He ran towards her. He dropped his sword and opened his arms towards her.
“Don’t go!” His voice reeked of desperation. “Don’t abandon me!”
He reached her and grabbed her with both of his arms. When he finally had her locked in his embrace, the feel of her familiar warmth gave him such a relief that it almost made him collapse to the ground.
He whispered the name that was his life, “Bina.”
The woman turned around slowly to him and Lucretius saw it.
A single stream of tear from her eye.
“Bina?”
He then saw something unexpected on the ground nearby.
The unpleasant burning smell continued to haunt him. It was a small fire and in it were the clothes she brought from her world.
They were burning slowly into ashes.
After a long hesitation, Lucretius finally asked, “Why?”
“…”
Bina didn’t answer. She instead turned her head to stare at the large gap, the gate, that continued to swallow the moonlight.
When her gaze reached it, Lucretius held her even tighter. He became fearful that she might escape his arms and run into the gate.
Just like the other black-haired woman a long time ago.
They stood like statues for a long time until the darkness of the night slowly disappeared. The blue light started to fill the forest. The moon was becoming faint as the morning approached.
With that, the gate was also slowly getting smaller and fainter. By this time, only the black ashes of Bina’s old clothes remained.
The moon was gone completely, but the sun hadn’t come up yet. It wasn’t night anymore, but not quite morning either.
Bina finally opened her mouth.
“I couldn’t do it.”
“…”
He didn’t know how to respond to her, but it didn’t seem like she wanted an answer from him as she continued.
“I understand if you get angry, but to be honest, I never intended to go through the gate from the beginning anyway. The reason why I left that letter for you is… I admit I just wanted to see if you would come after me.”
Her voice started to tremble, and Lucretius couldn’t help but hold her even tighter.
“Bina.”
“I am a selfish and annoyingly rational person, and that is why when I saw it with my own eyes, I couldn’t jump through it.”
A faint and small remnant of the gate remained in front of them.
Bina continued, “I don’t think I will be able to go home safely through that gate… Only two out of six people arrived here alive…”
“…”
“So obviously I couldn’t go through with it. I am a coward and there is no guarantee that the other side of this gate is my own world! I don’t want to die! Yet…”
“…”
“I know logically it makes sense to live here forever rather than return home as a corpse, yet…”
She finally started to sob as the small dark gap finally disappeared completely.
“If I saw something through it, I might have done it.”
YOU ARE READING
Empress of Another World
FantasySa Bina was on her way to write her SAT when she suddenly finds herself in a strange world. She is sent to be the old emperor's concubine, but on their wedding night, the emperor gets murdered by no one other than his own son and the heir! To surviv...
