“You said you brought Kim Ga-eul’s body. By any chance… did you know Kim Ga-eul back then?”
When she asked that, Niel’s eyes hardened at the unexpected question.
However, having already refined his emotions, he was able to hide those messy feelings from her.
Niel blinked slowly, tensing his clenched jaw.
The red mark on her left ring finger drew his gaze. He didn’t need to ask who had left it there.
Looking at the red love brand like a burn mark left by her man, Niel gathered his thoughts.
What he could do for her—who had now become another man’s woman—was—
“No, not at all.”
—to deny her, the Ga-eul he had loved, and the time they had spent together.
Though he said this to avoid burdening her, denying his time with her cut his own heart to pieces.
Niel ignored his painfully throbbing heart and left a final greeting on the back of her hand.
Though he knew he would never touch it again, he still had to let go without holding on too long.
As if he no longer loved her.
As if he didn’t have even the tiniest lingering attachment to her.
Because he didn’t want to burden her—who now loved another man—even with a speck of dust.
Back in his room, he took out the hard ring box from his pocket.
Click.
After staring intently at the pair of differently sized rings, he caressed the inside of the rings before placing them on the table.
That day, Niel drank alcohol for the first time in his life.
Drunk, he collapsed onto the table.
Ting. Roll roll—
The ring he never got to give fell to the floor and rolled away.
A moment later, the head servant came in to clean the table and discovered the ring on the carpet.
‘This ring…’
Recently, all of Yetrisha had been abuzz with news of the Emperor proposing to a commoner woman in town, but it seemed the outcome hadn’t been good.
The head servant looked at Niel with a sad face, then soon showed confusion.
‘Where did he get this?’
The head servant had procured everything the Emperor needed, but this ring was something he had never seen before.
There were unfamiliar characters engraved inside the ring.
The head servant placed the ring on the table and left the room.
A small groan escaped between Niel’s teeth as he slept.
“Ga-eul…”
***
Five years ago. When three men who seemed like they would never mix together united to save Jella.
“Crossing dimensions isn’t just about moving through space, but also traversing time.”
Helasio explained to Niel before his departure.
“That’s why you can cross over to a point before Jella’s body existed, or to a point after her body no longer exists. So it’s important to match the exact timing.”
“How do I match the timing?”
Helasio pulled a strand of light from Jella’s soul.
A luminously shining golden thread sparkled from Helasio’s mouth.
Helasio wrapped it tightly around Niel’s wrist and said:
“The object you’re holding will help you move spatially to that dimension, and this will help you match the timing to the day Jella’s body was born.”
“…”
Instead of answering, Niel stared intently at the strand of her soul wrapped around his wrist.
Instead of answering, Niel stared intently at the strand of her soul wrapped around his wrist.
And so Niel, carrying the god’s heart, crossed dimensions and arrived in Ga-eul’s world.
But there was a problem. Her world had too many continents and countries, and his time was limited.
After crossing over to this dimension, his body was maintained by the god’s vitality, so he neither aged nor fell ill, but someday that vitality would come to an end.
He had to find her before then.
Realizing it was impossible to find her by running around on foot, Niel immediately focused on other methods.
Unlike his world, where status equaled power, in this world, money was power.
Recognizing this, Niel quickly adapted to the new dimension, building a foundation with outstanding business acumen and execution, and based on this, he gathered information to find her body.
Nevertheless, finding her remained difficult. He didn’t know any characteristics of her body that existed in this dimension.
Niel knew only one clue:
The day he crossed over to this world was the day her body saw the light of the world.
However, in this world, over 300,000 new lives were born each day. He couldn’t rule out the possibility—though he didn’t want to consider it—that her body might be male.
In the worst case, he might have to meet all 300,000 people born on the day he crossed over to this dimension.
Niel used everything at his disposal to narrow down the margin of error as much as possible and visited countless people who might be her. He met them, turned away disappointed, and repeated the process of finding and meeting again as he searched for her.
Then one day, the golden strand shining on his wrist went dark.
