I spent hundreds of years alone.

I was a wandering spirit, floundering in a swamp of lingering regrets and remorse.

Despite committing the grave sin of forcibly binding a child from another world to my body, I shamelessly hoped for salvation. Praying that I might escape the clinging swamp and find peace.

The child from another world, summoned without understanding why. I couldn’t predict what this utterly ordinary child might accomplish. Surely that was the case.

Yet every moment thereafter was a succession of surprises.

A series of clumsy, haphazard actions. That was all, and yet somehow the child saved the world from a fate of destruction and even greatly twisted the unfortunate destiny of someone precious.

The child protected the blue sky from turning to ash and gifted those nearby with peaceful daily lives.

An ending that rightfully should have concluded happily.

However, this gracious child failed to save themselves.

In a strange world where precious people disappeared one by one, the child fell into despair and became buried in the past. Having been unable to observe the outside for quite some time, that was all I could surmise.

Still, I believed.

Because this was a child who had always created astonishing miracles.

I held a compulsive belief that someday they would break free from the immortality forced upon them by Malice. That they would certainly succeed.

And so a hundred years passed, then two hundred, until an immeasurable amount of time crushed us.

How much time had flowed by?

The outside scenery was blocked off, and any chance for intervention had completely vanished.

My entire world had shrunk to a narrow space where only past glories remained.

Astelnerca, Bartlant, Aselln, Rusheon, and… Lorian.

My greatest lingering attachment and the remnant of the mistake that defined my life. A love I couldn’t forget even after hundreds of years.

Creak… rumble…

“Ha… haha.”

For the first time since I had last ventured outside, I laughed aloud. I couldn’t hide my joy because a wish I had deemed eternally impossible had been fulfilled.

“Could it be that you’ve broken free from immortality, child?”

The collapse of the mental world. Its meaning was clear. It meant the physical body had met with complete death.

“If this is an ending that satisfies you, then I’m glad… though I worry whether you might have met with some misfortune.”

Whatever the truth, I have no right to know.

In this crumbling world, I tightly embraced Lorian’s form.

Even if she was just a doll carved from longing, I wanted my final moment to be touching her.

The world turns white.

Is this death?

The end of life?

Is this… peace?

Among the complex emotions, only one attachment stood out clearly.

I want to talk with Lorian.

Before I can no longer think of you forever, I want to tell you.

What connections I made, what absurd things happened.

Your voice flickers in my mind. Though I’ve already fulfilled a wish beyond my worth, my arrogance makes me desire something excessive.

When I come to my senses, I find myself vaguely praying.

It was behavior reminiscent of an impoverished person greedily devouring food obtained through begging.

A man who had been arrogant because everything came easily was, at the very end, clinging to a thread more tenuous than a spider’s web.

Is anyone there?

Please hear the prayer of this lowly human.

God.

For the first time, I call out to you and humbly ask.

Even as a lowly and base soul, I’ll do anything. Please…

Even just once, let me meet her.

I’ll endure your mockery of a foolish being who only realized his place after hundreds of years. So… please give me a chance, even just once.

If I cannot speak with her, at least show me her living happily in her new life.

Even if I see her smiling with someone else in another life, I’ll gladly die satisfied…

God…

Please, just one chance…

Ah… ah…

Lorian.

Lorian.

Lorian.

Lorian.

Lorian.

…

……

Ah…

Were my sins too deep to hope for a miracle?

“Ugh… uh… uwaah… aaaah… hic…”

Tears I thought had dried up long ago began to flow. I felt bitter resentment toward myself for living as a beast even God would turn away from, sorry that I couldn’t become a comet searching for you, and deeply aggrieved.

Karma.

Reaping what I sowed.

All sharp arrows pointing directly at me.

I am merely a humble target standing dumbfounded.

“Lorian…”

I called that name, filled with deep regret, one last time.

…

……

…… …

“Nes.”

“…!”

Ah.

From a radiance whiter than snow-covered fields.

She smiled.

◇

“What are you thinking about so seriously?”

“The past. A very distant past.”

“Don’t reminisce alone, tell me too.”

“That’s difficult.”

“Why?”

“It’s too crude to share without a filter.”

“That just makes me more curious.”

She gently settles her weight onto the spacious sofa. With the sensation of the seat cushion dipping beside me, the warmth from her skin spreads from my shoulder to my chest. The fresh scent of wild grass emanating from her nape distorts my senses.

“It’s fine, go ahead. Your big sister will listen to everything.”

