## Chapter 5 – 05. Iris
#05. Iris
Kang Hyun-woo didn’t notice, but Iris had been constantly anxious and unable to bear it since meeting him.
She tried to pretend to be cheerful while looking at her phone, but the growing anxiety in her heart was not something she could control.
It had been a full 200 years.
Even for a high elf who lived for eternity, spending that long in a dark prison without a single ray of light, cut off from all interaction with others, could only be a period of unimaginable loneliness and torment.
Living for a long time didn’t make them indifferent to emotions.
Rather, they were pitiful beings who grieved more than anyone else at the death of acquaintances and longed for the traces of fleeting time.
Tormented by endless time, they often either castrated their emotions or stubbornly reached the realm of transcendence and became enlightened.
Even elves, praised as descendants of gods, were ultimately just a part of humanity when viewed broadly. And humanity was merely an aggregate formed by social animals who couldn’t live alone.
Why would a high elf, directly created by the World Tree, create villages and run cities with other elves?
Why do people live among people, marry, and have children?
No matter how difficult life in society may be, it’s not easy to shut oneself away in the mountains.
Dying alone in a room without any contact or connection with anyone is one of the worst deaths in modern times.
For Iris, who had grown up receiving love and attention from countless people, the past 200 years had been too cruel.
Just as she was contemplating the extreme choice of suicide, Kang Hyun-woo appeared before her eyes.
It was warmth, conversation, and a meeting after 200 years.
At first, she was wary of being alone with a strange man, but that didn’t last long after she realized he was very weak.
What remained after that was curiosity and a slight liking.
She was so glad that she committed the shameless act of grabbing his hand first, but fortunately, he didn’t seem to mind much.
The hand of the man she held for the first time was rough, but on the other hand, it felt warm and reassuring.
‘Could it be because I unknowingly relaxed…?’
She even told a stranger about her past, something she shouldn’t have done.
She knew she should stop while talking, but the more she revealed her past and let go of her emotions, the more relieved she felt, as if the knot in her heart was loosening, and she couldn’t stop talking.
Besides, he listened to her story until the end, even though it must have been annoying. The boring, foolish woman’s end.
She felt really refreshed after telling him about her past.
-Don’t you want revenge?
She couldn’t answer easily.
There were definitely moments when she wanted to take revenge on Resilia and those behind her.
But perhaps because her emotions had faded over the 200 years, the burning emotions like revenge had long turned to ashes and died out.
The remaining residue was that she could no longer harbor the will to do something or the hope that she could.
From the beginning, she doubted whether she could even get out of here.
She looked at the stone gate that would never open even if she committed suicide.
Even if she could get out, would there still be a place for her in the kingdom?
-Who can I blame now? It’s a virtue of a monarch to see through the essence of others… I just didn’t have an eye for people.
Even if she committed wrongdoing, Resilia’s enthronement was clearly done under the approval of the World Tree.
There was no way she, a mere creation, would be allowed to go against the will of the World Tree.
-But you don’t want to stay here forever, do you?
The days had been the same for 200 years.
-Hey, things are different now than they were then.
-I’m here now.
He, who had come to this place without any notice, was strangely kind to her.
She was wary of a strange man, especially a human, but only for a moment. The more she talked to him, the more questions she had about him.
‘Why is he so kind to me? I don’t have anything? Why to me, who has nothing to give you?’
In her long life of hundreds of years, Iris knew that there was no such thing as unconditional kindness in this world.
What the people, the court ladies, and the officials respected and loved was the queen chosen by the World Tree, not a sinner abandoned and deposed by the World Tree.
She had no value without the premise that she was chosen by the World Tree.
Realizing that fact, Iris was both unable to understand Kang Hyun-woo’s unconditional kindness and very happy.
From some point on, her heart pounded whenever she looked at him.
Iris, who was called a great mage with her outstanding intelligence, was confused by the unfamiliar emotion she felt for the first time in her life.
But she could be sure of one thing.
That it wasn’t a bad feeling.
-I came from another world called Earth.
It was a hard story to believe.
But the evidence he showed was enough to quickly quell any disbelief.
