After such a long nap, Noel was slowly opening his eyes, letting out a question from his pale lips.
"Urgh.. what's happened..?"
"Noel! You're finally awake!" Crystal hopped onto Noel's face when she exclaimed happily.
"Crystal..? Why are you here..? I thought you disappeared after Noelle got frozen? Why..?"
When Noel was asking questions to Crystal, he suddenly realized that he was in the middle of people staring at him. And so he got startled by all these eyes after regaining his consciousness.
"Wait, who are these people..? Ahh!"
The moment Noel had his gaze on Frostina, he immediately stood up from his spot and had his index finger pointing straight at Frostina.
When Mirai and Raiden showed how Noel literally just pointed his finger at Frostina, pointing a finger gesture extremely aggravated these two.
Luckily, Raiden remained calm and rational because he knew it was understandable that Noel wouldn't know about the gesture of pointing the finger.
However, that left someone who wasn't happy at all by Noel's gesture.
"How dare yo—" Mirai was about to scold the boy, but she was interrupted by Frostina when she had raised her hand to stop Mirai.
"You! You killed me!" Eventually, Noel exclaimed in fright and shock, not noticing Mirai's glare.
Surprisingly, Frostina looked around to see who Noel was referring to.
Noel grew angry at Frostina and so, he uttered. "Yes, you! You! Only you, murder!!!"
"How unreasonable. You're alive, aren't you?" Frostina spoke, standing there with her usual disinterested expression.
After leaping off Noel when he got up, Crystal had walked up in front of Noel and uttered. "Noel. This is not the time to be in a rage."
"Crystal…"
Dazing at Crystal in his sight, Noel mumbled before crouching down and picking up Crystal in his arms.
"It's time to depart from here. We have already wasted precious seconds by waiting for this brat to wake up." Frostina declared before beginning to walk away.
Ultimately, Mirai and Raiden nodded to each other after hearing Frostina's words. Eventually, Mirai created a pillow and a blanket for JoonChul whereas Raiden was carrying JoonChul's body up from the cold snow.
Soon after, Frostina stopped walking and turned around to see Mirai and Raiden doing their duties, thus Frostina wanted to help them by summoning forth a coffin made out of ice in front of them.
As to show their thanks, Mirai and Raiden grinned at Frostina bitterly, then Mirai rested the blanket and pillow inside the coffin perfectly before Raiden came in to place JoonChul inside the coffin.
Covering JoonChul with her handmade blanket, Mirai etched a sad frown on her face when she shifted her eyes onto JoonChul's lifeless face.
"Captain.." Mirai murmured to JoonChul after stroking his pale cheek.
Afterwards, Raiden closed off the coffin and lifted it up before proceeding to leave this area with the coffin and Behemoth on top of the coffin.
That was when Noel witnessed JoonChul being inside a coffin, prompting him to rush toward the coffin the moment he saw it.
"Father!! Why are you putting him in that thing!? He's not dead at all! Take him out already!!" Noel exclaimed, falsely believing that his father would be alive.
Crystal, who was with Noel, harshly informed him of the truth. "He's dead, Noel. Please stop this.."
"No way.. He should be alive.. not dead!"
Noel was walking up toward the coffin and was almost close to touching it before he was brutally interrupted by a hand.
Slap!
Out of a sudden, a slap greeted Noel again by the exact person who slapped him before.
Frostina, who had ran over to the coffin, had slapped Noel with all her might. It was enough to cause bleeding onto Noel's cheek because of Frostina's nails.
"What are you doing, Frostina?!"
HwanGi, who had witnessed this scene, came rushing in to stand in between Frostina and Noel.
Frostina glanced at him with somewhat tilted eyebrows, expressing a little annoyance by what she was seeing. She then turned around and told HwanGi the following words.
"The brat behind you is JoonChul's murder. Keep that in mind."
"...!?"
Wholly shocked, HwanGi dazed at Frostina before shifting his gaze at the boy behind him, peered fixedly onto Noel.
"Let's go." Frostina told everyone before she started to walk alongside her comrades.
When all of them were leaving this place, HwanGi was still staring at Noel and Crystal before getting told to start moving from Louis and Alaine.
"Come on, we need to go." Louis informed HwanGi.
Needless to say, HwanGi took some time to respond to Louis, but soon, he replied as he walked away from Noel with slightly clenched and quivered fists as if he was extremely conflicted.
"..Alright."
Being left behind by everyone, Noel stood in his place without moving. It was because he was still baffled by the vicious slap he received again from Frostina.
"Noel! Are you okay? Ah! Your cheek! You need to stop the bleeding quickly!" Crystal spoke, but instead was ignored by Noel.
Since Noel was speechless, Crystal hopped onto his shoulder and proceeded to tap his cheek with her paw, freezing the wound with her ice power which caused the bleeding to stop completely.
After that, Crystal sighed in relief. "There.. much better."
"I'm a murder.. I killed my own father.." Suddenly, Noel became teary after sobering up, muttered to himself.
"Don't worry.. We can fix this together.. Let's just go with them, okay?" Crystal reassured him a bit.
