Chapter 79: Where Happiness Begins (Grand Finale)

"Aurora, Aurora..."

In the darkness, a voice was calling persistently.

It seemed as though a long, long time had passed...

"Aurora, why won't you wake up?"

In the darkness, someone kept murmuring in my ear.

Those cold, slimy tentacles in my nightmare suddenly retreated as if startled...

When I opened my eyes, I saw a pair of deep blue eyes.

It was Alastor.

I was still shaken from the nightmare.

"In the darkness, I heard your voice. What did you say?" Looking at Alastor, I was curious as to why those vines in my nightmare had suddenly vanished.

"I said... 'Hey, no matter who you are or what you are, you’d better give her back to me, because... for her, there is nothing I won't do.'"

Alastor spoke with absolute seriousness.

My eyes went wide, and I raised my hand to give him a playful punch.

He burst into laughter.

I found myself lying on the bed in the Candy House. Everything that had happened in the Celestial Realm made me wonder if it had all been just a dream.

In the dream, Samael was willing to be nailed to a cross and face judgment for Lilith.

In the dream, Cass's hand gripped mine tightly, holding on with the last shred of his consciousness...

In the dream, I was sacrificed to those monsters by Hino Umaba...

Turning my head to look out the window, the darkness had gradually dissipated, and the first ray of morning sunlight broke through the clouds in the east.

"Alastor, I had a dream," I started, my voice very soft. "Such a strange dream."

"I dreamed I died, and then... you died too. Samael was nailed to a cross to save me... Hehe, how could that terrifying Great Demon King ever do something like that..." I lowered my head and laughed.

Alastor smiled but remained silent.

"How long have I been asleep?"

"Twenty-one years."

Twenty-one years?

I froze.

After a long pause, I forced a stiff tug at the corners of my mouth. "Are you joking?"

"Alastor... Alastor..." A sweet, lively voice suddenly rang out from outside the door. The door was flung open, and a girl in a mini-skirt came running in quite boldly.

"Who... is she?" I looked at the girl who had burst into my room. Though she looked somewhat familiar, I was certain I had never met her.

"Eh? You're awake?" The girl wasn't shy at all. She walked over and sat down right next to me, turning her head to study me intently. "I’ve never seen you with your eyes open before."

I was utterly confused and couldn't help asking, "Who are you?"

"Let me tell you, I like Alastor! Even though the person Alastor likes now is you, and even though he waited for you for so long, I’m declaring war! I have the confidence to make Alastor fall in love with me!" The girl completely ignored my question and pointed at Alastor, announcing her declaration of love.

I couldn't help but roll my eyes at Alastor. That flirtatious scoundrel—his talent for attracting "stray flowers" was only getting stronger.

"Don't misunderstand, don't misunderstand! She is the daughter of Kaan Tung and Usan!" Alastor shouted his explanation, desperate to clear his name.

Hearing this, the girl puffed out her cheeks slightly and glared at Alastor in a huff.

The daughter of Kaan Tung and Usan?!

My eyes widened in shock. When did they have a daughter? And she was already this big?

"Mercy! Stop making trouble," Kaan Tung’s voice sounded from the doorway.

I looked up at Kaan Tung standing at the door. Her appearance was no different than before. If twenty-one years had truly passed, was it because of her half-demon nature that her beauty remained untouched by time?

Twenty-one years... what did that even mean?

Usan stood beside her, looking at me with a gaze filled with guilt.

"I’m sorry." He walked to my side and knelt on one knee.

I laughed and helped him up. "What’s wrong?"

The proud Wolf King had actually learned to apologize.

"I’m sorry. If it weren't for my misunderstanding, if I hadn't failed to believe you, you wouldn't have fallen into that monster's trap..." Kaan Tung began to shed tears.

I felt my head spinning and said hurriedly, "Don't cry, don't cry! I’m still completely in the dark here. How did twenty-one years pass so mysteriously? And your daughter is already this grown up?"

Usan glanced at Alastor. "You haven't told her?"

I blinked, completely out of the loop. "What happened?"

Everyone fell into a collective silence.

"You've slept for so long, you must be hungry." Alastor walked to my side, pulled me into his arms, and gently pressed my head against his neck.

Held by him, I blinked in bewilderment.

"Having slept for so long, my blood can help you recover your strength," he whispered.

I was indeed hungry. After a moment of hesitation, I leaned in and bit down.

"Samael is gone," Alastor spoke softly into my ear.

I froze slightly, and a scene flashed through my mind like a bolt of lightning.

I wanted to push him away, I wanted to ask him, but Alastor held me tightly and refused to let go.

"He said he would disappear with all the sins, so that you could remain yourself..."

Hino Umaba had sealed the spirit of the monster inside my body, and Samael couldn't even kill the monster, because it and I existed as a single entity. But if the monster were allowed to continue growing within me under the influence of Hino Umaba's resentful spirit, it would eventually devour me.

It was an impossible dilemma.

I was the one trapped in the predicament, yet Samael bore all the sins for me.

Samael left. He sealed Hino Umaba’s spirit in the Dark Kingdom beyond the Three Realms. He made a covenant with God to never step foot out of the Dark Kingdom again.

I leaned against Alastor’s neck as icy tears slowly meandered down my face...

