As soon as she thought of Kalcion smiling happily while looking at another woman, her throat choked up.
Selina put down the cutlery she was holding and tried to pass the food that was slurping in her mouth. It was not passing over as if there was a thorn in her throat. Even though she drank water, the narrowed throat did not loosen.
“What's the matter?”
Looking at her deteriorating expression, Kalcion asked though her mouth was full and she couldn't answer. Now it felt like it was squeezing her esophagus and stomach. Her stomach was so narrow that she couldn't even pass a sip of water.
Selina hurriedly got up and ran to the bathroom.
She spat out what was in her mouth on the toilet, but her esophagus felt stuffy, like a stone was full. Although she would rather have vomited it up and it would be cool, her clogged esophagus wouldn't budge.
“Uh.”
Her eyes were covered in white as if she was actually not breathing, and her ears rang. Selina punched herself in the chest, feeling like she was going to suffocate.
“Selina.”
Kalcion approached her and stopped her by grabbing her wrist, which was raised in the air. The moment he hugged her from behind and locked her in his arms, the moment the warmth reached her back, her breath exploded.
“Ha…!”
She could only breathe when she felt Kalcion’s warmth.
As she realized he was staying by her side, the time finally moved. Her world crumbled as time in the world began to move. The moment she didn't know, the moment she was hiding, the moment when the things she was hiding were revealed…
“What's the matter? Are you okay?”
Kalcion, not knowing what had happened to her, asked, looking with a worried face, but Selina kept her mouth shut and lowered her head.
She didn't want to show her face.
She didn't want to get caught.
…She finally realized her own feelings.
“Selina.”
Meanwhile, surprised by her sudden illness, he grabbed her chin and forced her to turn.
Selina tried to hold on as she forced her strength, but she couldn't stand on her strength. Eventually, she raised her head.
Kalcion, checking her face, took a small breath.
Selina, who admitted that she could no longer run away from Kalcion’s gaze, slowly raised her eyes. Inside, tears hung from her eyebrows like snowflakes on winter branches. Even then, tears filled both eyes.
The moment she wanted to endure it, the tears couldn’t overcome the gravity and rolled down.
Even when she closes her eyes and opens them, tears fill them like endless waves. It was only after the three waves came and went that Kalcion finally came to his senses.
“Are you hurt?”
It hurt.
…The thought of leaving him in this world?
Thinking of him smiling face to face with another woman.
It was different from the angry feeling when she half-played and thought that if she went back, Fionel would be by his side. Seriously, thinking that someone would be next to Kalcion for the rest of his life, and that warmth towards her would go towards that person, made her go crazy.
The sharp urge to shred the scene she had drawn in her head tore her heart first. The reason why her heart hurt so much was because her heart was so bulky.
Selina cried like a child.
Even though she wanted the toy in front of her so much, she couldn't even give up the candy she was holding in her hand.
A snack that she would never be able to eat again once she put it down…
A toy that someone else would take if she wouldn’t grab it now…
It was a problem that she had to make a choice. It was the life she had worked her entire life for, and Kalcion.
There was no way to have both.
“Yes, it hurts… It hurts so much. I feel hurt, and I think I will die.”
Kalcion, who had been watching Selina cry endlessly, hugged her silently. Now the hands wrapped around her back and digging under her knees were something she was used to.
She reflexively clung to his neck.
Selina buried her face in the nape of his neck, and while she sobbed, they were out of the dining room and reached her room. Sitting on the bed, as he gave her a cup of water, she tried to calm herself down with a sip of water, but her raging emotions seldom subsided.
As she sat on his lap, Kalcion waited patiently, gently brushing her hair.
Even so, it was a hand movement that was so careful that it barely touched. She felt impatient that she would die if she was touched, and her crying, which had barely stopped, started again.
…Why did he treat her so preciously like glass, knowing better than anyone how strong she was?
Kalcion shuddered at Selina's tears like a person with a rope around her neck. A person who wouldn’t blink an eye even if a person's head was blown off in front of her.
“What should I do if it hurts like this? Why did it hurt so much? Have I been hiding it?”
“No. There was nothing to hide.”
