Cassen looked at his wife with bewildered eyes.
'She's different. Not just awake, different.'
He was her first husband, and being first came with different responsibilities.
Responsibilities he never shirked, even when she pushed him away.
What he found strange was that a day ago, the other four husbands started behaving oddly after waking up.
Their expressions went from excited, to hatred, then to calmness. They looked like different people. Even when he told them their wife was missing, they just made excuses and brushed him aside.
'Like she'd never mattered. Like they'd never feared her.'
What was stranger was that they used to fear even her name. But now, when he told them about their wife's disappearance for more than twenty hours, they were too calm. In their eyes he saw something—hatred, disgust, and a strong killing intent he couldn't ignore.
He left them be. To him, they weren't a threat.
He started the journey to the Black Forest to search for her. The legend said that in the Black Forest, prey and predators were ruled by the light.
There, near the riverbank, he found her. Her body was unconscious and wet. A phone lay beside her, which was strange because it wasn't like the phones they used. Theirs were usually glass-like and used crystals as energy. They were tied to their wrists with different colors that signified power.
There were five colors in total. Red was for the royal families.
Yellow for families related to the royals.
Green for the nobles.
Blue for the commoners.
Black for slaves or fallen nobles.
Chloe was a royal—First Princess of Country X.
He touched her forehead and discovered she was running a high fever. He wouldn't doubt it if the doctor told him her brain was fried. And he thought so because… who could tell him why he could hear his wife's inner voice?
To him, Chloe was his light in the darkness, his first love that never died, and his reason to fight in this strange world.
He met her when she was eighteen. That was the age where everyone was carefree and females started dating. To her, that age was like a heavy stone. She was too mature for it.
She would sit there in the dark arena, watching the mers fight on stage or sometimes reading strange, huge books. Sometimes she would stare at something, lost in thought, or peruse pages anxiously like time wasn't on her side.
To him, she felt like she could fade at any time, and that brought out his protectiveness. He fell in love at first sight.
'Not love. Recognition. Like I'd known her before.'
He concocted a scheme that brought them together. She used to call him Pinkie because of his liking for pink things—clothes, ornaments. He even used to dye his hair pink, even though red was its natural color.
Mers weren't respected. In fact, those who were stubborn and strong like men were looked down on. Women preferred the white-lotus type, which he wasn't.
He was rejected even by his family, including his birth parents, so he found solace in hunting and fighting in the dark arena.
The day they met, he was heavily injured. She came to the lounge with a first-aid kit, silently applying medicine to his wounds with care.
When he asked why she was helping him—not because he didn't appreciate it, he appreciated it a lot—in Novearth, mers couldn't be treated without a guardian's stamp. Either the parents, spouse, or a friend, but they had to be female or a male with a stamp—something like a pass for the mers. A doctor in the dark arena usually charged an extremely high price for every minute.
"You know I have never been in a relationship, Pinkie." That was her unrelated answer to his question, and it stunned him.
'Wait, Pinkie?' He repeated the name silently. It sounded nice rolling from those red lips of hers, and he wanted to take a bite. And the voice—oh God—he knew it. He'd already fallen under her spell. He couldn't help but be drawn to her voice.
It was too smooth.
Too lazy.
Too cold.
'Like winter before it breaks.'
"Huh!" He was speechless.
"I am single," she continued. She raised her head to look at him. The disgust he expected to see in her eyes wasn't there. Her eyes were too calm.
'Too clear. Like she saw through me.'
"I know. Didn't you say you've never been in a relationship?" he replied in an amused tone.
"I have never touched any mer's hand, or the opposite gender," she continued while gently wrapping the bandage on his wounds.
"Mmh, Miss…"
"Chloe. Call me Chloe." She interrupted him.
'Just like that. No hesitation.'
"Miss Chloe, so what do you want?"
"You need to be responsible."
"Responsible! How?" he exclaimed in surprise.
"Mmh, for me as a woman, of course." She said it like she was explaining why it rained—because the sun was too hot.
Inwardly, he was giddy with happiness. 'Is this what I'm thinking about? Falling in love and getting married? Getting pregnant with her seed and giving birth to a girl who looks like me and a boy who looks like her? Then isn't that a jackpot?'
But outside, his expression was serious.
"Princess, do you know that I'm five years older than you?"
She raised an eyebrow at his serious question, or at the way he addressed her. "I know."
"Then why? Marriage is a sacred thing," he asked hurriedly, looking at her eyes for any emotion.
"Who talked about marriage?" Her eyes widened. So 'he' was the one who misinterpreted the meaning of being responsible, right? But who could blame him?
"But if you think marriage is the only solution, then I would marry you." She declared it with a tinge of red on her cheeks.
'She lied. Her ears gave her away.'
'Badum!'
His heart skipped a beat. No, it didn't skip—it 'jumped', because that voice was too human.
'So she can be shy,' he thought inwardly while clutching his imaginary heart. 'She looks cute. And why is she so damn hot? I want to… wait, Cassen, get hold of yourself. She's too young. Yes, too young.'
He didn't know when his heart betrayed him. Maybe it was when she came to bandage his wounds, or how those red eyes of hers looked at him with no disgust—like he was a fellow human—or earlier, when she sat there reading her book. But he felt drawn to her.
Since that day onward, he became her stalker, her friend, and lastly, a marriage partner.
At twenty, her parents started matchmaking her with different fallen nobles. It was an idea she resisted fiercely, even going as far as self-harm. But she married them at last.
That's when it all started.
The changes.
Sometimes she became irritated at her other husbands. Sometimes she was too calm in their presence, even ignoring them.
She even went as far as abusing them and raising her hands against them. What puzzled him most was that even if he intervened, she would look at him like he was an extra—like someone who didn't exist. Sometimes she'd utter words like 'you're not supposed to marry her,' and when all her episodes were over, she'd look scared and hide in his room.
That prompted him to investigate. That's when he discovered the secret.
The emergence of two different souls.
Both of them were evil—he knew it, because she was never a saint. But one soul, or personality, was too irritable.
The real her, the woman he fell for, had that 'are you tired of living for provoking me' vibe. But the other soul was very wicked.
Very stupid.
Back to the present.
"I am Cassen, your first husband," he told her when he heard her inner voice.
{System, come back! You didn't tell me he can read minds!} She shouted inwardly.
"And no, I can't read minds. It's just that your expectations are too vivid to ignore."
He looked at her, really looked at her, and what he saw surprised him and made him happy at the same time.
The gloom that had always surrounded her was gone, replaced by cheerfulness. Her always lifeless eyes were now vibrant. Maybe she had broken free from the plot she always murmured about in her sleep, but he could see that the burden had been lifted from her shoulders.
He went to the bedside to touch her forehead while spying on her inner voice.
"System, why don't I have any recollection of him? Even in the book, he's not mentioned when he's the main husband."
[Maybe it's because he isn't tied down by the book's rules, or he isn't the heroine's husband like your other spouses.]
'So that's it. No wonder Pinkie gives me a comfortable feeling.'
Cassen cast his eyes elsewhere to hide the bitterness in them. 'She really forgot me?' That thought made him gloomy, and he felt like crying.
'She forgot. But I haven't.'
'But memories can be created. And this time,' he thought to himself while a smile curved on his mouth, 'let the memories be happy ones.' He cheered himself up.