The Luna Who Lived Twice

Chapter6

The disappointment never got easier.

Eventually, the hope I held on to started to rot inside me.

Years turned into decades. And decades turned into centuries.

And the world kept moving forward while I remained stuck in the past.

I slowly lowered my hand from the mural.

My gaze dropped to the floor.

“I tried to forget you,” I admitted.

The words felt heavy in my throat.

“I really did.”

I tried drowning your memory in war…in blood.

I believed if I couldn’t have peace, then the world didn’t deserve it either.

I became something darker.

Something cruel.

Something I knew you would have hated.

The thought made my chest tighten.

“I told myself you were gone.”

That it was over.

That loving you had been a mistake.

But even after all these years…

I still couldn’t erase you.

You were everywhere.

A tired breath left my lips.

“I hated you for that,” I whispered.

For refusing to leave my heart. For haunting every moment of my existence. For making eternity feel like a punishment.

I tried to kill myself. I jumped off a cliff, I hung myself, I lay on the cold metal railway, waiting to be crushed.

But each time, I woke up in my bed without a single scratch.

I got jealous of you. You were granted death easily, while I was denied because of my origin. It was easier in my head; if I couldn’t stay alive with you, I could enjoy the afterlife with you.

But it wasn’t so.

My gaze slowly lifted back to the mural.

“And now…”

My voice faltered slightly.

“She’s here.”

The words felt unreal.

Even saying them out loud didn’t make them sound believable.

I turned my head toward the room where she slept.

“She looks like you,” I murmured.

The resemblance was impossible to ignore.

The same face. The same eyes. Even the way she frowned earlier felt painfully familiar.

But it couldn’t be that simple.

Fate wasn’t that kind.

Life has taught me that lesson many times.

And yet…

The moment I saw her on the ground while I was hunting in the forest, something inside me shifted.

Something I thought had died centuries ago.

Hope.

My fingers curled into a fist.

“No,” I muttered quietly.

I shook my head.

I had lived too long to be fooled by illusions.

“She isn’t you.”

The words felt forced.

Like I was trying to convince myself more than anyone else.

Because deep down… a voice whispered something else.

What if she was?

My chest tightened again.

What if after all these years… after all the pain and emptiness…

Fate had finally returned her to me?

The thought terrified me more than anything.

Because hope meant one thing. I could lose her again.

I dragged a hand through my hair.

“I won’t survive that,” I said quietly.

Not again. Not a second time.

The first time had shattered me. A second time would destroy whatever remained.

Silence filled the room again.

My eyes drifted back to the mural.

***

Five hundred years ago, she had stood in front of me with the same stubborn look she always had when she disagreed with me.

“You worry too much,” she had teased.

“I worry because I love you,” I had replied.

She laughed then.

The sound echoed in my memory so clearly that my chest ached.

“If something ever happens to me,” she said playfully, “I’ll just find my way back to you.”

I remembered scoffing at her.

“Don’t joke about things like that.”

“I’m serious,” she insisted, poking my chest. “You won’t get rid of me that easily.”

My throat tightened.

The memory faded.

And the silence returned.

Slowly, I looked toward the hallway again.

“She said she would come back,” I whispered.

The words barely left my lips.

My heart pounded harder in my chest.

Was this her way back?

Was this what she meant?

Was this… reincarnation?

Or was I simply a broken man clinging to impossible fantasies?

I didn’t know.

And that uncertainty felt like torture.

I exhaled slowly.

For a moment, I considered opening the door to the room where she slept again.

Just to look at her, to make sure she was real.

But I stopped myself.

If I saw fear in her eyes again…

I wasn’t sure what that would do to me.

So I stayed where I was.

“I waited for you,” I murmured.

It dawned on me that fate had placed someone who looked exactly like her in my home.

Just a few steps away.

My gaze lingered on the hallway for a long moment.

Then I finally whispered the words I had been afraid to say.

“If you really found your way back to me…”

My voice broke slightly.

“…then please.”

I closed my eyes.

“Please remember me.”