To You, Who Will Die Alone in Paradise Chapter 43

Sarphana opened her eyes. Light flashed in her violet pupils, then turned to the north.

The place she had challenged countless times but failed each time, the hateful land that had swallowed her, was there. Each time her attempt to invade it failed, Sarphana’s heart was torn into a thousand pieces and crumbled into ten thousand fragments.

How many times had she lashed herself for her own shortcomings and charged in? And how many times had she cried out her name while doing so?

But the cursed magic blocked Sarphana like an iron fortress, and her body only grew more broken with each repeated challenge. If Surha, unable to watch any longer, hadn’t ordered her to be confined for a while, Sarphana would still be swimming toward that land even now.

But now, Sarphana’s senses screamed.

Something had changed.

There had been a great movement.

Sarphana took one step to the north. At that moment, her vision darkened, and a familiar ‘gift’ arrived.

A small frame and a smooth face appeared. The race that Sarphana hated most in this world stood with its eyes closed.

‘A human….’

Sarphana stared at the ‘gift’ with half displeasure and half suspicion. She wondered why she didn’t just kill such a weak-looking human immediately. A strange sense of déjà vu also bothered her. It was a face she was definitely seeing for the first time, yet the shape of the eyes veiled by long eyelashes and the small lips were strangely familiar.

And when he finally opened his eyes, Sarphana’s breath caught in her throat.

Violet eyes, so very much like her own, met Sarphana’s like a revelation.

“…Hahk!”

Dandeleon opened his eyes.

His heart was pounding like crazy. Something trickled down his forehead. Dandeleon hurriedly wiped at the liquid on his forehead, then paused.

There was nothing on his hand. It was damp, but it wasn’t red. It was just clear. Strangely.

It took a long time to realize that the liquid on his hand was sweat. Dandeleon dazedly felt his forehead. It was moist, but there was no wound. Unable to accept this fact, he felt his forehead several more times before finally running to the mirror.

The Dandeleon in the mirror was perfectly fine. His thin pajamas were a little wrinkled, but that was all. There was no dirt or blood on him. His face was pale and completely devoid of color, but that too was a common occurrence.

Everything was exactly as it always was.

‘But I was definitely….’

And that was what was strange.

‘…I was?’

Something, something very terrible had happened.

“Oh?”

Dandeleon jumped like a startled rabbit. Zellos, who was opening the bedroom door and coming in, made an embarrassed face.

“I’m sorry. It’s still dawn, so I thought you’d still be sleeping, of course….”

“Huh? Ah… yes….”

His heart pounded and a cold sweat broke out. Dandeleon couldn’t even answer properly, just opening and closing his mouth. Calling Zellos’s name, even looking at him, was strangely uncomfortable. And yet he couldn’t understand why, and it was driving him crazy. Something had happened.

‘…What happened…?’

“Mr. Leon?”

As Zellos approached, Dandeleon flinched and stepped back. Zellos frowned and examined Dandeleon.

“Why are you sweating so much? Was it very hot?”

Dandeleon nodded. He had to do at least that, since words wouldn’t come out. Fortunately, Zellos didn’t press him further and turned toward the bed.

“This is why I told you to stop using the winter blanket. The tulips have been in full bloom for a while, but you’re still using a cotton quilt….”

Zellos went on nagging endlessly. While doing so, he neatly folded the blanket on the bed and picked it up, then spread a new one on the bed, and said he would take the winter blanket to the laundry room before leaving the room.

Everything was the same as usual. He was the very same Zellos Dandeleon knew so well, who grumbled but diligently did his work and took attentive care of Dandeleon.

Dandeleon plopped down on the bed. Something felt wrong, but when he looked around, there was nothing wrong at all. Dandeleon fidgeted with his fingers and finally pinched his own cheek.

It hurt. Ordinarily, realistically.

“It must have been a dream.”

Dandeleon muttered blankly.

Now that he said it, it seemed plausible. He had clearly had a very terrible dream. That was why he was sweating so much, felt awful, and even Zellos felt strange. Though he couldn’t remember what the dream was about at all.

Just then, he heard the sound of a door being thrown open from the living room. It seemed Zellos was back. It was an impossibly short time to have gone to the laundry room in another building and come back, so he must have forgotten something.

Dandeleon staggered out to the living room. He wanted to see Zellos again and check if the strange feeling continued.

But the person standing at the door was not Zellos.

“…Kellen?”

