Ch.55Chapter 55. Aftermath of the Coup

-Chirp!

The sound of birds gradually brought my consciousness to the surface.

Led by it, I raised my upper body from the bed and quietly gazed out the window, taking in the sight of a tree that had grown all the way to the second floor.

Chirp chirp, birds twittering, rubbing against each other playfully.

The way they spread their wings and swayed their bodies above looked not much different from what I had done on the bed last night.

So, you know.

-Chirp! Chirp!

Right. Chirp’s words. Multiple chirps, so chirpss…

“Are you awake?”

While I was staring blankly out the window with such silly thoughts, a voice reached me, and my gaze gradually turned toward her.

A woman in a red cloak with braided hair hanging down.

The way she was holding her share of luggage showed she was completely ready to depart.

Despite our intense time together last night and her disheveled appearance then, she had been waiting for me to wake up before leaving.

“Ah yes, good morning.”

Damn, just seeing her face makes me flush as I remember yesterday.

Is this how everyone feels after being with a woman?

“Um, Irie? About yesterday…”

“Yes, we did.”

Her immediate response came before I could finish my sentence.

Seeing my blank expression, I could briefly notice the fatigue on her face.

Right, we definitely kept moving our bodies until we were both exhausted and fell asleep.

“I…”

“Don’t apologize.”

I was about to say I was sorry for what I’d done, but her preemptive correction made me close my mouth.

“You don’t need to bow your head. You did nothing wrong.”

Wait, how did she know I was going to bow my head…

Oh right, she’s a prophet.

“What happened yesterday wasn’t your fault, Hyoseong. It was just the result of being played by a vampire we happened to meet…”

“Ah, no, but—”

“Even if you could have resisted, you never forced yourself on me. Though it happened suddenly, I accepted it, so I share responsibility for what happened yesterday.”

“Yes, that’s true, but more than I thought…”

“I don’t think it was that bad.”

Yes, that’s good to hear, but could you please let me finish a sentence?

I keep feeling like I’m hitting speed bumps because I don’t know anything.

“In fact, you were gentler than I expected, and also…”

Despite my feelings, Irie kept predicting the future and answering before I could speak.

But even she couldn’t continue for long, and her gaze gradually drifted away from me.

Then, slightly pursing her lips, she said:

“…I asked for more… because… I liked it.”

“What?”

“Ahem!”

Irie covered up her following words with a fake cough.

After that, returning to her previous demeanor, she maintained her composure and continued speaking to me.

Directly from her lips.

“Hyoseong. According to the future I’ve foreseen, you will soon consult me about your future.”

“Consult? You mean?”

“Aren’t you troubled in many ways? The people you’ve given your heart to are leaving one by one, and feeling that helplessness, you can’t even find direction for your future…”

As she spoke, Irie pointed to a table placed in one corner of the room.

I could see several folded notes welcoming me there.

“I’ve written summaries of the answers on those notes on the table, so you can check them one by one when needed. However, just knowing the future can create variables, so try to open the notes only at crucial moments… Do you understand what I mean?”

“Yes, yes. I’ll follow what’s written on the notes.”

I had no choice but to agree.

In fact, when I nearly died during my first mission, it was none other than her help that allowed me to avoid that future.

Those notes would surely help resolve any dangers ahead and solve my concerns.

“Now that I’ve said everything I needed to, I’ll take my leave.”

“What? Leave? W-wait a moment.”

We’d been intimate, yet she was departing so suddenly.

Could it be that she wanted to end our meeting today?

Had I made some mistake yesterday that made her lose interest in meeting me again?

“What about our relationship? When will we meet again…”

“Don’t worry, Hyoseong.”

As if she had foreseen even this expression of anxiety, she stood at the entrance and quietly spoke to me.

“If we do nothing, we are destined to continue in the future.”

“Continue…?”

“Yes, you don’t need to make promises. Just wait for time to pass.”

Irie briefly turned to look at me, meeting my eyes.

Her face, seemingly tired from not getting enough sleep, remained flushed despite maintaining her composure.

“So when that time comes, in a more proper relationship than now… yes.”

“…When that time comes, I’ll look forward to seeing you again.”

“Ah, yes. I-I look forward to it too.”

After exchanging greetings like that, with a click, Irie closed the door and left the room.

I stared at the empty space she left behind, then lay flat on the hotel bed, endlessly gazing at the ceiling.

Despite the storm-like intensity of our time together, the moment of clarity that inevitably follows such encounters had arrived, leaving me deflated.

Only then, having regained my composure, did I take time to seriously think about our future together.

“So, what exactly is our relationship now?”

She said we’d meet again, but she didn’t clearly say we were dating.

Of course, we’d been intimate and graduated from being virgins together, but if sleeping together once made us lovers, then a prostitute would be the wife of every client, wouldn’t she?

Beyond that, I felt anxious about our ambiguous relationship that was difficult to define in words…

‘We are already destined to continue in the future.’

Right, she had firmly stated this wasn’t our last meeting.

I don’t know if that means we’ll become life partners someday, but either way, she made me a promise.

That surely means there will be another opportunity to do what we did last night.

