“Finally…” YoungJae closed the map and stopped in front of a big ancient temple covered by vines and roots of century-old trees. After a long day walking, climbing, swimming over many lakes, hills, bushy forests, finally, they reached the target on the map. Not to mention about the alien monsters, alien bugs, and some other dangerous and monstrous kinds of beasts. Without their unity, they might not get over through. Thanks to their helping one another, all of them arrived safely. Even though they had met several troubles along the road, received some wounds, lost some blood but it didn’t matter anymore. This place was all that they were looking for!

YoungJae turned back and waved to the rest of the team tiringly followed far away behind. “Hey~ Over here!”

“WE MADE IT!” Zelo ran as fast as he could towards where YoungJae was standing and expressed his exciting face for the spectacular scnene.

“COOL~~~~” JongUp dashed towards them then passed them and ran straight into the door.

“Hey wait!” YoungJae called him back as they had to wait for the others but it was too late. He had already got inside.

DaeHyun rammed YoungJae’s back from behind and pushed him, “What are you waiting for?”

Everybody walked into the door respectively, except for HyunAe and YongGuk. They stopped right in front of it. When YongGuk picked his feet up to step inside, HyunAe grabbed his wrist to stop him. Looking at him with her watery eyes, she stuttered, “I’m scared…”

YongGuk intertwined his fingers with hers, “We’re here for this! We’ve been through many things just for this. Don’t give up!”

“I’m not giving up… It’s just… I don’t want to say goodbye…” She looked away and hurriedly wiped her teardrop.

“I hate that curse!” he looked down sadly at the ground covered by the white fog.

“Promise me one thing…” she turned to him to look deeply into his beautiful eyes. He also looked back into her soaking eyes. “You’ll look for me in our next life, just like SooHyun did to AhSeung… Please…”

YongGuk smiled. I guess what she said sounds silly to him. He smiled more brightly and nodded. “Of course, I will. I will!”

When they entered the main hall of the old temple, the others were exploring around. There were many culptures and mysterious signs on the rock wall. YoungJae just went around looking for something.

“What are we looking for?” MinHee asked him, to make sure that they would find the right thing he wanted.

“I don’t know too… Another room, maybe. There’s nothing here!” YoungJae scratched his head awkwardly. In the moment he thought that everything would be done soon, they ran into another trouble.

“I don’t think there’s another room. There’s not even a door here! Except for one that we stepped into.” DaeHyun shook his head at his best friend, reminding him that they were going to a dead end.

HyunAe and YongGuk looked at each other. There was a small dais right in the middle of the hall. Why did nobody see it?

“Guys!” YongGuk pointed at the dais. “Can this be that ‘something’ you’re looking for?”

“What?” HimChan turned around to look at the ‘something’ YongGuk was poiting. “I don’t see anything…”

“Right!” YoungJae clapped his hands. How could he forget such an important thing? Of course there was only the person who received the special senses from the Princess was able to see the signs. “What do you see, Bang?”

“A dais… With four dents at four sides. The shape of the dents looks like a rectangular.” He described what he saw as the others couldn’t see it.

“It looks like…” HyunAe added, “The book!” She stared at the ancient book YoungJae was holding in his hands. “Give me that!”

After receving the book from YoungJae, she put it down on the surface of the dais, fit the four sides of it with the dents on the surface. Immediately, they heard the sound of something moving. The book lighted up, flashing out many bright glares and the wall in front of them devided into two parts. Two halves of the wall moved to each side, revealing a big lake. In the middle of the lake, there was another dais with a gold box on it. The box somehow looked like the Pandora box.

“Wow~” HyoSung uttered. The scene was very beautiful. The lake had pure water that was so limpid that it could be seen through.

“Now bigger problem… How can we reach the box?” Zinger crossed her arms powerlessly. She thought they would have been through another hard time.

“Swim to it?” SunHwa suggested.

