Chapter 5
#05. Iris
Kang Hyunwoo hadn't noticed, but ever since meeting him, Iris had been unable to bear the constant anxiety that plagued her.
She had tried to pretend to be cheerful while looking at his phone, but the anxiety growing in one corner of her heart as time passed was not something she could control.
It had been no less than 200 years.
No matter how long-lived a high elf was, spending such a long stretch of time alone in a dark prison where not a single ray of light entered, without any contact whatsoever with others, could only be days of loneliness and suffering beyond imagination.
Living for a long time did not make one insensitive to emotions.
On the contrary, they were pitiable beings who grieved the death of acquaintances more deeply than anyone and yearned for the traces of years that vanished in the blink of an eye.
Those who suffered through endless time often ended up forcibly severing their own emotions or laboriously entering the realm of transcendence and attaining enlightenment.
Even elves, praised as descendants of gods, were ultimately part of humanity in the broad sense. And humanity was nothing more than a collective formed by social animals that banded together because they could not live alone.
Why would a high elf directly fashioned by the World Tree build villages and run cities alongside other elves?
Why did people live among other people, marry, and have children?
No matter how difficult life became under the pressures of society, shutting oneself away in the mountains was not something one could easily do.
Dying alone in a room without contacting or forming bonds with anyone was considered one of the worst deaths in modern society.
How much harsher, then, had the past 200 years been for Iris, who had grown up surrounded by the love and attention of countless people?
Kang Hyunwoo had appeared before her when she had been driven to the point of seriously contemplating the extreme choice of suicide.
He was the warmth, conversation, and companionship she had experienced in 200 years.
Since it was her first time alone with an unfamiliar man, she had been wary at first, but that had soon faded after she realized how incredibly weak he was.
All that remained afterward was curiosity and a little fondness.
She had been so happy to see him that she had committed the shameless act of taking his hand first, but fortunately, he did not seem to mind much.
The first man's hand she had ever held was hard, but at the same time, it felt warm and reassuring.
‘Could it be because I relaxed without realizing it...?’
She had even rambled on about a past she should never have told someone she had just met.
She had known while talking that she should stop, but the more she confessed her past and let go of her emotions, the more relieved she felt, as if the knot in her chest were loosening, and she simply could not stop talking.
What was more, although he must have found it tiresome, he listened to her story to the very end—the sorry ramblings of a stodgy, foolish woman.
After confiding her past in him, she truly felt refreshed.
-Don't you want revenge?
She could not answer easily.
There had certainly been moments when she wanted revenge against Resilia and those behind her.
But perhaps because 200 years had passed and her emotions had faded, feelings that had once burned as fiercely as vengeance had long since dwindled into ash.
With only the dregs left, she could no longer hold on to either the will to do something or the hope that she could.
To begin with, she did not even know whether she could get out of here.
She looked toward the stone door, which would never open even if she took her own life.
Even if she did manage to get out, would there even be a place left for her in the kingdom?
-How could I blame anyone now? Seeing through the essence of others is also a virtue of a monarch... I was simply unable to judge people.
Even if Resilia had committed wrongdoing, her ascension to the throne had unquestionably taken place with the World Tree's approval.
There was no way a mere creation like herself could be permitted to defy the World Tree's will.
-Even so, you don't want to stay here forever, do you?
The days had been unchanged for 200 years.
-Aw, things are different now from how they were back then.
-I'm here now, aren't I?
He had arrived without warning in a place no one had visited, and had been strangely kind to her.
She had only been wary of him briefly—an unfamiliar man, and a human at that—but the more they talked, the more questions about him arose.
‘Why are you being so kind to me? I have nothing. Why be kind to someone like me, who has nothing to give you?’
Over the course of her long life spanning several hundred years, Iris had learned that there was no such thing as kindness without a price in this world.
Just as the people, ladies-in-waiting, and officials had respected and loved her as the queen chosen by the World Tree, not as a sinner abandoned by the World Tree and deposed.
Without the premise of having been chosen by the World Tree, she had no value at all.
Realizing that, Iris found Kang Hyunwoo's kindness without a price impossible to understand, yet immensely delightful.
At some point, whenever she looked at him, her heart began to pound fiercely.
