/
“Don’t make fun of me.”
I smiled. He squished my cheeks together, making me look ridiculous. “… Tch. Cheeky.”
Kaichen then put his face near me and mumbled something. Face flushed and ears red, he let go of me and walked away with long strides. My heart pounded erratically as heat rushed to my face. What he had murmured in a low voice continued to ring in my ears.
‘I’m going crazy… how do you manage to charm me like this every time?’
Even though the snowstorm had stopped, the air was still cold, yet my face was so hot that I thought steam would rise from my body. Jealous Kaichen was cute, but when he looked at me with barely repressed irritation, he looked unberably sexy.
“He’s crazy!” Julius suddenly said from the side. He was laughing until he was wheezing. By the rotten look on Kaichen’s face, he must’ve heard Julius. “Can you believe how crazy he is these days?”
I looked at him, frowning. “Huh? Isn’t it cute?”
“…This is why people say love drives you crazy. Turns out there were two crazy people, not one.” Julius shook his head quietly and walked forwards.
Well, he wasn’t wrong. Love was bound to make me crazy since I couldn’t think of anyone but him. I couldn’t live for anyone but him.
*
“I thought I could use magic if I came closer, but it still won’t budge.”
Julius touched the tightly closed gate. His hand couldn’t even reach it, as if it was blocked with an invisible barrier. I smiled bitterly at Julius. It was a familiar sight. I’d been experiencing this for hundreds of years. I’ve always felt hopeless being blocked like that.
I stretched out my hand.
Clang.
“…Huh?”
Naturally, I thought my hand would be blocked like Julius, but it went in smoothly as if I was dipping my hand in water. I pulled my hand out and took a step back, surprised. My eyes widened and my mouth hung slightly ajar. I caught Julius’ gaze as he looked back and forth and the gate and me with an expression similar to mine.
When I first stepped foot into this place, the air felt familiar around me. It made me realise that Hoiore was trapped in time magic.
Swallowing, I clutched the metal once more. My hand reached it.
“Your Highness… I think I can enter through here.”
Kaichen had said before that I had a talent for time magic. Since I’d been a medium before, I’d surely be more familiar with time magic than anyone else. And perhaps, that was why the time magic that enveloped Hoiore didn’t reject me.
As if it thought that I was a part of the time magic.
*
‘I’ll go in,’ I thought as I looked around the fields of snow basked in sun. The quiet Hoiore where the snowstorm stopped. ‘Perhaps I could use my magic skilfully here.’
The thoughts grew stronger as we approached the Hoiore castle. The familiar yet heavy air, which I did not want to think about, was not much different from Acrab back when the days repeated, whether they were a hundred or just one.
We laid thick blankets on the ground and sat on them. The silence was heavy with our grim expressions.
“You know there’s no other way.”
Like Chushinik, Julius and Kaichen couldn’t cross through walls or open gates. But I was able to get into Hoiore. It was like a bridge on a cut-off road. Kaichen won’t allow this, and Julius couldn’t bring himself to accept it, so we couldn’t come to an agreement.
“I could destroy the magic from the inside,” I offered.
“It’s too uncertain.”
“My magic comes from time magic. It doesn’t work here, but it will. Inside.”
“…Dalia.”
“It’s true. I’m sure of it. I used magic inside Acrab too.”
Although I couldn’t use communication magic or telekinesis since I didn’t know much about them, I was able to use the basic magic that I’d learned casually.
The mana accumulated in twisted time was different. Kaichen had said that my mana was very dense, unlike normal mana. Since I had accumulated it for a hundred years, I told Kaichen that my mana would exceed his. Although it seems far-fetched, since I can’t use magic as skilfully as Kaichen.
Regardless, I had an advantage of using strong magic with a high concentration of mana.
“It could be dangerous. More importantly, you’ve never even destroyed magic before…” he said.
I exhaled a shaky breath. “I could try now.”
“Haa…”
Kaichen turned to look at me. Worry and helplessness was etched in his face, as if he knew that I wouldn’t listen to him if he tried to stop me. He knew me better than anyone else: in my stubbornness, I wouldn’t give in.
“Do you even know how to destroy magic?” asked Julius in a heavy, defeated voice.
I understood Kaichen stopping me because he cared about me, but I didn’t understand why Julius was against it.
“I’ve learnt it from Master before,” I answered.
“We don’t know what type of time magic is being activated here,” he replied.
“Yes.”
“If anything happens on the inside, we can’t help you.”
“That seems to be the case.”
“And yet you still want to go in?”
I nodded in response to his serious question. “Of course.”