She didn't even know she was hurt, so there was nothing to hide. The occasional stabbing pain in her chest, she thought, was just a temporary whim or a desire to compete. It was because she didn’t like Rosalyn… because Fionel was annoying…
It was impossible to connect because of Kalcion.
“It breaks my heart just to think of you enduring the pain alone.”
“Don’t do that.”
If his heart were torn apart, her heart would also break.
To think that their heart had to be torn apart because they couldn't accept each other even though they had the same heart. Selina was amazed at how this situation came about.
“If the Duke says he's hurt, then I'm hurt as well.”
Oh, so it was. Now she understood why she didn't try to hold on to him even though he said he loved her.
While she has acted romantically many times, Selina was also a newbie to love. It was the first time she had ever truly loved, and the first time she had ever been loved. She had to go through it one by one and think it through and realize.
She didn't want to hurt Kalcion.
Rather than hurt him, she wanted to endure the pain herself.
However, for Selina, the choice wasn't that simple. She saved him from drowning and was close to saving her life, watching him die.
“…What’s wrong?”
When he suddenly asked, she lifted her head, which she had buried in his chest.
“You don’t think I’m talking about menstrual cramps, do you?”
“…It’s not?”
This dull man!
Selina, who was clenching her fists and trying to get angry, remembered that she had been talking about her period.
Coincidentally, her menstrual cramps and conversation were oddly aligned. She cried earnestly, and when she thought that everything she had confessed had been in vain, she even felt unfair. She suddenly hated Kalcion, regardless if it was love.
The moment she saw his eyes, thinking she wanted to punch him, she realized again.
“That… you see.”
In fact, Kalcion was also carrying her anxiety. Although she was also looking into his heart, she didn't expect that he would be able to see Selina's heart clearly as well.
“Because of menstrual cramps… it hurts so much. Was there anything else that could hurt you like this?”
He was another person who, like herself, tried to pretend not to know and closed his eyes.
How did she end up meeting this idiot? Didn’t know her own heart and didn’t know how to be greedy… an idiot who was so considerate of the other person that they jumped around and went back to where they would have arrived in one step.
Selina's face contorted.
She still had trust that he would still look at her prettily, so she could cry a mess. It was only in front of this person that she could cry like a child without thinking about the wrinkles and angles of her face. She had this precious comfort, and she couldn't deny it any longer.
Selina swallowed her sniffles and vomited out the one word she had barely managed to contain.
“…I love you.”
Ah.
Now it felt like her stomach was refreshed.
It was these words that were the culprit that was blocking her throat as if she was about to die. She tried to return to her original world, keeping it within herself. It had grown so big that she couldn't contain it any longer.
Kalcion's eyes widened at Selina's confession.
“…Ah.”
He always showed neat movements, but on rare occasions, he wasted his movements in a hurry, like he forgot even how to treat his own body. His bewilderment was evident even under the dimly flickering lamplight of the shabby inn.
“I am… you… No way.”
“I know now as well. I guess I was in love, too.”
“….”
Even the words he uttered infrequently came to a halt.
He pursed his lips and finally failed to get his words out. Instead, he overlapped his lips as if pouring out his soul. Selina closed her eyes at the passionate emotion that erupted from his lips that were clearer than a hundred words.
Then, Kalcion's heart bloomed brightly as if cultivating a flower garden in his eyelids.
“…I never thought you could love me.”
Her lips fell, and at last, he could speak.
“I didn’t even think I could dare to ask for your love.”
It was because she was the one to go back… because she was not his own person… and because everyone who stood in front of love became weak.
Even Kalcion, Duke Renbird, where nothing in the world existed above his head, was not free from that.
“…Thank you, for loving me.”
As he hugged her, his fingertips wrapped around her head were trembling slightly.
Selina swallowed the cry.
“I didn’t mean to… Really, I thought it was work. I've never worked like this before.”
“This was an accident. Do you think so?”
It was nobody's fault.
Her mind did not move like her hands and feet. It is also wrong to say that it was wrong to fall in love. As Kalcion said, this was an accident like a comet flying into the earth… incapable of human power, unavoidable.
As he put it…
…It was force majeure.
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