#203

“I’m sorry.”

A muffled voice flowed into his ear. The hand that had been gently rubbing his back slowly moved to touch Cullen’s face.

Holding Cullen in his embrace, Kiyen looked down at him from close up. As if engraving Cullen’s face into his eyes, Kiyen parted his lips.

“I wanted you to smile, but I didn’t do anything to make that happen.”

The moment the sincerity of his inability to contain his apologies was felt, something that had been pooling in his heart burst.

It was the first apology he had received.

After reviving Cullen, Kiyen showed him various aspects of himself that hadn’t been visible before. He had pleaded, grieved, and confessed his love. But he had never apologized like this.

Even though he had never thought he wanted an apology from him, his heart wavered as if he had been waiting for this moment. The knots that had clung to his wounds like glue began to melt.

“I only pushed you because I didn’t know what to do…”

White fingers touched the corner of Cullen’s eyes. He felt the gentle warmth sweep across his heated eyes. Seeing the moisture on his hand, it became real.

He was truly crying.

He thought he had forgotten how to cry long ago, but tears fell at an unexpected moment. He bit his lip in his own surprise. He tried desperately to stop them, but his body wouldn’t obey. Instead of stopping, his eyes grew hotter.

“I only demanded.”

Continuing to whisper his mistakes, Kiyen slightly lowered his upper body. Meeting his gaze, he furrowed his brows. His eyes, which had regained their blue hue, held him steadily.

Kiyen watched him carefully for a while, then slowly drew closer. As he flinched and tried to pull back, Kiyen gently held him and rubbed his cheek against Cullen’s.

“I didn’t realize you were always the one accommodating me. Because there was no one as deeply intertwined with me, I just thought it was natural… I didn’t consider what you didn’t reveal. Cullen, I was wrong.”

The softly flowing voice was a side of Kiyen he had never expected. He hadn’t tried to look. He had considered himself and Kiyen to be beings separated by the boundary of their species, so he hadn’t thought Kiyen would understand him.

Still, he had been happy. Just loving him was a joy, and the occasional tender moments he showed gave him room to breathe.

However, a heart that had once been broken no longer seemed to be satisfied with just that. As he listened to Kiyen’s apology, Cullen slowly realized it. The heart that had hardened over time was, amusingly, slowly melting at his sincere words.

“I can’t be the same as before.”

Cullen cleared his throat in a low, muffled voice and managed to say one word. As Cullen opened his mouth, Kiyen held him tighter, rubbed his forehead against his neck, and whispered back.

“You don’t have to be. You and I have both become different beings than before.”

“…It might not turn out the way you want.”

Kiyen was silent for a moment at those words. However, the hand stroking his back did not stop. After gently stroking his back without a word, he opened his mouth.

“I will wait. Until you find the answer you want. As you said, I had three years, so however long it takes, for you to…”

Kiyen paused there. Hesitating, he managed to utter one word as if in pain.

“I will wait until you love me again. By doing everything I can, just as you did to me.”

Listening to Kiyen’s words, Cullen retraced his own thoughts as he had followed him. And he compared it to the present. It was clearly different from before. Although it was still uncertain and full of unknowns, the difference was that he wanted to believe Kiyen’s words.

However, there was also anxiety. Regardless of his own resentment towards him, Cullen didn’t want to see Kiyen get hurt or cry.

The problem was that he couldn’t act the way Kiyen wanted right now. Despite his will, his body and mind were not yet ready.

“But you suffered because of me, didn’t you?”

He asked, recalling Kiyen, whom he had seen cry several times before him. Kiyen let out a low sigh and pulled Cullen tightly into his embrace. It had been a while since they had held each other like this, and it felt awkward, but he didn’t want to push him away.

“As long as you don’t tell me to give up my feelings for you, that alone is good.”

Kiyen’s calmly spoken words suddenly reminded him of his past.

“That is my…”

Kiyen slowly closed his mouth. The sentence was not fully finished, but Cullen knew what would come next.

That it was the only reason Kiyen was alive.

Only when he heard voices calling for him and Kiyen from afar did Cullen snap back to his senses. The warmth of Kiyen, felt after a long time, was more comforting than he remembered. It wasn’t that they hadn’t touched since then, but this was the first time they had been together with such a sense of relief.

The slightly elevated body temperature felt awkward, so Cullen gently pushed Kiyen away. Unlike before, Kiyen, who released him quietly, looked at him with a flicker of regret in his eyes. The hand releasing him brushed down his lower back. A strange sensation briefly lingered and then disappeared.

