ERTHMB Chapter 61

I Hate You

“Lovers…I’ll grant you that. But I can’t even be a friend? I’m quite hurt.”

“Then tell me what you want. I’ll call you whatever you wish.”

Clang!

But this time Helena pressed him first.

Ian’s spirits, which had seemed to subside at her raised voice, rose defiantly again.

“I never even imagined we were barely beyond strangers!”

“Don’t be so arrogant as to think I’ll always speak and move according to your expectations!”

“It’s not arrogance, it’s confidence. As someone who has spent time with you and watched over you!”

“Then keep clinging like an annoying tick and be confident as you please!”

At those words that burst out like stepping on a landmine, Helena’s body flinched for an instant.

She didn’t mean it.

“…Annoying tick. Is that how you’ve thought of me all this time?”

She was angry at herself.

She was angry at herself for not being able to accept him without weighing this and that. What was so difficult about giving even a corner of her heart? She found herself pathetic for being frightened and trying to run away first.

When Helena swung her sword without another word, Ian took it as an affirmative answer and tightened his grip.

Helena gritted her teeth and held on, not wanting to be pushed back. The sound of blade against blade grew increasingly fierce.

Helena was disappointed in herself while simultaneously resenting Eugene.

Why did you make me into a coward who trembles with fear of betrayal? Why did you make me only want to run away?

‘You won’t even let me properly face that good man.’

She was truly angry. Now it was rage directed at Eugene, not herself.

You who took everything from me, yet try to take even that man’s place,

‘I hate you.’

Was it because of muscles rapidly expanding and contracting? The small anger that began like lighting a wick burned through every nerve in her brain, crackling until it was driven to the end.

Clang, clang!

It flowed like electricity to her fingertips and toes, then gathered. Every blood vessel throughout her body was boiling.

‘This is strange. Too hot.’

When she finally felt her outstretched arm and sword connect as one.

Swoosh!

The energy that had wrapped around and flowed to the tip of the blade burst forth.

Sword energy that blooms only from those who have reached the realm of the sword. It was a Sword Master’s aura.

Helena gasped at the sensation she had never felt before. Ian reflexively deflected the aura that struck directly at him.

The aura, roughly bounced off the blade, headed straight toward where Sakin and Flam were sitting.

“Watch out!”

As soon as Helena’s sharp cry left her throat, Flam grabbed one of the shields lined up nearby.

The aura, made even more fierce by mixing with the wind, struck the shield like lightning.

Crack—!

The shield split cleanly in half like tearing paper and fell to both sides, revealing Sakin between them, eyes wide and clutching his great sword.

Brushing away the dust with his hands, Flam shouted:

“Hey, keep your lover’s quarrel to a reasonable level!”

Normally she would have immediately corrected such words. But Helena was too busy processing the sensation of sword energy sweeping through her entire body. It was a small miracle that had occurred by accident.

“Did you see that just now? I, I… used sword energy.”

Ian, who had grasped the situation, also looked surprised.

He looked at Helena breathing heavily in and out, then at the fragments of the shattered shield, then back at Helena.

“Well done.”

It was a slightly twisted tone for pure congratulations. As if recognizing this himself, he added:

“This is sincere.”

Then he turned around, wiped his sweat with a towel hanging on the fence, and slid his sword into its sheath.

“But aren’t you the one being arrogant? You wouldn’t think I’ll never leave you, would you?”

Helena swallowed dry saliva. His words made her throat feel as rough as if sand had been sprinkled on it, her uvula stiff and uncomfortable.

“An annoying and irritating tick wouldn’t be of any help, so I’ll be going now. Since you like being alone so much, you should live alone for the rest of your life.”

From the moment he turned around, he walked away with large strides without giving her even a glance.

Helena stood rooted to the spot, watching his broad silhouette gradually grow smaller. He was angry with her.

‘…I didn’t say I was irritated though.’

She felt a bit wronged.

****

That evening Helena sat on her bed with her knees drawn up, resting her chin on them.

Despite the momentous occasion of finally taking a step closer to the realm of Sword Master, she wasn’t particularly happy.

Whether she closed her eyes or opened them, only the morning’s situation kept replaying over and over.

‘I… know too.’

That she and he were not merely barely beyond strangers.

‘But admitting that is even more frightening.’

[Aren’t you the one being arrogant? You wouldn’t think I’ll never leave you, would you?]

At those words circling in her head for the thirty-eighth time, her mouth went dry again.

Nothing was more frightening than giving affection to someone who would leave someday. Especially if that affection had ‘love’ attached to it.

But she also didn’t want to rashly cut off her relationship with him. She didn’t want to do that anymore. She didn’t want to be alone again.

She was still afraid, but when she thought of him, she felt she could endure this much.

However, for Helena, who didn’t know how to untie tangled knots without cutting them, the current situation felt overwhelming.