‘I’ve never seen a magic tool of this level even in Magnolia.’
The more she looked at the magic tool called a cell phone, the more everything was a series of surprises.
It was amazing that she could use functions such as communication, maps, location tracking, entertainment, photography, and recording with just this small magic tool, but it was also unbelievably amazing that she could access a huge library called the Internet and anyone could view knowledge.
It was a pity that she couldn’t do it now, but how long would it take for the magic engineering of this world to develop to this level?
Elves were not a race friendly to magic engineering, but Iris was different.
She had been strongly convinced that the study that would lead the future world was magic engineering, so she had been interested in and researching magic engineering for a long time.
Of course, research support at the national level was difficult due to the opposition of some high-ranking noble elders, but if you only counted the time she had researched alone, there were few people on the continent who were as familiar with magic engineering as she was.
That’s why Iris knew.
The development of civilization doesn’t happen just because hundreds of years have passed. The birth of a genius who will change the times and the flow of the world must be intertwined for civilization to develop radically.
In that sense, this cell phone was truly revolutionary.
‘You really came from another world…’
Aside from the cell phone, the combination of dark black hair and black eyes was hard to find on the Aquilon continent.
Just like the fairy tale she read as a child.
In one kingdom, there was a princess who was loved by everyone. The princess, who had a kind heart and gentle nature, always grieved for the hard lives of the people and did not hesitate to help them.
One day, as peaceful days continued, a witch who was jealous of the beautiful princess who was loved by everyone cast a very vicious curse on her.
-You will not be loved by anyone.
The princess was hated by everyone due to the aftermath of the curse, and eventually she was banished from the kingdom.
Everyone’s attention and love that she had received throughout her life turned into hatred and contempt, and even in the last moment of leaving the kingdom, what flew at her were rotten eggs and tomatoes, not tears and regret.
The princess, who was in deep despair and headed to a place where her feet reached without a destination with empty eyes, reached a deserted forest.
In the dark forest where even sunlight could not reach, only the fierce cries of beasts could be heard.
The princess sensed it.
-This is… my grave.
Unlike the words that came out calmly, her whole body trembled slightly.
As fear dominated her whole body, pearl-like tears flowed from her jewel-like eyes without stopping.
The beasts, sensing prey that clearly could not resist, gathered one after another, and the princess, who was quickly surrounded, turned white and could not escape.
Soon, the beasts rushed towards the princess.
-Aaaaaaah!!
A mournful scream echoed in the forest.
The princess, who was trembling at the approaching death, was puzzled that she did not feel any pain even though quite some time had passed, and carefully opened her tightly closed eyes.
And there stood a man.
He was a man with dark black hair and obsidian-like eyes.
He held a sword in one hand and knocked down all the beasts.
The princess, who was staring blankly at the scene, knelt down in front of her and said this.
-Are you hurt?
The princess, who was hated by everyone due to the curse, was saved by meeting a black-haired warrior from another world in a forest she happened to visit.
Perhaps because he was from another world? The warrior was not affected by the witch’s curse, and soon fell in love with the princess.
The warrior fought a life-and-death battle with the witch with the single thought of helping the princess. After a grueling battle that left him covered in blood and his vision blurred, the warrior finally succeeded in defeating the witch, and thanks to this, the princess was able to be freed from the terrible curse.
In this way, the princess was able to return to the kingdom and regain her place, but ironically, the ending of the fairy tale ended with the warrior looking at the princess who was loved by everyone and returning to his world.
After that, the story ended with the princess longing for the warrior who had disappeared without a word, and spending every night crying.
The princess looked up at the darkened night sky and agonized and grieved.
Why did you leave me behind and go back?
Didn’t you like me?
Were all the words of love you whispered in my ear all lies?
The torment without anyone to answer continued forever and became another curse.
The ending was sad and unsettling for innocent children to watch with a smile, so it wasn’t a very popular fairy tale, but Iris inadvertently felt that her current situation seemed to overlap with the ending of the fairy tale.
Kang Hyun-woo came from another world just like the warrior in the fairy tale, and there was not much difference from saying that no one knew when he would return.