“No… Walk to it!” YongGuk smiled at their wrong guess. He gave out his hand and signaled HyunAe to take it. Then they took their steps on the surface of the water.

“Huh?” Zelo enlarged his eyes surprisingly. “Were they doing magic trick?”

“Only true love can get close to Poison…” YoungJae murmured. “I bet there is an invisible path leads to the box but we aren’t able to see…”

YongGuk turned back to look at YoungJae while they were already at half way to the box, “You’re right Brain! There’s a path!”

“SEE?” YoungJae rubbed his hands together, showing his excitement of being so smart. But the rest didn’t care at all so there was only him laughing merrily at himself, like a mentally ill.

As they reached the box, they touched it right away. But it was locked. No matter how they tried, it couldn’t be opened.

“Jae!” HyunAe waved at him at the middle of the big lake. “We can’t open the box!”

“Really? Maybe we have missed something…” he quickly took several steps back to take a look at the ancient book. After a while checking, he exclaimed, “Here it is! ‘Note: When the Princess says ‘I do!’… We missed that part!”

“Right… I haven’t propsed to you yet…” YongGuk face-palmed and shook his head at his forgetfulness.

“But we don’t have rings…” HyunAe started wanting to do everything slowly, like she wanted to postpone it. Because they were rushing to the end of everything, their relationship, this story… There would be only MATO Planet saved, but them… No one could tell what would happen to them after the box was opened and they found Poison.

“The engage ring!” YongGuk gently took her hand and slid the engage ring that he was accused of stealing out of her finger. Just one short second, the memories turned back in both of them’s minds. All the moments from when they first met at the robbery, to when they acted a perfect play in front of TaeSung at the Royal engagement, to the very first time their lips touched each other… A tear dropped on HyunAe’s face.

YongGuk also paused. Everything was about to end here. He felt too hesitated to continue. This girl that he loved would soon be apart from him. Seeing her cry, his heart felt like there was a vaccination needle injected into it. It was stingy, very stingy. He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. Despite the pain, he had no choice.

Slowly pushing the ring back into her ring finger, YongGuk faked a smile to assure her that everything was fine to him, that he didn’t feel sad or hurt at all. “Would you marry me?”

HyunAe bit her lips to stop the tears from falling too fast and too much, “In our next life, yes, I do!”

As they heard a sound ‘click’, the box was unlocked. Now it was time!

YongGuk reached out his hand to open it but HyunAe stopped him, “Wait! I’m not ready yet…”

“It’s time!” he wiped her long line of tears.

“I can’t…” she grabbed his hands as tight as she could and scratched it, like she wanted them to be stuck with each other forever.

“This is our only chance! The sun is going down. The two moons will be full tonight. This is our last chance…” YongGuk pulled her closer and gave her a big hug.

“Kiss me… one last time…” she cooed to him while sobbing.

He pulled her out a bit to look at her and slightly rested his plump lips on hers. Even though she was crying a lot, even though she was feeling the most tragic pain in her life, but his kiss, his sweet kiss blew all of those away. Now there were only her and him in the world. There was no way she would forget him. No matter what would happen!

“Let’s do it…” YongGuk whispered. However, what he wanted to do was to hold her hands tight and run away from this, run away from sadness and depression. There would be only two of them in their own world. But no. This life, he would sacrisfice it for the whole Planet.

Both of them slowly open the box while looking at each other.

 “See you in our next life!” YongGuk said to her, as a promise. His voice had never been that warm before.

=====================================FINAL==================================

“You look stunning, my sister!” TaeSung whispered to HyunAe as he slowly wore the Princess crown for her. After repositing it to make sure that it wouldn’t fall, he turned to the side and took the scepter, giving it to her.

Then he turned around to look at the whole big square right in front of the giant Royal Palace which was filled up with several thousands of people, making an important announcement, “And now… I declare to crown this girl, Jeon HyunAe, the Princess of MATO Planet. She had just saved our Planet by finding and bringing back the lost mysterious gem, Poison, which is known as the most powerful source of energy. From now on, she would be one of my very important assistant to rule this Planet.”

