By Zephyria 
Whether he had been watching the scene of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince and Noah talking, the Sorcerer appeared in front of him as soon as Adrian left. One notable thing was that the Sorcerer, who had been just a handyman until a year ago, was talking to Noah in a condescending manner, as if he were superior.
“If I said I could help you, would you take my hand and come with me?”
The Sorcerer asked with a confident attitude. Noah thought the question was a little funny. Of course, only in his mind.
He must be thinking that the precious young master of the Count’s family, who is about to be engaged, is feeling some kind of sentimental change of heart, so he is talking to him like this.
“If I take your hand, what will change? How can you… help me?”
He wanted to grab that hand, even if it was just grasping at straws. No matter how outstanding a Sorcerer he was, he knew very well that it was impossible to oppose God, who had his destiny entirely in his hands, as long as he was just a human being, but still.
Lennox did not answer Noah’s question. Instead, he boldly came closer without permission and grabbed Noah’s hand as if he were taking it for granted. The Sorcerer with red eyes made a confession that was hard to tell whether it was a joke or a serious statement, saying that he had wanted to hold this hand like this since the moment you first appeared before me like a Person from another world. The person who said such things desperately imitated a light tone as if he were not very sincere. But it was not very effective for Noah. It was because it was also a very familiar thing for someone to fall into helpless love for him again in this way.
“You are too good to be confined to a narrow world, my Protege. No one will be able to monopolize you. Not even if it’s the Crown Prince.”
“…Even if I long for Adrian and choose to be confined myself?”
“You don’t love him.”
“…”
“You may have deceived the eyes of others, but you didn’t deceive my eyes. You don’t love him.”
The Sorcerer, with his eyes shining brightly with a passion that was hard to tell whether it was pure or crazy, smiled widely and affirmed so. He confessed that he had been watching Noah’s every move using his excellent magic skills for a long time.
A normal human would have felt nothing but fear or disgust in that situation, but not Noah. Just as much as receiving the unprovoked affection of other humans, being observed in every little scene of his daily life was as natural to him as breathing.
“What are you going to do?”
“Okay, I allow it. Do whatever you can.”
Noah nodded without much expectation. There was no great worry because there was no great expectation. He just thought that he would take him for a walk to a place where he could clear his mind for a while.
“You thought well.”
The Sorcerer smiled slyly and immediately snapped his fingers. Then, just as he had suddenly appeared from the darkness, some object just the size of Noah’s body appeared.
“This is…”
“How is it, is it worth seeing? Even though it looks like this, it’s quite a masterpiece.”
At first, he thought it was a corpse. The human, or object, who was not breathing with his eyes closed, had a shape very similar to Noah’s, as if looking in a mirror.
The Sorcerer was confident that although he had failed to artificially create pheromones and would have to come to inject pheromones periodically, the doll he had made himself would be perfectly capable of imitating the words and actions that Noah had been doing until now.
“Let this doll take the place of the spouse of someone you don’t love. I already knew your noble consideration that you don’t want to hurt others around you.”
The Sorcerer was just preparing for the fact that others who loved Noah Hamilton would chase after him with their eyes on fire after he stole him, but he was good at talking. Noah didn’t know that fact either…
‘I love you, Noah. I will bet my whole life on you alone.’
When he recalled Adrian’s voice, who had whispered love with eyes deeper and more profound than the starry night sky.
“…Okay. Let’s do that.”
The thought that he didn’t want to hurt him even by putting forward a fake welled up.
“Don’t worry. You can always come back if you ever want to.”
The Sorcerer was still long-winded, even though he had no intention of sending him back. The Sorcerer stole Noah Hamilton well from the human’s sight like that. For now.
When he blinked once while looking at the bright red eyes that were clear even in the darkness, Noah was already in front of a beach on the opposite side of the continent. It had been a dark night until just now, but it was already a bright day.
On the long sandy beach and in front of the sea, there were only Noah and the Sorcerer. Noah took a deep breath. He smelled the salty sea breeze. His chest… felt as cool as if it had been blown open.
