I Love You, Monster: The Blindfolded Wife x The Masked Husband - Chapter 431: Mine

"There was a time in my life where I struggled to breathe. A time where I felt suffocated everyday, but then I met you."

-Turning the gears of fate.

A drop of ink can penetrate the walls, even the walls you took too long to build.

After losing her first love due to a traffic accident, Ibuki Sumire transfers to Tokyo. She wanted to escape, to run away from everything that happened. To start over in a place that didn't have him. But a series of clues lead her to investigating the case behind the accident.

In that place she learns about the masks people wear. The masks people wear to disgui se their feelings. Sometimes you have to look past what you see on the surface.

There she meets him, the person who helps her move forward. But Sumire quickly learns how alike they are. His cold personality is different than the kindness she is used to. However, he is the only one who understands her feelings.

It keeps going around in circles, like a drop of paint. Round and round - an endless stream of pain and lies. But, that stream ended the moment she laid her eyes on his paintings.

Such rich and vibrant colors, it felt like his emotions exploded. Yet, in the corner of his studio, she found it. The real him, a sakura painting of two people walking hand in hand.

A gentle and sweet feeling, something she has never felt before.

[Commissioned Cover by: Vatarison]

[COMPLETE] Can a royal Romeo and Juliet find their happy ending?

Ayleth, Princess of Zenithra, is secretly trained in hand-to-hand combat, and collects swear words she doesn't know how to use. During the Festival of Peace, in which every royal son on the continent will be at the castle for a month, she is instructed by her parents to find a husband. Yet, Ayleth has never even been kissed—until the very first ball, when she meets the man in the Lion mask.

Etan is a seasoned warrior, and the Prince of Summitras. He attends the Festival hoping to find a powerful wife who will help him conquer the dark sorcery of their bloodsworn enemies, the Kingdom of Zenithra. But at the very first ball, he discovers the masked woman who captures his heart is the Heir to the evil empire.

Ayleth and Etan face an impossible battle. Will their love survive? Or will their parents' dark dealings keep them apart forever?

[Mature content. No sexual violence.]

******

“You…” She stepped back. Then back again, her mouth dropped open. “You… You cannot be…”

“I am,” Etan said, and his hair raked back as he pushed his mask off his handsome face. So handsome her heart raced.

His hair was ebony black, his skin a warm brown that threatened to fade in in the winter months. He stared at her with glittering green eyes, over high cheekbones and a noble nose, his jaw tight and shadowed this late in the day. His chin was high over the pillar of his neck that she’d just touched with its hard lines and steel strength, so different to her own. And his chest... She gasped and covered her eyes. She’d humiliated herself revealing her stupid, childish curiosity.

“No, Ayleth. This changes nothing.”

“How can you say that? It changes everything!” She was horrified to realize she was crying.

“Ayleth, please.” His voice cracked on the plea and she stared at him, shoving her mask up and off, despite how it would pull her hair out of the beautiful twist the maid had managed for her.

His eyes locked on hers and she couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe.

She had met her One. And he was the son of her bloodsworn enemy.

She stared at him as he stepped forward again, offering both hands, palm up. “Touch me,” he whispered. “Hold my hands. This is real, Ayleth. I don’t know how it happened, but this is real. Please don’t deny it.”

She couldn’t resist. She raised a trembling hand to his cheek, letting her palm catch on the scruff of his jaw. He blew out a breath and put his hand over hers, and that jolt that happened whenever they touched shivered through her again.

“Please, Ayleth.”

“I cannot deny it,” she whispered.

On Christmas day, seemingly overnight, God summoned everyone on Earth, giving every single person a 'Gift' along with a System.

These Gifts, synonimous with special abilities granted people powers beyond comprehension.

However, with these abilities came tragedy that enveloped the world. The Apocalypse!

Jeremy Lewis, a reclusive loner, is mysteriously exempt from this phenomenon and finds himself being the only one without a Gift.

God decides to grant him the last Gift available, [Subspace], and forcefully returns him to a world that has become hell.

Horrifying monsters now lurk around every corner, and inevitable death awaits.

Arming himself with his wits and the Gift he possesses, how will Jeremy survive this cruel new world that he finds himself in?

“Everything will go according to plan, and ultimately the path I have started will lead to my victory... these tools will be useful in achieving that!”

Callius von Jervain.

A character who dies no matter what he does. A character who falls into a forced choice route where he can only die, no matter his choices up to that point. However, there is a single route where the character can live and play the game.

And I have to carve out that route somehow.

Because I’ve become Callius von Jervain in the game.