The mediocre trainer doesn't want to reopen

"If I can't find him, I'll feel so empty in this world, and I'll want to die... So please help me find him..."

In the end, the Holy King's mother agreed to the Holy King's request, and even a few years later, she did her best to help the Holy King not only in Japan, but also in the United States and Europe where she had connections.

But in the end, they still got nothing. After all, there was no way they could find someone who had disappeared from this world.

However, in the ninth year, the Holy King's mother seemed unable to hold on any longer. Perhaps she could no longer bear to see her daughter suffer, so she said to her daughter earnestly, "Huanhuan, don't look for him anymore. He has fulfilled his responsibilities. Perhaps... he really was sent by the Three Goddesses just to heal your heartbreak and help you overcome this difficult time."

"Now, he has fulfilled his responsibilities, and you are now someone who can live on your own even without him. Therefore, the three goddesses have taken him back."

"Don't look for him anymore. He might... never come back."

Sheng Wang's mother's words were very tactful, perhaps the most tender conversation a mother could ever have with her daughter. She couldn't possibly say something like "Kitano abandoned her" to provoke Sheng Wang—especially since Kitano hadn't left without saying goodbye; he had left a letter.

The letter also said that he had "completed his mission" and felt that the heartache caused by Saint King Halo had healed, so he said he wanted to "do the next thing he could do" and specifically instructed "not to look for him."

Although it is still unclear what the last sentence "You should have a good sleep, just pretend that I have disappeared from this world, and the next time you open your eyes you will give up all your worries" means, it is obvious that Kitano is impossible to find. Their efforts over the years have clearly verified this statement.

The Holy King's mother could see that her daughter and the man she loved were actually a pair licking each other's wounds. However, under Kitano's healing, her daughter's scars were indeed healed - but her daughter had no ability to heal Kitano's "scars".

What obsessions did he have, what things did he have to accomplish, what things did he have to prove? Saint King's mother knew from the beginning that her daughter could not keep him.

But the Holy King's mother did not dare to say such words. She was afraid that this fact would stimulate her daughter, whose heartache had not yet healed, and make her fall in love with her, someone she herself could not love.

But she really had no good way to force the two to separate... Thus, a contradictory closed loop was created until it broke out on this day.

In the end, Saint King Halo did not give up, but she also understood her mother's difficulties. Before leaving, she left a final word.

"I'll keep looking for another year. If I still don't find Kitano after this year, I'll really give up."

"By then, I will remain a widow for only ten years, just as I promised. After ten years... I will find someone else to love, someone I will love, and I will never look for him again."

Speaking of which, it seemed as if there was some destiny. Kitano once asked the Holy King what he would do if he left one day. The Holy King at that time didn't know whether it was because she was shy or she thought she saw through Kitano's "offensive" towards her. Her answer was that she would look for Kitano for ten years, but she would never be a widow for her whole life.

At that time, the Holy King could never have imagined that Kitano would really leave her one day. But now, just as she had promised, she had been looking for Kitano for a full ten years.

She had spent ten years of her youth searching for the same person. Adding the three years she had spent at Tresen Academy and the seven years she had spent with Kitano, the current Saint King had spent nearly twenty years working with Kitano.

For ten years, she met and got along with a person she couldn't let go of, and even fell in love with him.

But for ten years, she has been looking for the person she met, got along with, and fell in love with.

This is the last year, the last day of the last year. After this day, the Holy King will have fulfilled his promise and will be able to escape from the "shadow" of this man.

But... can she really do it?

In the past ten years, the Holy King has gone from being panicked at the loss of Kitano in the beginning to being able to silently accept the result of no news and then move on to the next place.

She really had become someone who could live alone, just as Kitano had said. She put on makeup by herself, posted the missing person notice she had just printed all over the city by herself, then took a good bath at night, took care of herself, and even cooked for herself.

It seemed that after leaving Beiye, life hadn't changed much for the Saint King. Even now, the Saint King himself didn't know why he was still looking for him.

The Holy King walked onto a bridge by herself. It was a large bridge across the river. Here, the Holy King stopped, and the next moment, she did something incredible.

