‘Anyone can see we know each other!’

While I was inwardly screaming, the cult believers exchanged glances with each other and then, seemingly having made their decision, surrounded me.

“That woman must be in league with the Pope!”

“Capture the evil Grand Temple minion who persecutes religion!”

“We need to capture both the Pope and his minion!”

Half of the believers threatened me while the other half surrounded Yupheon in a circle.

I felt wronged.

I had indeed infiltrated the cult, but I was certainly not conspiring with Yupheon.

‘Damian is the one in league with Yuphe, not me!’

While Damian was actually acting as a spy under Yupheon’s orders, innocent me who was just quietly stealing was being accused of being his accomplice.

Feeling wronged, I looked around with wide eyes for Damian, and found him among the believers, holding a weapon and threatening Yupheon along with them.

“Beat the Pope! Kill the Pope!”

Damian was shouting with the loudest voice of all, performing a possessed method acting.

‘Why… does his acting seem so sincere?’

Perhaps taking after his superior, Damian seemed just as abnormal as Yupheon.

I pretended not to see and looked away.

‘I need to escape from here first…’

Actually, escaping wouldn’t be difficult.

But those people would inevitably get hurt.

I wasn’t keen on attacking people.

Unlike the fled cult leader, these were ordinary people who had been deceived by the cult leader.

‘But I have no choice since I’ll be in danger if I just stand here.’

I was reluctantly preparing to take a fighting stance against the people closing in on me when.

“Pretty one, it’s dangerous!”

Swoosh!

Suddenly Yupheon leaped through the air, broke through the people, and landed in front of me.

Then he grabbed me and jumped out the window.

‘Wait, this is three stories high!’

Someone with Cail’s level of skill might be fine, but Yupheon, who had only studied scripture at the Grand Temple, couldn’t possibly survive falling from the third floor…

“Phew, that was close. Right?”

Couldn’t possibly survive… or could he?

Not only was I unharmed in his arms, but Yupheon, who had jumped down from three stories while holding me, didn’t have even the slightest scratch.

He seemed to have no internal injuries either, let alone external ones.

I blinked in surprise as I looked at him, and my eyes met his as he smiled brightly at me.

“Put me down!”

I said while pushing his face away with my hand.

“Okay.”

He obediently put me down.

At that moment, I heard the cult believers shouting from above.

“Oh, they really are accomplices!”

“I knew it!”

“Catch them!”

“Get those two!”

I could hear them shouting as they stuck their heads out the window and the sound of believers coming down to catch us.

I was thinking we should get away before they caught up to us.

Swish.

Yupheon interlaced his fingers with mine.

I naturally turned to look at him, our eyes met, and he gently curved his eyes into crescent moons while rubbing the back of my hand with his index finger.

‘This is…’

My eyes widened.

He whispered to me in a low voice.

“One.”

Suddenly, a scene from my childhood came to mind.

When I was much younger than now.

When we used to skip classes together at the Grand Temple, avoiding Holiness Johannes.

“Two.”

Interlacing fingers and rubbing the back of the hand was our signal.

‘When one of us gives the signal, we count one, two, three in our minds and then run. Got it, Yuphe?’

“Three.”

Yuphe and I started running simultaneously.

***

After running nonstop for a long while, we reached a quiet alley not far from the underworld buildings.

Jella breathed heavily, huff, huff, and then asked angrily.

“What exactly did you do? Why did you make me look like a Grand Temple minion too!”

Her face was full of indignation.

For a moment, Yupheon couldn’t help but burst into laughter.

Seeing her with her face flushed red, breathing heavily, he suddenly…

Felt it real.

The fact that she was alive felt real…

She was so beautiful and enchanting as she breathed that it could bring tears to his eyes no matter how many times he saw her.

“I’m sorry. But you looked in danger, so I couldn’t pretend not to know you.”

Yupheon tried to soothe her with the gentle tone he often used when she was sharply angry.

But it didn’t seem to have much effect.

“If you hadn’t pretended to know me, I wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place, you know?”

“Mmm.”

“Why do you keep acting like we’re close when we’re not even friends?”

She snapped at him harshly.

‘She’s pretty.’

Why was Jella so pretty even when she was angry? It was truly a conundrum.

Jella was pretty. Since she was pretty even when angry, she would probably be pretty even when cursing or being violent. She would probably be pretty even when she became an old lady.

Sometimes, Yupheon found it a bit sad that she was so pretty.

He didn’t like her just because she was pretty.

He just liked her because she was her.

Because she was her. Because she was Jella. Because she was his only light. Because she was his real “god” who had shown him the world…

His feelings for her were that simple, yet at the same time too deep and profound to express in words.

Therefore, he had no way to convey these contradictory emotions to others.

And that made him sad.

Because he couldn’t express his feelings, and because people might think he was just another fool infatuated with her face.

I absolutely don’t like Jella because she’s pretty.

But Jella is pretty.

Yupheon stared at that pretty face while she tried to calm her anger, completely entranced.

Her cheeks flushed red, either from anger or from running.

Her disheveled black hair was sticking to her forehead, wet with sweat.

Her slightly furrowed eyes and pouting lips.

How could anyone not like that face?

But I really, really don’t like her because of her face.

Come to think of it, the her that I like wasn’t even this face…

But Jella was pretty back then too.

She was never not pretty for a single moment.

But I know.

No matter what she looks like, no matter what shell she wears, she’ll be the prettiest in the world to my eyes.

Because she is the only standard in my world.

“….”

Yupheon unconsciously reached out his hand.

His long fingers removed her hair that was sticking to her forehead, strand by strand.

It was an old habit that emerged unconsciously.

After running until out of breath, the young princess’s hair would always be disheveled as if she had been in a fight.

It was young Yuphe’s role to fix it in the warm, heated air.

In fact, every time Yuphe brushed back her sweat-soaked hair, his heart would strangely flutter.

At first, he didn’t clearly know why. He only realized it a little later.

The rapidly beating heart wasn’t an aftereffect of running, and the flushed face wasn’t because of the hot afternoon air. It was all…

Because he liked her.

Because I liked Jella.

That’s what it was.

When I first realized that fact, how wonderful the world seemed.

To her, who was my entire world, I was just a small piece that made up her world…

Nevertheless, the fact that I could like her.

The fact that I liked her.

How beautiful and thrilling and brilliant it was.

Yupheon was smiling slightly, recalling that electrifying sensation when he first realized he liked her, when their eyes met.

Her expression was a bit strange.

Her eyes were hazy, her pupils dark, her lips cold, and her complexion subdued.

She seemed angry at a glance.

Jella Shunaibel was known to the world as a tyrant with a fiery temperament, but that was what people who didn’t know her well said.

She was rather like a piece of metal that gets cold when heated, a person who became quietly angry.

“Pretty one…?”

“Yuphe.”

She called him in a stiff voice.

Yupheon, who was about to reflexively respond with “Yes,” suddenly froze stiff.

Yuphe.

That name was what she used to call him in the past.

There was only one moment when he had temporarily yielded that name to someone else, but even so, it was a name that only she could call him.

So now Jella was calling him not as Jella the apothecary of the underworld, but as the unique light of his world, his master, and that violent and lovely ruler who shared the same time with him.

Ah…

A soft sigh escaped.

So Jella has realized it too.

That I know her.