The Sand Bride - Chapter 90 - The End

Ⅶ. Somewhere

Her vision opened thinly. Esther blinked her eyelids and lifted her gaze upward. Someone was embracing her. Warm body heat was transmitted over their closely pressed skin. However, it wasn’t crushing her.

As Esther tried to move her head, she realized that the tickling sensation against her cheek wasn’t human skin but the texture of bandages.

When she lifted her head a bit higher, she could see black hair above the bandages, tanned skin, broad shoulders, a thick neck, and a protruding Adam’s apple in sequence. Having seen that much, Esther lowered her gaze again.

Even without looking at his face, she could tell that the man embracing her in his sleep was Karzhen. It was an appearance she had already become too familiar with.

This time, Esther examined her own body. Both feet and both hands were all properly attached. All her fingers and toes were there too. Her tongue was also intact. Then Karzhen’s past warning shook her chest ominously.

“Try pulling one more stunt. Then I’ll turn you into a complete cripple and bury you here for life.”

When she realized that Karzhen hadn’t turned her into a cripple while she was unconscious, Esther fell into despair. She had hoped that everything would be over while she was unconscious. At least then it wouldn’t hurt.

Thinking that far, Esther felt dizziness wash over her, closed her eyes briefly, and eventually drained all strength from her body. She was already too exhausted to have any energy left to fear or despair. Terrible helplessness wrapped around her like Karzhen’s arms embracing her.

What on earth could she possibly do? She had nothing left now. Coming to this distant foreign land and left completely alone, Esther constantly wanted to depend on something.

At least she was still someone who couldn’t live alone. She needed a familiar hometown, needed family, and had to have relatives, friends, and neighbors. Like a young animal forcibly separated from its parents before growing completely and becoming independent, when forcibly separated, such aspects became even more severe like an obsession.

However, when she thought that even Bianca had died following her father and mother, Esther gradually began to think that perhaps it was because of herself, not because of Karzhen.

Karzhen was an existence she could never escape or shake off, and she was collapsing under the self-reproach that she kept trying without knowing this and causing harm to people around her.

It felt like being in the middle of a massive disaster that human strength couldn’t handle, foolishly agitating that she could defeat it, that she could escape, and losing the people around her.

Esther let out a breath mixed with guilt and self-reproach. That long sigh came out as long as the length of pain. The embrace holding her was warm, but instead of comforting warmth, it only gave swamp-like resignation. That was the emotion she held.

Esther disliked Karzhen. If forced to choose between liking or disliking, that was certainly the case. Rather, feeling favorable toward him would probably be stranger. If Karzhen had died that day, Esther would have been bewildered at first by the absence of familiar fear, but as time passed, she would have improved, and perhaps someday a moment might have come when she completely escaped his shadow.

But all of those were merely assumptions, and in reality, Karzhen lived and ultimately achieved what he wanted. As he always did. Esther stretched her body in his embrace and once again fell into slumber as deep as an abyss.

Deeply,

Very deeply.

Only after she fell asleep did Karzhen open his eyes. He could only raise his body after confirming that the body in his arms had fallen into deep sleep. He raised his upper body to face Esther, but Esther, already deep in sleep, didn’t move at all. Even so, Karzhen called her softly as if whispering.

“Esther…….”

That name made him feel distant from the moment he uttered it. Gazing at the long spread sandy-colored hair, Karzhen had the illusion that he was in the middle of a desert. It felt like being thrown naked into a desolate desert with nothing.

In the middle of that, Karzhen foresaw his future. That he would spend his lifetime unable to give up, somehow searching for the deep blue vegetation within it and the sweetness of that fruit he had once tasted, even if only through delusion, running through this vast sand desert toward a future that appeared like a mirage.

When he brought his face close, small breaths continuing in steady rhythm tickled his forehead. Karzhen gently kissed the cheek of sleeping Esther.

Murmuring those words “I love you” that he could never utter to the awake Esther for the rest of his life…….

[The Sand Bride] End