He couldn’t come any closer and just shuffled his feet while spouting words haphazardly from his mind, but Lionella simply shook her head without interest in the context.

She had already reached a conclusion. She was always ready to refute his words. You are, my lady who was once mine, damn it, even at times like this you’re better and more noble than me… Why can’t you ever be caught in my hands? Why won’t anything go as I wish?

Unable to find an excuse for persuasion, Mishael had no choice but to make an appeal.

“Lily. It’s not impulsive. If I did something wrong, tell me, okay?”

“I’ve thought about it for a long time.”

Long. At that word, Mishael’s eyes that seemed ready to cry at any moment froze over.

“A long time.”

“You… the day you first said you’d take me back.”

“……What?”

“That day, I already decided to quit.”

“Lily, so, f*ck… You’ve been deceiving me for a year!”

About to cry at one moment, pleading with a choked heart the next, then raging fiercely… Mishael was swept up in all sorts of emotions as if he had been betrayed by her, while Lionella simply looked at him intently.

“You should have told me, okay? You should have said, if you tell me now that you love me, you’ll regret it! How would I know what love is? I saw my parents beheaded right before my eyes when I didn’t even know how old I was, wandered through slums alone until I ended up in Lycius. How would someone like me know about love? All I know is that even if I get beaten up every day because of you, I still want to linger around you.”

“……”

“I hate you so much that I want to twist your neck right now! But every day in my dreams you appear and all I know is this confusing emotion! How would someone like me know what love is?”

“Yes, so.”

Mishael’s words burst forth wildly, and Lionella gently cut him off with a bitter smile.

“……I’m sorry.”

“If you’re sorry, Lily.”

“I’m sorry. For what I did to you…….”

To you…….

For tormenting you. For despising you even after you became independent from me. For hating you. But for not being able to hate you till the end.

For loving you. I didn’t want to leave you with a destructive relationship that falls apart together, to the extent that I would end up with such an ending.

But now, adding any sentence after this would be nothing but an expired excuse. Since I’ve already made all my decisions, there was no need to leave anything behind. There was also no need to transfer any feelings that would prolong his regret. There was even less need for him to mull over.

Biting the inside of her lip, Lionella laughed as though she was about to cry. Her smile, against the suddenly darkened rain clouds, was absurdly bright.

“We were never meant to be from the start.”

“Li, Lily. No.”

“Because you won’t be able to cut me off yourself, I’m leaving.”

“No, Lily. No.”

“For you.”

“F*ck, if it’s for me, this shouldn’t happen……!”

“This is my last apology.”

“Lily!”

Roar…… Flash! With the flash that the rain clouds burst, Lionella slipped, and Mishael hurriedly ran towards the railing but…….

“No!”

Don’t go, just hold on, he almost rolled down crazily towards the bell tower below. In the middle of the clearing behind the bell tower, a place with few people…….

“Lily, come to your senses, Lily!”

Mishael collapsed to his knees and laid her on his lap, then desperately unleashed his holy power. But the holy power, aimlessly emitted, seeped into her, yet changed nothing. Not a wound, nor her dimmed eyes, nor her chest that didn’t move at all returned to how they were before.

“Lily, no. No…….”

He desperately tapped Lionella’s cheek but nothing returned to the cheek that had once lost its vitality. He endlessly poured holy power into the broken parts, the unmoving heart and lungs, and the shattered places, but nothing changed.

Unlike when she bit her tongue or cut her wrist.

If he had known this would happen, he would have learned to use his holy power differently. With so much holy power for such a twisted human being, there was no way to catch the falling Lionella. Healing power, what use is it if it can’t be reversed? Hypnosis, what use is it without even a soul? If he had strengthened his body like the holy knights did, he could have caught her as she fell and shattered myself in her place, and if he had manifested physical power like some saints in the scriptures, he could have caught or saved her from falling.