What if he, like the warrior, went back to his world without a word?
Me?
Do I have to be trapped here alone forever again?
The end of the past 200 years, which had been so painful that it could not be expressed in words, was a suicide attempt.
It was a very painful and scary moment.
Would her hand, which was trembling more than ever, have succeeded in stabbing a stone into her neck?
The answer was I don’t know.
She couldn’t be sure, but she couldn’t deny it either.
Because the past 200 years were days she never wanted to experience again.
That’s why she finally didn’t want him to go back to his world.
She wanted him to be by her side forever.
But how?
She had nothing.
There was nothing she could do for him to want him to abandon even his world and stay by her side.
She pretended to be looking at her cell phone on the outside, but in reality, Iris was driven to the point where her whole body was wet with cold sweat.
Just imagining him disappearing and being left alone here again made her throat tighten and she felt like crying.
Iris made up her mind. She would give anything as long as he stayed here, no matter what means she used.
And then, a light of hope that could not have been there seemed to descend on her. She went into an app called Gallery, and there were several pictures there.
As she expected, it was a photo. There are quite a few magic tools in this world that function as cameras.
When he explained the cell phone to her, he said that it also had a shooting function, so she thought that this was a kind of storage for storing the photos she had taken. Certainly, even the same photo had a different quality. She was surprised because the photos were of such high quality.
‘T, this is…??’
She was looking at the pictures and flipping through them, and then what appeared in front of her was a picture of a naked woman. Moreover, it was a picture of women in such suggestive poses.
The sight of women wearing something like underwear that was questionable even whether it functioned as clothes, exposing their breasts and even spreading their legs wide open, was truly an indescribable shock.
Moreover, among them, there were even pictures of women exposing their secret parts, which should be cherished, without any hesitation.
The moment Iris saw the picture for the first time, her brain was temporarily overloaded.
Born as the daughter of a high-ranking aristocrat, she had learned various etiquette as well as the chastity and dignity that a woman should possess as if it were an instinct. Chastity was a woman’s treasure to be kept for the one she loved the most, and exposing skin more than necessary was no different from sin.
The clothes she was wearing now were also clothes that kept that trend.
Thanks to the fact that she had been repairing and keeping her clothes clean with magic every day for the past 200 years, the clothes Iris was wearing were always as neat, elegant, and tidy as new clothes.
Of course, Kang Hyun-woo made the judgment to help her without any hesitation because Iris was the owner of a voluptuous body that even penetrated the characteristics of such clothes.
‘T, such a shameless person…!’
A woman shouldn’t be like this.
Regardless of status or position, if you’re a woman! There is a line that you must keep.
Iris doubted her own eyes and flipped through the pictures as if she didn’t want to see them anymore.
But what awaited her was a collection of even more dizzying and suggestive pictures. At that sight, Iris felt her mind become confused.
‘W, why does Hyun-woo have these things…!’
She couldn’t believe it at all.
She definitely thought he was a good person, and she still did. But the more she looked at the pictures gathered in a place called the gallery, the more she had to doubt her own judgment.
The budding suspicion was gradually blooming into a flower, but on the other hand, she was also sprouting an unknown joy that such pictures were contained in his cell phone.
‘Everyone… has huge breasts…’
There were short women and tall women.
Some were a little plain, and some were outstanding.
But no one had small breasts.
And she also had very large breasts. It was her own breasts that she had seen for hundreds of years, but they were so big that she often thought they were unnecessarily big.
It wasn’t just once or twice that she had trouble and felt uncomfortable when tightening her corset, and besides, the moment she took off her corset, she looked fat because she looked bloated overall no matter what she wore.
She thought it was a body part that her shoulders were constantly stiff and heavy for no reason, and she wished she could make it smaller with magic.
‘…Hyun-woo must like big breasts, right?’
But now she could do anything to keep him from leaving. She wanted him to stay here without going back to his world.
It was a thought that she would never have had in the past, or rather, a choice that she would not have even thought of even a year ago.
“I, if you’re okay with it, would you like to touch my breasts…?”
She could do anything as long as she could keep him here.