Niel instinctively realized:
Her body had died.
It was exactly 24 years, 2 months, and 17 days after he had crossed over to this world.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Niel used the god’s core to cross time and space again. There was no trace of fear about breaking the world’s taboos.
In his first attempt, he had met people he hadn’t met before while searching for her, but the second attempt also ended in failure without finding her.
This time too, it was exactly 24 years, 2 months, and 17 days later.
Her body in this world meets death at the age of twenty-four…
Niel found this fact quite bitter, but he didn’t even waste time dwelling on such emotions and crossed time and space again.
Third, fourth, fifth time…
Repeatedly searching for her through continuous time, the god’s core he had initially received from Yupheon was considerably depleted.
It was a day when the fifth attempt was also nearing its end.
After marking another X on the large map covering one wall of the room, Niel headed to a country he had never visited before.
When he arrived in Korea, it was still the chilly early spring.
Under a cherry blossom tree with pale pink petals fluttering, Niel reached out in a trance-like state. He looked at the pink petal that landed on his palm.
The young princess he had loved also had such lovely pink eyes.
The day he first met her remained vivid despite the countless repetitions of time flowing by.
“The firstborn of Duke Alpenhayer?”
The indifferent expression and nonchalant tone as she looked him over. The young princess who had expressed with her whole body that she didn’t particularly want to get close to him, yet he had fallen for her anyway.
How many more times must I repeat this arduous time before I can meet you?
How much more must I long for you before this long and lonely time comes to an end?
Niel let out a painful groan as he rubbed his rough eyes.
By now, the inertia of moving to find her had grown larger than the hope that he could find her body.
“It might take quite a long time, and if you deplete all your vitality before meeting Jella, it would be a disaster. You might even be trapped in the dimension and never return.”
Helasio’s warning, now a distant memory, suddenly came to mind.
After a few more springs pass, he would have to cross time and space again.
With each crossing, the crack-like fissures engraved on his soul were deepening, and the god’s core he had received from Yupheon was also nearing depletion.
He didn’t care if his soul shattered and perished, preventing him from returning to his original world.
But not finding her body was unbearably terrible.
‘No. That will never happen.’
Niel raised his head, reproaching himself for such weak thoughts.
It was then.
The wind blew, and through the swaying pale pink view, his body stiffened as he discovered something.
A strange woman was shouting something at him with a fierce expression from atop the wall where he stood.
Thump—!
His heart beat violently.
Black hair and black eyes. Languid, droopy dog-like eyes. The woman with a small tear mole under her left eye was certainly a face he had never seen before.
But the moment he faced that face, Niel stared at her, forgetting even to breathe.
Then suddenly, he realized she was getting closer and closer to him.
“Move aside, move!”
“…!”
In an instant, Niel realized the woman’s body was falling toward him, and instinctively stretched out his arms to catch her.
Unable to withstand the weight, they tumbled together, and when he came to his senses, he was lying beneath her.
Niel stared blankly at the face of the woman with flowing black straight hair, unable to think of moving.
“Ouch…”
The woman let out a shallow groan as she rubbed her sore ankle.
Thanks to Niel catching her, she wasn’t seriously injured, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t hurt at all.
“I told you to move because it was dangerous… Why are you staring at me like that?”
At the suspicious, sharp voice, Niel suddenly drew in a breath.
This pointed and curt way of speaking.
It was her.
In fact, this was an instinctive realization he had felt from the moment his heart responded.
“Ha…!”
A short laugh burst out.
“Hahaha! Hahahahahaha!”
Covering his face with one hand while laughing loudly, tears leaked from the corners of Niel’s eyes.
“What, what is it? Are you crazy?”
Looking at the perplexed face of the woman, Niel murmured softly.
“…I’m in trouble.”
Because he had fallen for her again.
Truly helplessly, he had come to love her once more.
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Mahwiii
this doomed love… is sad from the start 😭😭 the sadder thing is he already knows she will die soon too
ah Niel you werent my favourite from the start but this is too much for my heart to handle