# Chapter 11
I was afraid of making a mistake, so I couldn’t easily open my mouth. Though I had so many questions, I was confused whether I should accept this entire situation as natural given his relaxed attitude.
“I’m hurt that you’re so disinterested in me.”
“Ah, well… I think I might remember something.”
Despite his words about feeling hurt, the man was looking at me with a smoothly smiling face. His gaze was so explicit that it felt burdensome. He seemed amused, as if thinking of an interesting joke, and I finally couldn’t help but ask.
“What was your name again?”
Since his face was completely unfamiliar to me anyway, making it impossible to pretend I knew him, I asked with my eyes tightly shut. But contrary to my expectations, he willingly revealed his identity.
“I’m Devan. We had some fun together.”
Devan. It was a name I’d never heard before. If he had been a key figure in the Kingdom of Zendal, I would certainly have known him. Moreover, this incomprehensible situation clearly came from his hands. In the blink of an eye, two people had simultaneously moved to a different place. All my belongings seemed to have moved elsewhere too, disappearing instantly. If this was indeed his intention, as his calm smile suggested, then he was someone different.
“How did you do that?”
“Have you really forgotten everything?”
His lips were still curled upward, but his eyes narrowed as he looked at me. When I stammered out an awkward excuse in panic, he burst into laughter and reassured me.
“Well, can’t be helped. I saw you were going to the banquet, so I took a faster route.”
It was true. The place where he and I were standing was the village right in front of Zendal’s palace. He seemed to be someone who could use this ability freely. As I looked around dazedly, still not fully recovered from my stunned state, he snapped his fingers to get my attention.
“I put your horse in the royal stable. Your luggage should be in your room by now.”
“Are you also on your way to the banquet?”
“Of course. Festivals always need magic.”
Devan smiled pleasantly. I felt my inner child, which I thought had died, burst into flames at the word that came from his mouth.
“What? So you’re a magician?”
He slowly nodded and scanned my face as if examining me.
“Yes. Your demeanor has changed a bit?”
“D-does it seem so?”
“Well. It’s not the first time anyway.”
This time I could understand what he was saying. It seemed his history with Ludin had continued longer than I expected. If he was talking about when Ludin changed dramatically, he must be referring to the incident when Ludin plummeted rapidly. Devan briefly recalled something, as if reminiscing, then folded his arms and stared at me again.
“It was fun before, but I like you better now.”
Calling a person “fun” – anyway, he didn’t seem quite normal either. Not knowing how to respond, I walked ahead toward the palace, leaving him staring at me as if observing me. Devan soon followed behind me without making a sound. When I occasionally turned back to check, I could see him moving with light steps, as if dancing.
“But how did you know I was there?”
His face, which had been relaxed all along, momentarily stiffened.
“I just happened to see you while passing by.”
Devan quickly regained his composure and answered nonchalantly, but I couldn’t miss that momentary hesitation when he seemed at a loss for words. Though I nodded as if accepting his explanation, I decided I should keep watching him. He generally had a bright and gentle demeanor, but there was something suspicious about him. There were too many odd things to believe he had coincidentally discovered me fleeing in a sparsely populated forest and helped me.
The path to the palace was crowded with buildings and people. Most were too busy with their own affairs to notice Devan and me passing by, but occasionally, when our eyes met, there were people who recognized my face. It felt awkward, like wearing ill-fitting clothes, to be among people who bowed their heads almost to the ground and used the most honorific forms of address. Especially after living with soldiers at the temple who made no effort to hide their hatred for Ludin, the eyes full of goodwill felt uncomfortably prickly.
I flinched every time I saw people showing respect to me with excessively polite attitudes, and I heard Devan laughing behind me. To completely dispel his suspicion, I had to stop showing signs that I was not Ludin. But unlike me, who was extremely tense, he just watched me with an interested face and didn’t ask any sharp questions.
“Are you going straight to the banquet hall?” Devan asked.
Just as I opened my mouth to answer, I suddenly felt a symptom as if a knife was piercing my lungs. The symptoms that had been quiet for a while returned again. The culprit was that I hadn’t taken my medicine this morning, being too preoccupied with the sudden appearance of soldiers.
Devan approached me with a shocked face as I started gasping for breath without being able to make a sound. It felt like someone was strongly squeezing my lungs. I tried counting internally to steady my increasingly blocked breath, but soon my knees buckled. Devan, who lowered himself to meet my eyes as I collapsed, kept shouting something.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you okay?!!”
“Huk… kugh…”
With trembling hands, I tried to pull out Jiman’s medicine from my pocket, but it slipped helplessly several times. Noticing that I was struggling to find something, Devan searched my pockets. The medicine wasn’t there. I guessed I must have dropped it somewhere while escaping from the soldiers. My breathing became increasingly steep, unable to keep up with the rhythm.
I thought I was used to it by now, but it was a pain that wasn’t easy to get friendly with. I tilted my body uncontrollably as it trembled involuntarily. Devan’s warm hands firmly held me as I collapsed. It was fortunate, if anything, that I had fallen at the pathway leading to the banquet hall after passing through the entire village. Had such an incident occurred among numerous people, it would have been a precarious situation difficult to manage. I seemed to have grabbed Devan’s wrist to endure the pain. I had no time to worry about what he might think. Nausea rose in the dizzily spinning sky.
“I’ll make you comfortable. Close your eyes.”