“Was this your attitude when you were active too?”

“That’s why I was popular.”

“I don’t like that.”

“Pfft…”

She maintained a faint smirk as she actively shifted her weight toward me. Soon after, her lovely hair spread across my lap as she rested her head there and looked up at me. Her clearly defined eyebrows above those bright, dark eyes twitched cutely.

“You were popular too. A handsome face and the title of genius surgeon. With an impressive background to boot?”

“I don’t remember that.”

“Ugh, you jerk. Not even remembering others’ goodwill.”

“…Please.”

She waved her hand dismissively before I could even finish asking her to stop.

“I got it, I got it already.”

“Seriously…”

I suddenly recalled when we reunited.

I was thirty-three years old. At that time, I was a doctor working for an NGO in conflict zones. Every day, I treated people injured by weapons while living through dangerous times.

Then one day. The opportunity to meet her came unexpectedly.

The government implemented an operation to safely repatriate personnel working in areas where conflict was intensifying, and she was one of the people who planned that operation.

As an agent of the Intelligence Command, she accompanied the field personnel to gather local information, and that’s when our eyes first met.

…

……

I thought it was a dream.

If not that, I self-diagnosed it as hallucinations caused by psychological trauma from the conflict zone.

Throughout the escape, I was confused by a phenomenon that was impossible to comprehend.

The density of centuries of time.

Connections from another world.

Past lives and present lives.

All of it rushed into my mind like a violent river suddenly released. The sudden wave of memories persistently tormented me, and I ended up fainting as soon as I boarded the transport plane.

By the time I safely set foot back in my country, I had no choice but to accept it.

The past that felt like my heart was being stabbed with a knife.

The me from another world, stained with sin.

The blurring boundary between who I was then and who I am now.

And it seemed the same was true for her.

Seo Rian, Intelligence Command agent. And Lorian Feita, the first head of one of the Eld Empire’s four ducal families.

She seemed to have been confused for a long time about which was her true self. Though she didn’t embarrassingly faint like I did.

It took us a long time to accept each other.

It was difficult to straightforwardly acknowledge this situation where someone who had been a passionate lover appeared as a complete stranger.

It felt as if a third party was showing memories of their tender relationship to two amnesia patients and saying, “Are you still not going to date?”

So, our first formal meeting ended with just an awkward exchange of contact information.

Afterward, Rian and I frequently kept in touch.

We would make time to meet at quiet cafés and talk about the other world. We would blush awkwardly and pretend to be distracted. We often gossiped about the 3rd Emperor and talked about missing Astelnerca and Yernia.

As a result, rather than our emotions igniting suddenly like in our past life, it was more like we gradually seeped into each other’s lives and nurtured our feelings.

I was satisfied.

Even if the process wasn’t passionate, we slowly melded perfectly into each other’s lives. Like becoming an inseparable mixture after being thoroughly combined.

The result was who we are now.

A newlywed couple in their first year of marriage.

A mysterious married life connected by the bond of a past life.

“Hey, honey.”

“Yes?”

“I’m still curious about you doing that naked victory dance on top of the fountain.”

“You’re crazy…”

I openly lamented with exasperation.

“How did my past self end up binding such a crude child to my body…”

“Why? It’s fun. Actually, even when you were Nes, you never had much of a sense of humor, so you should have learned a thing or two.”

“Where did the Lorian who used to be so proper and strict about etiquette go, the one who hit me with a folding fan? Suddenly I miss her terribly.”

“Here I am.”

She spread her arms wide, reaching out to me in an embracing posture. I sighed lightly and offered my nape to her hands. My partner then held my neck, straightened her waist, and pressed her rose-pink lips against mine.

Chu-rup, smack.

She briefly intertwined her tongue with mine, then teased me with a bird kiss. Her manner of subtly igniting a fire and then acting innocent while fluttering her eyelashes was extremely vexing. Still, at a loss for words, I scratched the back of my neck.

Can’t be helped. I, with my accumulated sins from my past life, should yield.

At least to the extent of speaking first.

“You started it first.”

“The kiss?”

“That and various other things.”

“Blaming others now.”

I picked her up from my lap and headed toward the bedroom. It was still midday, far from the setting twilight.

“Don’t blame me if I’m rough.”

“How long have you been holding back to be in such a hurry?”

“Since that time only you know about.”

“Pfft…”

“Heh…”

We both burst into laughter simultaneously.

Eventually, I gently pressed my lips against her smiling ones.

Against her lips that I thought I would never be able to touch for the rest of my life.