As if to vent her anger, she threw all the missing person notices in her hands off the bridge - many papers fluttered in the air as they rose into the air, and slowly began to fall, landing on the bridge and the river surface far below.

"If we do this... we won't be able to find you, right?"

"I don't plan to look for you aimlessly anymore."

The Holy King's eyes were staring into the distance, but at this moment, she was tired but showed a sincere smile. She took out the letter that Kitano left for her from her pocket. She had read this letter many times in the past ten years.

"You said you completed your mission, that you've done what you were supposed to do, and that you're going to a place where no one can find you..."

"Why did you leave a letter instead of telling me in person? If you had told me in person that you were leaving, I wouldn't have thought of looking for you."

"No, it's impossible. I almost fooled myself."

At this point, the Saint King gave a bitter laugh. He put down the letter in his hand, gazed into the distance and at the river, and said softly, "Because you... didn't heal my heartache at all... You didn't take responsibility until the end."

"My heart is hurt... maybe there has never been any heartache. It's only when you are by my side that I am enveloped in happiness and forget the pain of the past."

"But now that you're gone, what should I do when all these things come back to me..."

As he spoke, tears could not help but fall from the haloed eyes of the Holy King. However, at this moment, the Holy King had already burst into tears, but he still maintained a smile.

She didn't know why... She always felt that she couldn't cry too miserably, as if something was supporting her, and she also had... dignity that she had to maintain.

"Isn't it too late to tell you this now?"

"Don't leave me, please don't... I love you, I really can't leave you... Isn't that enough?"

The Holy King burst into tears, and finally loosened the fingers holding the letter slightly. Finally, the last letter that Kitano left for her also floated from the bridge to the river.

The letter in her hand fell to the ground, causing the crying Saint King to tense up all over. When she looked down and saw the letter fluttering in the wind, her pupils blurred a lot in that instant.

"I don't want to look for you aimlessly anymore, Kitano."

"I want to find you, find you... no matter where you are, I will find you."

"If the three goddesses take you away, then this time, I will also let you take me with you to find the three goddesses together."

Muttering to herself, the Holy King slowly closed her eyes. At this moment, her heart suddenly calmed down, and a sincere smile appeared on the corner of her mouth.

However, her body, which was leaning against the bridge's guardrail, slowly began to lose balance...

"I'm coming to see you... for the last time."

The next moment, the Saint King felt a sense of imbalance enveloping him completely. The strong wind beside him, accompanied by a trance, made the Saint King's consciousness become clearer at this moment.

But she didn't think of anything.

"boom!"

There was a loud sound of someone falling into the water, accompanied by severe pain and a biting coldness. The Holy King instantly felt suffocated. Her consciousness blurred at a speed visible to the naked eye, and she had no desire to survive.

But... wait, why does it seem like... there's another sound of falling into the water not far away.

The Holy King opened her eyes slightly, and the next moment, in a trance, she vaguely saw a figure swimming towards her. At that moment, her pupils dilated slightly, and she seemed to see the person she wanted to see the most.

He jumped down with her, and at this moment, she really saw her again.

"I...found you...finally..."

At that moment, the Holy King seemed satisfied and content as he closed his eyes. She felt a warmth envelop her lips, and slowly, her consciousness, everything about her, including the world, began to blur...

But at least, before she left, her wish had been fulfilled.

She found the man, and he really... came back to see her.

Chapter 404: Thank you for changing everything I didn't want to see

"Don't leave me...don't..."

With a gentle murmur, Saint King Halo seemed to slowly regain consciousness in a trance, but the moment she opened her eyes, she found that she had burst into tears without knowing when.

This was the last piece of memory she recovered, and it was also the memory she had been hiding, and even her brain subconsciously helped her not to recall it... The ten years since she left Kitano seemed very long, but to the Holy King, all this was just a dream.

A dream allowed the Holy King to go through ten years in an instant, and she also witnessed that during these ten years, she had only done one thing - looking for Kitano.

