Chapter 206.1

Chapter 206.1

Lee Wooshin held her as she broke down, brushing her wet hair over and over.

It’s all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore.

With his forehead pressed against her trembling shoulder, he breathed heavily. Their chests were pressed together, hearts pounding desperately in sync.

His face had gone pale blue, yet Wooshin kept pulling Seoryeong back into his arms. His forearms were taut, veins like steel cords straining as he clung to her with fierce, unrelenting strength.

“Cough, cough!”

Then, in the middle of her coughing fit, Seoryeong began tearing away Natalia’s face mask. The overhead mask, soaked and soft from the water, crumpled easily under her fingers.

At last, the face it had hidden met the cold air.

Even with one unsteady eye, he stared at Seoryeong’s real face as if trying to devour it whole. Each time another bit of her bare skin appeared, thick clouds of breath poured from Wooshin’s lips.

For a moment, his expression went blank. Then something surged up inside him, and he clenched his jaw, turning his head away. Seoryeong looked at his white-knuckled fist and turned him back toward her.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Their gazes met, his bloodshot eye locking on hers. Seoryeong searched every line of his face for traces of that boy she once knew, staring at those beautiful irises that had captivated her at first sight.

“We met when we were kids. You, Instructor, you…”

Her throat caught, and she stopped to catch her breath.

“You held me here, like this…”

Her eyelids trembled. You held me in your arms like this. But she couldn’t hold it in anymore. Her face crumpled like a child’s, and tears streamed down her cheeks again.

“Back then, I was so tired. I wanted to die.”

At that, Wooshin’s face went pale.

“I ran to the cliff to end my life.”

She had left everything behind: Kia, who’d grown up by her side, and all the others she’d called her siblings. She’d escaped Winter Castle alone, not to survive, but to die.

But then, he appeared.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Seoryeong sobbed so hard she could barely breathe, and Wooshin, jolted back to his senses, pulled her into his arms again and patted her back.

“Cough, cough!”

She coughed violently, her neck flushed red, snot running down her face. Just like before, his absurdly gentle hands rubbed her feet, patted her back.

Seoryeong felt like her throat would close up and she’d die from it.

Had he been a trainee then?

If she’d stayed in Winter Castle a little longer, would she have had to fight that boy too?

She remembered how she had wished he’d come through the door instead. She had lived one more day just to feel his hand against hers again, ticklish and warm.

Suddenly, her appetite returned, her strength surged.

Her unfocused eyes chased falling snowflakes, as if enchanted, not from anger or despair, but because she wanted to see again the boy who had been as soft as snow.

“Even before I met you, Instructor, I kept missing something shapeless. I wanted it, needed it, longed for it. Since I was little, there was a hole in my heart I didn’t understand. That hole was you. Why didn’t you tell me?”

When Seoryeong shouted the words through her tears, his calm gray eyes slowly twisted with pain.

“I’m sorry. I was looking for you too, but I didn’t know.”

He said he had been searching through Winter Castle’s records. It was only after they parted in Azerbaijan that he learned she had been one of Winter Castle’s mice.

So, all this time, they had been right in front of each other and still hadn’t known. A dry laugh escaped her. There seemed to be too many stories left between them.

“And my mission was to protect ‘Han Seoryeong,’ not to expose Sonya.”

“Still, I’m sorry. Sorry, I didn’t save you back then He said it softly, like a confession.

“That was my first regret.”

It wasn’t an apology she needed from him. But somehow, the tightness in her chest eased a little. She thought of how, even during their roughest moments together, he’d kept murmuring “baby, baby,” over and over.

Heat rose in her body, and Seoryeong clutched at her wet clothes without a word. Every word he’d said back then had been meant for her.

The grandson of Winter Castle and the mouse of Winter Castle. There was no doubt their fate had begun as a cursed bond, yet they had ended up bound in marriage.

Seoryeong thought she knew the name of this tie, one that might be stronger and more enduring than any ill-fated connection.

If parents are the ones who first teach you warmth after you’re born–

Seoryeong looked up at the man before her with burning adoration.