The whole square was about to explode. People clapped and whistled happily, praising their new Princess. HyunAe beamed brightly. She had never felt this happy before. Wearing a gorgeous Princess gown, covered by a thick and long cape which made her look more like a Queen than a Princess. Her long-await dream finally came true. She liked that very much. Besides, the crown she was wearing made from rare jewels and diamonds. The scepter she was holding had a stick which made from gold and on top of it was Poison. She looked at Poison proudly and waved friendly to her people congratulating her on finally being the Princess of MATO.

She stood up, waved gently to the residents of MATO the last time before made her elegant way retreating inside the Palace. The Royal Body Guards followed her.

“Congratulation!” HyoSung and MinHee had been waiting for her at her tea-room. They hugged her right away just when she stepped in. After receiving their congratulation, she hurriedly changed her clothes and dashed to visit her sister-in-law-to-be, JiEun. The others slowly followed her.

Right after the Princess was crowned, the Wedding of the King would be held. It means there wasn’t much time left. JiEun eyed at her perfect reflection the last time on the mirror before taking the bunch of bride flowers from the maid. She was nervous, but more than that, there was another feeling dominated her heart.

“Eonni!” the little sister darted in and startled JiEun by hugging her suddenly and tight.

She smiled in return but that smile was very awkward and it soon disappeared. JiEun wanted to cry again just when she saw HyunAe.

“Eonni! Why are you so sad? It’s your big day! You have to be happy and smile always!”

Remember when I once told you, in Chapter 8 that there was a girl who didn’t feel good at all on her Wedding day? This is exactly that story. And I’m telling you now.

JiEun felt sad. However, she was still glad that HyunAe was able to smile so bright. Rubbing her hair gently, JiEun said, “It’s good that you don’t know anything. It’s good that you forget everything…” Then, couldn’t hold her tears, JiEun burst out crying and ran away.

“Eon… Eonni!” HyunAe called out for her. She was so surprised. Not only JiEun but also the others. It was a very big and happy day, why were people all so sad and depressed?

HyoSung heaved out a sigh, shaking her head and chucked her tongue. “Poor them…”

Zelo walked towards HyunAe and asked the question that everybody already asked her hundreds of times, “Noona… You really don’t remember anything?”

“Remember what?” she replied spontaneously.

“About Bang, about Poison, the curse… about everything?” MinHee reminded her. However, she had no clue.

“Who is Bang? What happened to him? Why are you guys so sad?” HyunAe asked in return. There wasn’t a single trace of that ‘Bang’ whom people around her were talking about in her memory.

“He’s dead…” JongUp answered with a sad voice and a sad face.

“He’s NOT!” HimChan suddenly became grumpy. It was easy to understand as YongGuk was his best friend and thinking about him as a dead person wasn’t comfortable at all. “He just disappeared from this World. It doesn’t mean that he’s dead!”

“Whatever… We won’t never meet him again…” DaeHyun’s voice trailed off. He had to admit that he really missed his leader.

“Until our next life!” YoungJae added, trying to cheer everybody up. At least, they would have a chance. They definitely would.

Suddenly, hearing that recalled something very ambiguous in HyunAe’s head. She heard a voice, a strange male voice which was very scary low yet warm and caring trying to tell her something. Her eyes unintentionally stopped at the top of the scepter, glued at Poison. “See you in our next life!” that voice echoed in her mind again.

Nobody knows what happens after that. Maybe they finally met each other again in their next life. I just know that someone added on the last page of the ancient book which gives the clues leading to Poison,

“When the gem was created, it wasn’t called ‘Poison’. It was a pure and powerful gem that was very helpful. Human’s jealousy and resentment polluted it, took away its purity. That’s why it became Poison! There’s no poison in natural at first, only human created it.”

=====================================THE END==================================

It's the end :(

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