Chapter 92
“Whenever he was with you, he was just an ordinary human. Jealous, greedy, hopeful, and then despairing…”
Nielsen’s voice faltered for a moment, as if struck by a sudden realization. The question that had always haunted him: why did God send this woman to Cyrone’s side?, finally escaped his lips.
“That’s why, at times, I resented you. Because you kept making someone whose path was already set stop and look back.”
Nielsen quietly stared at Elia, but she turned her gaze away, unwilling to meet his eyes. She wanted to put an end to everything, to be free. She wasn’t strong enough to carry Cyrone’s heart on her shoulders and then leave.
“And the reason you tell me this—?”
“I thought about it every day. What would have happened if you hadn’t met him? How many things might have changed if I had stopped it? But no matter how much I thought, there was no answer.”
Yet Nielsen didn’t stop. His voice grew more certain than ever.
“Now I realize. The question itself was wrong from the start. No matter how much time rewound, it wouldn’t have been stopped.”
With that acceptance came a strange relief in his heart. But Elia’s gaze grew uneasy.
“Even selling his soul to the devil to rewind time, even bringing you back like that… none of it would have changed the outcome. No matter what, he would have ended up loving you.”
“Love… do you think Cyrone ever truly loved me?”
Elia bit the tender flesh inside her mouth, the word “love” burning her throat and making her heart race. She couldn’t grasp the feeling swirling inside her. Was it anger? Sadness?
“Cyrone sacrificed his soul to the devil to bring me back. Because of that, I was dragged from the afterlife and forced to live again. Do you think that was because he loved me? Really loved me?”
Her voice sharpened. Her pale shoulders began to quiver.
“No, absolutely not. He hated me. Hated me enough to want to show me that being alive was hell. That’s why I was kept alive. I was left alone, trapped in endless time, while he just walked away.”
After her outburst, Elia let out a hollow laugh. She had only learned after being resurrected that death grants eternal rest, but life, it does not.
The torment of breathing didn’t end even when she closed her eyes. It returned with the coming of tomorrow. Cyrone surely already knew that being alive was hell. That was why he had left Elia alone here.
“What exactly did Cyrone want from me? Or rather, what if I had turned back time? Then maybe I could have ended all this miserable suffering!”
Elia couldn’t bring herself to say the last words and instead covered her face with both hands. After a long while, her unsteady breath slowly began to calm.
“Miss.”
Nielsen spoke again softly, patiently waiting for Elia to regain her composure.
“If you were truly given just one chance to turn back time, when would you go back to?”
Taken aback by the sudden question, Elia looked at Nielsen with puzzled eyes. But Nielsen asked in the same calm tone, as if out of pure curiosity.
“Would you go back to a time before you ever met him, before you even knew him?”
“……”
If given a single chance to rewind time, where would she go? Elia quietly asked herself. Countless memories flashed through her mind.
The day she first met the boy, the day she first held him in her heart, the days she endlessly followed him, the day he asked her name, the day he called her by it.
Elia remained silent, and Nielsen nodded as if he understood.
“Honestly, I would probably go back to before meeting him too. If you want to cut a bad fate, it’s cleanest to never start it at all.”
“No. That’s not true.”
But Elia’s reply was unexpected.
“I’d go back to before time turned back, before Cyrone opened Belial’s box.”
“Why? If you do that, you’d still end up dying.”
Nielsen asked with a look of confusion.
“If you choose to go back to before meeting him, you wouldn’t have to die.”
“Whatever will happen, will happen. Even if I don’t meet Cyrone, my father would have still tried to depose the Empress and tried to kill Cyrone. He barely survived those times, I don’t want to make us suffer through the same pain all over again.”
Nielsen’s face shifted strangely at her answer. He was unable to question her for a long moment, perhaps because he hadn’t expected such an answer.
But Elia spoke again, with a calmer expression.
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