Wandering Through Vol. 3 Chapter 82 - Settlement

I didn’t want to see you cry, so I tried to leave you…

That was the first thought Yiseo had as she looked at the man crying on top of her. Her head felt dizzier than when it had hit the floor. 

 

Unconsciously, she reached out and wiped his wet cheek.

Leegwang brought the palm that was wiping his cheek to his lips and kissed it. She was so captivated by his reddened eyes that she let him have her hand, but the increasingly strong, fishy smell of blood snapped Yiseo back to her senses.

 

“M-my lord.”

 

Yiseo shook off his hand and grabbed the front of Leegwang’s parted robes. She meant to check his wound. 

 

But Leegwang just seized her hand again and kissed it. Even while crying, his gaze was overwhelmingly intense. 

 

Perhaps even more so than usual.

 

“Don’t run away.”

“I’m not running, it’s just before your wound opens further—”

“It would be good if it opened further.”

He pulled her captured hand and pressed it against his stomach. 

 

As the wound opened wider, blood gushed out. Yiseo shuddered at the sensation of the damp blood spreading beneath her hand.

 

“P-please don’t do this. Please, let me call for a physician…”

He ignored her pleas. 

 

Just as Yiseo was about to scream, he whispered.

 

“When I feel my life is in danger, I remember you.”

In that instant, even her breath stopped.

“How we were in the past, what happened between us.”

“…”

“When you were not the you of now, and I was not the me of now… I also remember how you betrayed me.”

He pressed his lips to her ear and murmured.

“I remember, bit by bit. I remember. Every time I feel like I’m about to die, it’s as if something asks if I will really die, leaving you behind.”

 

Yiseo desperately repeated to herself that it couldn’t be true, but as his words continued, she found herself unable to stop thinking that maybe, just maybe, it was.

 

“It seems the god who bound our lives together truly loves you. Every time my life is in danger, it makes me think of you.”

 

Because the dragon god always desired Yiseo’s survival. 

 

Even if it meant she would suffer because of it.

 

So, breaking a promise he made to Yiseo could also mean nothing to the dragon god. If breaking his promise to her was more advantageous to her survival.

 

Human emotions like joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure were meaningless to the dragon god—only life and death mattered.

 

That was something she already knew. 

 

Even so, Yiseo felt betrayed. If the dragon god could arbitrarily break his promises to her, then whether Yiseo erased his memories or not was pointless.

 

After all, if Yiseo’s survival was ever threatened, the dragon god would just restore Leegwang’s memories at any time.

 

As if he knew what Yiseo was thinking, Leegwang twisted the corner of his mouth.

 

“You were planning to erase my memories and run away again, but it seems that won’t be possible now, does it?”

 

“…”

 

When Yiseo didn’t deny his accusation that she had tried to run away, he pressed down harder on his wound with their overlapping hands. 

 

The white cloth wrapped around his stomach was now so stained that no white remained.

 

As the blood continued to soak her hand, Yiseo squeezed her eyes shut and spoke.

 

“Let’s treat your wound first and then talk. I’ll keep holding it, so it’s fine… Please, let me call for a physician.”

 

“Your heart is already set on leaving me. Is there any reason for me to keep living?”

 

His words were heavy. 

 

Even with her eyes closed, Yiseo could feel his gaze on her and didn’t know what to do.

 

Yiseo had always believed that one person disappearing from your life shouldn’t determine whether you lived or died. 

 

Even if a parent, a sibling, or a child were to vanish, people were meant to survive. Yet, he spoke as if he were someone who could not live without Yiseo.

 

“Did you not live perfectly well when you did not remember me?”

Yiseo asked, her voice trembling.

“Wasn’t that time… better for you? There were no painful memories, no need to go mad with hating someone while still craving them… You could fully enjoy the life given to you, Grand Prince. That time was more…”

With her free hand, the one he wasn’t holding, Yiseo hesitantly, gropingly, cupped his cheek.

“I am returning to that time. Grand Prince. If you have no memories from the start, you will have no reason to want me.”

“The man who fell for you at first sight and recklessly carried you off—did he do that because he had memories?”

“That was… In the future, to ensure we never even meet, I will go much farther away…”

 

Yiseo’s words, stumbling and broken as she struggled to piece them together, faded into his dry laugh. 

 

Yiseo simply didn’t dare to open her eyes. She couldn’t tell if he was laughing or crying.

 

He asked in return. His tone, shifting between formality and familiarity, felt as if the ‘him’ without memories and the ‘him’ with them were blending together.

“Are you asking if it was better when I didn’t remember you?”

 

Yiseo’s judgment to keep her eyes closed was correct. 

