Hansel’s Enchanted Fairytale: Fill Me Up With Magic! - Chapter 87
His ashen hair was dull and lifeless. His crimson eyes were shadowed with gloom. He looked like he hadn’t slept in months, not just three days. His lips were dry and chapped, bitten until they were scarred. He seemed thinner, as if he’d lost weight in just a few days.
He lowered his head, as though the weight of it was too much to bear.
Hansel pressed her lips together tightly.
“I’m sorry.”
Tears welled up in his red eyes, but he quickly lowered his gaze and shook his head weakly.
“I’m sorry for deceiving you from the beginning, for lying to you, for hurting you… Dante.”
“……”
“You stood there the whole time, didn’t you? Are you okay? Is your body alright? Are you hurt anywhere? Please tell me.”
Dante kept his gaze fixed on the floor as he cautiously stepped into the room. Each step was like treading on fragile, thin ice that might shatter beneath him. It took him what felt like an eternity to reach Hansel, seated on the bed.
When he finally stood in front of her and their eyes met, he bit down hard on his lip.
Then, his body gave way. He sank to his knees, burying his face against Hansel’s lap as he gently wrapped his arms around her slender waist.
“You…”
His voice cracked, rough and raw.
“You wouldn’t wake up.”
He had almost hurt her—Hansel Arsinoe. He hadn’t known that was her name, but ignorance was no excuse. The fact remained that he’d nearly caused her harm.
But none of that mattered. Whether she lied, ran away, or hurt him, nothing else mattered.
His life had always been one of loneliness. He had never experienced kindness in any form—be it sympathy, friendship, affection, care, or concern. With so little exposure to such emotions, he had no words to define them, let alone the capacity to sort through their nuances.
Until Hansel entered his world, Dante’s life had been a blank slate—a canvas marred by scratches, sketches, crumples, and folds. Every mark on that canvas, every line of meaning, had been drawn by Hansel.
It wasn’t love so much as an obsessive, indelible imprint.
He could still feel the moment she had lost consciousness in his arms as vividly as if it were happening again. He had replayed it countless times over the past three days, but it never dulled.
Each time he dreamed of those horrors, her face overlapped with the nightmare, and his world would come crashing down again, crushing him beneath its weight.
“I… I called your name. I…”
Hansel reached out to gently stroke his hair. Dante’s broad shoulders began to tremble.
“Dante, look at me.”
Hansel cupped his face tenderly in her hands. When he finally raised his head to meet her gaze, his eyes were filled with anguish. His disheveled brows, tear-streaked cheeks, and sharp features, now gaunt from worry, were unrecognizable compared to the stoic mask he usually wore.
It was as if he had become an entirely different person, just as the werewolf had described.
Hansel brushed his damp cheek with soft strokes.
“You did nothing wrong. None of this is your fault. It’s all because of me… I lied to you too much.”
She began to speak, slowly recounting everything from the very beginning without a single lie or omission. It was as if she were confessing, pouring out her sins to him.
The root of all this chaos was, ironically, a simple desire—so basic and banal that it almost felt absurd in hindsight.
“At first, I just wanted my mother’s approval. I… I wanted to be treated as part of the family, like my siblings. That’s where it all started.”
She wanted to prove she wasn’t useless, not a failed lump of dough destined for the trash but capable of rising under the sun. She wanted to believe she had the potential to become something sweet and wholesome, a loaf of bread with value.
She had needed to prove it—not just to her family but to herself. That she wasn’t a disgrace, a failure, or a shame to her family. That her life had worth.
As Hansel opened her eyes, Dante remained silent, watching her with an expression free of blame or resentment.
“But whenever I’m with you, I never had those thoughts.”
Her entire life had been a struggle, like a butterfly flailing in a spider’s web. But sitting in the kitchen, tearing apart freshly baked bread with her bare hands, all her worries had melted away.
It was Dante’s pure, unjudging presence that had saved her.
“I didn’t need to prove anything. I was never a failure. I just didn’t know it.”
The memory of the kitchen, filled with the warm, rich scent of baking bread, surfaced in her mind. She could still hear his deep voice murmuring like music.
You have to see things through to the end to know for sure.
You haven’t ruined anything.
Even then, just as now, a strange, tender warmth had swelled within her, a feeling soft and full like cotton candy. She had swallowed it down, fearing it would spill out as tears.
Dante waited silently as she struggled to keep her emotions in check. He had always been like that—never rushing or pressuring her, always staying by her side and letting her speak at her own pace.
Hansel’s face crumpled into a tearful smile.
“Because I met you, I realized that’s who I am.”
“……”
“I lied, deceived you, ran away, and hurt you, and only then did I understand. I’m sorry. You’ve never hurt me, Dante. It was me who used you, who hurt you. I wanted to be happy… and I used you for it.”
She choked out a trembling laugh, her voice thick with self-loathing.
“I’m nothing but a selfish liar. A weak, cowardly Hansel Arsinoe.”
The bad girl who poked and prodded the lonely, innocent man in the gingerbread house from a fairy tale until he broke.
