Chapter 88
As Hansel sobbed, something gently brushed her cheek. It was Dante’s hand.
Dante leaned in closer, intently watching her tear-streaked face, like a puppy anxiously whining at the sight of its crying owner. He pushed back her disheveled platinum hair and wiped away her tears with the back of his hand.
“I like it when you cry.”
The face she had shown him while lying unconscious in bed, the silence, the stillness, the only sounds being her pained groans when her fever surged—it had been an agonizing three days filled with nothing but desolation.
Compared to that hellish solitude, her tearful whining, like a kitten’s mewling, was far better.
Because she was there by his side.
That alone made everything else bearable.
For Dante, that was enough.
“Use me.”
If it meant she would be happy, she could use him however she wished.
Better to be deceived and used by her, better for her to find happiness at his expense, than to lose her to death. As long as she stayed by his side forever.
Because she was his world.
Hansel tilted her head back to look up at Dante. Carefully, she reached out and lightly brushed his lips with her fingers.
“Dante.”
“Yeah.”
“There’s something I want to give you.”
“You don’t have to give me anything.”
“No, I want to. I have to. Please listen to me, okay?”
“…Alright.”
“Can you… call my name again? Just once more.”
“……”
“Ah! Dante, that hurts!”
Startled, Dante released his grip on Hansel’s shoulder, realizing he had unconsciously tightened his hold. Hansel clutched her shoulder, wincing.
“Does it hurt a lot?”
His eyebrows furrowed with guilt. Hansel straightened up and took his face in her hands.
“No, it’s fine! It just surprised me a little, that’s all.”
Dante closed his eyes and leaned into her touch, pressing his cheek against her palm as he murmured softly.
“Can’t do it.”
The memory of that day, of the three days that followed—it was unbearable. Even thinking about it now made his bones ache with cold dread, his mind sinking into the suffocating mire of fear.
“No, Dante. You can do it.”
Hansel lifted his face so their eyes met directly.
“Look, I’m right here, alive and well. Nothing’s wrong. You can call my name.”
Dante’s red eyes wavered, unsteady and filled with turmoil. Hansel stared back at him, her gaze unwavering.
The man who seemed like a stoic marionette at a glance—she could see his emotions now. His trembling pupils, the long eyelashes, the lips pressed together so tightly they turned pale.
This man, powerful beyond anyone else, was so heartbreakingly fragile.
His crimson eyes flickered with hesitation and fear, but deep within, she glimpsed a faint flicker of hope.
Her name—something so ordinary, something everyone had—was a treasure to him, precious as a castle in the clouds. It was something so unattainable that he had exiled himself to a life of isolation.
Hansel had to show him.
That she was here, by his side. That she always would be.
“Call me. Say my name.”
“……”
“You can’t hurt me. I’m the only one, Dante.”
Dante’s broad chest rose and fell as he took a deep, shuddering breath. His lips quivered, reluctant to move, as he hesitated several times. Hansel waited silently, patiently.
And after what felt like an eternity, he finally spoke.
“Hansel.”
Thump. Thump.
Dante’s heart pounded violently in his chest, as if it would burst free. Gripping the hands that cradled his face, he exhaled a shaky breath.
“Hansel Arsinoe.”
Tears spilled over.
Neither of them could say who started crying first, but in that moment, both of them wept.
Because of her. Because of her name.
Dante had finally put an end to decades of loneliness. Like a broken music box, he repeated her name again and again.
Yes, in truth, I was lonely.
The kind of loneliness so agonizing he hadn’t even been able to recognize it, as though he’d been born missing something essential. Afraid to confront it, he’d buried it deep, sealed in a stone tomb, and covered it with layer after layer of dirt.
His last memory of not being alone.
The memory that froze in place when he was seven. The boy who had kept painting over his house to hide it. The boy who had grown into a lonely man, his time stopped, his heart forgotten. Dante.
The realization that those long years had reached their end was so overwhelming that he couldn’t even bring himself to cry aloud.
Hansel.
Hansel Arsinoe.
The only name I could say. A name like salvation.
Dante’s body collapsed into hers. Hansel embraced him, holding his trembling frame as he exhaled a deep, broken sigh.
The strange clock within him, stopped for so long, had begun to tick again.
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