By Zephyria 
As the saying goes, if the tail is long, it will eventually be caught. The time came when Noah Hamilton’s abnormal signs were finally discovered. If I were to put a subtitle on this passage, ‘Finally’ would be appropriate.
The discovery was made through the collaboration of simultaneous factors.
The first was that Noah Hamilton’s sleeping hours had become excessively long, no matter how weak and tired he was. About half a year after his first heat cycle, Noah Hamilton was awake for less than a few hours a day. He had an appearance that perfectly matched the cliché of being emaciated.
The Imperial Palace, along with all the famous doctors from both inside and outside the country, were summoned for examinations. They all declared that, apart from muscle loss and excessive thinness due to prolonged lying down, there were no major physical abnormalities.
Unable to obtain a satisfactory answer from the doctors, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince and the Count Hamilton family summoned every Sorcerer and Priest rumored to be competent. However, all of them only repeated like parrots that there was nothing wrong with Noah Hamilton’s body, and the problem only worsened.
When awake, he was good at pretending to be reasonably normal, so by the standards of those who didn’t know the truth, there was no reason or sign for Noah Hamilton to be mentally ill. The speculation that someone, jealous of the noble person who received God’s love, had cast a wicked curse sounded more persuasive, but the Priest shook his head, denying it.
The second factor was the return of Nicole, his exclusive attendant, who had gone on a long family trip for several months to commemorate his silver wedding anniversary, marking 25 years of marriage. Nicole, who had been relieved to think that his young master, whom he cherished like his own life, had finally connected with His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, was shocked to see what had happened in his absence.
On Nicole’s first day back, Noah stopped smiling like a doll and cried for the first time. It was the first time he had cried since he had been able to smile inhumanly beautifully even while seeing the traces of his affair with Adrian, and even in the face of God, who was spouting things like, “If a child born from your womb inherits the throne, I will bless him to grow up healthy,” he could still smile back as if nothing was wrong.
“I’m sorry, Nicole, I’m sorry…”
“Why are you like this, young master? What are you sorry for? You haven’t done anything wrong.”
The young attendant earnestly comforted Noah, but once the tears started, they didn’t stop for a long time. It wasn’t just Nicole he was sorry to. Noah Hamilton was sorry to everyone who loved him and cherished him. He was so sorry that he sometimes wanted to die from being crushed by their extreme affection.
After having such thoughts, he would soon be startled. How many people were freezing to death without even a fur coat to cover themselves in the cold winter, and how many people were working so hard that their feet were blistered just to get into the eyes of the powerful, and yet… Just indulging in such luxurious sentiments and daring to escape into death made him feel so pathetic.
He had to endure. Not for the sake of the loving God and the hateful self, but for the sake of the little Nicole right in front of him. For the sake of his mother and father, who sobbed by his bedside every night and prayed. For the sake of Adrian, who was only suffering because of his incompetence.
Of course, God knew very well how broken Noah Hamilton was, or rather, how worn out his thin nerves were. Even more than the humans who stayed by his side, anxious and apprehensive, with deeper understanding and empathy. He felt so sorry and wanted to pat his head, but that was it. From God’s point of view, Noah Hamilton, as a human, only needed to survive and enjoy his natural lifespan according to the destiny given to him.
Perhaps because his initial identity was a demon, the young God who inherited the authority was very different from the Primordial God, who cherished humans and creatures so dearly. The Primordial God, as he entered the natural process of extinction, designated him as the principle to rule the world in his place and promised him a soulmate to walk the long path of eternity together.
Even after inheriting the position of God, he waited for quite a long time for the being promised by the Primordial God to appear by his side. Several universes bloomed and withered, and several worlds were turned upside down. An immeasurably long time passed, to the point where the promise was almost forgotten.
When he finally sensed that the promised soul had emerged in the middle of a remote universe, how impressed and delighted he was!
However, the existence of the newly planted soul fell far short of his expectations. He had expected a soul with at least the weight of his demon self, if not one of the same caliber as himself… The soul that began to sprout in the womb of the beautiful Countess Hamilton was just an ordinary human soul. Still, he decided not to completely ignore it. He knew that if the soul safely completed its destined lifespan and died as a human, it would naturally be reborn as a being of the same caliber as him. He simply knew that fact naturally. Perhaps the Primordial God made the person who would walk eternity with him start as a human in order to balance him, who was too indifferent to humans, that was the extent of his sentiment.
So, he preemptively issued a Divine Mandate and poured out more than enough Blessing to prevent any unfortunate accidents that might prevent the human from fulfilling their destined lifespan. It was just one of the many worlds he managed. As an incubator for the birth of his partner, one world was not too much.
