ERTHMB Chapter 71

The Burst Confession

 

Helena continued to brush his soft hair. Without stopping that gentle touch, she slowly drew in a breath. The sensation she already knew all too well lingered in her lungs.

 

‘Eugene. When I fell in love with you, I felt like I was breathing and living. While loving you, I couldn’t breathe. And now…’

 

The hair slipping between her fingers suddenly looked black for a moment. Helena stopped both her breath and her moving hand.

 

‘I feel like I’m holding my breath. I don’t know how long I can hold it. I can neither breathe nor suffocate, so I’m just holding it for now. Until I sink deep.’

 

Perhaps unconsciously feeling her touch, Ian stirred slightly.

 

Helena hesitated whether to move her hand that had stopped near his ear again. It was a sensation she wanted to feel more, but somehow she felt she shouldn’t.

 

‘But what should I do, Eugene? This man keeps pulling me up. He pulls me up without rhyme or reason. Now I’m afraid I might start breathing because of this man…’

 

Helena finally withdrew her hand.

 

‘I’m scared.’

 

At that moment, Ian’s eyelids fluttered.

 

Like a window opening, his eyelashes slowly lifted. Beneath them, violet-like pale purple crystals were revealed.

 

His eyes, still wet with sleep, were somewhat hazy. Ian squeezed his eyes shut once and opened them again, as if trying to shake off the drowsiness.

 

A great color immediately spread across his face when he discovered Helena was awake. Their meeting eyes curved gently.

 

The air suddenly became sweet.

 

Helena had to catch air in her lungs like someone who had just emerged from water. He was her breath.

 

With a deep intensity, Ian whispered a greeting.

 

“Good morning.”

 

Instead of returning the greeting, Helena sat up. Ian also followed her, raising his prone upper body.

 

His hair, pressed in one direction and tousled, looked like fluffy cotton. His sleepy voice was even more subdued than usual. Yet his expression was as light as the morning air itself.

 

However, Helena thought his face looked a bit awkward. After staring a bit longer, she realized that what felt awkward wasn’t him, but the atmosphere she was sensing.

 

‘I hadn’t seen your smiling expression for a while.’

 

She suddenly became aware of their situation that she had forgotten. Except for the few days they had spent frantically during the typhoon after their fight, this was the first time they were properly facing each other.

 

Looking at the calendar on the wall, five whole days had passed since she had collapsed. The feeling that she had just had a very, very long and old dream made it feel even more awkward.

 

In the inevitable uneasiness, Helena quietly reproached him.

 

“Why are you here like this? It must be uncomfortable.”

 

Ian reached out his hand first, as if he hadn’t heard anything. He placed one hand each on Helena’s and his own forehead, comparing their temperatures.

 

“How is your body? Fortunately, your fever has gone down.”

 

Helena grasped Ian’s wrist and removed his hand from her forehead.

 

“When did you come? Don’t tell me you were like this the whole time I was sleeping?”

 

“Is there any reason why I shouldn’t have been?”

 

“…It’s too much.”

 

“You would have done the same as me if I had been sick.”

 

“On what grounds?”

 

Ian, who had obediently withdrawn his hand, rolled his shoulders. The sound of bones adjusting came from joints that had been stiff for a long time. Then, while rolling his stiff neck once, he answered.

 

“Let’s say I trust the person named Helena that I’ve observed.”

 

Seeing his warm and honest eyes, Helena felt a pang in her stomach.

 

The words of Eugene she had met in her dream just moments ago still seemed to remain, crawling through her insides. Like silkworms slowly gnawing away.

 

[If there’s someone clinging to your side, get rid of them early. There must be a price they want from you.]

 

Strength entered her hand gripping the blanket. Helena bit her lower lip gently. Otherwise, words she shouldn’t say might burst out.

 

Barely swallowing the urge to be honest, she expressed a different kind of honesty.

 

“Don’t trust people carelessly. Betrayal may not be visible, but it’s always closer than you think.”

 

Ian, who had been loosening his tense muscles, hesitated. But as if nothing had happened, he pressed his shoulder blades again and said.

 

“I know because I’ve experienced it a lot.”

 

“If you know, then why—”

 

“I’ve experienced it so much that now I can judge people a bit.”

 

“What kind of person am I?”

 

“Someone I can trust carelessly.”

 

Helena replied immediately.

 

“I know you care for me. Even so, don’t mistake affection for trust in any way. There’s nothing more foolish than that.”

 

It was a self-deprecating tone. As if she had seen countless such people, as if she herself was that person.

 

Ian also replied immediately.

 

“Wouldn’t it be okay to be a bit foolish?”

 

“That’s up to you, but it won’t end well.”

 

“Then I’ll just do as I please.”

 

“I might keep hurting you like last time. I might not know gratitude and only resent you.”

 

“Then I’ll do the same, I guess. And then we’ll make up. Isn’t that how relationships work—they become tougher as wounds heal?”

 

Despite the sharp tone, the density of the air was becoming even stickier. It was dizzying.

 

He looked exactly like someone who had made up his mind about something. A familiar sense of unease washed over her, and Helena asked with some impatience showing.

 

“Do you really think I’m someone trustworthy? I’m fickle, frustrating, foolish, and stubborn… I can’t even give you what you want…”

 

“—I like you.”