“Sakin, liar… You said she was someone who doesn’t tangle knots in the first place.”

As she was quietly expressing her grievance in muttered words, there came a cheerful knocking at the door.

“Sister! It’s me!”

Helena lifted her head from between her knees and got up from the bed. Even as she shuffled toward the door, the knocking continued several more times.

Before the hinges could even creak, Lily burst in. The first thing that caught her eye was an unexpectedly strange outfit.

A star-patterned cloak that didn’t fit and dragged on the floor, a bowler hat that likewise covered her forehead and hung down, and mysterious glasses barely perched on the tip of her nose.

With a quite solemn expression, she adjusted her glasses and boldly announced the purpose of her visit.

“Hello! Swift and accurate delivery service! We deliver anything, whether words or objects! We’re offering free service for first-time users! Would you like to try it once?”

A look of confusion briefly crossed Helena’s face.

“Delivery… service?”

But she soon caught on to Lily’s scheme. She felt a bit embarrassed that their cold war was obvious enough for even a child to see. Yet she also felt a ray of sunshine pierce through the dark clouds that had covered her heart all afternoon.

It was a bit underhanded to receive help from a young child, but still, it was a service she had ambitiously prepared. A child’s small hands sometimes slip into tangled knots more easily.

Helena bent down and gently lifted Lily’s bowler hat that had come down to her nose bridge. Then, meeting those bright, sparkling eyes, she asked:

“Nice to meet you, problem solver. I have a knot I want to untie. Will you help me?”

****

The free time given after dinner was leisurely. Normally, Ian would have spread out a map and concentrated on whatever work needed doing at this hour.

He hadn’t come to Instantia solely to find Helena. There were other things he needed to find along with her.

The First Prince who had brought down his own father and seized the imperial throne against the natural order.

Beelzebuth Roel Knight Fevernheim.

Officially, the previous emperor’s death was known to be due to worsening illness, but everyone in the imperial palace knew that Beelzebuth had been involved.

As soon as he became emperor, he began implementing tyrannical politics as if he had been waiting for it.

Ignoring the cries and tears of starving citizens, he aggressively expanded territory. He was someone who lived for the desire to dominate and conquer.

His merciless offensive reached extremes day by day, and that year Ian appeared. Ian joined forces with factions opposing Beelzebuth and cut down his brothers’ heads one by one.

He climbed the bloody path and finally reached before the imperial throne.

But Beelzebuth was not there. Only the imperial crown lay alone under the cold moonlight.

He thought the man had disappeared because his life was precious to him.

Until he appeared again leading rebel forces, just as Ian had done.

[So we meet again, little brother. Have you been good, listening to mama and enjoying playing king? Oh my, I forgot again. Your mama is—]

“Huh.”

Ian exhaled deeply to shake off the deepening recollection. With hands stiffly clenched, he struggled to unfold the map and grasp his pen.

It was a map marking the movement routes and scale of Beelzebuth’s forces he had discovered so far.

‘His power grew too much while I was setting the government straight. I need to cut it from the roots before it becomes uncontrollable.’

It seemed Beelzebuth hadn’t perfectly prepared from the beginning either.

Even after revealing himself, he only continued intermittent standoffs in a checking manner. What he learned at the end of it was that his financial backer was in the Eastern Empire.

Beelzebuth’s close associate and the rebel army’s chief of staff, known as Cheshire.

He was said to be the one Beelzebuth trusted most, but no one knew his true identity.

His face, voice, age—none of it was known.

‘Probably everyone who knew is dead.’

Like a cat hiding in shadows, he was very secretive and cunning. If even a hint of danger was detected, he would immediately cut off his tail and disappear. It took several years just to discover the places he used as bases.

This summer, an uncharacteristic trail Cheshire had left. The source of the massive funds transferred to shell companies was Instantia. Ian had followed that trail here.

Of course, he couldn’t deny that Helena comprised most of his reasons. Even if it wasn’t love, he had lost his reason to blind devotion—he had no face to argue against that.

But she was the woman who had made stopped time flow again. There was no way he could forget her.

So that’s why his hand was clutching his own hair instead of the pen right now.

“Stupid bastard, why did I say such things…”

Ian rubbed his clenched fist against his scalp like pulling weeds. Self-deprecating curses came out easily. Though it had been hours already, the tunneling self-reproach was hard to stop.

Knowing full well what being alone meant to her, he had made what amounted to a threat, albeit not directly, in a cowardly and petty way.

“Really pathetic. Pathetic.”

Ian lowered the hand that had been tousling his silver hair and buried his face in it. Helena’s face kept appearing before him constantly.

Her expression when she had hesitated at his words. Thinking of that moment, he felt he deserved any punishment. Even falling into a pit of fire in the bottomless abyss would seem like merciful treatment.

Ian muttered like an exhaled sigh:

“Where would I even go?”

The only place I want to stay is by your side.