Episode 110 – Kill Me.

*

Mella didn’t so much kneel as her knees plummeted to the ground.

Collapsing onto the gravel-filled ground with a *cheolpeodeok*, Mella groaned, burying her head in the gravel.

It wasn’t the pain from her knees being torn on the stone floor, but the screams of her heart being ripped to shreds.

Robin killed Ed.

At those words from Ed’s mouth, Mella felt as if the world was plunged into darkness.

It wasn’t just a feeling because it was a dark night.

It felt like Mella’s world, created by Mella’s past and future, was being plunged into darkness, not the world illuminated by sunlight.

And for good reason.

If Robin really killed Ed,

If Mella herself had been in love with the man who killed Ed for all those years.

What the hell had her life been?

Mella lay prostrate on the ground, wishing he wasn’t Ed or that this wasn’t reality.

However, there was no possibility of a mistake.

It was a face fading from her memory, but she could still be sure it wasn’t a mistake.

The face she had touched with her own hands was definitely Ed’s.

The voice that echoed in her ears was definitely Ed’s.

Although he didn’t have the affectionate eyes he used to, those turbidly shining amber eyes were definitely Ed’s.

A conviction that welled up from a deeper, more instinctive place than her eyes or hands stopped Mella’s escape and held her firmly in place.

Moreover, the rain falling as coldly as Cyril hammered against Mella’s back and the back of her head, cruelly informing Mella that this was reality.

In popular novels with romantic stories, raindrops are often compared to tears, but the raindrops pouring down on Mella now were neither romantic nor sentimental.

It was cold water thrown to prevent her from losing her mind, and sharp needles piercing her whole body.

And within those needles, Ed’s voice flying towards her was a huge stake.

“Robin killed me. Mella.”

“Ugh… Ah… Ah, no.”

Ed crouched down by Mella’s head and spoke close to the back of her head.

His voice, colder and more chilling than the fiercely pouring raindrops, seemed to echo in Mella’s brain and stab into her heart.

Mella curled up, clutching her head, and pleaded.

For him to stop? Or to forgive her? Or for Robin not to have done it?

She didn’t even know what she was praying for, but all Mella could do was pray.

“He wanted to have all the Hero party members as wives, and I was in the way, he said.”

“No, no, no… no…”

“He planned it from the start with Jennifer. To kill me.”

“…Ugh, th-that’s… nonsense…”

“And, you married Robin and had children.”

“…Ah, ahh…”

“What do you think I was thinking while healing Tess?”

“Ed… ahh, Ed…!”

“…When I saw you name my son after me, with Robin, the man who killed me. How do you think I felt?”

Mella recalled the day she first met Baron Salvier.

When she told him her son’s name after he asked about Edward’s name, he suddenly jumped up from his seat and collapsed in his garden, suffering.

He tried to hide it, but Mella had clearly seen it.

He was literally vomiting blood.

“Ah, ahhhhh!”

“Answer me. Mella. How do you think I felt?”

“Ed… Ed! Ahhh! Ed!”

“…”

Mella screamed, calling Ed’s name.

She screamed so much that her throat was cracking, and she could taste a fishy taste of blood in the exhaled breath.

But Mella couldn’t lift her head or say she was sorry.

She was too sorry to look at his face, and too shameless to apologize to him.

“Ugh, geeu… uwaaaaaa!”

Mella screamed, repeatedly hitting her head on the gravel.

Ed put his hand under Mella’s head, gently supporting her torn forehead, and slowly lifted her up.

Mella, not resisting Ed’s touch, lifted her head and tightly closed her eyes.

She couldn’t bring herself to face him.

“…Open your eyes.”

Mella opened her eyes very slowly, following Ed’s command.

Mella’s brown eyes, bloodshot and full of tears, met Ed’s amber eyes, and Mella closed her eyes again.

As if those yellow eyes were the sun, Mella burst into tears and closed her eyes when she met Ed’s eyes.

Ed put his hand on Mella’s forehead and looked at her.

Ed’s hand was tinged with gold.

A sacred energy flowed from the hand touching Mella’s forehead.

Her torn forehead slowly healed.

The golden, sacred energy traveled through Mella’s body and headed towards her knees.

It seemed her knees were also torn when she fell to the ground a moment ago.

Mella could recognize that this was her divine power.

Why hadn’t she noticed?

Why hadn’t she remembered that she had poured blessings and prayers into Ed’s body for hours on the day Ed died?

