The sun was already setting.
“Now!”
I grabbed Hart’s trouser and shook it wildly.
“Let’s go!”
“Where to?”
“To give the Saint her medicine! She’ll wake up if she takes it!”
“Asta hasn’t been conscious for a month. But if she takes this potion, are you sure she’ll wake up?”
“Yes! Hurry!”
We have to go now! We can’t be late!
‘The timing of the medicine is everything!’
Getting frustrated, I tried to pull Hart’s hand with both my hands. But no matter how hard I tried, he wouldn’t budge.
“Umph, ungh…!”
“How am I supposed to believe you? No, by the time I brought you here, I was already…”
Hart seemed to be kicking himself for trusting a child the size of a pea. His slightly frowning face was charming.
‘You’re like a three-starred-Michelin restaurant for looks, as expected of my favourite.’
I couldn’t help myself.
Hart nodded and said, “Firstly, let’s feed her. I asked the imperial physician and he said nothing harmful can be made with these ingredients.”
Taking the vial, he left the room.
Losing his grip, I stumbled and hurried after him.
“Take Hanelope with you!”
Hart glanced at me but continued walking anyway.
But his steps were a little slower.
‘Hehe. I’m walking with my favourite.’
This allowed me to fully appreciate Hart’s ice-cold beauty.
“!”
Hart stopped walking.
Had he finally noticed my prying eyes? My heart sank.
“I-I wasn’t staring at you!”
Hart frowned slightly, as if hearing some kind of nonsense.
“Where are the servants I sent you to help you?”
“Huh? Uh, uh… I don’t know! They left because they were tired.”
“Is that so?”
He shook his head nonchalantly. But I knew how cruel Hart can be to his disobedient servants.
‘They knew that he had brought a filthy child from the slums to help him make the antidote, which servant would have taken it seriously? It’s not like Hart introduced me as his daughter. Thanks to that, I had to make it by myself.’
Still, I was looking forward to introducing myself as Hart’s daughter.
‘He won’t admit it if he didn’t want to. It didn’t matter even if it was your blood, right?’
I had already expected that I would not be accepted by that cold-blooded man with a word called daughter, because he was not the parenting type to begin with.
‘It’s still a bit upsetting.’
But if I show that I’m useful, if I keep sticking around, maybe he’ll warm up to me a little.
This is why, even though I was seven, I addressed myself in the third person, ‘Hanelope’, like a baby.
‘Mum had said, just saying my name and the Prince will recognize me.’
So even if you pretend that you don’t know, I’ll keep reminding you.
I’m the ‘Hanelope’!
***
I followed Hart, and soon we were in the room where Asta was lying, it was a spacious and luxurious room.
I wondered, ‘Isn’t this the room for the future Princess and Duchess?’
They gave Asta this room. Thinking of my mother, I felt sad.
Of course, Hart had his reasons.
‘Asta had consumed the poison and collapsed in front of him.’
The day, Asta had collapsed. She came to Hart to share a cookie from the Duke of Eisen, and collapsed in front of him during tea time. That was why she was being treated here.
Asta was lying on a large bed with a pale face.
Striking red hair and paper-white skin. Long, heavy eyelashes. Dazzlingly ornate features.
She looked like a snow queen.
‘Pretty! After all, a heroine was still a heroine.’
The two physicians tending to Asta bowed to Hart.
“His Highness, you’re here?”
“How is Asta?”
“No improvement from before.”
Hart’s face darkened.
I stuck close to him and looked at the physicians.
One was an older man with a bushy white beard. The other was a younger man with lustrous brown hair.
‘The younger one must be a physician named Philen, a supporting character in the original, and the old man next to him must be an imperial physician, since he’s dressed that way.
They must have been sent by the Emperor.
The empire was now divided between the imperial and temple factions. The Emperor kept the temple faction in check, but respected the saintly Asta, who held a tight grip on the people.
‘Besides, being a regressor,the beginning Asta already knew the Emperor’s itch. I’m sure she can win him over.’
The Emperor is still wary of Asta, but he’ll soon be smitten.
Beside him in bed was Hart’s half-brother, Prince Patrick von Reinhardt, the original protagonist of the novel, the man who would soon fall madly in love with Asta.
“The Lady is in this state, yet the Duke of Eisen is enthusiastic about his innocence.”
