The hall was deathly quiet.
The royal guards stood silently outside the door.
Inside, only the candle flames dragged their shadows as they swayed.
The night in the Northern Territory was bitterly cold. Chill wind seeped in through the cracks.
The table full of delicacies had already grown slightly cold.
Osha slowly withdrew her hand and sat properly back in her chair.
Yet she continued to gaze sideways at the youth beside her, her eyes filled with tender affection.
Zhe Zilin’s heart had not completely relaxed. Because of this pure trust, the heaviness in his chest only grew stronger.
But he had reasons he could not speak.
The atmosphere fell silent once more. Only the wind whistling through the stone cracks could be heard.
Zhe Zilin stood up and began clearing the table, pacing back and forth between the kitchen and the hall.
When his mind wandered aimlessly, time always slipped away quickly.
By the time he sat down again, his heart had calmed somewhat.
When Zhe Zilin looked at Osha, her gaze had never left him for a single moment.
That sentence “I want to keep looking at you” was not empty words.
Osha was putting it into practice at every moment.
The two of them looked at each other without speaking, silently interpreting the deep meaning hidden in each other’s eyes.
Zhe Zilin took a deep breath and spoke first.
“You have been tense this whole time. Are you afraid?”
Osha did not intend to lie. She nodded honestly.
“I am afraid of losing you again.”
“I never want to experience that feeling a second time. If you disappear from my side again, I think I will destroy everything around me.”
Zhe Zilin knew this was Osha’s nature — extreme gentleness and extreme destruction.
The switch between the two depended solely on Zhe Zilin.
In front of Zhe Zilin, she was a gentle and considerate princess. Her brows and eyes were soft, her tone gentle.
She would crave the warmth of a hot meal, sit quietly with him in silence, and lay bare all her soft vulnerabilities.
If Zhe Zilin disappeared from her side, Osha’s paranoid and destructive personality would spiral out of control.
She would kill anyone who tried to stop her from finding Zhe Zilin. She would kill anyone who took Zhe Zilin away from her.
When she discovered Zhe Zilin’s betrayal, Osha would unhesitatingly choose to die together with him.
Life and death made no difference to Lucifer’s representative.
She even leaned more toward death, because only in death could she stay with Zhe Zilin forever.
It could be said that Zhe Zilin was the switch for Osha’s emotions and personality.
Her gentleness belonged to him alone.
Her paranoia belonged to him alone.
Her destruction and downfall also existed solely for him.
“What are you thinking?”
Seeing that he had remained silent for a long time, Osha asked softly.
Her voice was still gentle, but her fingertips quietly curled inward.
The subtle movement betrayed her hidden unease.
“Ed, you are also afraid, aren’t you?”
Zhe Zilin came back to his senses and looked up at her, nodding.
Osha’s gaze trembled slightly, mixed with a trace of fragile anxiety.
“Are you afraid of me?”
Zhe Zilin shook his head.
Why would he not be afraid of Osha? Probably because he had personally experienced another morbid personality.
In truth, Osha and Ailia’s yandere traits were somewhat similar — both were paranoid and possessive.
When he first experienced it, Zhe Zilin had been completely helpless.
Ailia only wanted him to drink the magic potion so she could shape a version of Zhe Zilin who loved only her.
Osha only wanted to destroy everything and “never separate” from Zhe Zilin.
But the two of them also shared a common foundation.
Zhe Zilin tentatively called it favoritism.
Being favored was supposed to be a happy and pride-worthy thing.
Yet Zhe Zilin had tasted nothing but bitterness from such favoritism.
When the favoritism of two yanderes converged on one person, that was what he was afraid of now.
Countless days and nights, he had thought about running away.
But inside the castle there had been no opportunity, and in the Northern Territory the chances were even slimmer.
Besides, if he ran away, would Ailia and Osha simply let it go?
If he left, both of them would go mad and the world would fall into chaos.
If he stayed, he would be trapped in a cage, unable to control his own fate.
Whether he advanced or retreated, he was trapped in a prison.
Zhe Zilin lowered his eyes, hiding the helplessness in his gaze.
His voice was as light as the evening wind brushing past the candle flame.
“I am only afraid that one wrong step will lead to eternal damnation.”
Osha sensed the melancholy in the youth’s eyes, yet she did not understand why he felt that way.
Her slender fingertips stiffened slightly. Her curled knuckles slowly relaxed.
“Ed, you have become much more silent. I remember before, you were always very humorous and told me many stories.”
