to be in pain. You know that.”

Her violently trembling violet eyes remained fixed on hers, refusing to follow the movement of her hand.

“…Do you even know what you’re saying?”

“Use me.”

Her fingertips stretched toward his hand, swollen with veins—close, yet not quite touching.

As if it were absolutely necessary to make contact.

“Just like I used you.”

Yuan bit down on the herbs she had been holding in her other hand and stared at him.

As if to seize his trembling eyes and lock them deep within her own.

Hot breath escaped from her herb-stained lips.

“You know well how to escape pain.”

The woman whispered like a demon.

Clade stared intently at Yuan’s lips, still holding the crushed herbs, then slowly lowered his eyes.

Her pale hand, hovering so close to his, looked unusually large.

“This is my final warning. Don’t touch my body. If you do—then—”

He spat out the words with the last shred of patience he had clung to until the very end.

But as if disgusted by his words, the woman’s wet hand tightly gripped his fist.

At that moment.

The man’s perfectly composed face crumbled completely.

A large hand violently pulled her head toward him, as if snatching it.

Two burning, drenched lips locked together perfectly.