# Chapter 40
I ignored his words and went outside. But soon, a strong hand turned me around. Devan raised his voice with a grim face.
“Why are you giving up when there’s a way to live?”
“Devan, please… let me go…”
“Go where? I absolutely won’t let you go.”
Despite my pleas, Devan spoke as if commanding. I struggled to break free from his grip, but his hold only tightened.
“I really can’t live here anymore…”
“Then leave with me. Let’s go anywhere.”
“Let go!”
He dragged me along, walking recklessly. Even with all my strength trying to shake him off, I was pulled by Devan’s unyielding hand, my feet scraping the floor. I didn’t have the strength to deal with him in his irrational state. Eventually, as I almost fell when my legs got tangled, Devan quickly grabbed my waist. He pulled me close. His hot breath touched my cheek.
“I’ll give you everything. Just stay alive, and whatever you want.”
His eyes were half-crazed.
“Be it the king or anything else, just say the word. I’ll lay it all at your feet.”
“…Let me go.”
“I did foolish things to possess you. I did it because your heart seemed to be elsewhere. Now you possess me. If you don’t like me, take anything you want through me.”
Desperation permeated his words as he spoke through gritted teeth. I faintly sneered at him. Devan’s expression wavered at the short laugh that escaped my lips. I released the strength from my body that had been struggling to escape from him. And looking straight into his eyes, I said:
“I think you’re mistaken, Devan. I don’t want anything at all.”
Devan immediately opened his mouth to say something more. But my whisper was faster.
“You made me that way.”
“…”
Finally, he released me. His fiercely burning eyes lost their light in an instant. The pain had now risen to an unbearable level. Devan’s face, looking at me despairingly, was rippling hazily. I tried to bear it by clutching my stomach, but my legs buckled involuntarily.
“Ludin?”
“Huk…”
“You… what’s wrong with you?”
I braced myself against the cold floor and vomited abruptly. The sharp pain, like being stabbed with a knife, made even opening my eyes overwhelming. Devan knelt before me. His desperate cry echoed through the corridor.
“I… I did everything wrong… snap out of it! Ludin!”
I could feel Jiman rushing to check my pulse after hearing the commotion. I tried to respond to the voice calling my name, but consciousness gradually faded. Until I lost consciousness, Devan begged for my forgiveness over and over. His desperate voice rang in my ears, but everything just felt utterly sickening.
* * *
This time, I wasn’t asleep. I could feel it instinctively. Every night, raging fever made it impossible to think straight. Occasionally when I opened my eyes, startled by a cold compress, I heard serious voices. I spoke deliriously a couple of times without realizing it, though I didn’t know what I said. It probably wasn’t even intelligible.
The pain that started in my stomach spread throughout my entire body. I woke countless times from violent coughing fits. I grew weak as I couldn’t even swallow thin porridge. Several arguments broke out around me as I suffered deliriously. I couldn’t understand the content. I just twisted my body and gasped at the loud voices pounding in my head.
I thought the end had truly come. It was time to wake from the terrible nightmare and leave it behind. It saddened me that nothing came to mind in my final moments. It hurt that despite coming to the place I so desired and meeting the person I truly wanted to see, I had no memories to take with me. Still, I wanted to believe there was meaning in protecting what I had intended to protect. However, thinking about leaving this place forever, I couldn’t help but worry about Jiman.
There was always someone sitting by my bedside. When I clutched at anything to bear the pain, with my head burning with fever, he soothed me like comforting a child. I thought it was Jiman. I tried to move my lips to say goodbye to him, but my farewell never reached him.
“Sleep peacefully. Don’t think about anything. Don’t remember… any pain.”
One day, I seemed to hear his whisper amidst my hazy consciousness. A gentle hand wiped my face, which was streaming with cold sweat. I surrendered myself to that steady touch and fell asleep again. Strangely, my heart was at peace. If this was death, I could face it countless times.
But it wasn’t the end. The next day I opened my eyes, and the situation had changed surprisingly.
My breath felt tight as if I’d sprinted a long distance, and my aching body suddenly became lighter. My blurry vision cleared, and my breathing became even. My heart beat steadily, warmly circulating blood throughout my body. The pain that had dominated my body vanished overnight as if washed away. When I struggled to sit up with a dreadful feeling, a hand immediately supported my back.
I turned my head in surprise. At first, I thought I was seeing another hallucination.
“Can you get up?”
It was Kadilen. He was checking my complexion from beside the bed. I hastily retreated. The crisp new blanket was terribly wrinkled by my urgent movement. Seeing my frightened state, Kadilen hesitated and withdrew his hand. An awkward atmosphere hung in the air.
“You were very ill. They say you’ve passed the crisis.”
After repeatedly opening and closing his mouth, he finally spoke. I stared at him blankly. Kadilen looked like someone who had stayed up for several nights, with disheveled hair and a haggard face. It was a look I had never seen on him, who always maintained a neat appearance. He cleared his throat under my persistent gaze.
“The medicine wasn’t working, so I fed you a bead.”
“…”
“It’s the first case of multiple beads entering one person’s body, but control is possible, so…”
His calm, low voice carefully explained the situation. When I became critically ill, Kadilen put two more beads in me. Even he didn’t know what effects multiple beads would create, he said. But he had succeeded in saving me and said he would find a way to suppress the symptoms using those beads. Until he obtained a cure from Luan.
Kadilen was determined to save me. But why on earth…?
“Why are you…?”
My voice was terribly cracked from not speaking for so long. It was a question that came out unconsciously. His gaze wavered as he looked at me. After pondering with a complicated expression for a long time, he quietly answered.
