* * *

Time to go? Where to?

It felt like a sudden blow to the back of the head.

The announcement had caught Kaindel completely off guard.

He hadn’t even considered that the man might have a place to return to.

Until now, he’d vaguely assumed the man was a servant with no particular ties outside the palace.

Kaindel clenched his fists, summoning all his strength to steady his trembling voice.

“Where are you going?”

“….”

“Will you come back? When?”

“…I’m sorry.”

But the man didn’t answer.

What should have been an easy question hung awkwardly between them, unanswered.

Tension thickened the air, amplifying Kaindel’s growing unease.

The things he thought he had securely in his grasp over the past six months were slipping away.

No matter how tightly he tried to hold on, they eluded him, slipping further from reach.

The sight of the man, feeling more distant than ever, spurred Kaindel to move on instinct.

He quickly stepped toward him, stealing a glance at the pond as the man looked away.

He had to know what had prompted this sudden goodbye.

Scanning the area around the pond, he found nothing out of the ordinary.

The pond was as pristine as ever.

Perhaps it would have been better if there had been something.

The immaculate pond only deepened the turmoil in his chest.

Overwhelmed, Kaindel reached out, lightly gripping the man’s sleeve between his thumb and forefinger, careful not to touch his skin directly.

He knew the part of the man that came into contact would soon turn transparent.

“Why are you apologizing? It’s fine if you’re coming back. I’m good at waiting, really. Just tell me—where are you going, and when will you return?”

“You…”

Kaindel was confident.

Confident that if the man would return to him, he could wait patiently.

He had never waited for anyone before, but if it was this man he had to wait for, he thought it might be worth investing his time.

After all, the man, as a hero, had matters to settle.

During his absence, Kaindel could deal with issues of his own—like the ones related to the Great Calamity.

So he could wait.

As long as the man promised to return to him.

“When you grow up, let’s meet again.”

But even that simple promise, the man refused to make.

He was truly a cruel person.

“You’re lying. You’re planning to abandon me, aren’t you? Saying we’ll meet again, but you won’t come back.”

“No, I will come back.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Kaindel instinctively sensed it.

This was abandonment.

Even if the man said they’d meet again, he would never return.

If, by some chance, he did, it wouldn’t be for Kaindel’s sake.

The man had a lover he still held dear, and the reasons Kaindel and the man were incompatible were far too numerous to count.

That was why.

That was why he was being abandoned.

In hindsight, the man had always been ready to leave.

It was Kaindel’s mistake not to notice it sooner.

Even when the man was physically present, his mind always seemed elsewhere.

He would gaze frequently at the pond or stare intently at the sky, reacting with undue sensitivity to the passage of time.

He would often speak of reality and the present as if they were separate things, and he’d scrawl the same phrases on the ground as if trying not to forget them.

Once, Kaindel had glanced at the ground and seen the words Seriel Lake etched there.

The more he reflected, the more stifling it felt.

The laughter that came naturally when he looked at the man now turned into tears.

If being abandoned by someone you loved was this excruciating, he never wanted to experience it again.

He even entertained the faintly ridiculous hope that if he sat down and cried his heart out, the man might pity him and turn back.

It was infuriating.

If it was going to end like this, the man shouldn’t have given him the necklace. Shouldn’t have said he loved him.

The man was the one who had left footprints on the pristine snowfield of his life.

The one who had shaken him, who had no intention of indulging in vain desires.

The man was responsible for this situation.

He should be, at least…

Kaindel’s face contorted completely. He couldn’t hold back the tears that streamed down his cheeks.

The tears pooled and trickled down like a small waterfall.

With them came pitiful sobs, unwillingly escaping his lips.

Deep down, he wished the man would change his mind upon seeing him cry.

Even amid his overwhelming sorrow, such selfish thoughts arose. It was hopeless.

The man silently watched Kaindel cry before letting out a deep sigh.

He looked pensive.

Then, breaking out of his reverie, the man gently stroked Kaindel’s head.

His soft touch continued until he suddenly leaned closer, stopping just as his face neared.

“I love you, Kaindel.”

“…”

“I’ll give you the gift when we meet again.”

With those words, the man smiled, pulling his lips into a gentle curve, and placed a kiss on Kaindel’s forehead.

It was a kiss that was brief yet somehow lingering.

Kaindel swallowed dryly, feeling the warmth from the man’s lips on his forehead.

Perhaps it was because it was the first time he’d received such an affectionate gesture.

