At The End Of The Hidden Greenery

Chapter 59

There was another long silence in the rattling carriage. A silence where not even a sigh could be heard.

After a while, the Crown Prince quietly opened his mouth.

“…Akarna.”

Jiwoo turned her head and looked at him.

“The first time I’ve seen you… is not at the temple. As you may remember, the battlefields I fought in and your dispatch overlapped.”

“Was it?”

“You wouldn’t remember. It was a very brief moment.”

Jiwoo had a really hard first year or so of her life.

It was because she was sent to the battlefield before she could adapt to this world. She had to treat the wounded without knowing anything. She couldn’t remember the countless people she passed by.

“I… I thought you were really the one heaven gave me.”

The Crown Prince did not have that position from the start.

After Jiwoo fell into this world, he miraculously returned alive and won the battlefield, where he was almost pushed to death by his opponents.

After the Crown Prince found stability, he looked for the Akarna in the temple. Up to that point, he had no emotions other than curiosity.

It was strange at first, lovable, and at the end she lingered in his mind even when he closed his eyes.

The Akarna of the temple was said to live for a few years here, and then they would go back and would thus find a new body.

How could such an existence stay by his side a little longer?

According to the temple, when God’s presence would return to heaven, He would kill the shell of Akarna, but how could the Crown Prince protect her?

“You may not believe it, but I thought that marriage was a way to protect you. As I somehow survived…”

But I got it wrong. The Crown Prince let out a dry laugh as he spoke quietly.

“…We can’t go back to the way we used to be. I’ve found out that you’re just a normal person.”

The red eyes that had been staring intently at her narrowed down.

“You can die, you can leave me, you can change your mind…”

A normal person.

He didn’t know that he was enduring that time with only love. And how important that was.

The Crown Prince covered his face with both hands.

A blood-smeared bandage was visible through the loosely undone collar of his neck.

He lowered his head as his shoulders shook, but Jiwoo had nothing to say.

* * *

Jiwoo moved to a place much wider than the place she stayed in before. The bedroom was especially spacious. However, the structure was not pleasant.

Jiwoo’s bedroom had to be accessed through another room. And the Crown Prince stayed in that room.

This time, even the servants couldn’t easily approach Jiwoo.

The more she didn’t want to run into the Crown Prince, the more she became isolated inside.

Jiwoo’s room had all the amenities, but the windows were not very large, and even those were blocked by several bars.

It was truly as if she was a prisoner.