Chapter: 180
As I gazed at the beautifully sparkling Golden Eyes, Lian’s smiling face, promising to return soon, vividly flashed in my mind.
I wanted to protect you. I would have sacrificed even my life to keep you safe. To do that, I wielded my sword and tried to learn everything that could be of help. But in the end… I couldn’t protect you. I couldn’t even stop you from walking toward death.
While I pondered stupidly whether my desires were normal or not, you quietly left my side, like winter entering the forest.
My worries couldn’t exist without you, yet I realized that only after everything was lost.
After I lost you, my tongue felt as if it had hardened, rendering me unable to speak, and no matter what I ate, I felt no taste at all.
The touch of Lily, shaking my body, felt distant, as if I were an observer. Sounds echoed as if submerged in water.
Your absence alone had brought an end to my world.
Invisible hands seemed to be grasping my body, pulling it down, down into despair. A profound anger toward myself began to rise, an impulse to tear myself apart as if I were the judge of hell.
If I hadn’t been wandering in dreams, wouldn’t I have tried to hang myself in reality? At the very least, I might have severed my useless wrist.
She had nowhere left to retreat. The surroundings were filled with despair, fear, and anger. The spot she stood on was hell itself, and the sweet dreams repeating were a punishment sent from the heavens.
‘I should have carried that death myself.’
Noah’s gaze was no longer on Lian. It was frozen in the past, watching the moment when Lian walked into the ominous flames with a smile.
‘I should have died, I… I should have thrown myself into that fire.’
If this were reality, that thought would have stopped there, but here, in the depths of Noah’s mind, she could deeply examine her thoughts. Sharp realizations, long buried, suddenly surfaced.
‘Could I have really done that?’
Noah’s fingertips trembled slightly. A colossal presence so immense that mere humans weren’t even allowed to fathom it arose vividly, sending chills down her spine.
‘If I had stood where Lian stood, could I have thrown myself into the fire?’
She knew it was a meaningless question, yet she couldn’t stop asking it.
‘No— I wouldn’t have been able to. I would have foolishly collapsed, praying for someone to save me.’
At that time, Noah had been the only one to speak, while the Duke was paralyzed. Unlike Lian, who held divine powers, she had challenged fate with nothing but the frail body of a human.
Only those who transcended the limits of the soul to protect others, beings called heroes, could display such resolve, yet to Noah, consumed by guilt, it only appeared as if she had a thousand tails.
She wished to shed everything, to erase her existence entirely. It was a clear indication of how significant Lian had been in her life.
Suddenly.
Trapped in the prison of ‘Guilt’, Noah was jolted back to reality by a sudden sensation. She realized too late that the ‘fake’ who had only been watching her had grabbed her arm tightly.
The created ‘fakes’ merely repeated Lian’s actions as she remembered them, never showing any new behavior. Unlike now— they hadn’t drawn her into an embrace so tightly it robbed her of breath.
“Ah…”
The fierce voice that used to scratch her throat was replaced by a soft, breathy exclamation that scattered against Lian’s shoulder. Noah unconsciously reached out and hugged Lian tightly.
Confusion and indescribable emotions mixed, freezing her body in place. After the numbing sensation spread through her body, she finally recognized the feelings she was experiencing.
Hope, anticipation, and a relief so overwhelming it brought her to the brink of tears.
Just by showing behavior that felt ‘real’, Noah foolishly held onto ‘hope’. A ridiculous thought crossed her mind that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t a dream.
‘No, it can’t be true.’
But such hope didn’t last long. Once she realized this was a dream, an almost terrifying sense of reality overtook her body. Like someone who realized, after falling from a great height and still surviving, that ‘oh, it’s a dream,’ it was a sensation that couldn’t be denied.
‘Yeah, if it’s repeated this many times, it might be time for a new type of dream to emerge.’
Though rational thoughts tumbled through her mind, her body couldn’t keep up. Her heart thumped loudly in her chest, feeling as if it might leap out at any moment. A tingling sensation ran through her body as if she had been sitting incorrectly for too long, and her vision began to blur white.
Her eyelids became red, and her arms clung desperately to the warmth they craved, unwilling to let go. While her rational thinking faltered, her body responded honestly.
