***
Finding out about her wasn’t difficult.
Her name was Kim Ga-eul. Having no family since birth, she grew up in a facility. Last year, upon becoming an adult, she left the facility and began living independently. She had entered university with excellent grades and was receiving support from a foundation.
Niel immediately acquired the foundation and became her official sponsor. Then, pretending it was a coincidence, he arranged several more encounters.
Like becoming a lecturer at the university she attended. Or visiting as a customer at the convenience store where she worked.
But Ga-eul wasn’t easily fooled.
“You’re a stalker, aren’t you? Why do you keep appearing in front of me?”
When Niel appeared even at the cafe where she had newly found employment, Ga-eul asked with narrowed eyes.
“If anything, Ms. Ga-eul is the one.”
But Niel was much more shameless than her.
“Are you hanging around me with impure intentions?”
“W-what? Hanging around?”
Ga-eul raised her voice indignantly.
“Are you done talking? Who’s the one appearing everywhere I am! Last week at school! A few days ago at the convenience store! And now today…!”
“I went to the school because I had a lecture. I didn’t know I would run into you again at the convenience store. And this cafe.”
Niel nonchalantly walked past Ga-eul, entered behind the counter and tied an apron around his waist.
“This place is run by me.”
“What?”
“I’m saying I’m the owner of this place. I delegated hiring matters to the manager, so I didn’t know that the new part-timer they hired recently was you, Ms. Ga-eul.”
Of course, it was half a lie. As soon as he learned that Ga-eul had found a new job, he had acquired this cafe.
“That’s impossible! Someone who was lecturing at the university last week is now a cafe owner today? Isn’t this fraud?”
Ga-eul was sharp.
“It’s a hobby.”
But she had no way to counter his smiling response.
“By the way, I find it highly suspicious. How you manage to appear everywhere I am. Ms. Ga-eul, are you perhaps stalking me?”
“A-am I crazy?”
Ga-eul reacted angrily to his words.
“I’m glad if that’s not the case.”
Niel smiled and placated her.
He wasn’t deliberately trying to make her angry.
But Niel knew her too well. He also knew all too well that if he yielded to her once, he would have no more chances to approach her.
Although Ga-eul had grown up in a different environment with a different appearance from Jella, her straightforward and direct personality was exactly the same as the woman he remembered.
Niel sometimes felt like he would go mad with how much he loved that fact.
Niel was confident. Even if she had a different face, even if she had been a man or much older, he would have fallen for her again.
As the time they spent together grew longer, Niel often felt his heart grow warm.
“What is it. Now.”
Ga-eul frowned at one eye as she asked Niel, who was looking at her with an emotional expression.
“Why are you looking at me with such a cheesy expression?”
That’s how his expression must have appeared to her.
“What are you looking at.”
Long ago, when he would steal glances at her younger self, she would catch his eye and snap at him with the same crooked and curt voice, her eyes narrowed like axes.
Remembering those fresh and heart-fluttering times of Thursday afternoons at 2 o’clock that would never return, Niel chuckled and replied:
“Because I like you.”
“…”
At his casual answer, Ga-eul suddenly pressed her lips tightly together.
Soon, her face turned bright red.
At first, Niel thought she was angry, but when he read the strange atmosphere flowing between her and himself, he was taken aback.
Niel’s lips parted unconsciously. Her reaction was clearly…
‘No way.’
She was seeing him as a romantic interest.
Niel stared blankly at her, as if frozen in place.
It had always been him who showed such reactions between her and himself, not her.
She had always been a relaxed, bored, and indifferent person beside him.
Being accustomed to that, Niel had naturally thought that she would never like him.
He had only planned to hover around her and, when the time came, take her back to his world.
So this… was unexpected.
Something dreamlike as her falling for him…
***
Due to this unexpected development, Niel unintentionally began avoiding Ga-eul. He would still hover around her but would turn his head away when their eyes met.
However, Ga-eul wasn’t the type to let that slide.
“You said you liked me! So why do you keep avoiding me!”
Ga-eul blocked Niel’s path as he tried to avoid her and demanded answers.
“I’m not avoiding you…”
As Niel was making excuses, unable to look her in the face.
“You were just playing with me, weren’t you? You trash!”
Niel turned his head at the moisture in her voice and froze when he saw tears glistening in Ga-eul’s eyes.
“I knew from the beginning that you would—!”
Grab!
He unconsciously seized her wrist.
“How could that be possible?”
His quiet voice cut off hers, resonating in the still night air.
Ga-eul forgot to push away Niel’s hand and stared at him blankly.
His tightly clenched jaw and moving Adam’s apple caught her attention.
“What do you mean ‘how could that be possible’?”
“…”
Niel looked at Ga-eul with trembling eyes and gritted his teeth.
She doesn’t know.
She doesn’t know what terrible methods he, Niel Alpenhayer, who loved her, had used to protect her. What hurtful words he had said to wound her.
That’s why she looks at him like that. With a face as if she likes him, urging him to answer.
Niel closed his eyes deeply and opened them again. She was still there in the same place.
Jella. My dear fiancée. My respected Majesty.
Perhaps I’ve gone mad from searching for you for too long.
I felt an inexplicable thrill for a moment seeing your face, upset and tearful because of me.
Having such disrespectful feelings for you, who is precious beyond measure even just to gaze upon—when you learn of all this later… will you punish me?
How will you punish me for wanting to reconnect with you, even for a fleeting moment, despite knowing the end?
The true feelings he couldn’t possibly express to Ga-eul echoed painfully in the back of Niel’s throat.
“…I like you. How could I play with your feelings?”
It was a cowardly truth to reveal to her who knew nothing.
For a moment, he felt her draw in a shallow breath.
“I like you.”
Niel chose to become a coward.
“I like you, Ga-eul.”
A deeper emotion burst through his teeth.
“So if you’ll allow me.”
Swish.
Niel tilted his head and gently cupped her bright red cheek with his large palm as he asked:
“May I love you?”
“If you like someone, you like them, and if you love someone, you love them. Who asks permission for such things?”
Ga-eul pouted with a prim expression.
“You’re right…”
Niel chuckled and murmured bitterly.
There were days when he had to hide his feelings tightly, feeling guilty even for the fact that he loved her.
It was a feeling he had never dared to express in front of her, not even once.
It was an emotion he couldn’t reveal even after her death.
But if you tell me not to ask permission for this feeling…
“Then from now on, I’m going to love you without your permission.”
Jella. I dare to love you once more.
“Even if you say you don’t like it later, I’ll still love you. Even if you say you like another man, I’ll continue to love only you.”
Even if in the near future you despise me and push me away, I want to continue loving only you.
“Is that okay?”
Would it truly be alright if I do so? Your Majesty. My Ga-eul.
“I told you not to ask permission for such things…”
Ga-eul’s voice, deliberately curt to hide her embarrassment, stopped abruptly.
Her black eyes grew round like a rabbit’s.
Through the gap that unconsciously opened as his lips gently captured hers, a hot flesh intruded.
So hot and persistent, capable of burning even a handful of breath, he was kissing her.
Ga-eul grabbed Niel’s clothes without making a sound.
A moment later, Niel slowly pulled his lips away and chuckled as he rubbed the corner of her still-frozen eyes.
“You need to breathe, Kim Ga-eul.”
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Mahwiii
i just realized something
he went through time and space again and again so there was a chance for a kim ga eul from another dimension that died before meeting him to be the one reincarnated in his world but its still the one who had met him that reincarnated there…
its just… too painful ;-;