Follow Your Heart [EN]: Chapter 22

#22.

After the boy ghost disappeared, Ijae couldn’t shake off the feeling of having been unfairly wronged.

For a while, she covered her face with her hands, suppressing her anger.

But before long, Ijae had to raise her head again.

A familiar voice was approaching.

It was Roderick.

“Hailey. Are you crying?”

He had been frowning since he started walking from afar.

He had seen the Queen sitting near the lake, her head bowed deeply.

When she raised her head, he raised an eyebrow.

She didn’t actually seem to have been crying. Her cheeks and the corners of her eyes were red, but she looked more angry than sad.

After a moment of consideration, Roderick concluded that she had been crying, given the place and circumstances.

“I came out because I was worried, but you’re making me even more worried.”

He sat down next to her and grumbled, and Ijae asked,

“Does Your Majesty care about me?”

“How could I not?”

It wasn’t strange for Roderick to be concerned.

Hailey was someone who had once thrown herself into the river.

Anyone would be concerned if such a person sat by the lake every day, staring blankly.

Roderick roughly swept back his hair, looked around, and picked up a twig. He handed it to Ijae.

“Here, play in the dirt.”

Ijae took it and smiled slightly.

“Do I seem like a child to you? I’m an adult. My coming-of-age ceremony was a long time ago.”

“Do you think I’m treating you like a child right now? I’m telling you to stop brooding and play with something you like.”

“I didn’t cry.”

“…You didn’t?”

“No.”

“…You didn’t say?”

“No.”

He ran his hand through his hair again with an expression that seemed like he was about to go crazy.

Then, he stood up and held out his hand to Ijae.

“Let’s go inside, then.”

Ijae took his hand and stood up.

And after standing up, she carefully let go of his hand again.

The King took Ijae to her bedroom and stared at her face for a long time with a rigid expression.

Because the King’s expression was so bad, she was a little intimidated, and the people around them were just watching.

However, when he got up from the chair and lay down on the bed, the servants and maids rushed out of the room as if they were in a competition.

The King’s servants were determined.

We must win this time.

Still, the maids led by Deborah were much faster.

Deborah was a veteran who had never lost in a battle of nerves, and the maids trained under her were more skilled than anyone else.

Ijae stared at Roderick and asked,

“Are you going to sleep already?”

“Why? Can’t I even lie down with you now? Am I going back to the sofa again?”

Why is he being so aggressive?

She lay down next to him, unable to hide her disappointment, and said,

“I didn’t do anything wrong… If you’re angry, I’ll be angry too.”

Roderick chuckled.

“Hey. Do you even know how to get properly angry?”

“Why do you think I can’t? I’m someone who goes ‘Roar, roar, roar!'”

Roderick had a hard time holding back his laughter, so he rubbed his mouth and said,

“What is that?”

‘Oh? He’s smiling?’ Ijae thought, clenching her fist and sticking her head out.

“There’s an uncontrollable rage inside me too. Roar, roar.”

Seeing the young beast trying to imitate the fiercest expression possible, Roderick covered his face and shook his body.

But Roderick really thought that the Queen wasn’t someone who could get very angry.

Even when she spoke sharply, she would close her mouth and step back.

Calmly, as if preparing to distance herself.

But strangely, she also seemed lonely and sad.

‘Is it because that father of hers raised her by hitting her and yelling at her?’

Roderick had never liked Duke Duncan, but he couldn’t understand him grabbing his daughter by the hair and shaking her even more.

“Hailey, should I give you a pillow arm?”

If someone had seen what the King was doing, they would have thought he was making a pass at her again. But they were a married couple, and this was the bedroom.

Ijae hesitated, then rested her head on his wrist, and he sighed.

It was because she was like a resentful cat, wary of people.

“Your arm will fall asleep if you lie there. Haven’t you ever done this before?”

Then Ijae wriggled a little further inside.

She followed his instructions obediently, but with a questioning expression.

Roderick stared at her for a while, then turned his head to the other side and laughed.

Ijae, who kept glancing at him and watching his reaction, asked,

“Are you going to be my pillow now?”

“Yeah. Actually, I can be your blanket too.”

He thought she would say something about harassment again, but Ijae chuckled softly.

“Your Majesty, honestly, that blanket was too heavy.”

“Why are you so picky?”

Roderick, who was about to say something about Duncan, wisely kept his mouth shut this time.

Instead, he asked something else.

“Hailey, what’s wrong?”

You are the problem.

Ijae, who was still holding a secret she couldn’t tell, had a complicated expression.

“Why do you always go out there looking like you’re about to die?”

“Your Majesty, you shouldn’t say such things carelessly.”

Hailey and I may have been born with the fate to die young, but I’m still hurt when you say it so bluntly.

Ijae, who was lost in absurd thoughts, asked,

“If there’s a problem, will you solve it for me?”

“Yes.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because I’m worried?”

You didn’t want this marriage either.

