Chapter 20
Chapter 20
“Don’t do that and come in quickly!”
Saying hadn’t she asked him to teach her how to swim, Luke provocatively kept splashing water at her.
“It’s cold! Stop it, Luke!”
When Candice put her hand in the water to get revenge, Luke annoyingly fled to the opposite side right away. And after getting far enough away, he looked back at Candice, whose face was completely wet, and burst out laughing.
“Running away cowardly! Come here!”
As if he couldn’t hear her shout, Luke swam away as if showing off. Candice was burning with the desire to chase after him immediately and get revenge. But still, going into the water as she was was out of the question.
“I’m letting you off.”
She achieved a mental victory by snorting in disappointment instead. Deciding to leave the childish one alone, she lifted her skirt above her knees. When she put her feet into the water up to her ankles, the cold energy reached the top of her head in an instant. Candice held her skirt well so it wouldn’t get wet and sat on a dry rock.
Luke, who had been going back and forth rapidly through the valley alone for a while, now seemed a bit tired and floated on his back in the water. As he relaxed his body and rested, he heard a giggling laugh from somewhere. It was Candice.
“Why are you laughing?”
Luke straightened his body and swam toward her like a dog to ask.
“Just. I thought liking water really is like a child.”
Candice answered honestly. She had felt the bitterness of time because Luke had become so mature, but she felt relieved for some reason.
However, Luke’s expression was dark. He strode out of the water and stood in front of Candice. Coldness was felt on his face where water droplets dripped down.
“Candice, don’t keep treating me like a child.”
He didn’t raise his voice or make it loud, but suppressed anger was felt in it.
Candice was very flustered. She hadn’t said it with the intention of making him angry. As she couldn’t say anything out of bewilderment, Luke narrowed his eyes and glared at her.
“Candice, how old do I look right now?”
“…I’m sorry. It’s difficult to gauge the age shown in a human’s appearance. It’s too difficult a question for me.”
“Then I’ll ask again. As an elf, how old would your age be in human years?”
“Well… probably about in my twenties.”
She shrugged, having not kept careful count since passing a hundred years old.
“I’m twenty-seven years old. In elf terms, I might even be older than you?”
Candice’s heart sank. She couldn’t refute his words. It was true. In elf terms, he might be older than her. In just twenty years, he had become an adult who had surpassed her age.
A child becomes an adult, and then what happens after that? As time passed in the blink of an eye, he would eventually…
“I hate it.”
“You mean you hate admitting it? No matter how much you act that way, I’m not young anymore.”
“Yeah. I don’t want to admit it! It’s fine to just stay a kid! You’ve only lived a mere twenty-seven years!”
A shout burst out from sorrow.
“Once you humans become adults, you’ll just die soon after anyway. I’m saying I hate that!”
Treating him like a child couldn’t stop the flow of time. Candice knew that fact in her head, but it was hard to accept in her heart.
How shocked she had been when she learned that the young siblings had died, feeling on her skin how short the lifespan given to humans was. If even a connection that had passed by like a brush was that sad, how much worse would Luke’s death be?
Candice found it hard to fathom the sorrow she would experience. Unable to hold back, she shot up from her spot. Even as a startled Luke called out asking where she was going, she distanced herself from the valley barefoot, holding her boots as if fleeing.
* * *
Luke couldn’t understand what he had done so wrong. Her constantly treating him like a child when he wasn’t one was her problem. The fact that he might be older than her in elf terms was true, and her stubbornly saying she hated it was also her problem.
And on top of that, her going home by herself was quite infuriating.
“No, so are you telling me to live as someone far younger forever? While constantly being treated like a brat?”
Luke came out of the valley and headed slowly toward the house, grumbling. Candice was too much, no matter what. She must have clearly noticed and stayed despite knowing that he had feelings for her. Since he had been leaving kiss marks all over and touching her so blatantly. There was no way she didn’t know.
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