The Villain’s Aide Has Run Away - Chapter 1.1
This was not the outcome he had wished for.
His breathing was ragged, yet Leslun forced his legs to keep moving.
The forest was dark, the ground sodden and slippery with rain. At any moment, it felt as though someone might leap out and seize his throat.
“You ran from me… only to end up here?”
It was just as he paused for a breath. A blade-like voice brushed the nape of Leslun’s neck.
He deliberately refused to look back. Instead, he forced down a dry swallow and fixed his eyes forward as he broke into another run.
“Leslun!”
The voice calling after him drew closer and closer. Even above the roar of the heavy rain, it rang out sharp and clear.
Suddenly, a wild animal darted across his vision. Reflexively flinching, he stumbled, and his foot plunged deep into a muddy pit.
“Ugh!”
His body wavered as he lost balance.
A hand reached out desperately toward his small frame, teetering forward. Soon, a firm grip seized his arm.
But it was too late to stop the fall. Slowly, Leslun realized his body was giving way, collapsing under its own momentum.
When he came back to his senses, he was already rolling on the ground. Yet strangely, there was no pain at all.
“Ah…! Your Highness!”
Leslun turned to the one who had fallen with him while still holding him close. His fine garments, proclaiming his noble rank, were soaked through with mud and rain.
Had he been injured in the fall? The Crown Prince clutched one arm tightly, his head bowed as though in discomfort.
Tears welled in Leslun’s eyes.
“A-are you all right?”
“…Got you.”
Before Leslun could even think of running again, Kailos pulled him swiftly into his arms. As if caught in a flawless trap, Leslun could not move an inch.
“You’re the first to make me look like this.”
His words were sharp, yet his voice carried unmistakable relief.
“You’re no rabbit… At this rate, my heart will burst.”
Captured once more.
And in that moment, Leslun felt a faint sense of relief that he had not been hurt. Kailos’s warmth was searingly vivid.
Looking down at Leslun in his arms, the Crown Prince brushed a rain-soaked hand along his cheek.
“My heart beats faster and faster. Don’t tell me you ran away… only to miss me in the end?”
The voice was tender to the point of cruelty. A shiver ran down Leslun’s spine. Kailos tilted his chin upward.
“Ahh… Kail.”
His legs had stopped, but the tears would not.
“You fled from my arms, and now you call my name like that?”
Rain streamed down Kailos’s pale skin. Just before Leslun’s eyes, he saw the wet lashes, the glistening gaze, and the sorrowful smile at the corners of his lips.
“If you’re only saying it to please me… as expected, my aide is clever.”
The most exalted person in the empire, revered by all, feared even more.
The man fated, as the final villain of the tale, to meet a lonely and tragic end.
And the man to whom Leslun had given all of his firsts, stood before him now.
“But I… I want to run away.”
“Is it that you hate me, or that you want to play at running away?”
The question pierced him to the core.
Leslun’s only wish was for him not to meet that predetermined end. Yet if he stayed here by his side, the same tragedy as in the novel would surely come.
That was why Leslun had fled.
“For a lovers’ game of chase, it seems we picked the wrong day. Let’s choose another, and play again.”
The Crown Prince, Kailos, spoke as though he were willing to forgive every one of Leslun’s transgressions.
Then, without warning, he swept Leslun into his arms. The foot trapped in the mud slipped free with ease.
Instead of pushing him away, Leslun wrapped his arms around the Crown Prince’s neck, clinging to him as if surrendering. Their bodies pressed close together.
In place of the cold night air, the warmth against him made him relax despite himself. Almost instinctively, as he had grown accustomed to, Leslun buried his face against the nape of Kailos’s neck.
“See? I told you—you’re wise.”
As if rewarding him for doing well, Kailos brushed a kiss against the corner of his tear-streaked eye. Even covered in mud and filth, he did not care in the slightest.
What awaited the disheveled pair was a carriage bearing the royal crest—the emblem of his rank as Crown Prince.
Kailos lifted Leslun inside first, before stepping up into the carriage himself.
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