Chapter 119: Regretfully, I Couldn't Be Your Male Lead
On the mountaintop in the outskirts of Royal City.
The sea breeze carried the dusk, rustling Rast’s clothes with a hunting flutter.
The boy and the girl simply sat at the edge of the cliff, with the sea below dyed red by the glow of sunset.
Rast spoke, while Helen quietly listened by his side.
"As far as I know, most people join the Shoreguards not for those seemingly noble reasons."
"To seek shelter, to obtain a better life, to become extraordinary and stand above others... The vast majority of Shoreguards began with nothing more than such selfish motives."
"Only through battle, sacrifice, and death did they gradually change their thinking, and eventually transform into qualified Shoreguards."
"This is the growth path for most Shoreguards."
Rast's words echoed in the sea breeze: "But I was different from them."
"At first, it was because of the smile of the woman who rescued me from the ruins..."
"That smile was so blissful that it sparked longing and admiration in my heart without me even realizing it."
"But what truly made me a Shoreguard were the experiences that followed."
He glanced at Helen beside him, her lovely face bathed in the orange-red glow of the sunset as she listened attentively.
"Just as you've never left that palace in the center of the Royal City since birth, spending hundreds of years in an unchanging time..."
"I too had a similar experience… I was trapped in a port city for three hundred years, no matter how I struggled, I could never escape that endlessly repeating same day."
"So, in that frozen time that could never move forward—reality lost its meaning to me. I began to lose my sense of being alive, treating everyone in that city as NPCs rather than living people... I started to indulge in my desires and chase thrills."
"Gradually, my memories became fragmented, and my sense of self began to collapse... Even when I could recall past memories, I couldn’t tell whether they were real or just hallucinations I imagined."
"I couldn’t tell anymore… whether I was truly born in the border town of Canaan, lived a normal childhood, and then came to Deep Blue Port due to some accident; or if I had always been part of Deep Blue Port and the memory of Canaan was merely a fictional fantasy I made up; or perhaps Deep Blue Port was just a hyper-realistic virtual game, and I was nothing more than a glitched program that accidentally gained self-awareness."
"In that state, my admiration for the Shoreguards began to change."
"Like a drowning man clinging to a life-saving straw, I treated that admiration as proof... As long as I remembered that smile and still felt a longing and excitement for 'becoming a Shoreguard' in my heart, then the self called 'Rast' still existed. That was the evidence I hadn’t given up, the proof that I hadn’t abandoned myself."
Rast gazed at the setting sun on the horizon. "That’s the full story of me and the Shoreguards."
This was the first time he had so openly revealed his inner thoughts during his time in Deep Blue Port, even more candid than when he spoke with Shiltina back then.
Because others couldn’t understand the feeling of having their life frozen in the same day for hundreds of years.
No matter how much they imagined, how hard they tried to empathize, it was still just fantasy... Without having experienced it themselves, they could never truly share Rast's feelings.
But Helen was different.
Monotonous time, a life paused for hundreds of years… this Queen of the Underworld had experienced it herself.
So Helen understood—she understood how a person like Rast, who could only watch helplessly as his memories faded and his sense of self eroded, could become so desperate, so hysterical in clinging to that life-saving straw.
Just as she had always treated the old fairy tale books left by her mother as priceless treasures in her own life.
To a prisoner locked in a cage, it was the only light in hundreds of years of life, the meaning of existence, the proof that one was still alive.
Memories washed away by time, self gradually worn down... Hundreds of years passed, and aside from that unwavering obsession, those prisoners of time had long become empty—both in body and spirit.
「So lucky.」
Pale, slender fingers danced in the air, writing out icy-blue letters.
Rast looked at the delicate handwriting: "What do you mean by lucky?"
「Because no matter how dark your past was... Rast, you still managed to escape that place called Deep Blue Port, didn’t you?」
The girl tilted her head, and her smooth, icy-blue hair fell with the motion.
「Whether it was realizing your childhood dream of becoming a Shoreguard, or forming your own squad and coming to my city…」
「Those are all beautiful things you could never have experienced inside that cage. They're worth feeling fortunate about.」
「And, for me too.」
The icy-blue letters paused slightly in their writing.
「Being able to see you in that maid selection half a month ago.」
「Being able to encounter you, to meet you...」
「That is the luckiest thing in my life.」
In the glow of sunset, Helen’s dark purple eyes were no longer shrouded by lifeless mist…
They had become vivid, as if lit by fire.
This was the confession of her heart.
Because she met the boy in front of her, the canary trapped in the cage opened her window for the first time, catching a glimpse of sunlight.
Because she encountered Rast, the caged bird summoned the courage for the first time, leaping out of the cage and peeking at the world outside.
Also, because of her meeting with Rast—
Helen's life, which had been a monotonous black-and-white sketch, was finally dyed with color.
To Helen, the moment she and Rast set out on their journey—
It was as if all the light in the world had gathered by her side. It was a dreamlike journey bathed in sunlight.
…
The sun continued to sink.
Originally, half of the sun’s corona could still be seen on the horizon, but soon, less than a quarter remained.
In less than five minutes, the sun would completely disappear, and the long night would blanket the world.
The night grew thicker.
Not far away, the forest swaying in the wind gradually shifted from dark crimson to a red-black hue.
In the time that remained, neither Helen nor Rast spoke again.
The two of them simply sat in silence atop the cliff, watching the scenery before them.
A long time passed, and then Helen, as if having made a decision, slowly rose to her feet from the high cliff.
Icy-blue specks of light surged between her fingertips… then converged into a slightly worn book.
Helen carefully picked up the book as though it were a treasure.
Then, she placed it in Rast’s hand.
「This is my gift in return.」
The icy-blue letters shimmered in the air.
The moment the book landed in his hand, Rast knew where it came from.
On the book’s cover was a color illustration of a young knight wielding a silver sword and a witch girl shrouded in black mist. The fairy tale’s cover was mottled and cracked with age.
《Chronicles of the Silver Wing》。
Not the revised copy Rast had personally rewritten and gifted Helen before.
But the original version—an heirloom from Helen’s mother, the previous Queen of the Underworld.
It was Helen’s favorite fairy tale book and the proof that she had not abandoned herself during those hundreds of years.
And now, she had given it to Rast.
In that instant, Rast understood Helen’s heart.
The original 《Chronicles of the Silver Wing》 represented the first half of her life.
And what Helen wanted to entrust to him now… was the latter half.
Not far away, Helen took two steps back after handing over the fairy tale book.
Until she stood at the very edge of the cliff.
Her lotus-like skirt fluttered in the mountain wind.
Helen stood on the edge in woolen ankle boots, her thighs pale and slender, marked with graceful lines.
She turned around, her back to the steep cliff, icy-blue hair swaying in the wind, arms stretched open, eyes fixed on the boy before her.
Her crimson lips trembled, and Rast heard a voice echo by his ear.
It wasn’t written text—it was words spoken by Helen herself.
Her voice was soft and pleasant, mingling with the evening breeze, reminding Rast of a midnight wind chime’s chime:
“Rast, am I really evil?”
This was a line from 《Chronicles of the Silver Wing》.
In the final scene of the fairy tale, the lonely poisonous witch who brought plague to the world stood at the edge of the cliff and asked the male lead this very question.
And now, that scene from the fairy tale had descended into reality.