‘Get your mind together… I can’t disrespect Lian who has left this world.’
She bit her lip tightly and hardened her expression. She tried firmly to push him away, so that Lian wouldn’t be toyed with in her dreams anymore. Or at least, she had intended to do so.
“I like you.”
“…?!”
Before she could even attempt anything, those unexpected words struck her ears. Her bitten lip parted, and her expression softened adorably. A voice filled with affection she had never heard before whispered again.
“I like you, Noah.”
Noah stood there, her expression blank, as if she had just tasted sugar for the first time, unable to say a word. She couldn’t even come up with a thought of whether he was fake or not. Her mind was completely blank.
With great effort, she turned her gaze, catching sight of her flushed ears.
“Uh, um…”
As she couldn’t articulate a proper response, sounding foolish, Lian let out a small laugh and relaxed the tension in his body. The awkward smile she had never seen before and his flushed cheeks became engraved in her memory.
“Do you still think I’m fake?”
Only after hearing that question did reality kick in like a lightning bolt. She finally recognized that Lian’s eyes, which she had avoided gazing into with blurred vision, were entirely different from how they usually appeared.
Amid his white eyelashes, the Golden Eyes she faced were a much deeper and more enchanting shade than any fakes she had encountered in her dreams. It was beyond anything she could have ever imagined.
“…No..?”
With Noah’s dazed response, the dream world began to crumble. Overwhelmed by shock, she hurriedly pulled him close and shouted.
“..! No, don’t! Don’t leave me, Lian… I… I did everything wrong… so please…!”
As Noah desperately clutched Lian’s body and yelled, Lian hugged her tightly, reassuringly patting her back.
Crash, rumble!
Like the set of a play collapsing, the dream cabin and the dry path crumbled down, revealing a pure white space. The dream’s owner, Noah, realized that if everything around her collapsed, she would fully awake from this dream.
“No! I don’t want this…! Stop! Why… why is this my dream…! Please stop..!”
As despair filled Noah, the dream crumbled faster. The flower by her bedside judged that Noah was having a nightmare.
Lian silently continued to soothe Noah’s back and spoke.
“Noah, I’m ‘not’ dead yet.”
“What..?”
“I was kidnapped to the Demon King’s Castle after entering that fire. Right now, I’m trapped, but…”
Lian wasn’t dead.
That single truth struck Noah’s heart like a stamp, making it race.
“I can’t return to you guys right now—but I wanted you to know I’m safe.”
Lian continued in a light voice.
“You know my recovery ability. I won’t die anywhere, so don’t worry.”
Lian looked at the dazed Noah and then gently took her hand, placing it on his cheek. He rubbed his face against her palm as he continued speaking.
“I can’t promise that I’ll be back soon… but I will definitely return. So wait for me.”
Noah’s lips quivered as she tried to respond.
Suddenly, rumble.
The ground beneath them collapsed, and her vision was filled with white. Even in this vision so white it felt blinding, the warmth holding her tightly carved itself into her body like a scar from a burn.
*
“Ah…”
As tears she thought had dried began to flow down Noah’s face when she awoke from a daze, her vision became hazy with tears.
“L-Lian…”
Having been asleep for so long, she barely managed to capture his voice with her still-locking throat. Unlike her usual voice filled with despair, it now contained a fragile wave of hope.
From that day on, Noah shook off her bed and picked up her sword again.
A little time passed, and the Demon King’s Army and the Imperial Army began to clash in earnest. At the same time, tales of the brown-haired hero, nicknamed the ‘Cruel Guardian’, sweeping away the Demon King’s Army spread through the bards’ mouths.
Just as a knight awakened with the support of the heroine (??) was madly cutting down enemies, Lian, having returned to slime form, rolled helplessly on the ground in agony.
‘There were other things I wanted to say..!’
To prove that she wasn’t fake, she spoke words of confession that she never thought she would utter, feeling like she might die of embarrassment.
‘Confessions should be something more romantic, with a hundred candles lit… and at least a thousand roses prepared… plus, I should be wearing a nice white suit…’
If someone were to overhear her, they’d probably say that this confession was the best they had ever heard.
“Why have I been acting like this lately?”
“…!”
The Demon King suddenly picked up the rolling Lian, cradling him like a stuffed toy.
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