Though Iris was called a grand mage for her exceptional intellect, the unfamiliar emotion she was feeling for the first time in her life left her confused.
But she could be certain of one thing.
It did not feel all that bad.
-I came from another world called Earth.
It was a story difficult to believe.
But the evidence he showed was so conclusive that it instantly dispelled even her slight distrust.
‘I have never seen a magic tool of this level, even in Magnolia.’
The more she examined the magic tool called a smartphone, the more everything astonished her.
It was astonishing enough that a single small magic tool could be used for communication, maps, location tracking, entertainment, photography, and recording; but it was even more unbelievable that she could connect to a vast library called the internet, where anyone could access knowledge.
It was a shame that she could not do so now, but how many years would have to pass before the magical engineering of this world could develop to this level?
Elves were a race unfamiliar with magical engineering, but Iris was different.
Because she was more firmly convinced than any other elf that magical engineering was the field that would lead the world of the future, she had taken a great interest in it and studied it for a very long time.
Of course, opposition from several high-ranking noble elders had made government support for research difficult, but few on the continent could match her knowledge of magical engineering if one counted the time she had spent researching alone.
That was precisely why Iris understood.
The development of civilization did not happen simply because hundreds of years passed. Civilization could advance rapidly only when the birth of a genius capable of changing the times coincided with the flow of the world.
In that sense, this thing called a smartphone was truly revolutionary.
'So you really are from another world...‘
Even apart from the smartphone, the combination of jet-black hair and black eyes was difficult to find on the continent of Aquilon.
It was just like a fairy-tale book she had seen as a child.
Once upon a time, there was a princess in a certain kingdom who was loved by everyone. She was kind-hearted and gentle by nature, and always saddened by the people's hard lives, never hesitating to help them.
One day, while peaceful days continued, a witch who envied the beautiful princess loved by all placed a terribly vicious curse on her.
-You will never be loved by anyone.
The princess became hated by everyone under the curse's effects and was eventually banished from the kingdom.
The attention and love she had received all her life turned into hatred and contempt, and even at the very last moment as she left the kingdom, what flew toward her was not tears and pity but rotten eggs and tomatoes.
Deep in despair, the princess wandered aimlessly wherever her feet took her, her eyes hollow, until she reached a deserted forest.
In the forest so dark that even sunlight could not reach it, only the fierce cries of beasts could be heard.
The princess instinctively knew.
-This place... is my grave.
Contrary to the calmness of her words, her entire body trembled faintly.
As fear took control of her whole body, pearly tears flowed endlessly from her jewel-like eyes.
The beasts that sensed prey clearly incapable of even resisting began gathering one after another, and the princess, surrounded in an instant, became so pale that she could no longer flee.
Before long, the beasts leaped at the princess.
-Aaaah!!
A sorrowful scream echoed through the forest.
The princess trembled at the death approaching. After some time passed, she wondered why she felt no pain and cautiously opened her eyes, which she had squeezed shut.
And there stood a man.
He had jet-black hair and eyes like obsidian.
Holding a single sword, he had felled every beast.
He knelt before the princess, who stared blankly at the scene, and said:
-Are you hurt anywhere?
The princess, cursed to be hated by everyone, was saved when she encountered a black-haired hero from another world in the forest she had happened to enter.
Perhaps because he was from another world, the hero was unaffected by the witch's curse, and before long, he fell in love with the princess.
Determined to help the princess, the hero engaged the witch in a life-or-death battle. After a grueling struggle that left him covered in blood and his vision blurred, the hero eventually succeeded in defeating the witch, and thanks to that, the princess was freed from the terrible curse.
Thus, the princess returned to the kingdom and reclaimed her place, but ironically, the fairy tale ended with the hero looking at the princess, who was loved by everyone, before returning to his own world.
Afterward, the story ended with the princess spending every night in tears, longing for the hero who had vanished without a word.
The princess gazed up at the darkened night sky, tormented and grieving.
Why did you leave me behind and go back?
Did you dislike me?
Was the love you whispered in my ear all a lie?
Her anguish, with no one to answer her, continued forever and became yet another curse.
It was not a particularly popular fairy tale because its ending was sad and unsettling for innocent children to read with smiles, but Iris could not help feeling that her current situation overlapped with the fairy tale's ending.