 

He suddenly confessed. It was a confession that burst out like a sneeze.

 

It was a word that struck her mind without warning. Helena momentarily thought that only the bed she was sitting on had been cut out into a different space.

 

‘Just now… what did I just hear?’

 

She didn’t dare ask again, afraid of being confirmed.

 

With her frozen in front of him, Ian dared to repeat.

 

“For all those reasons, for all the other reasons that aren’t like that. I like you.”

 

Helena’s face contorted with overwhelming despair.

 

Ah, please don’t say those words. Try to endure until the end. Then I could have maintained this comfortable relationship even by deceiving myself.

 

Telling her not to trust him ultimately meant not to like him.

 

Saying she wasn’t trustworthy meant she wasn’t likeable.

 

He was a man who usually saw through her like the palm of his hand. So he couldn’t have failed to understand. Yet, knowing everything, still knowing.

 

He finally put an end to the precarious grace period they had been walking on a tightrope.

 

Helena felt cold sweat running down her cervical spine. Her lips wouldn’t part, as if her mouth had been filled with boiling wax. Only after swallowing dry saliva several times could she barely get her voice out.

 

“You’re making a mistake.”

 

“That’s right. How stupid of me to confess only now.”

 

“Did you hear what I said?”

 

“Did you hear what I said?”

 

“Please, even now, tell me it was a joke.”

 

“I can’t make jokes like this.”

 

He leaned his upper body closer. Helena’s delicate shoulders fit snugly within his large hands. As if worried she might run away, he held her firmly and said.

 

“It doesn’t mean I trust you because you’re trustworthy. It’s just that I want to trust you… so I trust you.”

 

It’s just that I want to like you, so I like you.

 

That’s how it sounded to Helena.

 

Helena had no choice but to accept him like a deer caught in a trap. Her entire figure was reflected in his light-rimmed eyes. It was a blind gaze.

 

That’s why it was hard to bear. Right before her eyes was herself, who had once staked her life on pouring faith and affection into Eugene.

 

Thump, thump, thump.

 

The turbulent heartbeat seeped into her chaotic mind and became tangled up. It melted and became one. Her entire body pounded like a single heart.

 

‘I don’t want to start if I’m going to be torn apart again.’

 

She had already felt to the bone how one person’s affection could cool frighteningly. This time, she couldn’t even hope with expectation that it would be different. She had experienced too many failed attempts for that.

 

‘All the regressions ended in death.’

 

She didn’t want to risk losing the bond they had built up so far by taking risks again.

 

Momentary emotions are bound to die down like ashes. After that, the day would surely come when he would regret meeting her.

 

Her ship was too worn and old to entrust to a new storm.

 

“Can’t we just stop at this kind of relationship? I’m quite satisfied with being friends, and you wanted that until recently too.”

 

“That would be difficult. I’m not satisfied with just that anymore.”

 

The hungry gaze that desperately longed for her bound Helena. Her spine creaked at that animalistic gaze.

 

But Helena didn’t want to have him. She just didn’t want to lose him. Loving someone was also the easiest way to lose them.

 

So.

 

‘If I don’t push him away, I’ll be in danger.’

 

Until now it had been worry, but now she was afraid. Helena bristled with fur and forcibly extended her claws.

 

“Then what should we do? I don’t want to see you,”

 

I want to see you.

 

“But you say you’ll keep staying by my side, so what can I do?”

 

Keep staying with me.

 

“I have no choice but to avoid you.”

 

Don’t go.

 

Each word she uttered felt like it was carving out her nape, but she steadfastly finished speaking.

 

The pain is only for now. In the future, she would be grateful that it passed with just this much pain.

 

But he, as always, stubbornly dug into that painful inside.

 

“Then don’t speak with that kind of face.”

 

Ian brushed Helena’s eye area with his thumb. Unlike his casual words, his touch was gentle. He kept rubbing as if she were crying, as if wiping away tears.

 

Helena couldn’t bear to look up at him. Maintaining only an expression that was either cold or detached, she waited for his lingering attachment to leave.

 

Then it left.

 

The hand that had been sliding down and tickling her nape disappeared, leaving only empty air. The sweet layer that had dominated all her breathing just minutes ago seemed to be completely clearing away.

 

Ian completely turned his back. Only then did Helena take him into her sight.

 

It was fortunate that her strength hadn’t completely returned to her body yet.

 

‘If my legs had been fine, I might have immediately run and clung to that broad back.’

 

Whether fortunately or unfortunately, he left the room without looking back again. Helena hugged her bent knees and buried her head between them.

 

Pathetically, tears came. She didn’t wipe them away and just let them flow. Just let them flow like the current situation.

 

Helena remembered the first day she learned gardening.

 

The seedling she had raised thinking that more good things would be better, giving it plenty of water and nutrients. The tree she had waited for to bloom pretty pink flowers in spring rotted away during the winter.

 

[Excess is worse than deficiency. You’re in this state because you’re full of nothing but greed.]

 

Christine had scolded her as if she had been waiting for it. It was sad, but it was a rare teaching worth agreeing with. Because of that, Helena knew. He was excessive for her. He was too much light for her, who was merely a weed.

 

Forcing great abundance into an unprepared space was like a disaster.

 

‘I need to find my life first. Only then will you… not become my Eugene.’

 

She couldn’t escape into his life.