Dead-End Villainess Who Makes Medicine

Going back in time to the day when I leaned on Julion and cried my heart out.

Eventually drained of strength, I had to return to the villa, nestled in Julion’s arms.

Feeling awkward with the knights nearby, I wrapped my arms around Julion’s neck, burying my face. He found it amusing and kept chuckling.

Despite telling him to stop laughing, asking him to put me down, and even scolding him for messing up my makeup, he continued to chuckle multiple times.

Then he said…

“Don’t worry, you were more beautiful than anyone else today.”

Followed by a sly grin.

As he casually let out those embarrassing words, my face turned red with embarrassment.

Thinking that he might be teasing me, I furrowed my brows, but Julion just kept smiling without a word, looking like someone with a missing screw.

“…That’s enough. I’m going to bed.”

I rushed to say goodnight, but Julion showed no sign of leaving.

Instead, he grinned broadly and removed his outer robe.

“I think we’ve had enough of the cramped quarters in the palace.”

“W-what are you…?”

As I was about to exclaim, I remembered the guards stationed outside the bedroom.

We had come all the way here together, and using separate rooms might raise suspicions.

‘I knew I couldn’t refuse…’

Although I hadn’t thought about it that way, I truly felt helpless.

Narrowing my eyes, I glared at Julion and swiftly turned away.

“Do as you please. I’ll go take a shower.”

I bluntly uttered these words and entered the bathroom without looking back.

However, the real issue began afterward.

Throughout the bath, under Zenid’s tutelage, in the awkward silence with Julion, and right up until the moment I drifted off to sleep, the question kept running through my mind.

[Even after a year, ten years, or a hundred years… couldn’t you stay as Sertijan forever?]

Julion’s bold statement to me.

I wasn’t foolish enough not to grasp the meaning behind those words.

Therefore, I prevented the conversation from progressing any further.

It made me feel embarrassed in a different way.

‘It’s been a long time since I cried like that.’

I hadn’t cried properly since I vowed revenge on Cassian.

Perhaps that’s why it felt so good.

I felt like something had melted away, like a blockage had been lifted, and I could move forward with renewed strength.

With a clear mind, I woke up to a refreshing morning.

“Rohiriel, did you sleep well?”

The first one to greet me was Julion.

Leaning against the headboard, his usually calm black hair seemed tousled, indicating he had just woken up.

“I’m… of course. How about you?”

“I had a bit of a restless sleep.”

In his slightly lowered golden eyes, drowsiness lingered.

Julion, who was blinking lazily, reached out to me but hesitated, turning his head away.

“I’ll go….. prepare some breakfast. You can come down to the dining room when you’re ready.”

With that, Julion slipped out of bed.

As soon as he was out the door, I pulled the covers over my head.

Sleeping in the same bed was something we’ve done many times in the palace, so why does it feel awkward now?

It’s not like anything happened.

‘But wait, what did he just say? Julion’s preparing… breakfast?’

I pulled the blanket down again and stared at the closed bedroom door.

He said he’s going to prepare breakfast. Apparently.

Why would the Crown Prince go out to prepare breakfast himself when there are perfectly fine servants?

‘If he wants an excuse to go out, he should come up with something more plausible.’

Julion was obviously embarrassed to face me.

“Your Highness, here is the water for washing up.”

Blinking in bewilderment, I was still lost in thought when Zenid came in to fetch the morning water.

I roughly shook my head to clear my mind and stretched.

What mattered now wasn’t whether Julion was preparing breakfast.

Starting today, I planned to thoroughly explore various parts of the villa.

‘First, let’s have breakfast.’

It felt awkward to face Julion, but I comforted myself, thinking he probably felt the same.

Despite the lingering awkwardness, I decided to focus solely on the purpose of coming here and avoid meeting Julion as much as possible.

Julion would come and join me for meals, but other than that, I spent the rest of the day going through my mother’s research journals and records.

I found the poisonous beetle journal surprisingly quickly.

It was so easy, almost to the point of wondering if it had been deliberately left here.

