The Esper Grand Duke Wishes For Purity - Chapter 9
Heejae stared in a daze for a moment before getting up and climbing out of bed. The thick rug spread out just below the bed was animal fur. The long hairs poking between his toes were unbelievably soft.
The clothes he was wearing were unfamiliar too. The wide, light-colored fabric was subtly embroidered. Everything was ornate and old-fashioned.
The room looked as if it had been decorated by someone truly obsessed with a particular concept—everything was perfectly in place. What he’d thought was an LED-decorated fireplace actually gave off real heat from its blue flames.
Above it, on the wall, hung a giant tapestry depicting a black dragon flying over a jagged pine forest.
‘Feels like I’ve been dropped straight into some kind of European mythology…’
So, was this somewhere in Eastern Europe, or Northern Europe? If the language was from there, it would make sense for it to sound so foreign.
Maybe they brought him here to treat him after he lost consciousness in theGate. Heejae frowned.
That made no sense… Why bring him so far, when there were excellent hospitals back home?
A creeping sense of anxiety began to rise, prickling the back of his neck. Heejae slowly circled the thickly carpeted room, then walked over to the window.
“……”
Heejae was left speechless by the sight beyond the window.
Endless pine forests stretched out before him. In the distance, beyond the woods, stood white, jagged gray mountains capped with perpetual snow. Deep valleys gaped between the giant mountains, and through those valleys flowed water all the way down to the castle where Heejae was now. The meltwater from glaciers sparkled emerald green.
The wide valley between the mountains was filled with a black wall. At a glance, it looked like a dam, but it was so huge it seemed to reach the sky.
Shaken by the unfamiliar landscape, Heejae stumbled away from the window. But that wasn’t all. The reflection in the dark glass, showing the Obsidian Forest, shocked Heejae even further.
‘What is going on?’
He could maybe blame the bright brown hair on some kind of overnight bleaching, but how could he explain the striking amber eyes?
He stood there, touching his unfamiliar face in the glass for a long while, when suddenly the door behind him opened—the same direction the man from earlier had run out. Heejae turned reflexively and, overjoyed, shouted,
[Sehyeon hyung!]
He was so happy to see him walk in alive and well that he forgot everything else. The long cloak draped over one shoulder, the pitch-black uniform, the longsword hanging at his side.
Heejae ran to him, out of breath, and threw himself into a tight hug. With a 98% matching rate, even his scent was different. His body, overjoyed to encounter a familiar presence, trembled in happiness. Warmth spread from his heart outward.
This feeling was real. Not a hallucination, not a fantasy—definitely real.
[Hyung, you’re alive! I’m so glad.]
Relieved, he rubbed his cheek against Sehyeon’s chest, but Sehyeon gently pried Heejae away by the shoulders. The touch was gentle but firm. His black eyes wandered restlessly over Heejae’s face. Only then did Heejae remember that both his hair and eyes had changed.
The matching rate had dropped, his imprint had broken, and for a while, he’d even lost his guiding ability. They said it all happened because his matching Esper died.
But wasn’t Sehyeon standing right here, alive and well? After healing those shocking injuries last night, maybe he’d just overdone it with the guiding and lost his pigments as a result. That’s what Heejae told himself. As long as Sehyeon was alive, nothing else mattered.
[When I woke up, my hair was like this. I don’t know why. Anyway, hyung, can you explain what’s going on? Everyone must be so…]
Heejae babbled, looking up at Sehyeon, whose brow furrowed deeply. Sehyeon tilted his head, then parted those handsome lips.
“…Ren. Why are you speaking a foreign tongue?”
The voice was still as pleasant as ever, but Heejae couldn’t understand a word.
Only then did Heejae realize something was wrong. He unconsciously took a step back, finally noticing Sehyeon’s clothing. A uniform of all black, a blood-red cloak.
This isn’t Sehyeon hyung.
