To You, Who Will Die Alone in Paradise Chapter 30

The gentle yet strangely thorny tone of voice awakened a memory in Dandeleon. Whenever he grumbled about why they had to visit their mother’s grave, Zellos always coaxed him in that way. He would pester Dandeleon endlessly, saying how disappointed their mother, Ms. Apsara, would be if the only two of them she had didn’t visit her at least once a year.

Right, his mother’s grave was in Roallant.

“I wasn’t in the right state of mind…”

Dandeleon glanced at Zellos and scrambled for an excuse. Inwardly, however, he thought Zellos’s off-topic question was strange.

He was more curious about whether I visited the grave than how I managed to get to Roallant and back in half a day? No matter how much the Lycan tribe valued family, this seemed to go beyond that sort of issue.

“It can’t be helped. Then how about we go together sometime this month?”

Dandeleon, who had been spacing out, almost asked where they were going. An instinctive sense of crisis clamped his mouth shut, barely saving him from the mistake. Dandeleon grimaced and touched his forehead. He felt like he had been doing nothing but foolish things since he woke up, and he suspected his fever hadn’t fully gone down.

“This month? The anniversary of Mother’s death is two months from now, isn’t it?”

The two of them normally went to Roallant once a year to visit the grave. There were times they couldn’t make it exactly on the anniversary, but they had never gone months early. When Dandeleon gave him a puzzled look, Zellos smiled faintly.

It was a smile that gave him a strangely uneasy feeling.

“I have a plan.”

“What kind of plan?”

“We go to Roallant, pay our respects to Ms. Apsara, and run away just like that.”

“What?”

Dandeleon was taken aback by the strange word that had suddenly popped out. He stared at Zellos for a long time, thinking it might be a joke, but no words came to say it was. Zellos explained to Dandeleon with an odd smile.

“Mr. Leon, you hate it here, don’t you? Don’t you remember how you sobbed, saying you wanted to go home when you first came to the royal palace?”

“Well… that’s because I was young then…”

“It’s not like you’ve grown to like it here just because you’ve become an adult.”

When he put it that way, there was nothing to say. Dandeleon still hated the royal palace. There was no way he could ever come to like this place, filled only with people who despised him.

However, running away from the royal palace was a different matter.

Dandeleon was physically weak. There was the fact that he didn’t have the stamina to endure a long journey, but the real problem was his medicine. Dandeleon’s frail constitution was congenital, so there was no way to cure it, but at least the symptoms could be managed with medicine whenever they appeared. One of the things Zellos did most often at the palace was go to the royal physician to get Dandeleon’s medicine.

The physician despised Dandeleon just as much as everyone else, but at least he didn’t demand money. It was perhaps the only advantage of living in the royal palace. Medicinal herbs were expensive, and medicine was even more expensive. The moment they left the palace, all medicine would become something they had to buy with money, and it would be difficult for not only Dandeleon but also Zellos to afford the cost.

And above all, there was one more important fact.

The king would not stand by and watch Dandeleon leave. The moment he realized he was gone, he was the kind of person who would mobilize the army, if necessary, to bring him back to the palace. This was not a simple guess but something that had actually happened. In his early childhood, not long after arriving at the palace, he had impulsively run away only to be caught by soldiers and brought back. So this time, too…

“His Majesty won’t bother to chase you.”

Zellos said. A chill ran down Dandeleon’s spine.

“He might have in the old days, but not anymore. It’s already been 10 years. A lot has happened in that time. His Majesty probably isn’t interested in you anymore, Mr. Leon.”

“Stop it.”

Dandeleon denied it reflexively.

Dandeleon had had the same thought before. Was it just ‘before’? He couldn’t count how many times. But thinking it yourself and hearing it from someone else were different. If that someone else was a person who knew you better than anyone, the feeling was even more different.

“No, it’s true that he was never interested in you to begin with. His Majesty was only thinking of Ms. Apsara, but he couldn’t accept that she was gone…”

“I told you to stop!”

Dandeleon shouted. The atmosphere, which had been as tense as walking on thin ice, instantly froze over.

Dandeleon swallowed dryly. His heart was pounding like crazy. His face grew so hot it felt like it was on fire, and his fingertips trembled faintly. It was hard to believe that Zellos, of all people, had spoken to him this way.

He knows why I’m here. He watched from the side through everything I went through after being forcibly confined to this place. He knows everything about what I expected and what was frustrated.

“Why are you suddenly acting like this?”

Dandeleon asked, his voice filled with anger and resentment.

Zellos did not avoid his gaze and met it head-on. When he wiped the unpleasant smile from his face, an unfamiliar expression was revealed.

“Mr. Leon, you…”

Knock, knock.

A knock on the door interrupted them. Zellos whipped his head toward the door, bared his teeth, and let out a low growl.