I couldn’t help it, but you actually needed it too.

Roderick sighed. He also fell into thought for a moment, like Ijae.

“Hailey, I know very well what people say about me behind my back.”

Tyrant. Madman. Split personality.

“But I don’t want to abuse my wife.”

“…………”

“Believe it or not, I don’t really enjoy such behavior.”

Roderick spoke as if he were talking to himself. But Ijae immediately replied,

“…I know.”

Then Roderick looked at Ijae with a strange expression.

So she nodded and told him again.

“I know. I know very well that Your Majesty is not that kind of person.”

That was actually the biggest problem. She could see it better than anyone else, so she was concerned about Roderick.

Shamans have their own unique perspective.

And there was something that the Yeongsan Grandmother had said to Ijae.

‘Grandma, why don’t you help that person?’

‘You wicked girl… Can you see it too?’

‘Yeah… If that person keeps going like that, they’re going to die.’

‘Ijae, do you think it’s better for a human to know they’re going to die, or not to know? Just because you can see such things, do you think you’ve become a god or something?’

It meant not to interfere in things beyond her ability.

But the feeling that the luck she thought was trivial was getting bigger and bigger.

Ijae knew that he kept giving her something.

It was probably… warmth.

Ijae’s past life was a series of moments where she desperately wanted it and begged for it.

She was ashamed of herself, so she hid her face in his arm for a moment, then cautiously raised her head and asked,

“Does Your Majesty treat people other than his wife badly?”

At her absurd joke, he snorted.

“No, it just means I don’t feel the need to be nice to women other than my wife.”

“Wow. You’re a devoted husband.”

“If you know that, treat me well.”

“No, those words are unlucky.”

“Look at you, all small and worked up again.”

The two continued to exchange trivial conversations for a long time, giggling.

Roderick, who was trying to indulge her until the end because the Queen seemed to be enjoying it, noticed that she was starting to look sleepy.

It was the result of one person recovering energy every day, and the other person using up energy every day because of that person.

The King quietly pulled up the blanket and covered her.

“Stop chattering and go to sleep. Your eyes are closing.”

“Yes, I’m not a sparrow, so I’ll stop chirping.”

“…………”

“Your Majesty.”

“…What is it now? I told you to sleep.”

“Then good night. You have to have good dreams today too.”

“…That kid keeps driving me crazy in strange ways.”

Roderick covered his eyes and smiled.

The next day, when he opened his eyes at dawn, the two were entangled again without fail.

Roderick clicked his tongue at the fact that he was holding the Queen’s waist as if grabbing a lifeline.

Since they had been attached from the beginning yesterday, it wasn’t too difficult.

However, he felt a little sorry for being so clingy, like a leech.

Roderick quietly lowered his leg, which was crushing Ijae’s small body.

And he began to admire her sleeping face.

“Hailey. What are you really?”

Humans cannot catch the intuition that passes by too quickly.

But if that intuition is repeated, anyone will want to catch it and make it concrete.

Before welcoming the Queen into the royal family, the amount of reports investigated exceeded a thousand pages. Because she was a Duncan, there was much more than the existing fiancées.

Roderick took out the report that he had recently put deep in the drawer again.

And he read it carefully.

The King called Jade and pointed out the parts that had bothered him one by one.

As a result of his sharpness being revealed after distancing himself from the vengeful spirit, this was perhaps a grave that Kang Ijae had dug herself.

‘I heard the Queen’s hobby is sculpting. You’ve all seen the gifts she gave me, right? I heard she’s been meditating in the morning these days.’

‘It says here that she’s very interested in the latest trends. You’ve all seen that bracelet, right?’

‘…Yes.’

‘Could it be that the Queen has been secretly studying primitive art?’

The King’s expression was very annoyed.

‘She barely eats anything but grass. How did the Duncan family raise her? She already eats as little as a bird, and her taste is completely like an old person.’

Roderick frowned, pointing to the passage that said she liked sweets and desserts. He had never seen her eat such things.

Ijae would frown and look disgusted if she ate food that was even slightly salty.

‘Jade. Who wrote the first draft of this report? There’s not a single thing that matches. I can turn a blind eye if it’s within reason, but how can you do your job like this? Does no one know that I’m being patient?’

Only then did Jade realize that the King had been observing the Queen very closely in a short period of time.

So this was not only the result of sharpness, but also the result of interest.

‘Do I need to say more? This is a wrong report. Investigate it again from the beginning and submit it. The deadline is after the hunting competition.’

The suspicion does not subside easily and grows even larger.

But he also had a hard time resisting the strange attraction.

The King clicked his tongue and swept up Ijae’s apricot-colored hair as she slept soundly.

“If you’re going to lie, keep lying. You sometimes… show it too much.”

Roderick hesitated, stroking her hair.

His thorough reason tells him to let go. But strangely, he couldn’t let go.

In the end, he carefully caressed her cheeks and lips.