The problem was that, even after thoroughly examining the research journal, I couldn’t come up with a proper antidote.

‘Maybe my mother was still in the early stages of her research?’

It was written exactly as I thought it was, but it wasn’t enough.

I wanted to borrow my mother’s wisdom to make progress a bit faster.

‘Otherwise, there’s no point in coming here.’

As I was considering that I might progress faster by continuing the development in a new way, I noticed my mother’s old diary.

At first glance, it seemed to contain simple daily records, but I could quickly sense that something was odd.

Today I went to the Hale festival with Rottie. I was happy to see the beautiful sky.

I tried cooking for Rottie but gave up because I felt tired. Tomorrow, I will try to make Rottie’s favorite pumpkin pie.

I had never attended the Hale festival with my mother, and pumpkin pie was one of my least favorite pies.

 

‘She deliberately left this for me to notice.’

To others, it might be a sentence to overlook, but for me, it was a sentence signaling something strange and worth investigating.

So, this diary was a cipher left by my mother for me.

‘How to decode it…’

I thought back to my childhood memories.

There was a sentence game that my mother and I used to play.

It involved separating consonants and vowels, then rearranging them in a specific pattern.

I fumbled for the rules in my memory and rewrote the deciphered sentence on a blank sheet of paper, letter by letter.

Mom’s beloved daughter, Rottie. By the time you see this, Mom will be gone.

 

As I deciphered the first sentence, I trembled.

My mother’s voice seemed to reach my ears beyond the letters.

Drop. Without warning, a teardrop fell, smearing the ink.

Ever since the tear-filled moment because of Julion, even a small stimulus has made my tears uncontrollable, putting me in a difficult situation.

‘This is no time for sentimentality.’

I took a deep breath to calm my emotions and wiped my eyes.

In the now-clear view, I saw my mother’s diary, filled with stories for me despite her illness.

Instinctively, I felt there might be mention of Cassian’s corruption and perhaps a solution to the issue of the beetles.

I grabbed the pen again and continued to decipher.

If our clever Rottie had noticed why her mother left such a letter, she would have understood that there was much to convey and would have gone straight to the point.

The Duke is not satisfied with the darkness; he’s also trying to seize the sun.

And he’s using poisonous beetles to do it.

 

I was already familiar with this information.

The Duke aiming to become an Emperor or gain similar power, and the poisonous beetles.

What surprised me was that the Duke had started preparing everything even before my mother passed away, and my mother knew about it.

‘At that time, my mother already knew that the Duke was using beetles.’

That meant that there were quite a few nobles who had been working for the Cassians for more than 10 years.

I could see why the imperial power was growing weaker day by day.

Even though the imperial power might be weak now, the Sertizan family is the only royal family that has been maintained since the founding of the empire.

The people will not serve anyone other than Sertizan as emperor.

There have been numerous rebellions in history, and there have been successful ones, but in the end, the throne returned to the Sertizan family.

The reason was simple.

This is because the nobles who opposed the traitor led all the people of the empire in support of Sertizan and regained the throne.

‘It’s not easy to be emperor on your own, even if you’re Cassian.’

The resentment of the people is not to be taken lightly.

But what if the nobles, who instigate and lead the people, all support Cassian?

How many nobles are there left? Are there even any?

Just the list of names identified by the Emperor three years ago exceeded two handfuls.

By now, they likely had even more control.

I took a deep breath and continued deciphering the words.

I’ll skip the information about the beetles since I assume you already know. The problem is the antidote…….

To cut to the chase, the antidote can be made more easily than you might think.

 

My hand was shaking as I wrote down my interpretation.

The writing became increasingly difficult to read, but it was crucial to decipher the next sentence quickly.

I’m going to give you a brief description of the recipe, so decipher it well. 

Then the next sentence.

And the next sentence.

As each line on the blank paper was filled, I couldn’t control the trembling of my fingertips.

In fact, the purpose of coming here was to uncover the antidote formula for the beetles and information about Cassian’s apothecary.

However, after interpreting the entire diary, all of those things became insignificant.

Knowing the truth made everything seem bleak and unbearable.