His voice, which had been buzzing, suddenly became clear. With one wrist gripped by me, he was gently cradling my neck with his other hand. Sweat was still flowing, and my chest burned as if breathing underwater, but the longer his hand touched me, the more the pain gradually diminished to a tolerable level.
As my unstable breathing gradually stabilized and my faint consciousness slowly returned, I became aware enough to find his hand on my neck strange. Devan’s face, now devoid of any trace of a smile, suddenly came into view, as if demanding an explanation.
“What’s this? How far have you gone with trouble this time?”
He frowned when there was no answer from me, who could only regulate my breathing, unable to speak.
“Did you take poison or something?”
“Why would I do such a thing?”
My voice came out rough, my throat hoarse. Despite my firm words, he didn’t remove his suspicious gaze. Though my breathing had returned, it wasn’t easy to steady my body that I had forcibly raised. I heard him click his tongue as he hurriedly caught me as I staggered.
“You’ve come back even crazier.”
With no words to retort, I tried to continue on the path I had been walking, but he turned me around with a wry smile, as if in disbelief.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m fine now, so I need to go to the banquet.”
“Why are you so thin?”
Holding my shoulders with both hands, he felt my forearms and waist with a stern face. Startled by the sudden touch, I reflexively pushed away his hands, causing Devan’s expression to distort even more.
“You’re really strange.”
“What are you talking about? If you’re not going to the banquet, I’ll go alone.”
“Is it also a lie that you don’t remember me?”
“You said you’re Devan.”
After standing with a frowning face for a moment, he suddenly wrapped his arm around my waist and came close enough to be right in front of my face. Looking into his pitch-black eyes reminded me of Kadilen, whose eyes were darker than the night. I tried to push him away forcefully, but it had little effect with my already drained body.
“Is that all?”
The smirking face was gone, and all I could see was his hardened expression demanding an answer threateningly. Though I thought I was used to hostile voices, the countless hate-filled faces I had encountered flashed through my mind in an instant. Seeing my chest heaving gradually, Devan backed away from me with a complicated expression, as if somewhat taken aback. He raised both hands to calm me and remained silent for a while.
“Let’s go in for now. We’ll talk later.”
Irritated by his incomprehensible attitude, I turned away from him without answering. Regardless of what the relationship between Ludin and Devan had been, his attitude was not pleasant. Moreover, at first, seeing his reaction that I might forget him, I had guessed there had been only a very old incident between the two, but from Devan’s words now, it seemed there was something I didn’t know. My head hurt, but I tried not to mind. I couldn’t pay attention to all of Ludin’s pre-existing relationships. The purpose of coming to the palace was to find something that would help prevent Kadilen’s treason from being discovered, so I needed to focus solely on my goal after resolving other matters reasonably.
This banquet was Zendal’s annual victory celebration. It was essentially a place to reaffirm his victory in unifying the five nations and to gather all the upper nobles of the unified country to reinforce his power and position once again. Befitting a place celebrating victory, the banquet hall was filled with splendid decorations and extravagantly adorned people.
As I entered, some nobles standing at the doorway recognized my face and bowed in greeting. Despite their polite attitude, the indistinct whispers and unpleasant gazes pouring from everywhere made Ludin’s reputation easily palpable. They were surely people who had once cowered before him when Ludin was the heir. I suddenly wondered if he had ever regretted his own choices after losing power. The atmosphere was quite different from being surrounded by commoners outside the palace who didn’t know the exact circumstances.
I was awkwardly standing near the window, as there wasn’t really a suitable place to stand, and no one approached me despite the greetings, when I saw Devan entering through the door. He ignored all the people offering greetings and looked around, then easily found me. Though I pretended not to see him and averted my gaze, he immediately approached me, cutting through the crowd, and had returned to a smiling face, as if having composed his emotions.
“Sorry for getting angry.”
“I really don’t remember you.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Devan lightly smiled and wrapped one arm around my shoulders. I tried to twist my body to escape, uncomfortable with the surrounding gazes, but he maintained his hand on me without concern. In the end, it was his victory. Becoming too annoyed to react to each thing, I let him use me as an armrest.
The bustling banquet hall suddenly grew quiet. When I raised my head to check the situation, Zendal was ascending to the platform. With his appearance, the hall, which had found order, was filled with the sound of courteous applause. Wearing a high-quality cape in the most intense color of all, Zendal stood before everyone with confident steps. As he swept the room with indifferent eyes, the nobles gradually stopped applauding and held their breath, waiting for him to speak.
“Five years have passed since the founding of the kingdom. Your contributions were great.”
He slowly shifted his gaze, looking at each noble in the hall one by one. I could see people who met his eyes hurriedly lowering their gaze, waiting for the king’s eyes to pass.
“What we have gained is unspeakable, but there is certainly something we have lost as well.”
Zendal’s eyes shot straight at me. There wasn’t a hint of hesitation in his movement as he found me. I could feel the surrounding nobles glancing at me. Devan’s hand gripping my shoulder tightened. I slightly bowed my head to Zendal in a simple greeting. It would be a lie to say I wasn’t intimidated by his imposing presence.
“We must set aside cleanly what we have lost and strive more for the prosperity of the kingdom. We have won, but the war is not over.”
As he finished his short speech, endless applause followed again. The cold face of Zendal descending from the platform looked darker than before. Suddenly feeling a gaze, I looked up to find Devan staring intently at me. When our eyes met, he smiled brightly, as if showing off.
“This is just the beginning. You’ll have fun too.”
