Focusing entirely on her, surrounding noise seemed blocked out.

He grasped the end of the cloak covering her face. The moment he lifted it, he noticed the lips where her wound should be were smooth.

Cracks formed instantly in Romeo’s brow.

“……K-Kata. P-please… forgive me……”

A terrified woman knelt and grabbed his pant leg. A woman with black hair and brown eyes resembling Rosaline, even similar build.

They say when too angry, no thoughts come—exactly that. Naively fooled again by a beautiful smile. Ah, you’re determined to break me? Fine.

Romeo immediately tried to jump from the carriage. But a hand gripped his shoulder. He didn’t immediately recognize who. He’d seen too many such figures in countless repeated lives.

A shrewd, base man full of desire.

Ah, the prince.

Having lost reason, Romeo no longer saw him as a prince. He was a conglomerate of humans who’d made his life burn only with hatred like fire throughout eternity.

William urgently spoke.

“Kata, she chose this.”

“Chose?”

Romeo stared at William without blinking once.

“Unable to let go of your former lover, isn’t your body changing like a common man? You should respect her choice made out of concern for you.”

“Respect? I can’t believe the words from your mouth.”

Romeo’s red eyes burned with clearer anger than ever.

“Did you respect the thousands of souls who’ll burn to death in your greed spreading like wildfire? Did they choose to burn to death? So, should we respect their deaths?”

“……”

“You can’t see one step ahead more than the blind, so you spout hypocrisy.”

Romeo growled like a beast with a pierced heart. Now his reproach wasn’t directed at William. Wasn’t he himself unable to let go of the woman who’d abandoned him?

With realization, the day moon hanging alone in the sky entered his vision.

“Tivre.”

So you’re determined to let me die alone again. Just once in tens of thousands of lives, is wanting to meet my end with you such greed?

I’m not noble like you. Originally base trash, so rather than clumsily tormenting and losing you, I’ll definitely break you and hold onto at least your body.

Even if it’s flames bringing only mutual pain……

“I’ll gladly burn to death.”

Romeo spat the words and leaped from the carriage. Thousands of hands yearning for god couldn’t stop him. Fervent praise turned to reproach toward an indifferent god in an instant.

This too was familiar, so he didn’t care.

He ran as though he could catch the faint moon. The day moon hung in the sky looked down at his shadow.

Through blurred vision, Rosaline looked at her limp arm and the blood flowing from her wrist. Feeling the now-senseless grip in her hand, she was reminded anew of her own foolishness.

She’d wanted to be someone meaningful to at least one person.

But to the mother she’d obeyed all her life, she was a tragic daughter; to Juliet whom she’d saved by offering her soul, she was an awkwardly positioned half-sister; and to Romeo, her first and last lover, she’d given only pain and obsession.

After repeated failures, she should have quit, but unable to abandon her lingering attachment, she’d hoped Romeo would remember her death after becoming a perfect god.

Looking at the blood flowing from her wrist, Rosaline thought of Romeo. He’d be angry, wouldn’t he? But still… he wouldn’t suffer anymore. No, truthfully she wanted him to suffer a lifetime longing for her. She’d blame all her wicked heart’s foundation on him.

‘You were too cruel to me.’

Now that she was actually dying, she felt such regret. Yet there was a strangely relieved corner, and sadness too.

Through fading consciousness, she heard rough sounds. Blinking slowly, she looked toward the source. Someone came running and grabbed her as if collapsing. Gripping her bleeding wrist, becoming more blood-soaked than her, shedding tears.

“Rosaline, Rosaline.”

Clutching her wrist trying to stop the bleeding, holding her body and wailing. Though Rosaline was the injured one, he breathed like a beast, unable to bear the pain, choking.

“Wake up, get up……”

At his whisper, she felt strange elation while someone overlapped.

‘Ah, I saw this in a dream.’

The man who’d kept chasing her in dreams, who’d joined bodies with her.

He called my name……

“Tivre.”

Just like this. Trying to wake me from dreams, trying to grab me and drag me into terrible solitude again.

Like a duckling just hatched from its egg, he followed me around.

“You’re still the same.”

Red still suits you well. Rosaline didn’t know what she was saying. She felt like her consciousness had suddenly split in two.

Thinking his screams sounded like song, she lost consciousness.