With a gap of about one step between them, they gazed at each other. As Cullen turned to leave, he saw Kiyen hesitate. Seeing his hesitation, which seemed to be due to their recent events, Cullen opened his mouth.

“If you come with me, won’t you be able to try anything?”

At Cullen’s words, which offered a sliver of hope, Kiyen’s expression gradually brightened. As he watched him, Cullen turned around, and Kiyen cautiously followed. His heart, which had felt suffocatingly heavy, felt a little lighter.

Kiyen, walking behind Cullen, slowly began to speak after a moment.

“I lived without paying attention to continental affairs, so I didn’t know, but I looked ahead at the path you were taking. From the Demonic Beasts encountered descending Mount Tesnia, there were many things I too had never seen before. These kinds of things will happen more often from now on, so if it’s alright, it would be best if we were always together.”

Cullen quietly nodded. He had tried to make him leave, and he had tried to run away, but now that he couldn’t see him, it weighed on his mind as well. What’s more, the Young Dragons hated seeing them part ways, which made him uncomfortable too.

“But it would be best to refrain from deliberately avoiding me like you did today.”

“That’s…”

Kiyen hesitated to answer. He glanced sideways at him, his expression troubled.

“I will listen to whatever you say, but I cannot give you a definite answer on that. Didn’t you do the same back then?”

Cullen, who had been about to retort, fell silent at Kiyen’s subsequent words.

“I didn’t understand it then. You, who were smaller and weaker than me, standing in my way to protect me.”

As Kiyen spoke, his expression was filled with longing. His gentle voice, as if recounting a precious memory, made a part of Cullen’s body burn.

“Even then, I didn’t want you to get hurt. I didn’t know why, but I would get angry when you were lying there unconscious.”

Kiyen murmured as if to himself, then suddenly spoke as if he had realized something.

“Only now do I know that it was an emotion born from worrying about you. After realizing the feelings you gave me, and subsequently understanding how I viewed you, I see many things more clearly.”

Their eyes met.

“It is better for me to get hurt than for you to get hurt. Because I never want to see you get hurt in front of my eyes again.”

He felt a different sensation than when he had mistakenly thought Kiyen was worried about him. It was different from the feeling he had when he and Ulli protected each other’s backs.

As Kiyen’s true feelings gradually flowed in, it felt like returning to a past where he had a family. Even though he knew it wasn’t true.

Cullen didn’t dislike Kiyen speaking like this. However, the content itself needed correction.

“But you must not forget that you are no longer immortal.”

At the word “immortal,” Kiyen flinched and glanced at Cullen. His beautiful eyes instantly lost their light and crumbled. Just like looking at Cat, his face revealed his emotions so plainly that Cullen was momentarily captivated.

“…But I am still the strongest being. The injury that day was only because I couldn’t adapt to my body’s condition.”

“If you had blocked for me today, you might have been hurt.”

“But you saved me, didn’t you?”

It was only after Kiyen said that that Cullen remembered the ability he possessed. He had thought he could only heal, and it was still unbelievable that he had gained a power that worked on Demonic Beasts as well.

Perhaps the Demonic Beasts from Dark Island were created by Akesis’s power, so they didn’t align with the goddess’s power? Just as Lasano and Arne were unaffected by Akesis’s curse, it might be the same principle.

At the mention of Arne’s name, which suddenly came to mind, Cullen felt sad. If he had had such power then, he could have saved Arne. He knew it was a futile thought, but thinking of the one he had lost made his heart heavy.

“Why that expression? Did I make another mistake?”

Perhaps his expression had given away his thoughts of Arne, as Kiyen quickly noticed and approached. Looking at his face, which was scrutinizing him as if something terrible had happened, Cullen thought carefully. He wasn’t sure if he and Kiyen would become lovers again, but at least this much was certain.

“Still, I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Kiyen fell silent at Cullen’s words. He blinked for a long time, as if he had heard something unexpected, then his eyes crinkled into a smile as he replied.

“Yes.”

Kiyen was smiling happily just from being worried about him.

“I will do so.”

Looking at his radiant face, which he hadn’t seen in a long time, Cullen remembered how much he loved his smiling face.

It had been that way from the moment Kiyen, who had lived confined with nothing to smile about, began to smile through his name.

That’s why he wanted to make him smile. He wanted to give him anything. Seeing the smile he had so desperately wanted bloom just from a single worry from him…

He deeply felt that Kiyen loved him.