Chapter 122 – #27_엇갈림(2)
#120
1.
As soon as Amelia returned to her room, she collapsed as if her legs had given way.
The heat of excitement, like the scorching desert sun, faded, and self-loathing washed over her.
She blamed her weakness, along with the regret that she shouldn’t have done it.
Mixing bodies with him now was something that should not have happened.
Shiwoo had not yet fully returned.
To seduce Shiwoo, who knew nothing of the situation, with her body and fulfill her half-hearted desires was a cowardly act that Amelia so despised.
She shouldn’t have even asked for forgiveness.
To even ask if he couldn’t forgive her even if he regained his memories was a shameless act.
“Hic… Ugh… Ugh…”
But she was so afraid.
The look he would give her when he returned.
The hatred he would harbor when he remembered everything.
She thought she would be okay with hearing any harsh words if it meant she could save him.
But as she spent happy days with Shiwoo, her heart had grown dull.
She had become weak.
She felt like she couldn’t bear to see his changed appearance.
“Master… Master… What should I do…?”
No matter how much she pleaded, no one answered.
It felt like she was breathing in a stuffy fishbowl.
-Ting!
A vial rolled to Amelia’s feet as she muffled her cries, afraid Shiwoo might hear.
Amelia picked it up with a blank expression.
“If only this wasn’t here…”
If only the mysterious potion Duke Keter had given her wasn’t here, she could continue this life forever.
She could live in this cabin, where happy memories were growing, with Shiwoo, who looked at her with affection.
She could whisper love to him in a lie built upon forgotten truths, study magic together, draw, play the violin, bake pies, and take walks.
“Happily…”
Magical particles rose from Amelia’s hand.
They were ultra-high-temperature particles that could completely vaporize a small vial like this, along with its contents.
She just had to be a little more cowardly.
She just had to compromise a little more.
This would be the last time she ran away.
She knew it was something she shouldn’t do.
It was trampling on his free will.
But wasn’t Shiwoo also happy with this life?
He had smiled much more in the past month with her than in the five years he had spent as her slave.
Instead.
Instead, she would make him even happier in the future.
She would return the happiness she had taken from him tenfold, for ten years, twenty years, no, for his entire life until he grew old and left this world.
Just as Amelia’s flame, which had slowly drawn closer, was about to scorch the tag attached to the vial, something entered Amelia’s vision.
The flower crown Shiwoo had made as a gift.
Amelia had cast a preservation spell on the flower crown and hung it by the window like a dream catcher.
It was the first gift he had ever given her when he was still a little boy.
The moment she saw it, the magic in her grasp scattered.
The madness-like impulse that had been driving her also disappeared as if washed away.
“I can’t… do it…”
She couldn’t do such a thing.
It was something she shouldn’t do.
Amelia slowly curled up.
Her silent sobs continued late into the night.
2.
As she straightened the blanket, she touched her lips.
Amelia had been taking care of Shiwoo since he was unable to fulfill his role as a person.
Everything was fun when she was with him.
Even the boring and tedious cleaning became a special event if Amelia was by his side.
Amelia was Shiwoo’s benefactor, a reliable teacher, and the first woman he had ever fallen in love with.
“I’m going crazy, really…”
Shiwoo grabbed his head and slumped onto the bed.
That passionate kiss with her.
His lips and tongue tingled as if the afterglow still remained.
The moment Shiwoo’s tongue intertwined with Amelia’s, he felt his reason snap.
Even though he thought they weren’t at that stage yet, for some reason, he confidently touched her chest and pushed her onto the bed.
Actually, he had seen, touched, and even sucked Amelia’s breasts before.
But that was when he was so young, and for Shiwoo, who had regained ten years of memories in a month, it felt like a distant past.
Actions done out of childish affection when both body and mind were young, and actions done with a firm will after the body and mind had grown, had different meanings and results.
What on earth did Amelia think about this?
“This feels really ominous.”
Shiwoo tore at his hair.
Yes, he was aware that Amelia had some degree of affection for Shiwoo.
Whether it was affection like a guardian showing to a ward, or love between a man and a woman, there was no way to confirm, but today, Amelia had actively accepted the kiss.
She didn’t even resist Shiwoo’s hands as they explored her body.
Then why did she refuse Shiwoo at the last moment?
Shiwoo couldn’t understand it.
‘I also want what Shiwoo wants.’
‘But… I’m not qualified… I’m not qualified to do this.’
After saying that, Amelia had left the room.
“I want what Shiwoo wants…”
Was she sure she knew what that was when she said it?
“But I’m not qualified…”
What qualification was she referring to?
He couldn’t understand it at all.
He didn’t know exactly what was going on, but he tried to imagine a similar situation.
One of Shiwoo’s friends had a crush on a female student, A, and they were in a subtle relationship, a so-called “some” stage.
So, when A asked him out on a date, he took a picture of his erect penis and sent it to her, and he was expelled after A reported him in shock.
“That crazy bastard.”
Shiwoo chuckled at the absurd anecdote.
When he first heard that story, he remembered thinking, “It’s a good thing you became a host.”
Anyway, he thought this might be a similar case.
Of course, not as extreme as Takasho, but he wondered if he had suddenly gone too far in that context… He was left with regret.
As Shiwoo thought that, he suddenly felt a sense of unease.
“Takasho?”
Who was that?
Memories flashed by like a panorama.
Two men talking with smiling faces in a shabby room.
The other person’s face was not clearly visible, as if it were veiled.
At the same time, a headache came over him.
“Ah, not again.”
If he took the potion Amelia gave him, his memories would become jumbled after a while.
