I Decided to Kidnap the Male Lead
Side Story 4: If (Belated Last Regression)

-For the confused, it’s what’s cut out from episode 123-

“Ophelia.”

There was no answer to the call.

“Ophelia.”

He called again. Still no answer.

Richard kept his mouth shut as he held Ophelia in his arms.

Her breath, drawn so tightly that there was no room for even a piece of paper to fit in, scattered into the reddish sky.

How long had it been since the whole sky had turned red and rained fire, and the land had turned and shook and collapsed, and all except him and her had perished.

Richard hugged Ophelia and looked out.

Ophelia’s tears fell drop by drop onto the back of his hand, but he didn’t feel the cold.

It had been a long time since he had cooled down more than that.

Richard’s eyes, stroking Ophelia’s wet cheeks, would contain only her before, now, and perhaps even in the distant future.

Someday in the past, he suddenly thought of it while looking at her, who was chattering and laughing in front of him.

—It would be nice if the world would perish and you would only look at me and rely on me.

He used to think so.

And as if to make that wish come true, the world steadily moved toward destruction in the eons of time the two were together.

No, it rushed.

It took an excruciatingly long time for the little rift to open, but it didn’t take long for it to finally cause the world to collapse.

‘And finally, only you and I remain in this ruined world, and only I embrace you, see you, and hear you.’

‘But you…’

“Ophelia.”

He called her, but no answer came back.

Ophelia, who instinctively sensed the world collapsing like falling from a steep cliff, ran on the burning ground without hesitation.

She didn’t give up easily, as she always did, and she moved her body to do what she could.

Wasn’t she the descendant of the Bolsheik who survived even turning the world into an enemy?

But even though she could turn the world into an enemy, she couldn’t continue breathing in the collapsing world.

“Stop!”

The moment the ground, which had been crushed like the soil a child kneaded, opened its black mouth and tried to swallow Ophelia.

Richard pulled her by the waist.

If she had taken one more step, or even half a step, she would have fallen into a bottomless pit.

Still, Ophelia didn’t look down at her feet.

She just stared at the sight beyond the cracks on the ground that looked like glacier crevasses.

The whole world was on fire. No, the flooding of the tsunami caused by the earthquake was dimly visible from far away, so that would not be the only thing.

But one thing was certain. Blood was flowing like a river.

Sooner or later, more blood would flow until it became a sea of red.

“Ah…”

A meaningless moan escaped from between her parched lips.

People she had never met before, people she had seen at least once, were falling beyond count.

“Oh, mother! Father, father!”

A woman frantically dug up pieces of a house destroyed by an earthquake with bloody hands.

“Ugh… Why, why is this…”

A man who lost his mind while looking at a burning house.

A child crying as if his throat was about to disappear, and an old man who looked up at the sky with hopeless eyes while trying to soothe the child in his arms.

The whole world turned into ruins before her eyes.

“Ah… Aaaagh!”

At first it was just screaming.

One day, another day.

As time passed, the people she cherished and loved shed blood without exception, and they left without even giving her time to protect them.

“Mother! Mother, mother! Mother, I’m here. Please. {Please. Mother, I’m here. Open your eyes. Yes? I’m here. I’m… I’m here!”

With her hoarse throat, she cried and begged and screamed.

Finally, she got her feelings out, and finally, at the warm touch, she had a night whereby she slept like a baby, but now…

Regret was always too late, and the results were devastating beyond imagination.

As a daughter, she couldn’t even protect her mother from the moment she left, so she wanted to stay by her mother’s side for a long, very long time.

However, she wasn’t even allowed to do that.

“Ophelia! We have to go. It’s too late!”

Richard pulled Ophelia, but she struggled.

It was the first time Ophelia had acted as stubborn as a child in all this long, long time together.

If it had not been for this situation, if she hadn’t rushed like a moth throwing itself into the fire, Richard would have given her everything she wanted, brought to her feet.

But he had to stop Ophelia to protect her.