 

If she had opened them and seen his glistening eyes, no matter how heartbreaking the words she heard, she would have been terrified and run away.

 

Knowing his own eyes were beyond his control, Leegwang considered it fortunate that Yiseo’s eyes were shut. He whispered in a deliberately choked voice, a voice so clogged it sounded on the verge of tears.

 

“Madam. When I couldn’t remember you, I was a little different from a corpse. Had I not met you as I was, I likely would have soon taken my own life out of sheer ennui.”

“…”

“This life began with you in the first place. Without you, it is hollow. There is nothing. Truly nothing…”

 

As if muttering to himself, Leegwang asked her,

“It would have been a painless death. Is that what you desire?”

A painful life and a painless death.

“Shall we die together?”

 

If he absolutely had to choose only one, Leegwang was, in effect, asking Yiseo what he should give him.

 

💫

 

At dawn, a man came to the government office prison.

The soldiers guarding the prison took a few coins from the man and let him through.

 

After all, the magistrate had only ordered them to prevent the prisoner from escaping, not to forbid other visitors.

 

Inside the cell, a young man sat listlessly, not even bound.

The man asked,

“Suyeong. Are you alright?”

 

At these words, Suyeong opened his closed eyes and looked up at his older brother. 

 

Even when met with Suyeong’s gaze, a chaotic mix of resentment and reproach, the man maintained his composure. 

 

Finally, Suyeong spoke.

“…I’m fine physically. Though I don’t know if I will be from now on.”

“You’ll have no problems in your future either. You’ll be out soon, so just think of it as bearing with this for a day or two.”

 

At the man’s comforting words, Suyeong let out a hollow laugh and asked,

“Even though I attempted to assassinate the Grand Prince?”

“The Grand Prince will forgive you and let the matter be as if it never happened.”

“Only because the Grand Prince planned to begin with.”

 

With the hand still stained with the Grand Prince’s dark, dried blood, Suyeong pulled a silk cloth from his robe and threw it toward his brother. 

 

The silk cloth, having left Suyeong’s person, fell in front of the man, shriveled and blackened as if it had caught fire in mid-air.

 

“It was something you gave me, Brother. Did you use me in your dealings with the Grand Prince?”

In response to Suyeong’s accusatory words, the man retorted instead.

“Was that wrong?”

“Brother!”

“You, me—neither of us has a single scratch. Was it we brothers who bled? It was the Grand Prince. Because of last night’s events, our family will only prosper more…”

“Then you should have told me! Rather than manipulating me like some possessed puppet!”

Suyeong remembered his body and tongue moving on their own. 

 

It had been a truly horrifying feeling. But his brother instead looked at him as if he were a child throwing a tantrum. 

 

Suyeong gritted his teeth.

“If you had simply handed me a blade and told me to stab the Grand Prince, I wouldn’t have felt this betrayed by you.”

 

“But if I had told you in advance, you would have refused. Especially to stab the Grand Prince in front of that woman.”

“…”

 

Not the ‘Grand Prince’s wife,’ nor the ‘First Wife,’ but ‘that woman.’ The man lowered his voice, deliberately avoiding clearly naming Yiseo. 

 

Suyeong paused, taken aback by his cautious tone.

“…You knew?”

“Knew what? If you mean that incident where you, oblivious to people’s watchful eyes, gave rice to some widow from a remote monastery, then I know nothing. Such a thing never happened. Isn’t that right, Suyeong?”

The man bent down to meet Suyeong’s eyes. 

 

As if determined to get an answer, he asked again.

“Such a thing never happened, did it? Suyeong.”

Faced with his brother’s resolute will to make it as if Suyeong and Yiseo had never even met, Suyeong fell silent. He had never intended to pursue anything with Yiseo from the start. She had never given him the slightest opportunity anyway.

 

However, Suyeong believed the Grand Prince was dangerous. 

 

Especially to Yiseo. 

 

Every time she endured what the Grand Prince did to her, that belief grew stronger.

 

At Suyeong’s prolonged silence, the man spoke again.

“You must think of your family. I don’t know how deeply you hold that woman in your heart, but His Highness the Grand Prince is not in his right mind—to the point of wounding his own body just to get a handful of concern from her. Do you intend to make an enemy of the Grand Prince over a single woman?”

“…”

“She’s a woman you’ve barely seen a few times anyway.”

 

He was right. Suyeong hung his head.

In over twenty years of life, she was a woman he had known for merely a few months, a woman he had barely seen. 

 

That was all Suyeong remembered about Yiseo.

…He remembered nothing of his beautiful cousin sister, nor the older brother he had followed more closely than his own father.

 

And so, he remained Shin Suyeong.

Yongsin had never once broken a promise with Yiseo.