Anything But Study - Chapter 70

Just looking at Melia was enough to break Hailon’s heart.

Step. Step.

He slowly approached Melia.

He knew. He knew exactly what Ervan meant to Melia.

More than anyone else, he knew it all too well.

That was why even now… he was still keeping that secret.

“Melia.”

A gentle voice filled with concern settled over her.

Even though he spoke right beside her, making his presence clear, Melia did not turn her head.

Did she even realize it was Hailon, or was she too shocked to hear anything around her?

Or….

Did she know, and was pretending not to?

A strange sense of déjà vu passed through him, but Hailon did not bring it up.

It didn’t matter.

He only needed to approach Melia.

Just as he always had.

“How is Ervan?”

But this time as well, Melia didn’t answer. The reaction was unusual.

Hailon waited for Melia’s answer, forcing himself to push away the ominous premonition that strangely enveloped him.

Her bloodless lips slowly parted.

“…Hailon.”

The voice calling his name was low and cracked. It sounded like the voice of someone who had witnessed the end of the world.

Hailon’s face twisted with worry.

“Yeah, Melia. I’m here.”

Even then, his voice toward her was endlessly gentle.

Normally, Melia’s heart would have fluttered.

But not today.

Melia found it hard to accept that gentleness. She didn’t want to meet his gaze filled with concern.

No, in truth, the thing she hated most was something else.

Even in a moment like this, she still wanted to fall into his arms.

Because she hated being alone, because she wanted to be comforted by him.

She knew well how much strength his embrace gave her.

But Melia drew countless X marks in her mind.

She built a fence around the feelings moving toward him and stopped them from going any further.

Don’t do this. No, Melia.

Continuing a relationship with Hailon Alfred is impossible.

If he really is Calix.

How could she remain lovers with the person who made Ervan like that?

‘Impossible.’

As she endlessly lashed her own heart, Melia deliberately forced a cold expression onto her face.

Thinking of Ervan’s face as he was carried away unconscious.

Yes. Now she had to say it out loud.

“…Hailon. You.”

The voice that came from Melia’s lips was as cold as a blade, a tone Hailon had never heard from her before.

Even when she’d begun by saying she would stop tutoring him, her expression had never looked like that.

‘No way. Melia….’

An inexplicable sense of unease swept over her.

“Do you know the name Calix?”

Bad premonitions always seem to become reality.

Hailon instantly realized that the ‘Calix’ Melia mentioned was not referring to Alfred’s butler, his subordinate.

Melia had found out.

His true identity.

That Hailon Alfred was the same Calix who had lived with her in the orphanage.

And….

That he was the one responsible for leaving her younger brother, Ervan Anderson, bedridden all this time.

“…Melia, wait.”

Hailon grabbed Melia’s hand.

He meant to explain.

He did not deny it.

Unlike what Melia had hoped.

From this moment on, nothing else mattered anymore.

“So you knew everything.”

At that answer, the strength drained completely from her shoulders.

Until the very end, Melia had hoped Hailon would simply say he didn’t know.

She wanted him to ask if she meant his butler’s name, to wonder why she was asking him that.

But the truth was cruel.

“And even so, you pretended not to know and deceived me.”

Her powerless voice carried a chill.

The warm gaze that always looked at him, the shy expression she used to show, none of it remained.

“Because of you, Ervan…!!”

“Melia. So, this is….”

“Go away. I don’t want to see your face.”

Just like back then.

Melia was looking at him with cold eyes.

It was a gaze he never wanted to face again.

“Liar.”

At that single word filled with resentment, Hailon didn’t know what he should say.

Because it was all true.

The fact that he hid her uncle’s debt.

The fact that he did not reveal that he was Calix.

And the truth was… there was still one more secret he couldn’t tell even now.

“So you were Calix. You really made a fool out of me.”

Melia let out a cold, mocking laugh.

“I wonder how it felt watching me blush without knowing anything, watching me fall into your arms.”

Words far sharper than usual slipped from Melia’s mouth.

“Between us.”

Hearing the firm voice, Hailon realized instinctively. There was only one thing she would say next.

“We can’t go back to how things were.”

It was a clear notice of separation.

“Stop the tutoring too. I don’t want to see your face again.”

That she could no longer continue their relationship as lovers.

“I’m leaving.”

Melia’s back turned sharply. Colder than the wind blowing in from outside.

Watching her leave, Hailon couldn’t bring himself to stop her.

How could someone who nearly took the life of her most precious family remain beside her as a lover?

He understood that feeling a hundred times over.

Left alone, Hailon slowly closed his eyes. Hoping that when he opened them again, all of this would be a short dream, and in truth, nothing had happened.

But cruel reality did not leave Hailon and remained exactly as it was.

Only now did regret fill his heart.

If he’d told her from the beginning that he was Calix, would things be different now?

If he’d asked for forgiveness long ago.

If she’d discovered everything while her brother Ervan’s condition was even a little better.

Countless possibilities filled his mind.

“Ha, as if.”

The countless assumptions he had built up collapsed all at once.

A hollow laugh slipped from Hailon’s lips. It would not have been better than now.

From the beginning, he probably would never even have had the chance to form a deep relationship with her.

If that had happened, he would never have seen your smile again.

Hailon bit his lower lip.

Then perhaps the present, where he could at least share a few memories with her, was the best choice he had.

Because in the end, nothing about the result would have changed.

Thinking that, he forced down the sorrow in his heart.

***

Several days passed.

Melia stayed constantly by Ervan’s side, barely attending the academy.

Her position as top student, her work as the library assistant, everything she had done was for Ervan. Without him, none of it meant anything.

“Ervan.”

Hoping her younger brother might wake up, she called his name, but his closed eyes did not open.

Melia slowly lifted her hand and brushed across her brother’s face. It seemed to be growing thinner and thinner. That pained her deeply.

Will he be able to wake up like this?

Melia’s face was just as gaunt, but she paid no attention to herself.

Silence filled the quiet hospital room.

When not even the slightest sound could be heard, that stillness inevitably invited unwanted thoughts.

Why was it that Hailon’s face came to mind again of all times?

The way he simply accepted it without even trying once to stop her when she told him they were breaking up….

And yet the black eyes looking at her had held such deep sorrow.

A liar, and yet. Why?

‘No, what am I doing?’

Ervan’s sleeping face entered her sight again. Looking down at her younger brother, Melia shook her head.

“I’m sorry, Ervan.”

She could never tell her brother that she had once been lovers, even for a short time, with the man who made him like this.

So continuing a relationship with him while knowing all of this was impossible from the beginning.

‘Don’t think about it anymore.’

But the more she tried to push it away, the memories did not sink. They only surfaced even more clearly.

In the end, this hospital also belonged to Alfred, didn’t it? Everywhere there were traces that reminded her of him.

Hailon had already become too large a presence in Melia’s life.

But if she left this place, there would be no way to treat Ervan, so she couldn’t move her brother somewhere else just because thinking of Hailon hurt.

Her heart and mind were both in complete disarray.

‘I don’t know either.’

Why she felt such complicated emotions.

…Why, even now, she actually wanted to see Hailon.

But she had already told him they were breaking up, and there was no turning back now.

Maybe it was for the best.

You were anxious too, weren’t you? Even yourself.

Even after becoming lovers with him, you kept wondering whether the relationship could really continue, whether it was only a relationship with an ending already in sight.

Yes, this is right. Everything is simply returning to where it belongs.

Melia murmured to herself as if hypnotizing her own mind.