The Holy King had truly experienced this. For the past ten years, she had been content with the simple happiness brought by Kitano. Suddenly one day, Kitano left her. In that instant of despair, as if the sky had collapsed, she slowly learned to grasp that wisp of illusory hope, which made her look for Kitano and follow her "promise" to him.

Her emotions gradually changed from shock at the beginning, to disappointment, to getting used to the dullness of disappointment, and finally... accepting the fact.

But the moment the Holy King accepted reality, she failed to pursue a new life as promised - she chose to embrace her and Kitano's past.

To put it bluntly, what she did was to commit suicide for love.

For a man she had never confessed her love for, a man she had only confessed to when she was on the verge of collapse, but she hadn't heard anything about it. She even thought that he hadn't fulfilled his "responsibility" at all and had left her without her permission...

Yes, for him, the Holy King chose to commit suicide in that week. At that time, she... still didn't have the courage to face the world without him alone.

Perhaps for Sheng Wang, she had already achieved what Kitano wrote in the letter when he left, and became a person who "can live independently even without him." Facts have proved that Sheng Wang can still live a normal life after leaving Kitano, and her life rhythm returned to normal later, no different from that of ordinary people.

But in the end, the Holy King made her own choice and gave up everything she had just to find the person she was looking for.

And in the end, she seemed to have really found him... and this memory, for some unknown reason, was "blocked" and became the memory that the Holy King was most reluctant to recall.

No... maybe, if I hadn't brought him into the "dream" this time, maybe I wouldn't have been able to find him in the end?

That idiot, as a bystander... must have jumped down in the end, which is why he had such a memory. So, does that mean that this memory was "affected"?

The original memory must have been extremely bad, right? So bad that my brain subconsciously didn't want to recall those things, triggering an automatic protection mechanism to block out these bad memories.

But now... this memory seems to be much better than the unmodified memory.

At least, it's not so unbearable to look at.

"Hmm? That guy is..."

However, Saint King Halo on the bed did not notice Kitano at first. When she stood up slightly, she found that Kitano, who was dressed neatly at some point, was sitting on the edge of the bed. He was hunched over, with his head lowered, and his body was shaking slightly.

At this moment, the Holy King, who had already understood, gently stood up, reached out and touched Kitano's shoulder. After a long while, he asked with a hint of surprise: "Are you... crying?"

"..." However, after the Holy King finished speaking, Kitano, who was already sobbing, suddenly came back to his senses. After swallowing back all his tears and emotions, Kitano found that at this time, his emotions seemed to be out of his control.

"I'm...fine, Holy King."

"You don't look well." The Holy King also lifted the quilt with some concern. Kneeling on the mattress, the Holy King tried to pull Beiye over, but found that Beiye was slightly resisting. He had no choice but to stroke Beiye's shoulders with both hands and said softly: "You don't cry often. I know you best. You just keep all your emotions in your heart and vent them until you break down."

"And when you let it out, you often can't see your partner anymore. I don't want to go through that again."

The Holy King really understood Kitano's temper. Kitano seldom cried, except for some times when he was very excited. The last time the Holy King saw Kitano cry was when Kitano and Rudolph "broke up". Kitano had an emotional breakdown.

This time, Kitano also cried because of a similar thing, but this time the heroine changed from Rudolf to the Holy King.

Now that the Holy King had recovered all his memories, he didn't know what to feel towards the man in front of him for a moment. However, the Holy King, who had met him in two lifetimes, soon understood everything. There was no need to figure it all out.

She had let it go and would no longer be angry about this matter, because she already knew that this man had made his choice in the end - when she jumped into the river, he also chose to jump down without hesitation.

All we can say is that he didn't know that everything in this world would continue to change after he left, otherwise he would never have left.

And if he left because he thought he had fulfilled all his responsibilities, and not gone without saying goodbye, otherwise, why would he spend seven years healing all the scars in her heart, waiting until she could really take care of herself and seemed to have completely forgotten about the past, before choosing to leave.

He had indeed done enough, but unfortunately... maybe she asked for too much.

"If it's because of me...don't be sad. Listen to me, I don't blame you anymore."