He said: Just let me disappear forever with all the sins, so that you can remain yourself.

He carried all the sins in my stead.

He made a covenant with God, accepted judgment on my behalf, neutralized the catastrophe of the world's end, and from then on belonged to the Dark Kingdom—forsaking the light and falling into eternal darkness.

From that moment on, he was sealed in the Dark Kingdom, unable to take a single step out.

That arrogant and petty Demon King... he once said he would never permit my betrayal.

He once said he wanted to take me home. He said that the Dark Kingdom beyond the Three Realms was my home, the place where I belonged.

But now, he was sealed there all alone.

He always stubbornly insisted that I was his wife.

...So rightfully, so arrogantly.

He said he could sense my power—in the Celestial Realm, the human realm, or the Demon Realm—no matter where I was, he could find me.

In truth, I hated him. I hated his self-righteousness, and I hated how he expected the existence of another person from me. So, I kept running away, and then... he would come to catch me, like a game of cat and mouse that he never tired of.

But now, he had let go.

So suddenly... he had let go.

Back then, I told Usan: do not wait until you have lost someone to understand how to cherish them.

And now? He was sealed alone in the Dark Kingdom. From now on, he did not exist in the Celestial Realm, the human realm, or the Demon Realm. He would never come to catch me again...

Once, there was a human who gave me the sweetness and warmth of a White Rabbit creamy candy.

But there was a Demon King who opened a candy house for me.

That Demon King was silly. He thought quantity was the way to win. Because I was moved by the warmth of a single candy, he opened a candy house for me and filled an entire room with sweets.

But at that time, I didn't understand.

In the days after Cass left, he arrived so unexpectedly and stayed by my side.

After Cass suddenly disappeared, I, who had to work hard to learn self-reliance, had no identification documents whatsoever. In the human world, those written documents are precisely the signs of a person’s identity and existence. But I had none; I was as if I had popped out of a crack in a rock, so silent and trace-free... Back then, even Cass, the only one who could prove my existence, had left me.

No company dared to hire me. Just as I was hitting a wall everywhere in my job hunt, a youth named Samael stood before me as if falling from the sky.

With eyes as black as ink and filled with indifference, the youth said: "New shop opening. Free samples."

At that time, I was overjoyed. What a stroke of luck.

I was the first guest of the Candy House, and Samael was the most irresponsible boss. I remember he brewed his own coffee, sat at the bar, and drank it with such concentration that he didn't even lift an eyelid. I really couldn't stand it and offered a word of advice.

He then looked at me. "Do you want to work here?"

What a careless inquiry, what a casual question...

Marveling at my own dumb luck, I finally found the first job of my life.

Thinking back now, what an abrupt sentence that was. Busy as I was searching for work, I didn't realize what kind of expectation and tension were hidden within that seemingly careless question.

He hid it too well.

And I was too stupid.

That simple sentence carried an indifferent yet bone-deep emotion.

Samael had finally found his Lilith, but Lilith had forgotten her Samael.

Back then, at the Splendid Candy House, he would appear in the shop at exactly ten o'clock every day. He would sit alone at the bar by the window, brew a cup of coffee, and sit there blankly for the entire day. Unless necessary, he would never say a single word.

At the time, I didn't understand. Actually... that was also a kind of indifferent tenderness... a gentle companionship.

He kept waiting, waiting for me to awaken.

He said: Lilith would never fail to remember Samael.

Such a certain tone, yet such a plain sentence.

But it turns out... plainness can be an emotion sublimated to the extreme. Under the entanglement of thousands of years, all words seem impoverished and insufficient to describe it.

I don't remember why Lilith and Samael fell from heaven, or why they turned from angels into demons.

I don't remember.

I don't remember any of it.

To this day, I don't even know what kind of earth-shaking story existed between him and me, or if there were vows spanning life after life.

He waited so long for Lilith's awakening.

...With that kind of quiet, underlying tenderness.

But until the very end, he still never got his Lilith.

If I had never met Cass, if it had been Samael who found me first from the start, would I have been able to appreciate Samael’s awkward tenderness?

Alastor’s hand gently patted my back.

"Alastor..."

"Hmm?"

"At the moment I died, I was thinking... would that idiot Alastor regret forming a blood contract with me..."

"Yes, I regretted it." He pushed me back so I could see those deep blue eyes clearly. "I regretted forming the blood covenant, because when you were in the most danger, I couldn't help at all. I could only watch you fall into darkness."

I looked at him and said nothing.

The blue eyes had lost their usual cynical playfulness. He looked at me and said, "Aurora, I will look into your eyes and guard you for the rest of my life."

"I will always stay by your side and be good to you forever..."

"If being good to you is a sin, I don't mind committing that crime forever, until the day I turn to ash..."

When I walked out of the Candy House, the sunlight outside was brilliant.

I narrowed my eyes slightly and raised my hand to block the fierce sun overhead.

"Now, has happiness finally begun?"

"Yes, it has begun," Alastor said with a smile.

A breeze brushed past, and the wind chimes of the Candy House made a series of crisp sounds. I looked back at the bar by the window, as if seeing an indifferent youth holding a cup of coffee, gazing longingly toward the counter.

That spot was my favorite place to stay...