Laila’s mood was gloomy. For some reason, her pocket containing the paper felt heavier than before.
She got up from the bench and started walking aimlessly.
Like many people who feel suffocated inside, she just wanted to walk without any reason.
So, Laila kept walking wherever her feet took her inside the estate, and as she walked,
“Ugh.”
She realized as she suddenly lost strength in her legs and sank down.
‘…I’m hungry!’
She had recklessly moved too much in a state of hunger for several days!
Her head began to spin. Oh, why did she do such a foolish thing?
With no strength to get up, Laila sat and observed her surroundings.
The weeds had grown so densely that the trail was barely visible.
If it’s a place where hardly anyone’s footsteps reach…
‘……If I collapsed, how long would it take for someone to find me?’
Of course, Laila didn’t want to collapse. Her goal was to gather her remaining strength and safely get out of here.
However, she couldn’t rule out the worst-case scenario.
Laila searched her surroundings meticulously. It was just an instinctual action, but it unexpectedly helped.
Berries.
Small, reddish berries peeked through the weeds.
Laila blinked and stared at them.
If she had found mushrooms, she would have ignored them without hesitation.
It was common knowledge to most people, including Laila, that wild mushrooms could contain deadly poison.
These were fruits, however.
And a pretty ordinary-looking one at that.
They resembled what she had seen on the pancakes served at the table a few weeks ago.
The wind blew. The tiny berries swayed, hanging from the thin branches like blades of grass.
Laila’s hand moved involuntarily.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
“Miss, wake up! Sir Elvin, please save our lady.”
“Calm down, Marie. First, let’s lay Laila down on the bed.”
Sion, who had fallen into a light sleep, suddenly opened his eyes.
The reason for his sudden awakening was the commotion coming from outside the bedroom.
The next bedroom, to be precise.
Sion reflexively pushed himself upright in bed, trying to recall the words that had woken him.
“Our Miss, help her, Lady Laila…”
‘Did Laila Hildegarde die?’
Sion thought absentmindedly, then immediately dismissed the idea.
‘Of course not.’
If Laila had died, Sion would have woken up in the cramped, dark, swaying luggage compartment of a carriage long ago.
He wouldn’t still be in this bed.
Sion descended from the bed, assessing Laila’s condition.
She wasn’t dead yet, but her breathing seemed precarious.
Sion frowned and glanced at the clock.
Just an hour ago, Laila had been perfectly fine.
So much so, in fact, that she’d been rummaging through someone else’s bedroom to her heart’s content.
Why had she suddenly become…
Sion swallowed his irritation and left the bedroom.
He wanted to personally assess Laila’s condition with his own eyes.
Laila shouldn’t die now. It wasn’t her time to die yet.
‘Why does she keep putting herself in situations where she could die at any moment?’
It hadn’t been long since he saved her from an arrow in the forest.
Isn’t she practically disregarding her life by doing this? Why is she doing this when she claims she wants to live?
“Could she be reading my thoughts? Did she want to die out of defiance when I told her not to die?”
“…I’m having absurd thoughts.”
Without bothering to pinpoint the exact cause of his escalating frustration, Sion entered the adjacent room, where the door wasn’t properly closed.
The interior was disorganised, as evidenced by the disorderly state of the room.
Everyone was so focused on Laila that they didn’t even realize that someone else entered the bedroom, allowing Sion to blend in with the group of people checking on her.
Standing amidst the crowd surrounding Laila’s bed, Sion furrowed his brow.
The young girl lying in bed looked truly on the brink of death.
Her face was pale as a sheet, her lips almost devoid of colour like a desert, and her hair, especially the strands near her face, clung wetly as if drenched by rain, likely due to cold sweat.
Her eyes were tightly shut, and her breathing was barely audible.
Sion was stunned.
He had somewhat guessed from the pleas to save their lady, but this… she was really on the verge of death.
Why did it come to this? Sion naturally wondered about the cause when the doctor spoke up.
Dr. Elvin, after examining and observing Laila’s condition, wrote down his findings on a piece of paper before coming to a conclusion.
“I believe she may have ingested something toxic.”
“Toxic? Are you saying that the lady ingested poison?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was poison, but it seems she may have consumed some toxic fruits or roots.”
Elvin shifted his pen and chart in one hand and pushed up his glasses with the other.
A shadow seemed to pass over his face briefly, and Sion didn’t miss the reaction.
‘There’s more to it, it seems.’
So Sion stood there a moment later, deliberately not leaving as Elvin dismissed the others from the bedroom, leaving only Marie, Laila’s dedicated maid.
Elvin, belatedly noticing Sion due to his shorter stature compared to adult men, looked surprised.
“This child is…”
“Oh, she’s the lady’s, um, slave.”
Marie hesitated for a moment, but eventually spoke the words that everyone in the marquisate used to refer to Sion.
“A slave?”
“Yes, that’s what he is.”
“Hmm…….”
It wasn’t hard for Elvin to remember Sion.
The boy, who had been brought to the marquisate a week ago with an arrow in his shoulder,.
He’d done his best to save his life, but he didn’t know how he’d gotten involved with the Marquis’ family.
‘Lady Laila’s slave.’
Elvin remembered Laila from a few days ago, when she had come to inquire about Sion’s condition.
At the time, Laila seemed concerned about the slave’s health.
Elvin shrugged inwardly.
He didn’t know the details, but he figured that if he was close to Laila, he didn’t need to kick him out of this bedroom.
“Alright, you stay here too.”
Sion didn’t answer and remained silent.
Elvin quickly tore his gaze away from Sion and focused on Marie.
When the four of them were alone in the bedroom, including the unconscious Laila, Elvin spoke.
“Has Laila not been eating recently?”
“Eating?”
“Refusing to eat or vomiting everything she eats…”
“Well, that can’t be right! She eats sparingly, but I’m sure she’s eating…….”
“Eating sparingly?”
“Yeah, um…”
Marie tells Elvin about Laila’s “meal restrictions” as part of her punishment for the hunting ground incident.
Elvin’s eyes widened in surprise at this new information, then he composed himself and lowered his voice.
“Have you ever checked how much she leaves uneaten?”
“No. After meals, she always returns the tray to the dining hall herself… She insisted on doing it that way.”
“Hmm. Marie, it seems to me that Miss Laila hasn’t eaten much in the last few days.”
“What?”
“Her body is severely malnourished. On top of that, she consumed toxic food.”
Elvin sighed again, mixing a hint of frustration into his words.
“I would say she’s been starving for at least three days, if not longer.”
“Why on earth…”
“I thought maybe the Marquis had forbidden her to eat, but apparently not.”
Well, even the most heartless person wouldn’t starve their ten-year-old daughter for days on end.
As Elvin pondered this, unaware of the situation, Sion’s expression hardened more and more.
‘What?’
A meal, only once a day, and only a set amount.
Laila, who seems to have hardly eaten for days.
No way…….