The unplanned escape was just pleasant and enjoyable with the help of the Sorcerer. He thought it was just a momentary deviation, but Noah was soon deeply immersed in the escape.
Wandering freely through a foreign city where no one knew him, having concealed his striking appearance with magic as if he were just an ordinary person, Noah sometimes deluded himself into thinking that this peaceful escape could last forever. He would occasionally feel an unbearable longing for the family he had left behind and for Adrian. Still, he found such longing preferable. The heartache of deep longing was more bearable than being in the capital. In this unfamiliar, faraway land, even the suffocating love for God and the resulting existential loneliness seemed to fade a little.
What truly made him want to shake off and run away wasn’t actually Adrian’s devoted affection. Wasn’t it obvious? From the beginning, what Noah Hamilton genuinely loathed was only God’s influence.
Sitting side by side with the Sorcerer at a messy street stall in the sunset-tinged streets, enjoying a meal seasoned with unfamiliar spices, Noah found himself laughing more often. He wished he could live freely like this forever, escape forever like this. Even so, it wasn’t that he hated God. His reverence and love for God were still vividly alive within him. What he hated was his own foolishness, his inability to help but love God.
Around that time, he often imagined. How wonderful it would be if he could exist simply as ‘Noah,’ not as the Child of Prophecy ‘Noah Hamilton,’ blessed by God, as in the dreams he often had.
The two walked together, matching their pace, wherever they went. The escapades of these aimless fugitives were closer to wandering than traveling, but that was fine too. At first, they used magic to zip around from place to place, but soon they genuinely began to enjoy the journey itself.
How long had it been? It was around the time when Noah could laugh as easily as he had when he was young. One chilly dawn near autumn, Noah woke up as if possessed by the sound of morning dew dripping. The Sorcerer, who had completely let his guard down over the past few months, was sleeping soundly in the bed next to Noah’s. It was the completely unguarded face of someone who loved Noah more than anything.
‘I won’t be greedy. It’s just… you brought me back to life, whether you intended to or not… So I want to lead you down a path of happiness, just enough so that you… think it’s worth living, just enough for you to think that way.’
The Sorcerer, with eyes redder than the sunset behind him, had whispered that to Noah. Along with the reassurance that if the words ‘I love you’ were burdensome, he wouldn’t even utter them, so he should rest assured.
Hearing those words, Noah suddenly came to a realization.
Isn’t this… no different from the terrible thing I did to Adrian…?
When he first started the journey, he didn’t feel much guilt. The affection the Sorcerer poured out didn’t reach Noah’s inner self with enough weight to warrant it.
But as they walked the road together, made silly jokes, and deeply inhaled the chilly night air, the Sorcerer, who had been nothing more than an unfamiliar intruder, had become Lennox, someone incredibly close to Noah.
If he couldn’t reciprocate that feeling, if he couldn’t look at him with the same emotions, he should have cut it off from the start. He couldn’t do that, knowing better than anyone else in the world how painful it was to pour out unrequited love unilaterally.
Noah staggered. As he walked out of the lodging and the village, no one encountered him, as if by a lie. It was a time when he would have been up already on a normal day, but the Sorcerer slept in that day. Noah, filled only with the thought of leaving the Sorcerer, didn’t know it, but it was, as expected, an arrangement by the one in the sky.
Leaving the village and walking aimlessly, Noah found himself at a dead end. Above a cliff where the road abruptly ended. Noah sat down, exhausted, and stared blankly into the air. Giggles burst out. He was surprised that he still had the strength to laugh. Then, without realizing it, he glanced down at the cliff below.
“……”
The gaping maw of the hideous chasm in the earth was strangely alluring. It was just as he was about to get up again, staggering as if his soul had left him.
“What are you doing, Noah?”
With a clear voice, his shoulder was pressed down.
“It’s been a while. How was… your outing?”
It was the voice of the one being Noah loved more than anyone, the one being who made Noah more desperate than anyone.