“Wimu made a request.”
I couldn’t help but laugh emptily. I had forgotten about that for a moment. Wimu had made a request to Kadilen for the first time in his life. It was to save me. Though I should have been angry about the treatment proceeding regardless of my wishes, I just felt strange. I looked at Kadilen again. Even after giving his answer, his face showed more confusion than mine.
“Your Majesty, everything is ready.”
Behind him, a chamberlain approached without making a sound. I couldn’t tell when he had entered. While he bowed his head and waited for the king’s answer, Kadilen couldn’t take his eyes off me, as if wrestling with some thought.
“Just… just a moment.”
A mutter-like phrase came from his lips. The chamberlain sighed and urged him firmly.
“You cannot postpone state affairs any longer.”
I looked back and forth between them in confusion. It was hard to say which was more bewildering – Kadilen, completely absorbed in me, or the chamberlain, glaring fiercely at me. Time, which seemed to have stopped, flowed again, and finally an answer fell from Kadilen’s lips.
“…I understand.”
Even as he reluctantly stood up, he continued to stare at me relentlessly. The chamberlain looked at him with contempt. As he was led out of the room, half-pulled by his attendant, Kadilen looked back at me repeatedly. Each time, not knowing how to react, I awkwardly met his gaze.
Finally, the king’s confused face disappeared, and I was left alone in the room. I was dumbfounded by the strange situation that had just swept through. I stretched out both arms as if doing a stretch. My body felt excessively light.
There were many strange things. Kadilen’s suspicious reaction was dubious, but even setting that aside, everything was strange.
The strangest thing was that he had fed me more beads. Though he mentioned Wimu’s request, there was no need to protect me by giving so many precious objects to one person. Kadilen wasn’t someone who did anything without purpose. What meaning lay in those persistent glances?
One thing came to mind. Kadilen had once used the same method to suppress my pain. On the day my breathing stopped at the temple, he willingly gave me his bead. However, it soon became clear that his intention was to probe my emotions. Suspecting I carried a curse, he put a bead in me to clarify the facts. And the next day, I was wounded by his sword.
My mood plummeted instantly. Was one not enough? Perhaps he couldn’t believe what I said about Luan. Despite saying even he didn’t know the effects of multiple beads, did he distrust me so much as to take such a risk?
But there was something he overlooked. If he couldn’t believe the sincerity he discovered with one bead, adding two more wouldn’t make him believe anything more. Kadilen would doubt me at every moment. Regardless of what I had done for him so far, regardless of my feelings.
I looked down at the floor dejectedly. Hitting my chest with my fist to relieve the stifling feeling, I stood up. I thought of looking for Jiman. I wanted to childishly whine about whatever business kept him from my side now. Just as I painfully lifted my foot–
Suddenly, darkness came. I had only blinked once, but the world was completely dark.
I froze like a stone, staring into space. I rubbed my eyes frantically and stretched out my hands, waving them through the air. Nothing was caught.
“…What is this?… Is anyone there?”
My weakened voice sounded like a whisper. Ignoring my increasingly trembling body, I struggled to feel for the wall. It seemed like I was making a little progress through the darkness, but I tripped on something, lost my balance, and fell. No matter how much I blinked, opening and closing my eyes led to the same darkness. My breathing grew increasingly rapid, and my back bent. A strange wind sound rang in my ears.
I curled up and buried my face in my knees. The things I had once imagined in the darkness were coming for me again. I could feel their presence. Soon they would surround me with hideous faces, shouting and scratching me roughly. What pierced my throat was sometimes a large sword, sometimes sharp fangs, and soon changed into a corpse bleeding black blood.
“Huk…”
Sobbing, I lowered my face even more. Though I couldn’t see anything, I didn’t want to see anything either. If our eyes met, they seemed like they would tear my clothes apart and bite my neck. Meeting Kadilen just moments ago felt like it happened in the distant past. Listening to my own rapid breathing, I pounded my chest, which was heaving uncontrollably.
That’s when it happened. The door opened with a thud, and a faint light filtered in from outside. I quickly raised my head. It was night, and the corridor lights weren’t as bright as I’d thought. Still, I pressed against the floor with all my might to somehow enter that light. At the doorway stood a small child, silhouetted in the flickering light.
“…Lord Ludin?”
“Who is it? Please…”
“Are you alright?”
The child rushed over and sat down with me. My hands, pressing down on the floor as I tried to crawl away, were trembling uncontrollably. A young voice came from the person who pressed against my hands.
“It’s Rio. Jiman is bringing oil because it’s all run out…”
“Tell him to come right now!”
I wasn’t in my right mind. Rio was the child Jiman had brought before. Though it was terrible that I had shouted harshly at a child, the boy wasn’t flustered and calmly checked my breathing.
“I’ll go quickly and come right back.”
Sensing my condition wasn’t normal, Rio spoke hurriedly and stood up. As I felt him moving away, extreme fear suddenly overwhelmed me. The monsters were right beside me. They were holding their breath near me, waiting for the child who had walked in from the light to leave.
“Wait!”
“Yes?”
“Don’t go. Just stay here.”
The hesitating child approached me again. Rio slowly extended his hand and knelt before me. I desperately clutched that small hand. The doorway was just a few steps away, but even moving that far wasn’t easy. The darkness was pressing down on my entire body. Though it felt suffocating as if my throat would be strangled at any moment, my breathing burst forth at an excessive speed.
The child hesitated, then clasped my hand in return. And he looked into my eyes, filled with fear. From Rio’s lips flowed the clear voice of a young child.
“Don’t be afraid. I’ll tell you an interesting story.”
