ERTHMB Chapter 104

Make Me Love You

Ian unusually entered without even knocking.

He locked the door first. In his hands was a tray with a teapot and two teacups, as if he had been expecting a warm teatime.

Ian set the tray down on the table and grabbed Helena’s wrist, stopping her. Helena answered hurriedly.

“Eugene, Eugene came to see me.”

“So what.”

“He found out where I am. What if he keeps coming in the future?”

Helena pulled her arm free from Ian’s grasp. She resumed packing while scolding him.

“Don’t just stand there watching, hurry and pack your things too.”

“What on earth did that bastard say to you?”

“We need to say goodbye to Gelda and the guild people before leaving. It’s getting late. Hurry.”

“What does that bastard have to do with your life anyway? You have your own life now.”

They talked past each other, like a forced puzzle that didn’t fit together.

When Helena didn’t respond further, Ian began taking items out of her bag one by one.

Helena urgently grabbed the bag’s handle. She blocked him from taking out more items and said coldly.

“If you don’t want to be with me anymore, then stop.”

“Helena.”

“I’ll leave by myself then.”

Leaving the bag behind, Helena opened the wardrobe wide. Her hands pulling clothes from hangers were as urgent as someone being chased. The sound of hangers clashing mercilessly rang out.

Behind her moving in a trance, Ian murmured softly.

“You’re trying to run away again.”

“It’s foolish to stand around dazed when a tsunami is coming.”

“No. Look properly, Helen. Don’t mistake mere splashing for a tsunami.”

Helena hesitated for a moment. But soon she continued moving regardless.

She crammed clothes into her bag and then zipped it shut. Then she looked up and saw a coat that had fallen on the bed. She hurriedly picked it up and put one arm through it.

But the thick wool coat slipped from her grasp with a rough friction. Helena let out a soft moan of surprise and pain. But Ian didn’t stop.

Ian threw the coat on the floor and took Helena’s bag away too. The bag was torn open roughly in Ian’s hands.

Then he turned the bag upside down and spilled out the contents. The items Helena had carefully packed fell with a thudding sound.

“What are you so afraid of?”

Thunk. An ink bottle that fell from the bag hit the tray and spilled onto the floor along with the teacups. The sound of glass clashing was loud. But Ian’s louder voice covered the noise.

“What are you so scared of, what is that bastard to you? Do you have to keep running and hiding forever? This is endless. Just don’t worry about it and—”

His increasingly loud words suddenly cut off. After a moment, the bag also slipped from his hands and fell.

Ian suddenly had a face as if he had realized something. It also looked like a face about to collapse. He was hanging on the edge of a precarious cliff. As if Helena had pushed him there.

With that face, Ian asked.

“You still haven’t forgotten him?”

“……”

Ian stared at Helena intently. His gaze clearly contained the intention of asking her to say something, anything.

However, Helena responded with silence. If she opened her mouth, there was only one thing she could say.

Finally, Ian’s face crumbled.

“You still like….you can’t let go of that bastard.”

“……”

Sharp air flowed. As soon as it entered through her breathing, thorns burst out.

With the feeling of swallowing poison, Helena stubbornly maintained her silence. She just bit her lower lip until it turned white.

‘……This is endless, you said.’

Guilt and shame so deep she couldn’t even lift her head mixed and surged up.

Nevertheless, it was the truth. An unchanging reality. She had simply finally acknowledged it.

‘……No. Even when I left Evergale, it was never over.’

Leaving the mansion required many things. Infinite patience and resolve, the determination not to look back at Eugene, even the courage to willingly throw away her life.

Even if that choice would kill her again, it didn’t matter. As long as it wasn’t by Eugene’s hand, it was fine.

She simply couldn’t remain at Evergale like some predetermined fate. If she continued to stay by Eugene’s side.

‘She would fall in love with him again.’

Being unable to cut off this cursed fate and inevitably being locked in it. That’s what she feared. She had no choice but to hate herself as much as she had loved Eugene.

Helena calmed her tattered insides with several deep breaths. At the end, she barely parted her lips.

“I’m sorry. But… I’m really sorry. I don’t know. I can’t control my own heart either. What can I do about just feeling that way?”

Helena still couldn’t lift her head. She just muttered while sighing in frustration.

She was afraid of what kind of face he was looking at her with now. Even thinking of her as a pathetic and hopeless woman would be a generous assessment, but she hoped he wouldn’t think that much of her.

Helena tasted blood in her mouth. Meanwhile, piercing silence continued.

Ian maintained the silence for about a minute before finally responding.

“It’s your heart, so why don’t you know?”

Helena’s vision blurred. The indifferent tone that rarely came from him made it so.

Helena squeezed her eyes tightly shut and opened them. The dark brown liquid of black tea wetting her toes looked distant. She just stared at it blankly. It was cold.

‘Rather……’

Rather, if only she could cool down instantly like this tea.

