At first, he thought he had heard wrong.
No, wasn’t that only natural?
Right now, Rowoon was hiding himself.
On top of that, he had the artifact Iho had left behind, which had a perception-interference effect.
And yet.
“Behind a tree is not a comfortable place to stay for long. Don’t do that. How about sitting comfortably today?”
It sounded like she was talking to herself, but it did not sound like she was talking to herself.
When Rowoon tensed, thinking, ‘Surely not.’
Cheonghwa spoke as if it was nothing.
[She is not speaking to you. No matter how strange that fox may be, it is not as though he lacks skill. It must be nothing more than coincidence.]
Right. That had to be it.
Rowoon was just about to feel relieved.
“I really was speaking to the person over there, so don’t worry and come sit comfortably.”
At the same time, his eyes met Lee Jeonghye’s dead-on.
“……”
For a moment, he had the illusion that the surrounding temperature had dropped by ten degrees.
…Strange?
Iho had definitely been confident there was no way he would be discovered.
[W-wait. Did that human just understand what I said?]
It seemed Cheonghwa wanted to deny reality too, because they frantically frothed up bubbles.
‘Iho…! You said you were confident I wouldn’t be discovered…!’
The bleakness only lasted a moment.
‘Wait. Isn’t this serious?’
The past week and a little more flashed through his mind like a revolving lantern.
Suddenly, his vision went dizzy.
Although, during that week and a little more, Rowoon’s role had been nothing more than a real-time provider of physical force and a twenty-four-hour standby labor unit.
‘No matter how you look at it, I’m a suspicious person, aren’t I?’
From a third party’s point of view, there would be no excuse if he looked suspicious.
There was only one thing needed at a time like this.
“I’m sorry.”
Immediate, swift admission and apology.
But Lee Jeonghye’s reaction was unexpected.
“Mr. Rowoon, there’s no need for you to apologize. The fault lies with someone else. Besides, if anyone should apologize, it should be me.”
“Pardon?”
The day he thought would pass without anything happening had turned spectacular.
Rowoon, who had even been considering prostrating himself in apology, floated a question mark over his head.
“Please have this first. I bought it because I thought you might like it.”
“Th-thank you.”
He had wondered why she suddenly bought two coffees.
When he received it, it was mint chocolate.
“For some reason, I thought you would like that.”
She was right.
He had no idea how she had figured it out.
‘Wait. What exactly is going on right now?’
As if she had noticed what Rowoon was thinking, Lee Jeonghye said,
“You look like your head is complicated. How about drinking that first and calming down?”
A brief silence settled between the two of them as they sat side by side and drank their drinks.
“First, I should thank you. I’ve received your help several times, but I never properly greeted you even once.”
“Greeted me…?”
“Yes. You helped me several times, didn’t you?”
“…Don’t tell me you knew it was me all along?”
When he asked, thinking surely not, surely not.
“Of course. Yours is a face that’s hard to forget once someone sees it, so naturally I remembered.”
Once again, “surely” caught Rowoon.
“I-I’m sorry. It’s not that I was intentionally trying to follow you around…!”
“I’m not blaming you, so don’t worry. From the start, the fact that Mr. Rowoon had to step in was all my fault. I told you I was the one who should apologize.”
“Pardon? What do you mean…”
“I’m sorry to you, Mr. Rowoon, but I’m saying I intentionally caused a few small accidents. There was a need for me to do that.”
“Pardon…?”
Was it just his imagination?
‘I feel like I’ve been doing nothing but repeating “pardon?” for a while now.’
This would not do.
Rowoon felt the need to sort out the situation.
In any case, the request was currently underway.
Although an unexpected problem had broken out, this too was something Rowoon had to handle, and it was his responsibility.
If he went on like this, there was a danger he would be pushed around here and there until it ended in failure.
However.
[Current request completion rate: 57%]
‘So just continuing to watch over her wasn’t the correct answer.’
He could tell from the way the completion rate, which had been stalled for several days, had risen by several percent through this bewildering conversation.
The situation itself was flustering, but in any case, it meant he was close to the right answer.
Rowoon opened his mouth with determination.
“Ms. Jeonghye? There are a few things I’d like to confirm.”
[Huuuh! He truly is a bad man. How can he be so cold and heartless?]
Cheonghwa clicked their tongue and poured out their indignation.
It was such a natural interjection that one would never know they had been flustered after being discovered.
Cheonghwa was openly sitting on Lee Jeonghye’s lap, and it looked quite natural.
[I understand. I do, indeed. Ms. Jeonghye deliberately pretending not to know was all the seed that fox fellow sowed, was it not?]
“I feel relieved to hear you say that.”
When Cheonghwa had even started calling her Ms. Jeonghye was a mystery.
It looked quite affectionate.
‘Well, now… I guess things can unfold this way too.’
It had started with Rowoon’s questions, meant to somehow smooth things over and finish this request properly.
He wanted to know how much Lee Jeonghye knew.
More precisely, he had asked questions to find out from what point this request had become twisted.
‘I didn’t know that would mean going back several decades.’
It was not ten or twenty years.
A span close to half a century came out.
And yet, that was also the right answer.