"You've done enough, and you've done it well. I know you want to prove yourself, to change everything. You have your determination. If you don't achieve it one day, everything you have now may just be a continuation of your pain."

"You only focus on healing my wounds. Have you ever thought that the wound in your heart might also need someone to help heal you?"

The Holy King said softly, and she gently hugged Kitano from behind. This time, her movements were more cautious than any other time, as if she was hugging a fragile piece of porcelain.

Because this time, the Saint King knew more than ever how hard it was to get this hug. She also knew exactly how much hardship she had gone through in order to embrace this man again.

Of course, she also truly felt sorry for this man, the man she loved. His heart was originally as fragile as glass, but through repeated experiences, through the process of being broken and picked up again, pieced together and broken again, he had tempered his glass-like heart into something as hard as steel—but not as cold as steel.

This is rare and difficult, but the Holy King saw that this man had struggled all the way, from a man who was unable to help, a man who had talent but could not use even 10% of it due to his own inner limitations, to a man who still stuck to his original intention, and after going through so much, he could still have absolute kindness and tenderness towards the "Uma Musume" group.

It has not been easy for him. The suffering and choices he has experienced are actually much more bitter than those of the Holy King. And now, even the most basic choice, the choice of giving up, which seems to be the one that requires the least concerns and the least psychological burden, has led to a big mistake. It is inevitable that he will have an emotional breakdown.

"For once, let's not worry about it. Perhaps... I can't be the person who heals your scars like you did back then, but I can probably apply some medicine around your wounds to make you feel better."

"I don't blame you, I forgive you, and... I still can't leave you."

As the Holy King's words gradually fell, she felt the man she was hugging move, and then gently loosened her arms around him. At this moment, Kitano also slowly turned around, revealing his tearful eyes that were rarely seen by others.

At this moment, looking at the Holy King in front of him again, Kitano seemed to have all his psychological defenses collapsed. Without hesitation, he hugged the Holy King in front of him, no longer sobbing, but bursting into tears, crying out: "I'm sorry... I... I'm sorry... Holy King... I'm sorry..."

"You don't have to say 'sorry' to me." The Holy King gently patted Kitano's back. At this moment, she seemed to have become the Kitano of the past, the one who comforted him. She said softly, "You haven't done anything wrong to me. You did everything you had to do. It's me who may have been too greedy."

"I wanted a perfect ending, but I didn't dare take a single step towards it. I only regretted it when I lost it... And you tried to take many steps towards me before. If I had responded once, would you not have left?"

"But even so, in the end... you gave me the best ending, a worst-case scenario that I myself didn't dare face. Because of you, I can finally face this ending. I can finally face everything."

"You have already changed everything, Long Yi. You have done well enough."

This time, the Holy King spoke these words from the bottom of his heart. It was even the first time, and the only one in the entire team, who called Ryuichi Kitano by his name.

And she also knew that this was the first step to heal this man's scars. The road ahead was still long, and she...had to accompany him slowly.

It was just like he was with her back then.

Chapter 405: First Contact with the Holy King's "Shadow"

A few days have passed since the end of Gaoyue Award. Now, Kitano and Shengwang's relationship seems to have gradually recovered from the initial tension and uneasiness, and everyone in the team can clearly feel that this tense atmosphere is slowly dissipating.

Sheng Wang began to return to the team's daily routine, and training began to gradually resume. Such changes made everyone feel that the situation was back under Kitano's control.

Qingyun Tiankong, who was also burdened by this incident, felt relieved after seeing the Saint King return to normal after a few days. However, everyone on the team soon realized that beneath this seemingly calm rhythm, there was something subtly amiss.

"Trainer-san, have you been spending too much time with Seiou-san lately?"

In the end, it was the spoiled brat, the East Sea Emperor, who first realized that Kitano and the Holy King were spending far too much time together. During today's training, he finally complained to everyone around him, somewhat dissatisfied, "Emperor, I just won a match, and Shanxin also won the match, but Trainer-san has been hanging out with the Holy King lately. We're clearly working hard to win the match, too!"