Ch#77
‘Please, just kill me now.’
Meanwhile, the Lumenen Leader, Valentis, stood at the railing, lost in thought.
‘How much more must I ruin before you stop this? Do you want to lose everything left as well?’
He should have realized it when he heard the Association had summoned Trebaga for this incident.
That he might run into Tesetan here.
‘But I thought that child wouldn’t come.’
His head throbbed as he recalled Tesetan turning his back once more at the end of their long conversation.
But even closing his eyes didn’t dispel the vision before him.
‘Please, just let me go.’
Once, his eyes had burned with fighting spirit.
‘There’s nothing left to regret, lament, or despair over now.’
Now, only parched obsession and regret remained.
‘Theseos Lumenen is already gone.’
His hand on the railing trembled.
‘But how.’
How could he kill his own child?
When he was alive.
Alive and well in this world, breathing freely.
Valentis slowly bowed his head.
One thought filled his pounding head again.
Would things have been different if Eleonora were by his side?
Of course, she would surely have known the answer.
Unlike the clumsy, ignorant him, Eleonora had been more than he deserved—overflowing, even.
As Valentis clenched his fist,
Suddenly, an unfamiliar presence came from above and to his right.
Gathering his holy power, he lifted his head to see a pair of eyes gleaming in the reflected moonlight.
For a moment, Eleonora’s eyes overlapped with those green ones holding the moonlight.
But Valentis Lumenen soon regained his composure.
“……Agavert Leader.”
It wasn’t Eleonora.
Before him was the Agavert Leader, Sovereign King, whom he had seen for the first time in today’s meeting.
The Sovereign King, meeting his eyes, flinched.
But then bowed awkwardly and carefully began descending the stairs.
Clutching the railing with one hand, she looked less like a disguised adult and more like a real child.
As Valentis narrowed his eyes,
“Lumenen Leaderrr.”
The Sovereign King trotted up close and looked up at him with an inexplicable expression.
Then, pointing gingerly at the corner of his eye with her index finger, she asked,
“Are you sad? Why……?”
Only then did Lumenen realize tears were falling drop by drop down his cheek.
Turning his head, he clearly saw a few drops on the railing and floor.
Valentis fell silent before turning his head toward the floor-to-ceiling window.
“I have personal circumstances.”
“Personal circumstances……?”
A certain jellyfish she’d seen once flashed through Tie’s mind.
Soon, the child’s face grew serious.
She didn’t know what it was, but the Lumenen Leader’s circumstances were clearly gross and pink.
Tie swallowed and nodded as if it didn’t matter.
Then she pulled something from her pajama pocket.
A handkerchief with a light brown baby bear embroidered on white cloth.
“Wipe with this.”
Valentis stared down at the Sovereign King, speechless.
Then, noticing something, he slowly crouched down below the railing.
“Thank you.”
Taking the handkerchief, he lightly wiped his damp cheek.
No trace of tears remained on his face.
As he returned the handkerchief, the Sovereign King took it and hesitated for a moment.
Then,
“Here too…….”
She dabbed at the right side of his jaw that Valentis Lumenen had missed.
Valentis silently watched as the Sovereign King folded the handkerchief twice and tucked it into her pocket.
His gaze shifted again to something dangling from the Sovereign King’s wrist.
‘A relic?’
An oddly shaped bracelet.
Refined holy power emanated from it.
He had sensed a similar energy from the Pearl City maritime magic stone fragment in a recent report.
Staring intently at the Sovereign King, he said,
“And why are you sad?”
Her eyes were red too.
She had sat blankly through the entire meeting, but clearly had shed tears for some reason.
The Sovereign King panicked visibly and waved her hands.
“Tie didn’t cry. Almost did, though.”
“Is Tie your real name?”
The Sovereign King clamped her mouth shut before nodding slightly after a long pause.
“……Yeees. Sovereign King is a nickname.”
“Is it alright to reveal your real name so freely?”
Tie rolled her eyes wordlessly.
In truth, there was no real need to hide her real name.
But she had kept it hidden as much as possible until now.
To maintain some mystique, and because there was no reason to spread her real name.
But,
‘How is this person exactly like Dad…….’
The problem was that Valentis gave off an atmosphere so similar to Dad’s that it flustered her.
Her head warned her to beware of the holy knight before her, but her body was drawn to him on its own.
Her mouth was the same; from earlier, Tie had been babbling unnecessary things to Valentis.
Suddenly worried, Tie timidly glanced at Valentis.
“You won’t tell anyone else, right?”
“Your real name?”
“……Yeees. Thinking about it, it should be a secret and…….”
Valentis nodded with an expressionless face.
“Understood. But if you want to keep your real name hidden, you should be more careful than me.”
Tie nodded awkwardly.
Then, like Valentis, she crouched on the floor and leaned against the railing.
Valentis reflexively reached toward the railing she leaned on.
Gripping it firmly, as Tie looked down at the ground and asked slyly,
“What makes super super strong people like Leader sad?”
It circled back to the question about the tears he had coincidentally witnessed.
Still holding the railing Tie leaned on, Valentis lowered his gaze.
“Are you curious why I cried?”
“Not exactly why you cried, but why you were sad?”
“They sound the same to me.”
“Really?”
“…….”
A short chuckle finally escaped Valentis’s stiff lips.
Gazing at the floor-to-ceiling window twinkling with stars for a moment, he said,
“The reason I was sad, well.”
Then whispered softly.
“I met someone I missed after a long time, but he was no longer the person I had longed for.”
Tie blankly parted her lips.
Soon, the child’s eyes widened.
“Tie knows that too!”
“Knows what.”
“Meeting someone you missed so hard, but that person isn’t that person anymore.”
Like the Dad she met at the pier, who wasn’t the Dad Tie had known before.
Recalling that made her heart heavy again.
“Why do people always have to change……?”
Dad, who had returned from Korea in an urn.
The time she had to send back.
The home Tie had to leave.
And nights like this when she couldn’t sleep.
“Happy times always end. Gotta say goodbye to the people you like.”
Valentis quietly listened to Tie’s words.
“Whenever Tie has a hard day, my heart feels like this, like it’s ripping apart.”
Truthfully, everything that happened today was too much.
Like trying to stuff an entire ocean into a tiny cup.
“……You know, mister, you look exactly like the person Tie likes most in the world.”
Tie mumbled.
Staring silently at her reddened nose tip, Valentis said nonchalantly,
“If it’s someone you like, do you mean the knight you’ve been discreetly inquiring about for the past few weeks?”
Tie’s eyes went wide.
Regardless, Valentis narrowed one eye slightly and added,
“It’s been a while since the report, so my memory’s fuzzy. The name was somewhat exotic, I think.”