So, there will be a chance to form an even more proper relationship than when we exchanged our firsts…

‘Ah, ahh, haaah~♡’

‘Hyoseong. Hyoseong~♡’

‘Does it feel good?’

‘Yes. Ha, one more time…♥’

“……”

Hmm, right.

Let’s take a step back and think about this.

****

After leaving the hotel, Irie returned to her tent set up in an alley.

Of course, the tent hadn’t been removed nor had thieves broken in. She always selected spots where guards and ruffians didn’t pass for her camping.

Though soon she would need to leave quickly, as guards would patrol this area later.

-Thud.

While packing her things, her crystal ball fell to the ground with a thud, but Irie couldn’t bring herself to pick it up.

Normally she would have handled it carefully as a tool for prophecy, but now her mind was too troubled to care about even that.

‘Wh-what have I done….’

‘E-even if it felt better than I expected, it was my first time, and I asked for more again and again…’

Though caught up in the mood, to make such intense demands from the very first encounter.

At this rate, she was no different from the perverted version of herself she had foreseen in the future.

‘My tongue, entering Hyoseong’s mouth, and, th-this… sticky…’

Their saliva.

That warmth filling her mouth, going down her throat—all those moments vividly came back to her.

“Wa, wawa, waaaa…!!”

Unable to bear the fact that she had done all this with her own hands, Irie collapsed onto the ground.

But no matter how much she denied it, what happened had happened.

By now, he had not only taken a deep place in her heart, but the pleasure she felt in that one-time encounter had deeply imprinted on her body, which she couldn’t deny.

‘That’s right, it really felt good.’

She couldn’t forget it at all.

The first impression that started with attraction connected to their future union, and it kept coming back to her mind, making her wonder if their destined union was indeed true.

“If I fall in love.”

But being honest about such feelings shouldn’t happen now.

“That can’t happen. Irie.”

Only now, after everything had ended, did Irie recall her mission, and anxiety began to overwhelm her embarrassment.

How could she, who was supposed to prevent this world’s path to destruction and revive the Haven clan, be swept away by circumstances and give her heart to someone?

How could someone in her current state fulfill her mission when the appointed time came?

Even if there could be a future where she could coexist with him, such narrow thinking was forbidden for a prophet.

‘What should I do now…’

While she was unable to find direction in the midst of this, she soon felt a presence approaching from behind.

“Are you Irie Haven?”

A visitor?

No, that’s impossible.

When she made her prophecy this morning, there was nothing like this.

“Who are you…?”

“I’ve come to deliver a letter from an anonymous sender. Here you go.”

“What? An anonymous acquaintance…?”

“I was only told to deliver it at a specific time and location… I have work piling up, so I’ll take my leave now.”

The man left after saying that.

The mark on his uniform and the bag on his shoulder indicated he was a “mailman” who delivered mail throughout the empire.

Just to be sure, she tried to vaguely read his past, but even that showed nothing but the identity of an ordinary mailman in his past actions.

“…This wasn’t in my morning prophecy.”

But the letter he gave her might be different.

Beyond what she as a prophet couldn’t predict, a situation where the future changed drastically without her sensing it, like when Transcendents acted on a whim…

Such things usually happened when “a prophet like herself” intervened in her own destiny.

Yes, the one who sent this letter must be a prophet like herself.

“…For.”

But the identity of the letter sender far exceeded even that expectation.

“Fortune Haven?”

Fortune Haven.

The first child of the destruction god who descended to this land, united with a man, and then ascended—a demigod who began the Haven clan.

When Irie realized that someone from thousands of years ago had sent her a letter, her expression gradually hardened.

“The sender is my ancestor?”

How could a person from thousands of years ago send her a letter? It would be impossible unless they predicted everything that would happen in the future.

But indeed, the letter looked like an ancient artifact, yellowed and worn all around.

The text inside was in an ancient language she couldn’t read, and it seemed so fragile that it might crumble if handled incorrectly.

Proper reading would require archaeological interpretation and restoration.

That would certainly take considerable time and investment, but it wouldn’t be much of a problem for her as a member of the Haven clan.

“…Stars, show me the result of my interpretation of this letter.”

What appeared in her crystal ball, infused with her power, was her future self who had found an archaeologist and successfully interpreted the letter’s contents.

Entrusting the answer to a decipherable code to her future self, despite the time it would take, was an interpretation method passed down through generations of the Haven clan.

[To my distant descendant, child of my mother. The last successor of Haven.]

Thus, the contents of the letter were revealed in the present through her future self’s act of reading it.

[You who are reading this letter have probably arrived at the empire following the future I foresaw, and are feeling anxious about the savior you don’t know when you’ll find.]

The moment she confirmed that someone from thousands of years ago had a general grasp of the current situation from the introduction.

As expected of a prophet who foresaw destruction, Irie thought as she imprinted the following sentences in her mind.

Perhaps they would be the answer to the concerns she felt.

[But my child, do not be anxious. The savior I prophesied might not be about finding something that exists, but perhaps about creating something that doesn’t exist with your own hands.]

“…Create?”

Creating a savior with her own hands.

Not yet understanding the meaning, someone’s existence began to emerge in Irie’s mind.

“Make Hyoseong the savior?”

Hyoseong Woo.

The one destined to be her partner, unforgettable at any moment.