Like the hero in the fairy-tale book, Mr. Kang Hyunwoo had come from another world, and there was no telling when he would return—a situation that was not much different.
What if he, too, returned to his own world without a word, just like the hero?
What about me?
Would I have to remain trapped here alone forever again?
The end of the past 200 years, which had been so agonizing she could not put it into words, had been an attempt at suicide.
It had been an unbearably painful and frightening moment.
Had she actually managed to drive a stone into her neck with that trembling hand?
She did not know.
She could not be certain, but neither could she categorically deny it.
That was how desperately she never wanted to experience those past 200 years again.
That was why, at last, she wished he would not return to his own world.
She wanted him to stay by her side forever.
But how?
She had nothing.
She had nothing to offer him that would make him abandon even his own world and remain by her side.
Iris had pretended to look at his phone, but in truth, she was so cornered that her entire body had grown damp with cold sweat.
Just imagining herself left alone here again after he disappeared made her throat tighten and her eyes fill with tears.
Iris made up her mind. If only he would stay here, she could give him anything, by whatever means necessary.
And then, a light of hope that should not have existed seemed to descend upon her. She opened an app called Gallery, and there were several images inside.
As she had expected, they were photographs. There were quite a few magic tools in this world that served the function of a camera, too.
When he had explained the smartphone to her, he had mentioned that it also had a camera function, so she assumed this was a kind of storage space for photographs he had taken. Even for the same photographs, their image quality was clearly extraordinary. She was marveling at how incredibly high-definition they were when—
‘Th-This is...??’
As she was looking through the photographs and swiping sideways, what appeared before her was a photograph of a completely naked woman. And not just that—it showed women in extremely provocative poses.
Wearing underwear whose very function as clothing was questionable, with their breasts fully exposed and even their legs spread wide, the sight was so shocking that it defied description.
Among them was even a photograph of a woman exposing without a care the private parts that were too shameful for any lady to mention aloud, let alone show.
The moment Iris first saw the photographs, her brain briefly went into overload.
Born the daughter of a high-ranking noble family, she had learned all manner of etiquette, as well as the chastity and dignity befitting a woman, as instinctively as breathing. Purity was a woman's treasure to be kept for the one she loved most, and exposing more skin than necessary was no different from a sin.
The clothes she was wearing now adhered to that same convention.
Thanks to repairing them with magic and keeping them clean every day without missing a single day over the past 200 years, the clothes Iris wore were always neat, elegant, and demure, like new.
Of course, because Iris's voluptuous figure was enough to reveal what even such clothing concealed, Kang Hyunwoo had decided without a moment's hesitation to help her.
‘Wh-What a shameless...!’
It was not merely that a woman should not behave this way.
Regardless of status or position, every woman had a line she absolutely had to observe.
Iris doubted her own eyes and swiped to the next photograph as if she did not want to see any more.
But waiting for her were erotic images of an even more shocking level. Iris felt her mind grow faint at the sight.
‘W-Why on earth... would Mr. Hyunwoo have these...?!’
She simply could not believe it.
She had clearly thought he was a good person, and she still did. But the more she looked at the photographs gathered in the place called Gallery, the more she could not help doubting her own judgment.
The suspicion budding softly inside her was gradually blossoming, yet at the same time, an inexplicable happiness was also beginning to take root at the thought that his phone contained photographs like these.
‘They all... have incredibly large breasts...’
Some of the women were short, and some were tall.
Some were rather ordinary-looking, while others were outstandingly beautiful.
But not a single one had small breasts.
And Iris's breasts were also very large. Though she had looked at them for hundreds of years, they were truly so large that she often thought they were needlessly big.
Tightening her corset had been difficult and uncomfortable more times than she could count, and the moment she took it off, anything she wore made her look larger overall, to the point that she even looked fat.
Her shoulders often ached, and because they felt needlessly heavy, she had thought of them as body parts she wished she could make smaller with magic.
‘...Mr. Hyunwoo likes large breasts, I suppose?’
But now, she was willing to do anything to keep him from leaving her. She wanted him to remain here instead of returning to his own world.
It was a choice she would never have considered in the past—or even a year ago, she would not have given it a moment's thought.
"I-If you don't mind, would you like to touch my breasts...?"
She could do anything, as long as it meant keeping him here.