“How many times do I have to—!”

Zellos lunged toward the door. Dandeleon scrambled to his feet to follow him.

‘Is it Kellewen?’

If it was Kellewen, the timing was terrible. He didn’t know why, but Zellos was extremely aggressive right now. It seemed Kellewen had been quite a nuisance while he was sick, and if a Zellos who couldn’t see straight did something to the High Elf, it would be impossible for Dandeleon to handle the aftermath. Dandeleon dragged his heavy body and took a step to stop Zellos.

“…Yes? No, right now he’s…”

But Zellos, who had violently thrown open the door, changed his attitude in an instant. He exchanged words with the visitor in a slightly flustered tone. A moment later, Zellos closed the door.

“Who was it?”

Dandeleon asked. Zellos answered with a dazed look on his face.

“It was someone sent by His Majesty. His Majesty… has summoned you, Mr. Leon.”

A short while later, Dandeleon arrived before the door to the king’s office with a complicated heart.

The hallway in front of the office was quiet. One end of the small corridor led to the office, and the other end to a larger hallway. In the small space caught between the doors, there wasn’t a single guard on duty. Only the paintings of various sizes hanging on the walls stared silently at Dandeleon.

Dandeleon was about to knock on the office door but paused. A landscape painting hanging closest to the door had captured his attention.

A purple line ran across the upper part of the massive canvas. The ominously glowing purple gradually faded as it descended, its place taken by blue. At the bottom of the painting was a white sandy beach, with waves crashing upon it.

It was a painting of Roallant.

There were no living creatures in the painting. Nor did it depict the Zeloquar Lighthouse, as artists painting Roallant often did. The painting, stained only by the waves on an empty beach, was desolate and lonely.

Dandeleon gazed at the painting for a long time before turning away. The heavy door looked down on him as if it would crush him.

Knock, knock.

“Come in.”

The reply to the knock was so faint it was barely audible. He wondered if it was because the door was thick or because the owner of the voice had answered weakly. Dandeleon opened the door and entered the room.

The king’s office was extremely ornate. A giant portrait hung on the wall directly visible upon entering, and a ceremonial sword adorned with gold and jewels decorated the space beside it. In front of a desk wider than Dandeleon’s outstretched arms, there was a relief carving of a scene from the holy scriptures.

“Sit there.”

The king indicated the area in front of him with a nod of his head. It was a space with a low table, barely knee-high, and a sofa. Dandeleon carefully sat down on the chair in front of the table.

The room was excessively quiet. It felt as if the air had mass and was pressing down on him. Dandeleon fought back the urge to remove the cravat wrapped around his neck.

The king continued to read his documents for a while even after Dandeleon entered. During that time, Dandeleon sat without moving a muscle, just staring blankly out the window. It was late afternoon, but the clouds were so thick that there was almost no trace of the sun. Everything reflected in the window was drab, as if painted with gray watercolor.

After a period of time that felt like an eternity, the king put down the documents. He let out a low sigh, picked up a large seal, and stamped it on the papers. Only then did he rise.

As soon as the king sat down opposite Dandeleon, a servant appeared as if on cue. The servant placed a teacup on the table, picked up the teapot, and poured tea. After bringing out some refreshments to go with the tea, the servant disappeared through the door opposite the one Dandeleon had entered through.

“Did the palace tour end well?”

The king asked without touching anything on the table. Dandeleon replied.

“Yes…”

“You went through a lot of trouble.”

The exchange ended there. A suffocating silence fell.

Dandeleon lowered his gaze and just stared at his own legs. The area around his forehead felt ticklish. The king was looking at him. That gaze was too much of a burden.

‘If you have something to say, just say it already…!’

It was just as Dandeleon, unable to bear the tension, raised his teacup and forced himself to take a sip of tea.

“Do you know what the Tuella Deum is?”

A new question finally came from the king’s lips. Dandeleon answered with a willing heart.

“I understand it to be an organization similar to a knightly order that protects the Elven Forest.”

“Correct. We received a message from the Elven Forest. The Tuella Deum will soon come to escort the High Elf.”

“……!”

Dandeleon set down his teacup with a trembling hand. He tried to act composed, but the cup clattered against the saucer, making an unpleasant sound.

“As you know, the High Elf’s pilgrimage ended in our kingdom. All that remains now is for him to return to the Elven Forest.”

“Yes…”

“You are well-versed in elven culture and are also acquainted with the High Elf, so you must be sure to attend the reception to welcome the Tuella Deum. If you arbitrarily decide to be absent as you have with other events, it will bring great disgrace upon the royal family.”

“I understand.”

The king was subtly rebuking Dandeleon, but he was in no state of mind to pay it any mind. The fact that Kellewen was leaving shook him to his core.