A Practical Guide to Ending a One-Sided Love - Chapter 72 - ɪx.

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Bjorn was suffering from recurring nightmares.

“I will never make you uncomfortable again. Then, please be happy.”

“So… I plan to marry the person my parents choose and live quietly. So I hope you too will find true happiness and stability.”

The beginning was always the scene of Leila leaving the bookstore, leaving him behind. Because that was the moment the endless pain began.

After Leila left him in the bookstore and departed, Bjorn returned to the temple and writhed in agony for three days and three nights, crying out.

The pain his rampaging divine power inflicted on his body was like torture, yet it was nothing compared to the pain of his despairing heart, torn asunder.

Because the love he lost in an instant felt unbearably unjust. Because she had always been before his eyes, yet he tested her recklessly and failed to acknowledge her like a blind fool. Because he was afraid he would never meet her again. Because he missed her so much. Because he repented his sins and regretted his actions to death.

There were too many reasons to cry for him to even count them all.

He cried himself to sleep, then upon waking cried again thinking of Leila. He did not even have the composure to devise any plan. He wept miserably like Lucifer cast out of heaven. He cried and cried until the chest he clawed at felt like rags.

It was the first time in his life he had cried this long, even including childhood. After days of crying like a madman, what finally steadied his mind was the proof of miracles that had appeared before him at every turning point in his life, and the rosary Leila had given him.

The traces of the Lord God who had saved him whenever he wanted to abandon his miserable life. The rosary he relied on even on the battlefield. And Leila, the only signpost he had to cling to.

Bjorn recovered his senses very slowly. The self he thought shattered beyond repair was barely pieced together by his yearning for Leila.

Unlike when he was eight and could do nothing, now he had the will to at least try something. If doing so allowed him to see her again, if the chance to win her back, if such fortune came to him even briefly, then he vowed he would seize it with all his strength.

He was no longer the man who wished to give up everything at the smallest coldness from the world. He did not want to easily abandon this fragile yet precious emotion newly born toward her.

Self-loathing toward his foolish self, self-hatred, and destructive urges to punish himself still remained within him, yet he no longer had extreme thoughts like before. Everything was thanks to Leila.

A person who had tasted hope and happiness could not return to how he was before. He who had clung to despair now clung to hope, to the miraculous existence called Leila.

Even if this love devoured him like divine power gnawing endlessly at its unstable master, even if only hardship and failure awaited at the end, he could not abandon her. A blindness equal to faith seized him.

If blindness made him stand again, hope pulled him forward. Even if it was an empty illusion without substance, he could not help but follow it like a blind man.

If he atoned like this, perhaps a miracle might occur where she forgave him and loved him again. It would be a lie to say he did not have such impure wishes. Yet even if it did not, it no longer mattered.

Bjorn could fully understand the Leila of the past. A love satisfied just by watching from afar truly existed. He would be grateful to love her from a distance while thanking her for briefly shining love upon him.

With that resolve, Bjorn gathered the courage to leave the dark cave he thought he could never escape and stand before Leila.

* * *

Standing in front of the count’s residence was not difficult. Especially in the first few weeks, it was quite bearable. Because he could see Leila’s face, even briefly, when she came out to persuade him.

But after deciding words would never reach him, she hid herself so thoroughly that not even a strand of hair could be seen, perhaps intentionally.

After enduring like that for three months, Bjorn began to feel the strain. If it were physical pain, he could endure for one year or ten. But what slowly began to break him was heartbreak.