Chapter 79
Lynette looked up at Euphen, who was still angry, in silence.
The man who had been staring at her without a word squeezed his eyes shut and let out a long sigh.
No matter how long she waited, his voice did not come.
“Your Highness.”
When Lynette spoke cautiously, the man ground his teeth and said,
“You’re that man’s guide…”
It wasn’t the kind of tone that expected an answer.
Lynette bowed her head slightly and clasped her hands together.
Everything became certain.
How had it gone so wrong?
There was no better way to describe it than a ‘trick of fate.’ The two of their hearts were clearly connected, yet reality was cruel.
“Lynette.”
“Yes?”
“How did you know Eshar was my guide?”
After some time, as if he had calmed a little, Euphen asked in a voice that tried to hold back emotion.
Lynette blinked. She should have anticipated this question, but she had no excuse prepared.
Her head had been full of thoughts about that man, and she had only been scrambling to deal with what was happening right in front of her.
“W-well…”
Her throat tightened. She stammered out the first words but had nothing more to say.
She knew almost nothing that would allow her to answer that she knew the future.
If she had paid more attention to her surroundings in the past, she might have at least pretended to know something about the future.
Besides, the few events she did know had been thrown into chaos.
Euphen being attacked by an assassin, Sillian appearing, all the secrets revealed…
Lynette pressed her lips tightly together.
“I saw it in a dream.”
She soothed herself by thinking it wasn’t entirely false. Things from before she returned felt like a dream.
Except for the part where she parted with him at the end, everything had been so sweet.
Sometimes she had even been afraid it was all an illusion.
“You mean a precognitive dream?”
“Just once… I only dreamed of it once.”
“You were sure, from a single dream, that Eshar would be my guide?”
She knew it was an absurd excuse.
But she had no choice but to insist this way.
‘I can’t say I returned.’
If she said that, she would eventually have to reveal her previous life, and it would surely hurt Euphen.
Even though it had become something ‘that did not happen,’ if he knew she had been guiding normally without him knowing anything, he would hate himself even more.
“It was a very vivid dream.”
“Lies.”
The man cut her off and leaned in slightly with his head lowered. His blue eyes had darkened.
She remembered what he had said at the party.
He had said she had no talent for lying.
Even if he knew all she said now was a lie, he wouldn’t be able to guess what the ‘truth’ was, so it was fine.
Lynette carefully avoided his gaze.
Euphen seemed to realize that too.
Perhaps noticing that further interrogation would only make Lynette repeat herself, he did not press for the truth.
Instead, he brought up something else.
“In that dream…”
He clenched his fist tightly.
“Were you the guide of that guard?”
“…No.”
After a moment’s thought, Lynette told the truth.
“So the man didn’t appear in your dream?”
She nodded slightly.
At that, Euphen let out a long sigh and lowered his head deeply, so much that his expression was hidden.
“Hah, damn it.”
The rough words he muttered in a low voice sounded awkward.
When Lynette tilted her head a little, the man slowly straightened his back with his hand covering his face.
“I’m glad that even at this moment, that man didn’t appear in your dream.”
Euphen muttered bitterly and clenched his teeth.
“You make me the worst kind of man.”
She suddenly wanted to carefully stroke his shoulder and then pull him into a brief embrace.
But if she did that, he would only be sadder.
Lynette stepped a little closer to him.
“Your Highness.”
“…”
He inhaled and exhaled deeply without answering, then wore a bitter expression.
He felt both joy at being the only one in Lynette’s dream, and self-reproach for taking comfort in it.
“If you become that man’s guide, will everything return to the way it was?”
Lynette couldn’t properly understand what ‘the way it was’ meant.
Their relationship had always been this way.
From the first moment she met Euphen in her life before returning, to living this new life again now.
She had tried to change it, but the fact that Lynette was a ‘fake guide’ did not change.
“You mean, can I be okay if I touch you?”
Lynette hesitated to answer.
It was something she had never experienced, but she could roughly guess the result.
In the opposite case before, even after a guide appeared for Euphen, touching him still hurt.
The man, too, seemed to suspect that.
His face darkened.
“Right. It won’t be that simple.”
“…Yes.”
“It would be the same even if Eshar awakened.”
This time Lynette nodded firmly.
A heavy silence passed.
‘There is only one conclusion.’
The two of them growing apart, or living together for life while never making contact with each other.
There was no other way.
But Lynette did not think she could endure that.
Even if it hurt, she wanted to touch him.
Even if it was agonizing, she wanted to hold him.
That was why, even knowing she was dying, she had desperately tried to hide her pain.
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