[17] Chapter 3. In Order Not to Love (4):
Chapter 3. In Order Not to Love (4)
Fernciana watched the caravan disappear into the distance. The carriage wheels kicked up a cloud of dust, but even that quickly thinned out, and the caravan soon vanished from view. She turned her back just as the faint edge of that distant dust cloud brushed against her breath.
The capital, Pomilas, lay further north from here—completely opposite from the direction she was heading.
Ilias had listened quietly to her words. He hadn’t mocked or ridiculed her when she said she would visit a village just based on what the shop owner had told her.
She’d expected him to scold her, saying she was being thoughtless again—but Ilias didn’t laugh. When she said they would have to go separate ways from here, he only asked if she would be okay.
Fernciana had nodded with a smile, and Ilias had simply told her to take care. He offered to return the commission payment, but she shook her head.
She had told him to come find her and work together again when he reached the capital. At that, Ilias sighed, joking that he was afraid of how much interest would pile up. Then he left with the caravan heading to the capital.
“Come on… it’s not like we were together that long.”
With her luggage slung over her shoulder, Fernciana trudged southwest—alone. She clicked her tongue inwardly and scolded herself, but her emotions and reality remained unchanged.
She was the only one on the road, and it felt achingly lonely.
‘Should I have asked him to come with me?’
But Ilias had no reason to agree. His job was information-gathering, and he had no time or need to wander through small villages that weren’t even marked properly on maps.
Their contract hadn’t included escorting her to some unknown town either—it was to investigate the Emerald Tabula and the imperial genealogy.
‘I’ll just check out the place and go back to the capital. I can see Ilias again there.’
That’s what good friends did, didn’t they? Though whether Ilias considered her a friend was uncertain, Fernciana justified herself and resumed walking. According to the directions she got from the shop owner, she had to hurry. If a carriage passed by, she’d hitch a ride—but none did, so walking was her only option.
If she kept moving without breaks, she would arrive in Desidiera before sunset.
As she walked, light as if stepping on clouds, she tossed a handful of Erasil seeds into her mouth—something she had packed in her pocket. Ilias would get motion sickness in a carriage, while she tended to get sick from walking.
“Oh… it really works?”
After chewing and swallowing the seeds with some water, the nausea began to subside. She stopped walking for a moment and rubbed her stomach. A pang of regret flashed by—how could she have lived not knowing about this all this time? But she quickly shook it off.
Then she walked again.
But when the sun rose to its peak above her head, Fernciana had to admit it—at this rate, she wouldn’t reach Desidiera even by the next day. And the reason she couldn’t pick up speed was due to one thing.
She threw both hands up and smacked her own cheeks hard enough to make a sharp slap.
“Pull yourself together, Fernciana!”
You’re just lonely because you’re alone in this entire world!
But that very phrase—meant to encourage herself—crushed her heart instead. She dropped her head and stared at the dirt road. Dark, round stains were beginning to form on the ground, but she couldn’t bring herself to lift her head.
It felt unjust, miserable, lonely, and unbearable.
If it was because she had lived sixteen years in unthinking happiness, then the divine scales were surely broken. But there was no way to reverse anything. And so, she lived only to hate others, to destroy what they had. She’d spent years sharpening her blade, vowing to kill and erase it all.
But that kind of hatred and murderous intent was like a handleless blade—the tighter you gripped it, the more it cut into your own flesh. Yet she couldn’t let go. All that remained in her was rot, borne of loneliness and hatred.
Then…
She came back.
It felt like God had finally fixed the broken scales. The end of Serelim still weighed heavy in her chest, but she came to realize that his final words had never been a command to hate others. At the end of that tear-filled road, she had found Ilias.
He had scolded her for napping without a blanket, even while gently covering her with one. That small, unassuming kindness had melted her heart completely. It was the first warmth and gentleness she had felt in what seemed like years. For him, it was nothing. That kind of kindness was something he would offer to anyone.
When spring comes at the end of winter and sunlight touches the seed, it doesn’t bloom because the light is special and meant only for that seed. The sun simply shines wherever it pleases—but a seed that survived winter has no choice but to bloom when the time comes.
But she knew well enough: that sun was never hers alone.
‘Just thinking that maybe we were like family—or something like blood kin—was enough to do this to me…’
And if she reached Desidiera only to find nothing of what she had imagined, how deeply disappointed would she be?
Fernciana let out a long sigh, patted her cheeks again, and wiped away her tears.
She hadn’t expected that just thinking of being a little lonely would make her cry like this. She rubbed the tear-stained dirt with the tip of her shoe. And just as she lifted her head—
“Really now, you pushed me away insisting you’d go alone, and now you’re standing here crying by yourself? Hmm?”
“…Eh? …I-Ilias?”
Fernciana’s eyes widened in surprise. In front of her stood Ilias, sweat dripping from his chin, smiling down at her.
*
“Ay, can’t even take his eyes off her.”
“I-It’s not like that~!”
Ilias quickly straightened up after glancing back down the road the carriage had come from. The merchant on the driver’s bench glanced at him.
“That little noble lad—did he say something came up?”
“Yes.”
Ilias nodded with a calm smile. He looked relaxed and unbothered, but even as he answered, his eyes flicked back toward the road the moment he finished speaking. No one was following them, yet he’d been like that for a while.
The merchant had reason to say the boy couldn’t tear his eyes away.
“Looked like a small lad. He could’ve just come with us to Pomilas… Must’ve been in a rush. Said he’s alone?”
“Yes, apparently so.”
“Guess he wasn’t just a hired mercenary, then. You two must’ve been close.”
Ilias chuckled, amused by the merchant’s comment, but the man only shrugged at the reaction. Ilias brushed aside a lock of hair tickling the corner of his eye.
‘Close?’
He thought of Fernciana. Petite frame, round golden eyes. No matter what you said, she never backed down—always firing back confidently—and sometimes she seemed far too mature for her age.
He figured she must have some kind of past. And yet, seeing her try to press on without revealing a single crack in that small frame made it impossible to ignore her.
If they were the same age, he would’ve probably thought of her as a friend. But since she was younger, he naturally saw her more like a younger sibling. When she smiled so easily, he sometimes thought, “Why not just live like that?” But then he’d remember—if she could, she wouldn’t be going all the way to the capital.
Every now and then, when he saw her looking off into the distance alone, he recalled the first time he’d called her name—when she suddenly burst into tears and left him flustered.
Somewhere deep down, he must’ve thought they’d go to the capital together. The way her face turned serious at dawn, saying she had to go a different way—that had shocked him more than he expected.
‘Still… what is a girl going to do all alone out there?’
That thought made Ilias pout slightly. Really, was it so shocking that Fernciana said she’d go her own way? The real shock had been learning that the “boy” he’d trusted so fully was actually a girl.
Looking back, she’d never shown any real commitment to pretending to be a boy. In fact, it was surprising he hadn’t figured it out sooner.