During the repeated regressions, Eugene’s affection gradually cooled. Gradually enough to dry her up and kill her. She just hated herself for expecting something every time while knowing the withering end.

But what could she do about hating it? All the time she loved him was ultimately her life.

Not loving Eugene anymore was like denying her very existence. Regretting it would be lamenting her own life. So Helena ended up loving Eugene out of inertia.

Even to lessen her guilt, she had to make Ian understand that inertia.

“My heart belonged to Eugene for a lifetime. So I’m like something predetermined, trapped in an unchangeable mold, like a broken music box that can only say ‘I love you.’ I keep falling in love over and over again.”

Helena trusted Ian. He was a man who knew her like seeing the bottom of a clear lake. There was no way he wouldn’t understand when she laid bare her pathetic insides so openly.

But Ian unusually refused to understand.

“Then pull out the spring.”

The answer that came back was not only indifferent but wickedly calm. It was as if he were watching someone else’s business.

Helena’s head finally lifted. A heavy lump stirred inside her. Her throat was completely blocked. If she didn’t spit it out immediately, it seemed like it would devour and shatter her body without leaving a trace.

“You’re the one who doesn’t know anything. What kind of life I’ve lived, and what kind of feelings I can’t help but have when I look at him.”

“Then you can tell me.”

His attitude of acting as if it had nothing to do with him continued consistently.

It was only three words, but they felt louder than a thousand words.

Helena’s resentment began to boil over. It was burning her esophagus. It mixed with frustration she had never shown to anyone.

It surged like a volcano about to explode. Heat that would wound both the one harboring the volcano and anyone approaching.

But this man. This wickedly gentle and persistent man.

He stubbornly set foot in this ruined wasteland.

“I won’t know unless you tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“Helena.”

“I said I can’t.”

“You can.”

He approached without rest. Eyes holding cold fire pierced into her. Helena shook her head firmly.

“I can’t, I can’t.”

Her stubborn tone was hot enough to burn. It seemed like the organ that maintains constant body temperature had broken down. And Helena knew the reason.

He was the person who always cooled down her heated self. But now, he was also the man looking at her with an even more heated gaze.

“At least try to convince me.”

“Because it’s obvious you won’t believe me.”

“You’re the one who can’t trust me.”

Ian’s words became thick.

Helena became hotter, and hotter, and hotter. Just holding it in her mouth was a lump of heat that would peel away her skin. It rose right behind her lips. She couldn’t bear it anymore.

She finally burst and spat it out.

“Who would believe a crazy woman who says she repeated the same life three times!”

The boiling lump splashed out. Tears finally poured out. What had she done so well for them to come out so easily? Through the opened mouth, pathetic excuses also flowed smoothly.

“Don’t call me foolish. Don’t call me stupid. I’m not the kind of person who can endure for a hundred or thousand years without any trouble. Just because he abandoned me doesn’t mean I can casually abandon and cut him off too.”

“Helena.”

“I’m someone who thirsts and thirsts for even a handful of affection, who loves for fifteen years and crumbles after fifteen years!”

Ian stepped forward as if to stop her, but Helena reached out and pushed him away. Instead of being completely pushed back, Ian lightly grasped her wrist and held on.

Helena couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes and hung her head.

“I have no confidence. What’s so great about leaving that place that strangled me countless times, what’s so great about abandoning Evergale. It took several lifetimes just to plan and resolve to leave the mansion.”

Her breathing mixed with sobbing hiccups. Round stains appeared on the floor drop by drop. Helena slumped down to the ground with deflated momentum.

“I know I’m stupid and foolishly stubborn, but I have no idea what to do. At first I thought the situation drove me to that, but now I think I was just that kind of person from the beginning.”

Just opening her mouth made sobs pour out persistently. Small teardrops attached to her resentment were pulled out in a string. Now there was nothing that could stop.

Ian didn’t let go of Helena’s wrist until the end. Like that, he knelt down following her. He couldn’t even embrace her trembling small body. It seemed like she would crumble if he touched her.

He just desperately rubbed the inside of her wrist. It was the place where life could be felt most closely beyond the thin skin.

Ian stroked the beating artery with his thumb. As if embracing all the lives she said she had lived through, he kept stroking.

Helena gripped his collar with her hand that touched it. Soon her sobbing voice stretched out.

“It all seems like it was because of me and my problem, so I can’t easily blame anyone. I don’t even know who to blame, so rather, so, so please……”

Her words came out torn to pieces. Unable to organize properly, Helena stopped breathing for a moment.

The words she was about to say next required considerable air. She felt once again how unfair the world was.

If she had the courage to die, shouldn’t she have just as much courage to live? If they made her stand on this earth with both feet, shouldn’t that at least be the case?

She needed twice as much courage as when she stood on that sandy beach.

Helena swallowed several breaths. Only then did she empty out the last remaining dregs.

“Please make me love you.”