[Current request completion rate: 73%]
Just listening to Lee Jeonghye’s tangled story had made the completion rate rise sharply.
‘Iho, just what in the world are you…’
The story Rowoon heard about the two of them was roughly this.
‘So… Iho picked up Jeonghye?’
Judging by appearance, it made absolutely no sense, but if he considered the fact that Iho’s true identity was a thousand-year-old fox, it was not impossible either.
“When I was young, I was a child even my parents shunned.”
That was because Lee Jeonghye was a child who saw things others could not.
She had been called an ominous child, not only by her parents but even in the village, so if things had continued that way, she might have starved to death without even eating a proper meal.
It was right after a great war that had split the country had barely been temporarily stitched shut, and everyone was suffering and poor in its aftermath.
The one who picked up that Lee Jeonghye was Iho.
“It seems the fact that I was startled after seeing his pointed ears piqued Iho’s interest. He said there were sometimes people whose spiritual eyes were open, but until then, there had been no one who could see through even his transformation.”
She met Iho in a place she had entered because she was hungry and wanted to pick even wild greens to eat.
Iho immediately recognized Lee Jeonghye’s specialness.
-You have very rare and precious eyes.
It was the moment when a child considered ominous and avoided by everyone became special in front of Iho.
Lee Jeonghye never forgot that feeling she experienced for the first time in her life.
Because she had met the first person who affirmed her life.
That was why.
-Humans may be animals that live in groups, but those eyes of yours will make you lonely. What should be done? Ah. This will do. Will you follow me?
When Iho offered her a choice, Lee Jeonghye decided to follow him without hesitation.
There was not the slightest hesitation.
Because there was no one who welcomed her anyway.
“When I was beside Iho, I was always safe. I felt as though I, who had been an ominous child, had become the ordinary person I had always dreamed of being.”
The things she saw even when she did not want to see them all disappeared when she was beside Iho.
At last, she felt a sense of liberation, as if she had escaped a dark cave.
In that way, Iho became Lee Jeonghye’s savior and the light of her life.
-Would it not be a waste? With those eyes alone, you could become a great person who commands the whole land. Everyone would bow their heads at your feet to obtain even a single word from you.
It was an attractive offer.
Even more so for Lee Jeonghye, who had lived a life where she was alive but did not truly feel alive from the moment she was born.
However.
-Then what about you, Iho? Will you stay with me too?
-Is our companionship not only until your eyes close? If they were to open wide instead, what need would you have of me?
-Then I don’t need it. I don’t need anyone else. Someone else might want that, but I don’t. I only need you, Iho.
-Human hearts are fickle. You are still young and do not know the ways of the world. Do not regret it later.
With a voice containing laughter, the hand that had been touching the area around her eyes fell away.
The two continued traveling together as the seasons changed dozens, hundreds of times.
As much as the seasons changed, Lee Jeonghye also grew up.
Enough that her blind feelings toward one person began to take on a different color.
One day, Iho suddenly said,
-It is about time you adapted to the human world too.
It was a subject that had been repeated until the child grew up, became an adult, and several more years passed.
-I said I don’t want to. I only need you, Iho.
It was a conversation that always ended with the same answer, but that time was different.
-Your eyes have become quite clouded now, have they not?
It was also when Lee Jeonghye had taken a great step closer to “ordinary.”
-What does that matter?
-But you did not want to see anything, did you? Then what use is it if you stay with me? I must be the greatest existence you should avoid. If you continue to stay with me, your eyes will never close forever.
-I’m fine as long as I have you, Iho.
-Human hearts are fickle. Can you be certain that your heart will remain firm even later?
As the days passed, Iho spoke less and less.
And then, at some point.
Around the time Lee Jeonghye’s eyes came to contain only the things of this world.
Iho suddenly vanished from in front of Lee Jeonghye.
“At first, I couldn’t believe it. After that, I didn’t want to believe it.”
Lee Jeonghye searched for Iho for a long time.
Until that time surpassed the time she had spent with Iho, and even became twice as long.
During that time, Lee Jeonghye’s daily life became peaceful, but at the same time, it was not peaceful.
Because the empty space left by the heart she had already given to someone was so large that she suffered from the emptiness.
“That was when I began writing books. I didn’t want to forget what happened with him. I wanted to prove that I hadn’t dreamed a long dream alone.”
It was like a spell she recited to herself so she would not forget.
And at some point, Lee Jeonghye could feel that someone was watching over her.
Lee Jeonghye waited calmly.
Hoping he would not run away again, hoping he would someday come closer.
“But… now, only when the day I leave is right before me, he appears nearby. Still, now he’ll believe me, won’t he? That my heart was not fickle, but firm.”
Rowoon, who had been listening up to that point, cautiously raised his hand.
“Um, I’m sorry, but there’s something that’s been bothering me for a while.”
“Yes, go ahead.”
“That… what did you mean when you said there isn’t much time left…?”
The anxiety that he had been missing something very important had been pressing in on him for a while.
Fortunately, Lee Jeonghye did not look offended by Rowoon’s cautious question.
She soon answered as if it were nothing.
“I have terminal cancer.”
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