He stood rooted to the spot, unable to move away, as if his feet were nailed to the ground.

It was only after a beat that the meaning of the man’s saccharine words sank in.

‘Because I love you.’

As he replayed the words in his mind, Kaindel let out a faint, bitter laugh.

It was a self-mocking scoff.

Young Kaindel didn’t know how not to love a man who made a habit of declaring his love.

And so, helplessly, he was swept along, unable to resist.

Even as he was being openly abandoned, why did his heart flutter?

He hated how foolish he was.

“So grow up quickly.”

Grow up, and we’ll meet again.

The man’s lips left his forehead as he murmured in a low voice.

He spoke of some vague, distant future without revealing where he was headed.

“…”

Kaindel stood frozen until the man’s gradually fading figure completely disappeared.

He stared blankly, gripping the necklace in his palm until it left deep marks on his skin.

“Hah.”

After a while, he noticed that the spot on his forehead where the man’s lips had touched was starting to heat up.

Despite the cold season, his forehead was red-hot, in stark contrast to the chilly air around him.

The warmth lingering on his forehead became his final memory of that day.

---

As if to confirm his doubts, the man who spoke as though he would return when Kaindel grew up didn’t reappear, even after Kaindel’s coming-of-age ceremony.

That was when Kaindel had no choice but to acknowledge it.

That day by the pond had been the last time he would ever see the man.

He couldn’t even bring himself to resent the man for lying to him.

He wasn’t even upset.

He had known from the beginning that this was how it would end.

A year after the man’s departure, Kaindel had asked the people at the royal palace about him.

A man dressed entirely in white, save for his distinctively red lips.

If the man had worked at the palace as Kaindel suspected, surely someone would remember him.

Kaindel intended to use whatever information he learned to track him down.

But no one knew of such a person.

If not for the necklace the man had left behind, Kaindel might have been swept up in the disbelief of others and convinced himself that the man had been a figment of his imagination.

The necklace, weathered with the traces of time, was the only proof of the man’s existence.

Or perhaps not the only proof.

With a faint laugh, Kaindel perched on the railing.

“Stars shine the brightest in a dark sky.”

The man’s words echoed in his mind.

Stars shone brightest against a dark sky.

But had the man known?

That as he said those words, he had shone brighter than any star beneath the night sky.

Because of him, Kaindel couldn’t look at the night sky without being reminded of him.

The fever that had started suddenly and burned intensely was still ongoing.

Even so, the emotions Kaindel had nurtured in his youth had dulled with time.

That didn’t mean he had forgotten his memories with the man.

It just meant he was no longer consumed by those feelings to the point of throwing away every expectation placed upon him to be with the man.

He had learned to distinguish between dreams and reality—between the cabin in the woods and escapist fantasies.

As he grew older, Kaindel learned many things.

He saw the people who admired him, heard their hopeful wishes, and realized the weight of being a hero within the kingdom.

Kaindel wasn’t the only one who had changed.

People’s attitudes toward him had shifted too.

Where once they had funded him out of admiration for his title as a hero, they began to approach with other motives.

Some sought to hire him as an escort, while others wanted private meetings.

There were even those who derived satisfaction simply from the thought of having power over someone as esteemed as a hero.

People no longer concealed their desires, and Kaindel had grown accustomed to it.

He had to.

As a child, he could charm others with just a smile, but now, he had to pay a price.

The price being himself.

As a child, he believed that once he grew older, he wouldn’t have to attend the sponsorship parties anymore.

But that hope was crushed when he realized all the money from those parties went straight into his father’s pockets.

Since his father squandered every last coin on gambling, it was no wonder the family treasury never had a chance to recover.

So, he gave up early and learned to accept it.

Once he did, everything became bearable.

Even the sight of the sycophantic, grinning fools made him want to retch, but he could endure it.

Even if he had to kiss the hands of the unsightly for the sake of decorum, he did.

He even managed to ignore the judging eyes that assessed and scrutinized him like a commodity.

But there was one thing he simply couldn’t stand.

“This headache…”

The overpowering stench of perfume.

That, no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t get used to.

“Well, still…”

Kaindel narrowed his brows briefly, then rose to his feet, brushing off his trousers.

“Once I go off to slay the Calamity, this will all be over.”

At least he wouldn’t have to endure the cloying scent of perfume while dealing with the Calamity.

Thinking that way, the current discomfort felt almost trivial.

Though, the irony wasn’t lost on him—this cycle would only end if he chose death.

* * *