“Hmm, it feels like we’ve been seeing each other a lot lately.”

She greeted him with a bright smile, her tone friendly and familiar. Watching her, Kailhart found himself sitting down closer to her. Once again, he’d ended up at this tree, almost as if something was pulling him in that direction. Even he found it ridiculous.

He rested his chin on his hand, quietly watching as she leaned her back against the dark brown trunk, knees drawn up, scribbling something intently.

“Why are you always here?”

“Huh?”

“Do you not have a home or something?”

“What—what are you talking about? Of course I have a home!”

Startled, she looked just like a tiny, flustered bird.

“I just come here to play a lot, that’s all! This has been my own secret hideout since forever.”

“Really.”

“Yeah, you got here after me, so you don’t have any right to complain.”

Kailhart simply raised an eyebrow, unconcerned, and she went back to smiling.

She always brought a notebook and was busy coloring something in it. That alone wouldn’t have been odd, but sometimes, instead of using paints, she’d use plant sap. When he’d asked why, she’d said she liked the colors better that way.

No matter how he looked at it, she was a strange girl.

He was sure she’d said they were the same age, but her body was so much smaller than his. He couldn’t help noticing—her arms and legs were thin, her skin and face so pale…

At that moment, a pair of blue eyes met his.

Ah. She was staring right at him. Kailhart lowered the hand supporting his chin. It felt strangely unfamiliar, realizing he’d been watching her without even thinking.

“Come to think of it, what’s your name?”

She asked the question, and he couldn’t do anything but watch her go about her business.

I…
Kailhart, about to answer, suddenly hesitated.

It was a belated introduction. If they were going to exchange names, it should have happened the second time they met, at the latest. But that wasn’t the only reason he hesitated.

“Never reveal your real name outside the palace, under any circumstances.”

He remembered the warning from one of the royal tutors—his final words before he was purged in the midst of the power struggles. Strictly speaking, the advice had been meant for his half-brother, not for him.

“Kailhart.”

Even so, Kailhart told her his name. It was the first time in his life he’d ever revealed his real name outside the palace, but he didn’t care.

“That’s a long name.”

She said, tilting her head a little. It was a simple, unvarnished comment—nothing sharp about it.

“Is that all?”

“Uh, huh? Was I supposed to say more?”

“No.”

It was also the first time in his life he’d received a look so free of prejudice. Thanks to his father, everyone around him had always seen him through a clouded lens.

“What about you?”

He asked her, and those blue eyes met his—clear, unclouded, as if he could see straight through them, like a hidden spring in a remote wilderness, never before discovered by anyone. Not a single trace of deceit.

‘Ah, so that’s why I kept unconsciously seeking out your gaze.’

Such a strange, sincere girl. She was the first person in his life who saw him not for his bloodline, but for who he truly was.

“I’m… Isabel.”

That was Isabel.

🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁

‘The place where I first broke into your world…?’

Isabel’s mind burned, turning over the words Kailhart had just said. It was strange. That wasn’t something the Emperor Kailhart should ever say.

It wasn’t something he could say as the man who had stolen her night, either.

It was the kind of thing only someone who had known her for a long time—someone who truly understood her—could say.

“Just now… what you said—was it true?”

‘Did I ever do something to you here when you were a child, Kailhart? Is that it?’

The moment that unsettling sense of wrongness seeped into her, Kailhart stepped in close, exhaling a shaky breath. Instead of answering, he wrapped an arm around Isabel’s waist and pulled her into his embrace.

“Ah, Isabel, you…”

Every time, his voice scratched hoarsely against her ear. When she looked up, his brow was furrowed. Even though he was always so indifferent—so unruffled, even when mocking his enemies—right now, he was unmistakably shaken.

“You’re always testing my patience.”

His breath came rougher than usual, his body hot and solid as always, but deep in his chest, there was a faint tremor. He was wavering. It looked as though he was holding something back.

Watching him clench his jaw, Isabel’s eyes trembled slightly.

The look in his eyes, burning with desire as he gazed down at her—this time, it seemed different. It didn’t feel like the l＊st that could be satisfied by simply coming together a few times.

“Why do you keep getting yourself hurt?”