With only one choice, Noel had to listen to Crystal. As a matter of fact, Noel looked at her for a short period and nodded slowly before gazing at the back of everyone walking ahead of him.
"Let's go and bring your father back, shall we?" Crystal smiled, getting back to Noel's arms.
"..." Noel, hesitant, nodded to her.
And so, Noel and Crystal accompanied the 'The Rebels' Guild along the way. With certainty, Noel didn't want to get too close with Frostina and everyone, thus he had been walking a few steps far from them, anxiously hugging Crystal firmly.
———
After leaving the cocoon and journeying through the high mountain, everyone had been looking for the Crystal Temple.
Despite the mountains not having any trees or plantations, it remained difficult to locate the temple because of the snow that had covered it.
As such, their eyes were focused on finding some sort of building that might be hiding under the snow.
During this, HwanGi who was traveling with everyone, had been keeping an eye on Noel and his bunny.
Spying on them every now and then with a bemused expression, he was planning on having a conversation with the boy.
Considering how HwanGi only know that Noel is JoonChul's murder which is definitely enough to hate on him, but still…
'I haven't heard his part of the story and his reasoning for killing JoonChul-ssi..' HwanGi pondered.
After a short moment of continuously thinking, HwanGi had reached a decision.
'Communicating is better than ignoring him.'
Finally making up his mind, HwanGi was slowing down his pace until he got by Noel's side, causing Noel to be surprised by his sudden appearance.
Noel uttered, giving a menace gaze at HwanGi. "What are you doing? Did you get tired or something?"
"No, I came here to listen to you." HwanGi responded.
"What..? That's your reason? Didn't that lady tell you that I'm the murder!? Just leave me alone!"
"Noel! Don't do that! Just talk to him instead of making everyone hate you more!" Crystal scolded Noel as she bit Noel's finger.
Noel grumbled, completely ignoring HwanGi. "Ouch! Hey! Crystal! I have been wondering about this the whole time! Why are you here?!"
"Well.. after Noelle got frozen, I disappeared for a long time. Since I needed to save up the leftover mana inside of me, I couldn't stay with you until the right moment came."
"So you just appeared now? You could have informed me before disappearing like that!"
"I'm sorry.. I didn't have much time and if I do that, I would only be able to stay for a few days or more."
"...I was isolated and alone.. you know?"
After Noel had spoken, he felt hands being placed on his shoulders which caused him to look at the person who did this.
Finding out it was HwanGi who Noel had ignored, Noel flinched a bit by the big hands on his shoulders.
"W-What is it?! What do you want from me?!" A bit frightened, Noel asked.
With emotions that were hard to tell, HwanGi was laying his eyes on Noel, gazing at Noel before asking the question.
"Why did you kill JoonChul-ssi?"
The moment HwanGi mentioned the name 'JoonChul', he had tightened his grips on Noel's shoulders as if HwanGi was extremely angry.
"Uh.. I.. I didn't mean to.. I was just.. I was.."
Although he was perceiving the pain on his shoulders that was caused by HwanGi, Noel didn't react to the pain but instead, looked away from HwanGi's line of sight.
"Please tell me honestly."
"I did it.. I DID IT BECAUSE I WAS MAD AT MY FATHER!" Noel exclaimed loudly.
"What..?"
"You don't understand at all! Neither does that cold lady! ..Noelle and I had to endure the harsh cold after our father's death.."
"His death..?"
"We were left alone with only ourselves to take care of each other.. It was okay since we always found supply of food and water in our sights.."
"...????"
"The snow was cold and sometimes hard to live through.. but you know what's more painful? The suffering of having to wait for your beloved one after decades to centuries!"
In short, the story was poorly told..
Without a doubt, HwanGi was now 100% confused about Noel and what he was mostly talking about. Though HwanGi did understand a little, it was better to know the full story instead of a summary.
And it seemed that Crystal also knew that Noel was being emotional while telling his story, including the fact that HwanGi's confusion was written on his face.
"Sorry for that, sir. Noel is very depressed right now, so he can't talk to you right this moment." Crystal informed HwanGi.
HwanGi, being a tiny bit surprised by a talking bunny, jolted a little when he heard the bunny. Until he realized that he had already seen something more shocking like a spider who could turn into a human, whereas a bunny talking wasn't that surprising at all.
"Can we talk while walking? Since everyone is moving further away from us.." Crystal suggested as she looked toward the others.
In due course, HwanGi also noticed he had stopped walking when he had rested his hands on Noel's shoulders.
"Oh.. Yes, we can."
By then, Noel started to walk without having eye contact with HwanGi. While Crystal was explaining things in somewhat full details to HwanGi, he had exclusively paid close attention to JoonChul's death.
'I'm not sure what this means.. but did JoonChul-ssi die in the past.. or did Crystal misspeak that?' HwanGi wondered as he concentrated on listening to Crystal.
By now, HwanGi was unintentionally learning about JoonChul's past death. Whether that was true or not, he had to think about it much further.
'..Crystal didn't mention anything about his death nor how Noel knew JoonChul-ssi was his father.. This is really strange.'
He pondered as HwanGi stared into the distance where everyone was, gazing at the coffin with a sort of bewildered and puzzled expression.