WGMFTR | Chapter 9

Episode 9

<With the pain came a desperate scream echoing through the air. It’s always worst when I’m asleep. Maybe it’s because my mind is unguarded then.>

Only then did I remember what he had said.

He had hidden it so well that it was hard to realize he was actually suffering.

Now that I saw it, the symptoms brought on by the curse looked terribly severe.

He had brushed it off so casually that I had taken “suffering from pain” at face value without truly grasping what it entailed.

Still, when I thought about how I had effectively neglected someone I had vowed to take responsibility for, guilt unexpectedly crept in.

It was frustrating that the Marquis Esteban only ever said he was in pain, without elaborating.

“It looks a lot worse and more painful than I thought. Would it hurt to ask if there’s a way to ease the symptoms in daily life besides lifting the curse?”

Lydia muttered to herself, grumbling.

Because he was lying on his side, it was awkwardly difficult to hold the cursed left hand.

“Can I hold your right hand instead?”

Approaching the Marius cautiously, Lydia lightly touched the right hand, which wasn’t gloved.

She kept glancing at his face, worried he might wake up, given how sensitive and temperamental he seemed. But there was no sign that his tightly shut eyes would open.

“This probably won’t work…”

As expected, even holding his right hand, Lydia felt nothing unusual.

Curse or not, it simply felt like she was holding another person’s warm hand.

“Huh, maybe it’s working?”

But all her worries about whether to wake him and ask him to roll over suddenly felt pointless.

The Marquis Esteban, who had been muttering incomprehensibly for a while, fell instantly silent.

Even the frown that had wrinkled his brow eased into a surprisingly peaceful expression.

“…Is my power activating without me knowing?”

Perhaps Lydia’s power instinctively responded to this vicious curse, trying to awaken and protect its wielder.

Maybe just touching him was enough for the marquis to come under that protection as well.

“Well, either way, that’s a relief.”

The Marquis Esteban exhaled deeply, his breathing calm now, and gradually relaxed from his curled-up posture, beginning to roll onto his back.

Worried he might feel cold once the sweat cooled, Lydia gently pulled the blanket back over his shoulders.

That made it easier to see his body rising and falling in slow, steady rhythm.

She found herself thinking again how pitiful he seemed in many ways. He was the master of this vast mansion, someone who should be resting comfortably in the softest bed.

And yet here he was, crumpled in the study like this.

‘He must’ve come out here because he couldn’t sleep due to the nightmares.’

The half-read documents left on the table seemed to support that guess.

As she leaned against the sofa with her arm draped over it, gazing up at him, a yawn escaped her lips.

“Haaaah… Just for a bit… and then I’ll… wake the marquis…”

Her fatigue hit her all at once from having stayed tense all day in an unfamiliar environment, and her head soon drooped forward.

It was the hour just before dawn, when the world was slowly being dyed in a bluish hue.

Ilian Esteban suddenly opened his eyes. The silence around him was eerily unnatural.

“What the…”

His left arm, which should have been in pain as usual, felt perfectly fine. Instead, his right arm was tingling.

He didn’t have time to finish wondering whether the curse had taken a new direction. At the edge of his gaze was a mass of abundant brown hair.

The person clutching his hand tightly, practically hugging his arm while sleeping in a precarious position leaning against the sofa, was none other than Lydia Solem.

She had clearly covered him with the blanket she’d been using, and her face, deeply asleep as if the cold didn’t bother her, looked far too peaceful.

“So defenseless…”

Clicking his tongue, Ilian slightly lifted his body, though he made no move to withdraw the hand she was holding.

At first, he had thought it was bearable, but the symptoms had been getting drastically worse by the day.

With the voices and pain tormenting him constantly, he was starting to feel like he’d lose his mind first.

This current state, where it had all vanished, wasn’t something he could easily let go of.

“Lydia.”

Still, he couldn’t just leave Lydia dozing uncomfortably like that.

Even as he cleared his dry, cracked voice and called her name several times, the brown-haired woman remained sound asleep, unaware of anything.

Leaving the hand she held alone, Ilian reached with the other and gently shook her.

Only then did her eyelashes tremble, and her dazed, sleep-clouded eyes slowly opened.

“Isn’t that uncomfortable?”

“…Marquis.”

Lydia, propping her head on her arm to look up at him, still seemed only half-awake.

“It looked like you were… having a nightmare… and your sleep… looked uncomfortable… haaaah…”

Her head drooped forward again as she yawned, and strands of hair spilled down. Illian, as if bewitched, reached out and gently brushed her bangs aside.

Perhaps the one being too defenseless was himself.

The servants wouldn’t dare step foot in his study, but he had given Lydia free rein of the mansion—his mistake.

“Go back to bed.”

As the blue hue of dawn faded and the sun threatened to rise, Ilian took the opportunity to slip his hand free, anticipating the return of pain and voices.

But nothing came.

It felt as though the pain were suppressed—just a dull ache, like something muffled by a thick wall.

“But… you’re still hurting…”

“Not as much as I expected.”

He didn’t know how long they had stayed like that through the night, but the continued contact seemed to have had an unexpected effect.

Of course, it hadn’t just been hand-holding.

Still, compared to the exhausting days when he suffered migraines and couldn’t focus during meetings, this was a blessing.

“Really?”

Finally, a clear light returned to Lydia’s eyes. Her reaction, like someone who had made a groundbreaking discovery, made Ilian let out a small chuckle.

“I honestly didn’t use any power. And I was even holding the hand that wasn’t cursed…”

“Then go back to your bedroom. I doubt anything will happen to me while you oversleep a little.”

He cut off Lydia, who was rubbing her eyes but still looked drowsy. She pouted slightly but nodded.

Still, instead of getting up, she sluggishly returned to her sleepiness, eventually flopping down again and using Ilian’s arm as a pillow to doze off.

“…Seriously. You’re unbelievable.”

Ilian debated waking her again, but decided not to be fussy this time.

It was the first time in ages he’d woken up feeling refreshed, after all.

He gently pulled his arm out, stood up, and leaned down to lift Lydia into his arms.

Though she jostled as he adjusted her position, Lydia paid no mind. Rather, she nestled closer against his chest, falling deeper into sleep.

It was still early, but the servants in the mansion would soon be rising to begin their work.

While carrying Lydia down the stairs, Ilian ran into the busy head maid.

“Master, today—”

He silenced her with a single nod, motioning toward Lydia asleep in his arms.

The head maid, seemingly understanding, nodded cautiously, though her expression showed disbelief at what she was witnessing.

Even as Ilian passed by without a word, she couldn’t take her eyes off the pair.

Ilian entered Lydia’s room, where books were still scattered about, and let out a soft sigh-laugh at the familiar sight.

‘Really now…’

Even if you gave her treasures of gold and silver, she’d likely spend half of it on books and the other half on space to store them.

He gently laid Lydia on the bed.

“…Leon will be jealous.”

He found himself thinking that as he checked whether the blanket covered her properly.

If it were his nephew Leon, he’d puff out his cheeks and complain about how he only ever got a brief goodnight while Lydia was carried all the way to bed.

‘Useless thoughts…’

Ilian hadn’t expected to gain another person whose well-being he needed to worry about.

Despite her passion for learning surpassing even that of palace scholars, she was terribly inept at navigating life.

If he wanted to keep her by his side in the future, he’d have to constantly look after her—that much was clear.

But the image of her, curled up uncomfortably and asleep at dawn, refused to leave his mind.

The annoyance, the burden that should have come—none of it truly registered.

She really was one of a kind. Lydia Solem.