It was like watching dozens of TVs at the same time, with all sorts of images and sounds swirling in his head.
After a moment of nausea, Shiwoo felt an extreme pain in his left eye.
“Guh!”
It was an excruciating pain that he couldn’t even scream from, as if he had been stabbed with an awl.
Shiwoo lay on the bed for a while, experiencing hellish pain.
The pain, which had lasted for about 10 minutes, disappeared in an instant.
It was as if it were phantom pain that had never existed.
However, Shiwoo’s whole body was soaked with sweat from the pain.
“What, what is it…?”
Shiwoo tried to find Amelia in a hurry.
After all, it was the potion Amelia gave him that improved his condition.
He had to report his abnormal state to her.
As Shiwoo staggered to his feet, he felt something strange.
His left eye was dark.
That was to be expected.
According to Amelia, he had lost his left eye in a fight.
He had filled the empty eye socket with a prosthetic eye and covered it with an eye patch.
But this darkness was different.
It was as if something was covering it, rather than not being able to perceive it because there was no eyeball.
Shiwoo untied the string that was wrapped around the back of his head and took off the eye patch.
At the same time, light poured in as if it would burn his eyeball.
It was like someone who had been trapped in a dark place suddenly seeing light, overloading his optic nerve, which had not been used for a long time.
“Kuh…!”
But that was only for a moment, and his eyes quickly adjusted to the light.
What on earth was going on?
Shiwoo covered one eye and staggered to the vanity table.
“What, why is it like this?”
The prosthetic eye, which had been just a prosthetic, was moving around as if it had always been a part of him.
He could clearly see objects with his left eye, and he could see his own reflection in the mirror.
His vision had completely recovered.
However, there was a clear difference when compared to his right eye.
Only the color of his left pupil was shining with a brilliant gold.
Moreover, complex formulas were appearing and disappearing on the white of his eye, as if he had tattooed them.
Shiwoo’s confusion didn’t end there.
“Whoa!”
Shiwoo was startled and turned around, surprised by the faint lights he saw around him.
Something was floating in front of him.
He could see colorful lines.
Faint lines, like currents, were floating around the room and everywhere.
At first, he thought it was a hallucination caused by his optic nerve being surprised by the light after a long time.
But soon, Shiwoo instinctively realized.
This was the flow of magic power.
Every time he waved his fingertips, the flow of magic power was disrupted, like winding a thread floating on the water, and then returned to normal.
“Well… this is amazing…”
It was a sight that was difficult to understand with Shiwoo’s magical common sense.
Generally, the flow of magic power floating in the air is very, very, very subtle.
Moreover, it would be impossible to visually observe such neat strands of magic power because they would be disrupted the moment you tried to observe them.
The moment you tried to observe them using magic, that magic would break the flow.
And when Shiwoo casually turned his gaze to the desk, his heart almost jumped out of his chest.
The moment he looked at the magic formulas he had scribbled down while searching his memories, some of the letters and formulas popped out as if he were watching a 3D movie.
Shiwoo stared at the scene with wide eyes.
In Ain, magic circles are composed of three or more dimensions.
Magic formulas were just a means of transferring them to a two-dimensional piece of paper.
Just by looking at such magic formulas, he began to see the essence of magic as if he were in Ain.
It was like hearing an orchestra vividly in his head just by reading sheet music.
It was a very strange and bewildering experience.
Shiwoo raised his hand and covered his left eye.
Then the three-dimensional model disappeared.
When he lowered his hand again, the three-dimensional model reappeared.
“Amazing.”
It was a very exciting experience for Shiwoo, who had become so engrossed in magical research that he had put mathematics on the back burner.
Before informing Amelia of this strange phenomenon, he wanted to try something.
In fact, it was also true that he was embarrassed to see her face right away after such an awkward incident just a few minutes ago.
What Shiwoo took out was a magic formula that he had transcribed exactly as it existed in his head.
Even though he hadn’t been able to decipher even a little bit of it, Shiwoo’s memory had memorized all 200 pages of complex formulas.
That meant it was an important memory.
And the moment he flipped through the stack of papers, Shiwoo felt as if lightning had struck his head.
He felt like his body was tilting backward and sinking into endless darkness, continuing to sink.
When he came to his senses, Shiwoo was in a dark space.
This place, where only endless darkness spread out like the universe, was ‘Ain’.
The world of concepts and thoughts that only a witch who had honed her magnetic magic could possess.
He had been invited into that space, which he had only heard about.
In the center of the dark Ain stood a large structure.
It looked like a round circle, a clump of black shadows, a large loom… and another he couldn’t recognize.
There was a cognitive dissonance because he couldn’t recognize it even though he was clearly seeing it.
It felt like he was looking at a higher-dimensional being that was not of the same dimension.
“………”
In front of it was Shin Shiwoo.
A Shin Shiwoo who looked a little older than himself now.
He looked like he would look in his late 20s when he got a little older.
He was sitting expressionlessly on a throne made of shadows, staring intently at the structure.
“Was there something like that?”
He had heard about Ain, but it was the first time he had heard that there was someone else in that space (even if it was his own image).
Shin Shiwoo’s head turned.
The two made eye contact.
At the same time, black chains wrapped around Shiwoo’s whole body.
Before he could even make a sound, Shiwoo was ejected from Ain.
It was truly instantaneous.
As Shiwoo, dumbfounded, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
Memories about magic filled his head again.
Countless pieces of knowledge began to penetrate his brain, as if a dam that had been held back had been opened.
Shiwoo stood there blankly for a while, accepting it.
Something was changing.