It’s been 12 years since he first manifested holy power. Fleeing from Parma to the Holy Kingdom, he cultivated a power that would no longer be dominated by anyone. Therefore, his holy power developed in a direction that could dominate the consciousness of others, and it was only out of the pretense of wanting to be a saint that he learned healing power.

By then, Mishael was already fated not to save Lionella today.

And again, 10 years ago, their relationship had already started off wrong.

From the start. That is…

Would our relationship have been different if we had met under slightly different circumstances?

Could I have realized sooner that this hatred-filled heart was actually a love-hate relationship for you who wouldn’t look at me?

Thump, thud… From the darkened sky, a few drops of rain finally fell. Moisture soaked into Lionella’s cheek, which had lost its warmth. He could imagine her twitching her cheek as if annoyed by it, just like when she despised herself, but there was no movement on her dry cheek, and then something hot welled up in Mishael’s eyes.

Lionella was gone.

From the beginning of my memory, losing my family and rolling around like a dog in all kinds of slums until I met Lionella Parma… enduring the oppression of that lovely and arrogant tyrant and finally standing proudly alone, by possessing her, I finally completed my revenge.

By ruining you in a way you never wanted, making you stick with someone dirty and despicable like me and relying on me for life, I finally had you in my arms.

Like that, for the first time in my life, I had you.

I loved you.

“Ah, aaaaah…!”

The man collapsed on top of Lionella, wailing.

Was it a problem that I was broken? Was it wrong that I couldn’t even think of love while desiring you? Was it a problem that I threatened you to fix me when I was unfixable? Why did you leave me?

The boiling desire for revenge, the self-destructive love that made me hate myself for not being worthy to approach you, and the resentment towards you for leaving after recognizing and even responding to my love, why is it all my burden?

Why am I the only one left?

Saliva dripped through his sobs, but the blood from Lionella had already soaked their clothes, simply flowing down. Nothing he did could change the situation.

In Mishael’s wails filled with despair and anger, the rain grew heavier.

Finally, the sky flashed and thundered, but the man’s crying did not cease. The pouring rain washed away the blood, creating a pool of blood around where he sat, and Lionella merely looked like someone who had fainted.

How much time had passed?

The rain stopped, the clouds cleared, and the sun came out. It was unclear whether it was the sun that hadn’t set yet or if it had risen again.

Mishael held Lionella and headed blindly towards the Holy Kingdom. He walked, walked, and walked again.

At the end of a journey that spanned several days and nights.

The place he reached was the Room of Oracles, located deep beneath the main temple of the Holy Kingdom.

Because he had poured out his holy power to maintain Lionella’s condition as much as possible, unintentionally, no one in the Holy Kingdom realized that Cardinal Mishael, who had disappeared from the capital a few days ago, had appeared. That he had descended the stairs located in the deepest part of the main temple, and entered the Room of Oracles, which only the high priest in charge of the Holy Kingdom’s main temple and the Pope have access to. The hypnosis that he had been using as naturally as breathing for over a decade since he learned to manipulate holy power was automatically activated.

An underground space as bright as outdoors with a huge dome-like structure. As the only living being in that space, feeling its vastness, Mishael suddenly knelt down. With Lionella, glowing faintly due to his holy power, laid in front of him, he propped himself on the floor and cried out. No, in reality, not a bit of moisture seeped from his empty eyes; it was closer to a dry scream. No, there was no sound to make because he had screamed everything out in the rain a few days ago; it was a groan scraping through his tightly clenched throat.

Anyway, Mishael sobbed, as if vomiting an unresolved lump, and the faint light emanating from his hand instantly dyed the floor of the vast space and climbed up the walls. The marble tiles blinked one by one until soon the whole space was lit white.

A feast of pure white.

In the dazzle where every direction became a source of light, casting no shadows anywhere, a man added to the pure white space with his red ceremonial robe soiled with blood, rainwater, and mud like trash, continued to pour out his holy power, as though he was spitting out his last breath. The marble tiles that could shine no more made a clicking sound around. The round table on the altar shook, and the pages of the oracle book laid upon it fluttered wildly.