PCP – 107

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Damia nodded.

“It’s not a big deal, but… … It’s a thank you gift in return.”

At those words, Akkard unwrapped the gift wrap. He asked as he looked around for the handkerchief that came out.

“It’s our family coat of arms. Did you embroider it yourself?”

“Yes. Is it agreeable… … ?”

Damia asked, slightly nervous.

Akkard was a man who lived his life only seeing all kinds of sophisticated art forms in high society in the capital. She had no idea how her gift would be regarded by those set of eyes with such high standards.

Akkard didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he smiled brightly.

“Thank you.”

The corners of his charming lips were raised to the sides, and his eyes wrapped in pure white eyelashes curled nicely. Looking down at Akkard’s smiling lips, Damia realized:

He was pretending to be happy now.

‘Are handmade gifts too burdensome?’

Akkard broke his gaze and didn’t make eye contact with her. All he wanted now is to keep some distance from Damia.

‘This woman keeps making me weird,’

he realized. He knew he was a little strange now and somewhere something was changing. Apparently, the lust he felt for Damia had gone too far, so his mind was being swayed.

He thought that this feeling could never be love. Akkard Valerian was a devotee to loving no one but himself.

Each person was born differently. Some craved affection, and others suffered from loneliness.

Likewise, he was selfish by birth. And women, unfortunately, wanted something that he could never give. He knew he wouldn’t be able to even listen to their desires so emotional entanglements were even more annoying.

He admitted that he failed to control his distance from Damia Primula. So he decided to readjust the ‘safe distance’ again.

“Do you have any other business?”

He asked as he got up and put on his clothes. He was smiling, but there was a chilly air as if drawing a clear boundary and trying to shake her off.

There was no way Damia couldn’t have felt it. Whiplash. She clearly witnessed this man who had been seducing and pursuing her like a dog in heat just moments before, turning cold right after their tryst ended.

‘Ah.’

This is how it feels. Being pushed away by a man with whom you’ve just mixed bodies with.

It was a more miserable feeling than she expected. Damia lowered her eyes and quietly adjusted her clothes.

How very strange. Until a few hours ago, when she had looked in the mirror in the parlor, she thought she was beautiful. But now, she felt squalid and shabby, like the seed of a grape that one had spit out.

There was no way that she had changed that much but it was only because the attitude of the man in front of her had changed that much.

“… … No. There is nothing else.”

She felt fortunate that she didn’t love him. Otherwise, not only would her self-esteem be suffering like now but so would have her heart.

Damia was genuinely relieved by this fact. She, with a blunt attitude, embraced his egotistical condescending spirit.

“I delivered your present, so I’ll get going. I apologize for coming without notice.”

“Yes. See you later.”

Akkard, wearing a shirt with an open front, leaned against the door of the drawing room and bid her farewell briefly. He was just as beautiful as an angel, with beautiful silver hair curled and messed up on his straight forehead. But his eyes looking at Damia was full of guarded indifference.

So Damia felt the abrupt change and sense of alienation that could not be expressed in words. Could those cold eyes once have been warm belonging to someone that had passionately coveted her?

Due to the extreme change, she felt she was observing a stranger she didn’t know at all. So Damia realized it all over again.

‘Ah, as expected, it will never work with this man.’

Damia couldn’t grasp his selfish sense of distance. When she had pushed him away, he had approached her with so much avidity, but when she tried to hold his outstretched hand, he backed away.

A sense of distance that really depends solely on his capricious whims, with no consideration for the other party at all. So, a relationship only worthy of just one night playing with fire.

‘Indeed, I must have done something wrong.’

I can’t believe you handed a gift you made by yourself to a man who doesn’t even want it. How very stupid of me.

Damia was stabbed while embroidering, and smiled bitterly as she swept her still burning fingertips. This is why she was never loved.

‘Afterall, I’m such a fool.’

Her sincerity was too heavy and banal. Men, including her first love, Kael, were usually burdened by this.

It would have been especially true for a man like Akkard who did not want to be tied to a woman. He and her were types that could not mix, like water and oil.

The only thing they could do was forcefully stir with their bodies for a while. Even that will be completely separated by a boundary once their relationship of mixing and shaking bodies is over. As if they had never mixed in the first place.

[t1v: ouch….]