His hand, locked tightly around her as if declaring he’d never let her go no matter what happened in this world, was so tense that the veins stood out, his knuckles turning white with desperation.

Yes, it almost seemed like he was trying to protect her from something unknown.

‘But why?’

“Why can’t I ever hold on to you?”

He was the one who had supposedly never faltered, even in battles where lives were at stake. He was the one who wouldn’t break, no matter the storm. Yet now, he looked unmistakably wounded.

She wanted to understand the reason for this gap.

As Isabel let out a sigh in his arms, a sudden gust of wind swept in. The wind lashed sand all around them, beating against the spot where they stood together.

In just a few seconds, the entire scene changed.

Everywhere she looked was wasteland. It was clearly afternoon, yet the sky was so clouded it felt like the dead of night. Stories of this place once being a lush paradise, full of giant trees and greenery, felt pointless now, with the sallow wind sweeping across the landscape and isolating them in a world of yellow dust.

“Ugh.”

Isabel furrowed her brows, the sand stinging her eyelashes and eyelids.

As the wind scattered grains of sand through the air, they rattled and struck everything—their bodies, Kailhart’s coat, Isabel’s clothes—until everything was rumpled and battered. Sand whipped against her ears, making her flinch and shrink away, and just then, Kailhart moved his hand, shielding her from the world’s harsh noise.

That unexpected gentleness made Isabel hold her breath.

‘You’re the one who barged in and shattered my world at will. Every chance you got, you’d force your way inside and relentlessly tear me apart. And yet, every time I start to lose my balance and crumble, you’re always the one who holds me steady.’

“Are you all right?”

The contradiction of it struck her. Even the howling wind that had roared in her ears seemed to vanish.

“I’m…”

She started to speak, but something caught her eye.

The back of Kailhart’s hand, which she’d slapped away earlier in the wind, was reddened and a little swollen. Glancing at it, Isabel clenched her fists tight.

“I’m not all right.”

“What?”

A strange, unfamiliar sensation swept through her. She felt shaky, her legs weak, her senses spinning so wildly it was almost hallucinatory.

“So please—just answer me honestly today.”

Yes, it had to be a hallucination.

How could she feel such scorching heat on her cheek, as if the world that had been reduced to ashes long ago was still burning here and now?

Kailhart didn’t answer. Instead, he tilted his head slightly.

Isabel, blinking away the stinging sand, stared straight at him, unflinching in the storm.

“Ugh—”

Just then, another gust of wind struck, fierce enough to make her stagger. Kailhart only tightened his arms around her, holding her upright. Even as his coat and her collar were shredded by flying stones and branches, he didn’t so much as flinch.

Ah… just like that, Isabel forgot what she’d meant to say. Because when she looked up, she saw Kailhart let out a breath of relief—almost as if reassured that not a single hair on her head had been harmed—and for a moment, he looked completely different from usual.

“You…”

Yes, right now—

He looked just like a young boy, thrown n*ked into a battlefield.

All his life, he must have stood on the edge, breathless and battered, tested by countless brushes with death. Even now, lashed by the razor-sharp wind, he didn’t utter a single complaint, but simply endured, never wavering. Suddenly, Isabel saw all those overlapping images at once.

“I never once questioned you, even when you insisted on forcing yourself through such a grueling schedule.”

Isabel’s eyes narrowed as she spoke, her expression turning more honest than ever before.

“Even when one of the train cars derailed during the trip here, you were determined to come, no matter what. Do you know why I went along with it?”

Even now, as the sandstorm whipped her hair into a mess, her words came out clear and steady. Isabel finally let out the feelings she’d worked so hard to hide.

“For the first time in my life, I found myself curious about you.”

Yes, for the first time, you seemed human to me, Kailhart—not the cold, perfect figure everyone makes you out to be, but a person who hovered near me, fumbled around, and made mistakes.

“I wanted to know what you were thinking.”

Looking at his forearm, exposed through his disheveled clothes, she felt a heat rise within her. The moment her eyes traced the long scar running from the back of his hand, past the start of his arm, and up beneath his shirt, the headache pounding in her skull grew sharper.

“Weren’t we… always close? Didn’t we always know each other well?”