* * *
Isa’s complexion was ashen as he mumbled in a panic, clearly distraught despite not being the one injured.
He bit his lower lip incessantly as he stared at Kaindel’s blood-soaked hand, his fingers fidgeting but never quite reaching out to touch him.
“…”
Kaindel observed Isa closely, noting every little action as if nothing else in the world existed.
His every movement, consumed with worry for Kaindel, drew his full attention.
A sudden burst of laughter escaped Kaindel, rising unbidden from the satisfaction bubbling in his chest.
Ah.
A soft sigh mingled with his growing grin, lingering on the tip of his tongue.
Ah.
His brows furrowed so deeply that Isa blurred in his vision.
All he could see now were Isa’s silver eyes, shimmering with emotion, and his flushed face, which looked as if he had been weeping despite shedding no tears.
It was stunning—so much so that Kaindel lamented not noticing it sooner.
“Yes, it hurts, Isa.”
The moment he acknowledged the powerful emotion simmering within him, the headache that had been plaguing him vanished.
With the pain gone, he felt remarkably lighter.
It all made sense now—the reason Isa stood out to him, the reason he couldn’t stop paying attention to him, the reason his hands always seemed to move of their own accord.
Possessiveness.
This was possessiveness.
Whether or not affection was the foundation for it remained unclear, but the emotion that stirred within him, boiling and unrelenting, was unmistakably possessiveness.
Like a child refusing to let go of a beloved toy despite the risk of breaking it, he wanted to keep Isa for himself.
Kaindel reached out with his uninjured hand to caress Isa’s cheek, his touch trailing to the tips of Isa’s burning ears.
“Your pretty face is a mess.”
“…Stop it.”
The reason for his crude possessiveness over a human rather than an object was a mystery.
But when Isa displayed submission, faltered in visible panic, yet refrained from rejecting him, Kaindel felt a thrill so intense it made the back of his neck ache.
Until yesterday, he had convinced himself that his feelings stemmed purely from amusement—fascination with how different Isa was from others.
Surely, the impulse to seize and crush something stemmed from idle curiosity, not genuine affection.
But to realize it was possessiveness…
Though unexpected, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
Kaindel’s gaze fell to Isa’s soft-looking hair.
He wanted to touch it.
If his desire to hold and consume every part of Isa—from his round head to his toes—stemmed from possessiveness, then everything fell into place.
So now, what should he do?
Kaindel glanced briefly at Owen, who was emerging from the fog.
Realizing this was possessiveness had taken time, but it allowed him to swiftly decide his next move.
After all, Isa liked him.
Kaindel would have plenty of time to figure out the source of these peculiar emotions before taking responsibility for them.
For now, he decided to wait and see.
From the moment Kaindel recognized what he felt for Isa, touching him no longer felt like crossing a boundary.
Isa liked him, after all, and Kaindel’s possessiveness justified his actions.
Though he had yet to define their ambiguous relationship, he found the current state acceptable.
In fact, he even thought maintaining this dynamic wasn’t so bad.
Isa, enjoying the attention of his unrequited love, must find it satisfying, and Kaindel could alleviate the possessiveness suffocating him. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Of course, whether this relationship could persist back in the capital remained uncertain.
Kaindel didn’t even know if he’d survive the subjugation of the great calamity.
But if he did return alive, he’d fulfill his duty by marrying the partner chosen by the king and live appropriately as the head of House Sudelgarten.
Therefore, the thought of keeping Isa by his side indefinitely never crossed his mind.
It couldn’t.
But.
“…Kaindel, you know.”
“Hmm?”
“When you act like this, it makes me misunderstand.”
The moment Isa, marked with Kaindel’s traces, poured out his raw honesty, Kaindel sensed something was gravely wrong.
Cracks began to form in his firmly held beliefs and arrogant assumptions.
“Misunderstand?”
Kaindel suppressed the twitch of his lips, forcing his rising smirk back down.
The atmosphere, which had been pleasant just moments ago, suddenly turned cold.
Why was this happening?
The weight of the air bore down on his shoulders as Kaindel caught a glimpse of rebellion in Isa’s eyes.
Isa, who had once eagerly accepted his attention, was no longer there.
Trembling, Isa continued slowly.
“I misunderstand that you might like me.”
“…”
“And I keep getting disappointed because of it.”
“…”
“I’ve felt that way before, and I feel it now, and I know I’ll feel it again.”
Disappointment born from misunderstanding.
Kaindel instantly understood what Isa was saying.
The sorrowful confession left no room for ambiguity.
Isa was trying to define their relationship—something Kaindel had intended to leave tangled and undefined.
Why does he keep expecting things from me and then getting disappointed?
Kaindel struggled to understand behavior that defied his logic.
Isa’s expectations and disappointments were, after all, his own doing.
And yet, he seemed to be holding Kaindel responsible.
If he hadn’t expected anything, he wouldn’t have been disappointed.
Suppressing the irritation bubbling within him, Kaindel suddenly recalled Sehir’s cryptic words: “Kaindel, just because you act a certain way, don’t assume Isa will interpret it the same way.”
…Surely not.
It was at a moment when he was brooding over his conversation with Sehir, wondering if he had missed something, that Isa cast a sorrowful smile at Kaindel, who sat silently.
“Kaindel, do you like me?”
“Well, what do you think?”
“I think love is something you can’t be confused about.”
‘So, I guess you don’t.’
The words at the end sounded as if Isa were about to cry.
While he smiled on the surface, the tears buried deep within him seemed ready to burst forth at any moment.
“Kissing is something only lovers do—not people who are nothing to each other, like us.”
“Isa.”
“And so is holding each other like this.”
Murmuring softly, Isa lowered the strong arms that had been wrapped around his waist.
Though his strength was weak, there was a firmness in his gesture.
Kaindel instinctively tightened his grip on the warmth trying to slip from his embrace but stopped himself.
At that moment, a word he’d never considered before struck him like a blow to the head.
Lover.
“Kaindel, if you’re not going to like me, then I’d appreciate it if you didn’t give me any false hope.”
“…What do you mean?”
“Sometimes what you think of as politeness looks like hope to me. Hope that maybe, just maybe, you might like me back.”
“Ah, hope.”
“So, I know it’s a lot to ask, but please help me a little. Then I’ll figure out how to move on. Pretending nothing happened from the beginning might be hard, but I’ll try. I’m used to letting go of my feelings, so I won’t make things uncomfortable for you. I promise.”
Thump. Thump. Thump.
His heart pounded violently as if struck by lightning.
Isa was declaring his surrender.
Instead of resenting Kaindel for raising false expectations and then disappointing him, he was hinting at the end of this ambiguous relationship.
Something was wrong.
Kaindel looked down at his hand, which now had nowhere to go, before glancing up at Essi.
Something was very wrong.
“I’m confessing right now, Kaindel.”
“…”
“I mean it.”
Where did it all go wrong?
Rotten fragments of his past surged up like a tidal wave.
Lover. Kaindel rolled the word Isa had spoken around in his mouth.
Lover.
The truth that came crashing in left only grains of sand behind, like the tide receding after a flood.
And those grains of sand were the remnants of Kaindel’s negligence.
* * *
🙂