And then he forgot about it again for a while. When he suddenly remembered and went to check, his partner’s soul was a child of about ten years old. Although he was a child, he was beautiful enough to suit him. Only then did God begin to take an interest. The resonance of the word “destiny,” with its sweet nuance, moved even the distant Mount Tai.
About seventy years remained until Noah Hamilton enjoyed his destined natural lifespan and was reborn. To a supreme being who had lived for thousands and tens of thousands of years, seventy years was the blink of an eye. Regardless of what the other party thought, spending a few months without a promise and then suddenly appearing once in a while was, in God’s own way, showing his face very often.
Noah Hamilton, as a human, desperately flattering him for fear of being abandoned, begging him to visit more often, or at least promising when he would come… was very lovely, but honestly, a little annoying and bothersome. For the first time, God thought that the short period of seventy years might feel a little long.
Although he couldn’t dare to complain or show resentment in front of God, Noah Hamilton sometimes resented God for not showing interest in his body, resented God for not loving him in a human way, and sometimes, impiously, even had the audacious idea that it would have been better not to receive God’s love.
Noah Hamilton would eventually realize how insignificant and pathetic a short human life and a mere body that was only used temporarily as a human were in the face of a covenant to spend eternity together. Only if this life ended. Only if he died safely as a human.
So, whether Noah Hamilton went crazy or broke down, as long as he was alive and breathing, that was enough for God. His broken mind would be restored in the process of being reborn as a higher being.
It was an extremely arrogant attitude to not understand how much fear and disgust it would cause to a human who had barely lived for twenty years to have to spend the rest of his life like this, and to have to be with the culprit who would torment him for the rest of his life, even after death, in a forced covenant.
“It’s all my fault, it’s all my fault…”
Caught between the absolute being who was deliberately feigning ignorance of his lover’s collapse with thorough intention and the people who were only worrying about him and loving him without knowing why, Noah Hamilton sometimes wanted to die, then was seized by the guilt that even such thoughts were wrong, and then sometimes hated himself, whom he hated so much, and even then, he would discover that he still harbored a longing for God in one corner of his heart. Then he would hate himself even more. Without knowing that it was a heart bound by the coercive chains of fate that had even tied down the gaze of God, who had lived so much longer than him. Why, why couldn’t he love Adrian? Why couldn’t he uproot the love for God from the very beginning…? He had reached the point of despising his pathetic self.
Nicole couldn’t just stand by and watch Noah, who was listlessly drooping and trying to escape into sleep again. Nicole held back his tears and pretended to be even better. After obtaining permission from His Royal Highness the Crown Prince and the other Count family members, he diligently took Noah Hamilton out.
Although it was unknown to those who had been raised so preciously like Noah, there were cases where those who had been confined to a single residence due to various circumstances complained of madness… The best guess around was that the cause of the mental illness that was severely afflicting Noah Hamilton was that he had grown up in too small a cage.
However, Nicole didn’t know many places because he was always obsessively guarding Noah’s side. Therefore, most of the outings were near the trading company run by Nicole’s father.
In the meantime, Noah happened to discover a clever handyman at the trading company. Nicole’s father said that he had also been keeping an eye on him and suggested sponsoring the handyman named Lennox. Since sponsoring a commoner wouldn’t be a burden, Noah nodded indifferently. Occasionally, reports came in that the person who received the sponsorship actually had a talent for magic or entered the magic tower and achieved astonishing results, but as always, it was not very meaningful information to Noah.
Meanwhile, the engagement preparations, which had been imminent for some time, were proceeding steadily. It was not a very important schedule for Noah Hamilton, and as everyone was anxiously watching Noah’s condition recently, the engagement preparations went smoothly without Noah having to worry about them.
“I was ignorant… I didn’t notice that you were lonely and struggling…”
Adrian, who had secretly climbed over the wall and knocked on the window of the Count’s residence a week before the engagement ceremony, whispered so. His expression and voice were overflowing with radiant affection.
“Noah, if you forgive me just once. I will dedicate my whole life to compensating you, I will compensate you…”
“…”
“But I hope. Allow me this life. I will never give up on you, no matter what moment comes. I will try to make you feel happy even if every day can’t be happy, at least at the moment of falling asleep together.”
Because I, who love you, am already excessively happy.
Adrian smiled brightly as he finished speaking. It was a smile so dazzling that one might doubt whether the setting sun had risen again. The uncharacteristic shy blush was like taking the soft sunset hanging in the spring sky and hanging it up.
“I love you, Noah. I will bet my whole life on you alone.”
The moment he faced Adrian, Noah suddenly felt like he was suffocating. What am I doing… to Adrian… What, what am I doing…? He realized with his whole body that the sin he had committed was by no means small.
“Oh dear, you seem to be in a lot of trouble, Protege.”
And right then. The Protege who meant nothing to Noah suddenly appeared in the air.