Looking around the room as if searching for something was Kellewen. His face was deathly pale, and his hair and clothes were a complete mess. Hearing Dandeleon’s voice, Kellewen whipped his head around. His green eyes widened, then filled with tears and crumpled.

“Leon…!”

Kellewen approached Dandeleon in a single stride. Kellewen’s hands grabbed Dandeleon’s shoulders, then let go with a start. Dandeleon noticed that his fingertips were trembling slightly.

“Kellen? Are you okay?”

“Are you hurt anywhere?”

“Are you asking me right now?”

Dandeleon replied, feeling bewildered.

“I’m perfectly fine.”

“Anywhere that hurts? Where were you last night?”

“…I was sleeping in my room.”

“You didn’t go outside? The letter… the letter? Did you not receive the letter?”

“What letter are you talking about?”

“Ah….”

Kellewen’s barrage of questions finally stopped. Now seemed to be a good time to ask what was going on. The moment Dandeleon opened his mouth, thinking so, tears streamed down Kellewen’s face.

“Leon….”

Facing that face, Dandeleon couldn’t say anything. Kellewen cried like a person suffering from terrible pain, then suddenly changed his expression and smiled like a person who had the whole world. After repeating the cycle of crying and laughing, he suddenly reached out his hand and slowly, very carefully, caressed Dandeleon’s cheek.

“Really….”

Dandeleon was confused. Kellewen’s state was so strange it was a little scary. Kellewen’s fingers moved past Dandeleon’s cheek, down to his chin, and then dropped.

Kellewen pulled Dandeleon into a fierce hug.

It was a desperate embrace, as if he were clinging to him. Kellewen’s warmth enveloped Dandeleon tightly. And then, strangely, Dandeleon’s vision blurred.

“Kellen.”

Dandeleon whispered without realizing it.

Was it because Kellewen’s anxiety was contagious, or was it because of last night’s forgotten nightmare? Unexplained tears streamed down Dandeleon’s eyes as well.

He didn’t know the reason, but his heart felt at ease. The strange feeling he had felt right after waking up melted away, mixed with his tears. In Kellewen’s arms, Dandeleon slowly regained his composure.

How much time had passed like that?

“I was wrong.”

It was Kellewen who spoke first. Dandeleon still had his face buried in Kellewen’s chest. He had calmed down long ago, but he didn’t want to be caught crying.

“I will not return to the Elven Forest.”

But at the words that followed, Dandeleon had no choice but to lift his head with a snap.

“What did you say?”

Dandeleon shouted, looking up at Kellewen. He thought he had calmed down by now, but Kellewen’s face was still wet with tears. He smiled brightly with his tear-streaked face.

“I will go later, much later. After your time has ended… going then will be enough. For now, I want to prioritize you.”

A storm once again raged inside Dandeleon, which had been slowly calming down.

The words Kellewen uttered were so sweet that they were hard to believe. Dandeleon remembered Kellewen shouting that saving the world was the same as saving him. At that time, he had said that the guardian tree’s life was running out. Dandeleon had scoffed inwardly upon hearing those words. Not even knowing that my lifespan is shorter than the guardian tree’s….

His thoughts stopped, and his heart sank. It took immense courage to open his mouth and confirm the fact. Dandeleon stammered as he asked.

“Did you, by any chance… know?”

Kellewen didn’t answer. He didn’t even ask what he knew. He just looked back at Dandeleon with a complicated gaze. No, at a glance, it also looked as if he were observing him.

That attitude gave Dandeleon his certainty.

‘He knows. That I’m going to die soon….’

A flicker of curiosity about who told him arose but soon disappeared. At this point, something like that was too trivial to even care about.

Dandeleon closed his eyes. In an instant, his heartbeat quickened and his face grew hot. A complex emotion that couldn’t be defined in a word or two pressed down heavily on his chest.

There had been many chances to tell him. It would be a lie to say he hadn’t wanted to. But the reason he had hidden the fact until the very end was because begging for love using his short lifespan as an excuse seemed pathetic. He felt that if he did so, what would come back to him in the end would not be love but pity, and he hated the idea of sinking to such a miserable state more than death itself, so he even lied and deliberately pushed Kellewen away.

But what was this situation now? In the end, Kellewen only decided to stay by his side after finding everything out. Is this really love and not pity?

In the end, it was my lifespan and not me that held him back, so am I allowed to be happy about his decision not to go back?