“I had never left the royal capital, so you told me about your travels around the world. Back then, your eyes always shone with light. Your smile was always full of sunshine.”
Osha’s voice grew slightly hoarse. Complex emotions surged beneath her gentle gaze.
Zhe Zilin’s expression shifted.
He knew.
They had never intended to hurt him.
Ailia’s imprisonment came from fear of loss. Osha’s destruction came from fear of separation.
Zhe Zilin gently exhaled, suppressing all the chaotic emotions in his heart. He lifted his eyes and looked out the window.
For some reason, he wanted to know how his past self had balanced the relationship between Ailia and Osha.
And it seemed he had kept that scale very steady.
The current situation was something the former Zhe Zilin must have faced before. How had he resolved it?
He turned his head and looked at Osha, wanting to know more about his past self.
“Can you tell me those stories I used to tell you?”
Upon hearing this, Osha was momentarily stunned. Then a soft smile bloomed on her face.
She tilted her head slightly and gazed at the flickering candle flame.
Her thoughts drifted back to the past.
“You said that in the Eastern Plains there was a dense forest that stayed green all year round. Living among the trees were spirit birds covered entirely in colorful feathers.”
“Their calls could travel through the forest and reach a hundred miles away. The streams there were always warm. Even in winter, they never froze. Unknown little flowers grew along the banks. When the wind blew, the entire valley was immersed in floral fragrance.”
She paused. Her gaze returned to Zhe Zilin’s face.
“You also spoke of the endless beaches on the South Island. The tides rose and fell. During the day the sand was warmed by the sun. At night when it cooled, crabs would scurry across the beach. You would always roll up your pant legs and catch a few to roast and eat. You never grew tired of telling stories about going to the sea at night.”
Osha described, word by word, the scenes Zhe Zilin had once told her about.
She remembered.
Back then, Zhe Zilin’s brows and eyes had been full of spirit.
When he spoke of his travels across different lands, the light in his eyes had been dazzlingly bright, as though those mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, and all the myriad aspects of human life were unfolding right before his eyes.
At that time, he had been carefree and unrestrained, witty in conversation. He had never worn the heavy melancholy between his brows like he did now.
Osha gradually fell silent. She looked at Zhe Zilin.
“Back then, you seemed forever free of worries, as if the vastness of heaven and earth was yours to roam. I always loved clinging to you, listening to these stories over and over. I could never get enough.”
“Oh right, I also remember you often said one sentence: ‘As long as I want to walk, the road is beneath my feet!'”
“Back then you always said things I could not quite understand. Things like ‘In the Valley of Fallen Souls the cold wind blows, in spring and autumn the cicadas cry as the youth returns.’ And also ‘I hold the sun and moon in my hands and pluck the stars, there is no one else like me in this world.'”
Zhe Zilin listened quietly.
Those unfamiliar yet familiar lines echoed in his ears.
His heart was filled with mixed emotions.
These experiences and these states of mind felt to him now as though they were separated by a hazy fog.
He could not remember the feelings he had when telling these stories.
Yet the scenes Osha described were so vivid that even that high-spirited version of “himself” gradually took shape in his mind.
How exactly had his past self navigated between Ailia’s and Osha’s extreme forms of favoritism?
Had he deliberately disguised himself, or had he already found a unique way of getting along with them?
Or perhaps back then, he had not yet fallen into the same powerless sense of being trapped in quicksand that he felt now?
“So I used to see so many landscapes.”
Zhe Zilin sighed softly, his tone carrying a trace of melancholy.
“Not only did you see them, you also yearned for freedom.”
When Osha spoke, her expression was full of spirit.
But when she looked at the current Zhe Zilin, she became lost in thought.
“But now you seem trapped by something. You no longer speak of distant places. You no longer laugh and joke. Even the light in your eyes has dimmed considerably.”
Zhe Zilin met her probing gaze. He did not argue. He only pulled up a faint smile.
“Perhaps after seeing too many storms, I lost the enthusiasm I once had.”
“Is it because of me?”
Osha suddenly asked. Her voice lowered.
“Am I too paranoid? Do you feel suffocated?”
Zhe Zilin’s heart softened. He quickly shook his head.
“It has nothing to do with you. It is my own problem. There are too many people and matters involved. I simply cannot control my own fate.”
He could not mention Ailia’s existence.
He could not reveal the dilemma of two morbid forms of favoritism intertwining.
He could only swallow all his difficulties alone.
Zhe Zilin looked at Osha and smiled from the bottom of his heart.
“You are wonderful, Osha.”