Aya Ran Away - Chapter 5

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 5
A voice thick with malice rang out above her head, brimming with cruel delight.
Aya thrashed wildly.
Her frantic struggle sent ripples across the Pond’s surface.
The mist vanished, but water rushed down her throat instead.
Her nose and mouth submerged; her breath caught fast.
She kicked, but waterweeds tangled around her legs, only binding her tighter.
Her feet found no bottom.
She’d felt it when she looked down earlier—the Pond was deep enough to drown in.
Aya gasped roughly and let out a sound between a scream and a shriek.
Her vision narrowed as panic seized her.
The world spun before her eyes.
‘How do you breathe? How does breathing work?’
Her mind wouldn’t settle; panic drowned out reason.
With only the thought of pulling herself up, she grabbed whatever thin reeds came into her grip.
The fragile stem snapped beneath her hands, and Aya plunged underwater again.
Her head went white; her thoughts scattered into chaos.
Wet hair plastered across her face, blocking out the world.
Death seemed to close in, close enough to touch.
“Calm yourself!”
Then someone seized her waist with a fierce grip.
At the touch of those hands, clarity flooded through her mind.
The world flipped; her senses inverted in an instant.
The stench vanished. The laughter that had echoed above her head—gone.
In its place, the sharp reek of pond water and the bitter cold of it became sickeningly vivid.
‘…So cold!’
Terror seized her completely, and she thrashed harder than before.
Panic swallowed reason whole.
She kicked and pushed against the arms holding her, desperately trying to wrench herself free.
“Stay still!”
But the more she pushed, the tighter they held. Before she could dodge, he tore the gag away.
“Hahhh!”
Clear air rushed in all at once.
Only after the thing fell from her mouth did she understand what it had been.
‘Ah. That was it.’
In her panic, she hadn’t thought about the gag clinging to her lips, soaked and suffocating.
“You’re all right. I have you.”
A large hand patted her back reassuringly.
Aya gasped and leaned her head against that hand.
Held by a stranger, relief washed over her like floodwater.
‘I’m alive.’
That knowledge was sharp and clear.
Her heart thundered in her throat.
The man lifted her into his arms.
With his free hand, he brushed the waterweeds from her face and swept her soaked hair back.
“Are you hurt?”
As she blinked her water-logged eyes, a strikingly beautiful man came into focus.
Beneath long, damp lashes hung what gleamed like brilliant gold eyes.
His skin was smooth and dark—the face of someone she’d never seen before.
Aya’s eyes widened.
His own wet face showed clear bewilderment.
Before she could even offer thanks, Aya bent forward with a strangled sound.
She coughed and retched, expelling water in long, violent spasms.
“Good. That’s good,” the man murmured, patting her back to encourage her.
His soothing voice steadied her.
For no reason she could name, tears threatened to spill.
As Aya’s ragged breathing eased, her body began to go limp.
Unable to hold herself up, she rested her head against his solid shoulder.
The reassurance she felt—like leaning against an ancient tree, not a living person.
The Pond’s water continued to lap against her, cool and endless.
The man carried her out of the water, walking slowly onto the bank.
“Easy now…… Yes, that’s it.”
As if to help her, who was still gasping and struggling to breathe properly, he patted her shoulder in a steady rhythm.
Aya exhaled and inhaled in time with each tap.
With every breath out, her raw throat burned as though seared by flame.
“You’re doing well.”
As her breathing gradually steadied, shame crept in to fill the silence.
The man, now fully out of the water, set Aya down on the ground.
She couldn’t walk at all, trembling violently where she stood.
It wasn’t shame that made her shake—it was the cold.
Her teeth chattered, click-click, rattling together.
She didn’t want to be any more embarrassed, but her body betrayed her will.
“Your Highness!”
“Your Highness……?”
A sharp cry tore from the Nurse’s throat.
Footsteps followed, people running toward them.
“Oh…… Your Highness.”
She heard the man murmuring something above her head.
His voice had turned noticeably colder than before, and despite her trembling, Aya lifted her head to study his face.
Soaked and dripping, he wore an expression of startling indifference.
He made no overt show of displeasure, yet his face suggested that whether he’d fished out a princess or a lost cat made not the slightest difference to him.
“What in heaven’s name has happened?”
The Nurse strode forward, examined Aya, then turned on the man with a cutting glare.
Aya grabbed at the Nurse’s sleeve, silently begging her to stop.
“What……”
The man drew out his reply, looking down at Aya with an unreadable expression.
Seeing her standing there, trembling, unable even to lift her head properly, he sighed before answering.
“I was passing through this place when I heard a scream. I came to look and found Her Highness had fallen into the Pond, so I went in and pulled her out.”
It was a concise, clean explanation.
The Nurse didn’t press him about why Aya had fallen.
There was no need to ask.
Aya’s occasional wild escapades had become familiar enough throughout the entire Royal Palace.
The Nurse, still looking angry though she said nothing, took a Blanket from one of the attendants standing behind her.
She wrapped it around Aya’s body and helped her trembling form to her feet.
Aya followed without complaint, terrified the Nurse might say or do something unnecessary again.
The Nurse offered the man not a single word of thanks.
Instead, she swept her eyes over him once, slowly and deliberately, with an expression cold and contemptuous, then turned to leave.
Shocked by the Nurse’s overbearing and discourteous manner, Aya looked back.
The man stood alone there, shaking the water from his wet hair.
Aya waited for his eyes to meet hers.
She wanted to convey her gratitude to him through a glance or a nod, if nothing else.
But he did not turn his gaze away until Aya had left that place entirely.
After that, she lay ill for a full month.
For the first ten days, a relentless high fever consumed her.
Her head felt as though it were splitting in two, and waves of sharp pain shot through the back of her skull, like a red-hot iron spike being driven in.
Each breath she drew carried excruciating torment.
Aya knew this was not an ordinary kind of sickness.
She had suffered high fevers before, but never like this.
‘That mist.’
It must have been that.
The Physician came to examine her, prepared medicine, and left.
The Nurse tended to her throughout her illness, watching over her constantly.
She sat vigil through the nights and changed the Wet Cloths on Aya’s brow again and again.
The Nurse was always like this.
She hurt Aya’s heart as easily as she soothed it.
One moment she treated her like a burdensome nuisance, the next she pulled her close like her own child.
As these thoughts swirled through Aya’s mind, she squeezed her eyes shut, her brow furrowed.
The careful touch on her forehead felt suffocating.
She could neither hate freely nor love freely.
As the scent of medicine drifted through the air and the atmosphere grew thick and stale, sleep came creeping over her.
Through the haze of pain and medicine, Aya’s thoughts spiraled around a single refrain.
‘I want to tell them thank you for saving me.’
When she bit her parched, fever-cracked lips, tears spilled down her cheeks.
Unable to offer even a single word of gratitude to her savior.
Because she was ill. Because she had no strength to speak.
All of it was just an excuse.
The real reason was shame—shame that burned so fiercely the tears came.
‘Will I ever see them again?’
It was possible she never would.
The Royal Palace was a constant flow of faces, the staff turning over endlessly.
Unless someone lived in her own quarters, there was no way to track down a passing acquaintance in such vastness.
‘Even my Nurse didn’t seem to know who they were.’
As doubt crept in, Aya forced herself to hold firm.
‘No. I’ll find them. I have to see them again—and when I do, I’ll tell them thank you…….’
But despite her resolve, her vision blurred further with each flutter of her eyes.
Her consciousness sank slowly, inexorably, into a thick and fathomless darkness.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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