“Mother, she is inside, Sebastian and the other employees are also inside.”

Brokenhearted, Ophelia sat down in front of the mansion, which had been swallowed up by the ground and left no traces.

Richard hugged her tightly from behind and buried his face in her dust-stained red hair.

How did time pass.

—Chak, chak, chak…

When Ophelia found Catherine in the ruins of the mansion, or rather, only part of her, she buried her face in a pool of her blood and wept.

“Catherine, Cathy, Cathy. I have to let you go like this, you… I… you…”

Lawrence, who had tried to protect her, was also lying in a similar state. It wasn’t strange since all the remains of the mansion were covered in blood.

A smell far more repulsive than the fishy smell of iron filled the air like fog.

Still, Ophelia couldn’t stop her steps.

Now, she wasn’t moving to do anything.

She just hoped that she could see the end of those who gave her hope.

Thus, Richard was always next to Ophelia, who was moving around.

While Ophelia’s inner world was being shaved off day by day, no, every hour, Richard, too, was conflicted and agonized every minute and every second.

‘Do I regress or do I not regress?’

No. It was more of whether he could bring himself to or not.

He had the notebook left by Raisa, who had her head cut off, and he also knew that this notebook was the way to regress.

But he didn’t believe it. Even if all the circumstantial evidence and reasoning pointed out that the regression and the notebook were one body, he couldn’t believe it because he hadn’t experienced it firsthand.

And what scared him more than that…

—Kwaaaang!

Before he could finish his thoughts, the pillar of the center of a huge building burned and collapsed.

Desperately, Richard reached out to grab hold of Ophelia, who was blurry beyond the misty dust clouds.

The perishing world gradually choked Ophelia and Richard.

If there was even malice, they wouldn’t be so miserable.

“Sorry, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry, sorry.”

Ophelia, who couldn’t even scream anymore, looked with her dazed eyes at Iris in her arms, and a broken Cooper a few steps away.

Richard spent a few days looking at James’ broken glasses and his pale, grayish arm, which was scattered on a pile of stones.

So there were only two left.

Only two people. The two of them left behind as if the perishing world wanted to boast its end.

“Look over there. It still remains, everything else is gone, and the only thing left is the one you said you wanted to get rid of.”

Richard pointed to a lonely and precariously standing statue with his gaze instead of his finger. It was where Ophelia had smashed her forehead while running away from an assassin in the past. Richard finally shut up.

Since when did Ophelia stop speaking to Richard?

…She simply lost her words.

As if replacing her, Richard spoke incessantly, continuing even when his voice became an echo that didn’t return. And now.

Richard was sitting on one side of the smashed Imperial Palace, holding Ophelia, who was limp like a doll with a thread cut.

He thought that if he could keep Ophelia by his side, it wouldn’t be bad for everything to disappear like this.

For Richard, death rather felt more like a blessing as he regressed and lived through a long, long time that never knew when it would end.

But look at this now.

“Ophelia. Ophelia. Look at me just once, at least once.”

He whispered, begging, but she was helplessly slipping through his fingers.

He would hold on to her empty shell for days and days. After spending an incalculable amount of time, he gave up the blessing he had so longed for.

And he reached out for what he feared so much.

Maybe, it would be useless.

He might not be able to turn back time with this notebook.

And if he succeeded in reversing time, Ophelia would forget him.

Perhaps he would forget her too.

For Richard, forgetting her, rather than the whole world being destroyed…

He clutched the small notebook and whispered as he looked into Ophelia’s empty eyes.

“…….”

Whispers so small that even he himself could not hear them scattered across the perishing world.

Ame: *mutters* would it have been better for this to be part of the main story… *pulls hair* I KNEW THOSE PEACEFUL EPISODES WERE TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!

Um, anyway, next side story will be the last…

Dea: why is the author doing this to us? Why can’t we have nice things? T^T Sᴇaʀch* Thᴇ ɴøvᴇl_Firᴇ.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.

Sᴇarch the NʘvᴇlFɪre.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.