Like the quiet of a holiday morning, trivial noise tickled Rosaline’s ears.

Opening her eyes on the bed, Rosaline lifted her aching wrist to check. Her wrist was wrapped tightly in cloth torn hastily.

When she slowly turned her gaze from the familiar bedroom ceiling to the walls, she met the golden crown of a man’s bowed head.

As if sensing her gaze, a low voice immediately rang out around them.

“Why did you try to die?”

His merciless tone even to one who’d died and revived was actually riddled with fear and self-loathing. He knew Rosaline had woken but kept his gaze fixed on the floor without the slightest movement. Like a statue.

“Didn’t you cling to me? Yet you wanted to escape even through death?”

Rosaline didn’t want to escape him. She simply couldn’t bear feeling like she was ruining him more. But Romeo didn’t seem to intend waiting for her answer.

“You can’t leave. I won’t let you.”

Still without raising his head, he stretched out his arm and gripped her thigh together with the blanket. The blanket wrinkled like roots taking his hand as their stem. He seemed to be destroying it, or clinging to it.

“I can’t understand myself either.”

Perhaps Rosaline’s blood had dried stuck to him—dried blood transferred from his hand onto the white blanket like red smoke. Romeo looked at the blood and scoffed at himself.

“I can’t let you go at all.”

Watching him like he was coughing up unstoppable fits, Rosaline recalled their first meeting.

Those arrogant eyes that had revealed blatant emotions while hiding an unknowable past.

She whispered blankly.

“Why?”

Romeo who’d died with Juliet had been merely a passing puppy love. But this being who’d returned with her, Romeo yet one who’d lived eons—why was he so obsessed with her?

Simply because she was an impudent believer who pitied god?

No, that wasn’t it.

He’d known her from much longer ago.

But clear memories wouldn’t surface. Like hidden behind fog, she couldn’t pull them out……

With a frustrated heart, she gently clasped Romeo’s rough hand.

“Why can’t you let me go?”

He slowly raised his head. Red eyes drenched in vicious tears reached her. Seeing him in such a mess somehow reassured Rosaline, and she smiled without realizing.

“Do you really not know, Tivre?”

Finding her cruel, Romeo began his story with a pale smile.

Your mother’s body wasn’t sound, so she died right after bearing you.

Your father was one steeped in alcohol and gambling with only debts, and he disappeared bursting with rage like one who’d lost property at his wife’s death.

But you were rather lucky. Your pitying aunt kept you alive as a lump of flesh by begging for milk.

Of course, that only meant you stayed breathing—you didn’t grow well. All your family and relatives were poor, the land was dried from drought then, and children and elderly were dying.

Everyone’s faces were gray like piled ash.

But not you, you who had no name.

Growing on only ground grain dissolved in water, you often burst into clear laughter despite being starved. Like a flower blooming in ash… like the first sprout in the final winter, you smiled so.

Your aunt cherished you amid bone-melting hard labor and harsh life. She lived each day vowing to give you a good name, not a shabby one like hers.

The young you were unfortunate yet happy.

But on a poor and barren day no different from any other,

You became a sacrifice offered to god.

Your uncle was very pleased. Not only was it a chance to remove you, already a thorn in his eye, but the child-sacrifice’s family received enough money and food to live well for ten years.

Your aunt had no strength to resist before her brutal husband and hunger. She only cried endlessly before her powerlessness and guilt.

But you, the nameless you who could have any name.

You made a wreath from gathered dried petals for your beloved aunt and kissed her cheek.

Unable to ask her not to abandon you, you were abandoned, died on the cold altar, and were reborn.

As Tivre, god of the moon.

As owner of all names calling the moon.

Tivre. Gods are born from such absurd coincidence.

They arise when humans’ desperate wishes coincide with phenomena beyond universal logic. Gods aren’t absolute, sublime beings that existed from the beginning. All a terrible delusion. Even their authority varied each time, and when humans forgot god’s existence, even power vanished.

What you as Tivre could see was only darkness wrapped in faint light. So you couldn’t easily see the world’s many true faces where the moon existed. You could only hear occasional murmurs in the silence and stillness night gave.

What do you think you were like in that?

Did you grieve at being abandoned by your beloved, then rage?

No.

You were lonely.