Because he was said to be dead.

Because the intense magic power spewing from the Demon King’s corpse made it impossible for anyone to approach.

She had wished so much for him to come back to life, but she never really thought he would come back to life.

Mella asked only then.

“What happened…?”

“…What do you mean, what happened? I became an undead because of the magic power of the Demon King’s castle.”

“Ah, ahh…”

Mella despaired.

Undead, a monster.

For Mella, who had been a saintess of the Goddess Church, it was the most terrible end imaginable.

It was an end that someone like Ed should never face.

The one who made him that way was Robin, whom she had believed in and loved so much until yesterday, no, today.

At that moment, Mella recalled when she met Baron Salvier at the social gathering held at the Imperial Palace yesterday.

It was the moment she understood why the usually kind baron had shown such animosity towards Robin.

And, at the same time, Mella remembered what she had said to him.

And she also remembered what she had done.

Robin in front of Ed,

“Ugh, ugh…”

The sensation was strange.

She couldn’t tell up from down.

She felt like the floor was collapsing, and she couldn’t feel the gravel pressing against her skin.

She felt like she was thrown into a dark space and spinning around.

Her head was spinning too.

Mella finally threw up what was in her stomach.

“*Uweaek*,”

Mella tried to cover her mouth with her trembling arms, but it was no use.

Ed quietly watched Mella.

Mella, who kept throwing up yellow stomach acid, could have been disgusting, but Ed didn’t move away from her and brushed her orange hair back.

“Ed… Ed, I didn’t know. I really,”

“Yeah. I know.”

“…If I had known, if I had known! Ah… Aah, uwaaah!”

Mella got up and fell backwards, screaming.

Mella’s appearance, tearing at her hair with her hands, scratching her face with her fingernails, and writhing and screaming like a cat run over by a carriage wheel, was close to madness or a seizure.

Blood smeared on the handful of hair torn from her scalp with a chilling sound.

Her face and arms, which she scratched madly with her fingernails as if trying to peel off all the skin that Robin had touched, were also covered with nail marks filled with blood.

Ed watched Mella and slowly got up.

“…I see.”

“…Ed, E, Ed…”

“…”

Ed simply nodded slightly, as if he understood something.

Mella felt like she was going even more insane looking at Ed.

She didn’t know what to do.

This feeling wasn’t unfamiliar.

Like that feeling she felt 20 years ago, the day she heard he died,

Those painful days that she thought she had overcome, shaken off, and disappeared were tightening around her neck again.

No, this was a much more terrible situation.

It was Robin who told Mella that Ed had died.

He had brazenly deceived Mella for 20 years.

Like a fool, Mella had loved him without knowing it.

With the hand that killed Ed, he comforted me, with the mouth that deceived Ed, he comforted me,

With that hand, he touched me, with that mouth, he said he loved me

With that hand, he hugged me, with that mouth, he kissed me,

With that body, me. With my body, his children who killed Ed.

No.

No,

Stop,

I hate it.

Mella said, tearing at her neck as if to rip it apart.

“Ed… please.”

“…”

“…Kill me. Please…”

“…”

“I don’t want to live anymore… with that hand, kill me… like a fool… with that man who killed you… tear me to shreds…”

“…”

“Ed, please!”

Ed just stood upright and looked at Mella.

Mella pleaded, tormented by his gaze.

“Why would I?”

Ed said briefly.

“Please… I don’t know how else to ask for forgiveness… how else to atone…”

“Don’t do that. Mella.”

“Ed,”

“Mella. You know what?”

“…?”

“Just the day before yesterday, I was still longing for you.”

Mella took a deep breath at those words and slowly sat up, looking up at Ed.

Of course, she didn’t stop scratching her body.

Ed approached Mella, grabbed her hands, and slowly continued.

“Maybe, just maybe, I was hoping that after my revenge on Robin was over, I could start over with you.”

“…E, Ed…”

“But, seeing you happy next to Robin yesterday. I realized that I had been making a terrible mistake all along.”

“Ah… Aaaah… Aaaaaaaaaaah”

“That expression you only showed me. That smile you only made in front of me. And your body, which I never had the chance to have. Even my children, whom I would have raised with love with you… Robin took them all.”

“S, stop, please stop, j, just kill me… please, Ed, please, please!”

Ed shook his head.

“You are not guilty, but I will not forgive you.”

“Ah, no… please,”

“I will not end your pain.”

“Uwaaaah! Ed!”

