Collector’s Cage - Chapter 25

Even up close, it was still a handsome face. It was like a sculpture meticulously carved by an artist. Even the slightly upturned eyes seemed charming. If she had to find a flaw, it would be the faint frown lines between his brows, likely from furrowing them often.

As Hermie touched his face, Froy blinked rapidly. His long eyelashes fluttered, revealing his bewilderment.

“Stay with me always. If you won’t let me out, then don’t go anywhere either.”

Hermie acted pitifully to make him feel guilty. She thought that because Froy loved the fairy and tried so hard to meet her demands, he wouldn’t be able to resist if she clung to him like this.

“Hermie……”

As Hermie had anticipated, Froy’s mind was burning like a fire pit hit by a gale. His emotions were in such turmoil that it wouldn’t be strange if his entire spirit soon turned into gray ashes.
Froy felt like he might cry over how thoughtless he had been.

He hadn’t shed a single tear since being diagnosed that he would never get out of bed after his fall from the horse, but seeing Hermie’s pitiful state made his chest ache and his nose sting.

Had Hermie cast some dangerous spell on him? It was an unfamiliar emotion, suspiciously so.

“I’ll stay by your side from now on.”

He made a promise he couldn’t keep. It was a false promise that would be broken as soon as the next day.

He moved the cage to the bedside table. A position where he could see Hermie even while lying down. Hermie, now seemingly reassured, lay down facing where Froy was and began to smile a little. It was a lovely laugh, like the sound of morning birds.

“Sleep well, Hermie.”

Froy said goodnight first.

“Sleep well, Froy.”

Hermie also followed suit and greeted him. Froy, ruminating on Hermie’s greeting, drew a pleasant smile.

It had been so long since he had last heard the words “sleep well.”

As a child, he was a boy who felt loneliness keenly. Afraid of sleeping alone, he would often rush to his mother’s bedroom when he woke from sleep.

But after his mother passed away, there was no one to soothe his loneliness. He was always alone and had to grow accustomed to solitude.

If he showed any childish behavior, his father and stepmother would scold him severely. A child with nowhere to be petulant is bound to grow up quickly.

From some point on, he no longer felt lonely. The fear of the night disappeared, and he no longer felt the need for anyone.

Being alone gradually became comfortable. Then, as he grew older, he realized that others were not to be trusted.

Annoying, bothersome competitors who coveted what was his. That’s how they mostly were, the closer he got. So he kept his distance from people. He prided himself on living well without forming close relationships.

Yet, before this small creature that clung to him simply because it was lonely, his thick walls crumbled. It was hard to draw a line.

‘I have no immunity to this sort of thing.’

Froy realized his own weakness. While he could easily reject elaborately packaged words, he had no immunity to raw emotion.

Hermie’s emotions were like that. I like it, I dislike it, I’m lonely, I’m bored. They carried an unpretentious purity, uncomplicated and direct. That’s what made her endearing.

“I’m lonely, so stay by me.” It was what he had wanted to say in his childhood. Perhaps that was why he couldn’t refuse her all the more. The promise to stay by his side was also something he had desperately wished to hear.

It seems I’ll have to cancel my outside schedule tomorrow, Froy thought before falling asleep.

***

He dreamed of Hermie with wings, fluttering and flying freely outside the cage.

Sunlight shattered brilliantly upon the transparent wings, and the sky was bluer than ever. Hermie flew freely under the azure sky like a fish swimming in the sea. Hermie smiled brightly, like a flower in spring.

Seeing that beautiful sight, he himself shed tears.

“Don’t go.”