더는 너를 기억하고 싶지 않았다

“I want to fall in love at first sight and give my heart to that person until my dying breath.”

When someone once said this, Ariel smiled faintly at the innocence of the words.

But despite that smile, as if guided by fate, she met Kylance – and fell madly in love.

People called their love a fairy tale, a romance too perfect to be real.

And Ariel never doubted it, not for a moment.

Not until now, when everything she believed in is crumbling around her.

“The words Kylance spoke, ‘I love you’, were all lies. You, the daughter of the man who mu*dered his parents – Kylance only sought to destroy you, the woman he claimed to love more than life itself.”

As the truth shattered her world, Ariel collapsed in despair.

“I wish I had never met you. If I could, I would erase every memory of you from my mind.”

Determined to break the cruel bonds of fate, she left a single farewell note before throwing herself into the dark embrace of the sea.

***

“I can’t believe you’re alive. This isn’t a dream, is it? If it is, I don’t want to wake up.”

Ariel. Ariel.

The man holding her trembled as he wept, her name falling from his lips like an unfamiliar prayer, tears streaming down his face.

When his trembling hand reached out to touch her cheek, she flinched instinctively, pulling away.

“Who are you?”

Her cold, distant voice cut through the air, unrecognisable as she pushed him away.

“What?”

Kylance’s handsome face twisted in raw devastation, his expression shattered as if his entire world had crumbled.