Ed ignored Mella’s screams and poured divine power into Mella’s body to heal her.

The feeling of divine power erasing the nail marks all over her body was terrible for Mella.

Every time the nail marks disappeared and new flesh grew, she felt Robin’s touch.

Mella struggled, but Ed didn’t let go of her hands.

“Kill me! Please!”

“No.”

“Ugh… ugh,”

Mella’s struggles seemed to subside, and she suddenly dropped her head.

She seemed to have fainted.

Her hair, which had been torn and disheveled, was sparsely gray.

Ed silently looked at Mella’s face.

‘I’m glad I didn’t come in a human body.’

[…Ed]

Ed slowly put his hands under her back and under her knees and lifted her up.

No matter how harshly he treated Mella, he couldn’t leave her abandoned in a graveyard on a rainy night.

Ed emitted a chain from his hand, picked up the mask he had placed on the ground, and put it on his face.

For some reason, the mask felt heavy and stuffy.

*

I was sitting alone in a clinic near the graveyard, waiting for something.

Since Baron Salvier, who was at odds with Robin, couldn’t take the fainted Countess into her mansion, it was a clinic I came into thinking I would leave her there if there was a place to lay her down.

Late at night, the old doctor, rubbing his sleepy eyes, told me that I had to stay while he examined her.

He said it was because of the rule that he could only provide treatment if there was a guardian, and he could only put her on the bed after the treatment was finished.

Whatever, as long as I left before she woke up.

I nodded and sat on the bench outside the clinic, waiting and organizing my thoughts.

Of course, my thoughts were not organized at all, damn it.

I revealed my identity to Mella, and Mella reacted to the terrible truth she finally learned like a truly crazy person.

If I left her like this, she might really become a madwoman.

I remembered what Lara had told me before.

What she looked like when she heard I died.

Even with Lara’s testimony that she kept harming herself and trying to take her own life from time to time, I honestly couldn’t immediately picture Mella doing such a thing.

Because she was a devout saintess.

She wasn’t the type of person who would attempt suicide, and she was always a warm person with a bright and cheerful smile like the sun.

But Mella’s appearance a moment ago proved that Lara’s words were not false.

The sight of her hitting her head on the gravel, tearing at her hair, and scratching her whole body with her fingernails until blood gushed out was a shock beyond imagination.

Mella’s appearance was somewhere endearing and so pitiful that I even felt the urge to hug her.

But the thought that Robin’s touch would have been on Mella’s body everywhere made me hesitate.

Of course, I had no choice but to shake my head at Mella’s request to kill her as well.

I didn’t hate her enough to kill her, but I didn’t want to be considerate enough to let her die comfortably.

She may not be guilty, but I couldn’t forgive her.

I know she’s not guilty, but I can’t forgive her.

I smiled bitterly, mocking my contradictory thoughts.

What do I want to do?

What will I do with her in the future?

Did we ever have a happy future?

Was our love only enough to not overcome this ordeal?

Do I still love Mella?

Can I love her again, who married Robin, loved him, had children, and grew old with him?

I groaned at the dizzying thoughts.

No thought landed on a stable ground, but floated irregularly in my head, colliding, breaking, shattering, and scattering.

The two morons who are usually noisy were also quietly sparing their words today.

“Baron Salvier-nim?”

At that moment, the door of the clinic opened and the doctor peeked out.

“The examination is over.”

“Thank you for your hard work.”

I followed the doctor into the clinic.

The old doctor, sitting across from me at the desk next to Mella lying on a small bed, slowly asked.

“You said she collapsed in the rain?”

“Yes,”

“Fortunately, she doesn’t have a fever… but she was shaking severely. It could be due to the cold or psychological factors…”

“Is that so.”

I answered carelessly.

I only wanted to pay the medical bill quickly and leave this place.

“I have a conflict with the Countess’s family, so I can’t take her to that mansion, so please take care of her here until she wakes up. I will give you a generous fee.”

When I said this, placing a jingling bag of gold coins on the desk, the old doctor raised his eye wrinkles, widened his eyes, and coughed.

“Hmm, hmm… you don’t have to go this far… Then I will take good care of the Countess.”

“Please.”

“Well, the Countess is not single, so she needs to be careful.”

‘…Wait’

[…Oh my god.]

[It never ends.]

For a moment, I doubted what I had heard.

“…What?”

“…Baron-nim?”

I even forgot that I had forgotten honorifics.

“What did you say just now?”

.