“He says he’s conducting a search through the household to find the culprit, but who’s going to believe him?”
The older physician’s retort made Patrick fume.
“It was strange from the time he started arguing with the Lady about everything. I’m going to catch him guilty.”
‘Asta was preparing for revenge.’
In the beginning of the original work, Asta plotted every trick to recruit people who would benefit her revenge. She wanted to get her hands on everything that could be hers before the trans-dimensional Yenna showed up and took what belonged to her.
Even the title of ‘Miraculous Saint’ originally belonged to Yenna.
‘But Asta stole it.’
On one hand, she took revenge on those she held grudges against before her regression. No matter how trivial the grudge, the retribution was brutal.
‘She slashed the wrists of the young lady who had splashed her with tea, crushed the legs of the knight who made her trip, and made the tongue of the lady who had spoken ill of her never to be used again.’
In the original, it was so exciting for the readers, to see Asta returning her revenge in thousandfold.
But when it became a reality, it was kind of scary.
‘Besides, if my favourite was sacrificed for mere exhilaration…’
I looked at Hart.
Hart’s face was filled with guilt and pity as he glanced at Asta.
‘He blamed himself, as he couldn’t protect her while she collapsed in front of him.’
But that’s not the truth.
It wasn’t his fault. I looked resentfully at the sleeping Asta.
“What brings you here?”
Patrick asked in a sarcastic tone.
If Hart is a precarious handsome man with a sharpness, Patrick is a gentle handsome man who seems to have been carefully cared for.
Brothers of the same age, they had their moments.
“I’ve been working on an antidote.”
“An antidote? How?!”
Patrick sprang up from his seat.
It was an antidote that Patrick couldn’t get, even if he ran around to the point where his eyes began to see darkness.
How did Hart find it!
He couldn’t believe it at all.
“I found a daughter of the genius physician, who had helped me before.”
“The daughter of a genius physician?”
“Her mother taught her pharmacy. Thanks to her, she knows how to make the antidote.”
At Hart’s words, the white-bearded imperial physician asked worriedly.
“Do you mean to tell me that she concocted the antidote without ever seeing the patient’s face?”
“Is there a person in the Empire who doesn’t know the symptoms of Asta’s disease? And when I asked you about the ingredients used in this antidote, didn’t you say it wasn’t impossible to make something harmful from them?”
“Is that why you asked, but…”
“Anyway, the bottom line is, If it works, great. If it doesn’t, so be it. At least it’s better than nothing.”
If he had brought a child to examine Asta in the first place, they wouldn’t have passed that stage, let alone concocting a medicine.
‘Also he hid the fact that a child concocted the medicine before getting the approval from the imperial council.’
Was there any reason to not give Asta the antidote?
My dad made a clever move.
Everyone nodded, then suddenly Philen spoke up.
“No, we can’t. We’re not even sure who made it, and as a member of the Imperial Council, I can’t approve it until I’ve met the apothecary.”
Philen was a stubborn character in the original. He won’t let go of this easily.
‘There are some things you just can’t back down from.’
I can’t help it. This body has to take action.
***
“You have to give her this now! If she takes this, she’ll wake up soon!”
The chirping voice came from somewhere, and everyone was trying to find the source of the voice.
It was then that Patrick’s eyes caught something of the size of a bean next to Hart.
“Who is that?”
Patrick asked coldly, looking at the tiny sparrow-like child.
The child was scared and stood close to Hart. Hart glanced at the child and spoke nonchalantly.
“She’s the one who prepared the antidote.”
“What?”
Disbelieving stares fell on the small, chubby-cheeked child.
Patrick gave me a ‘no way’ look.
“Are you a dragon using poly-morph?”
“No.”
“Then, a witch with enough magic to never age?”
“No.”
“Then, a Saint who works miracles and is recognized by the temple?”
“She’s just an ordinary child. Her biological mother was a genius.”
Horror filled the room.
As if noticing the uneasiness, the child grabbed the hem of Hart’s clothes with her tiny hands.
“H-How can you say that!”
“What do you want me to say then?”
“That Hanelope is smart, too.”
Hart dismissed the child’s words as if they were nothing.
The child puffed up her cheeks and pouted. When Hart didn’t laugh at her, she felt very proud.
“You never cease to amaze me, my brother, but this is unbelievable. An antidote made by a child who looks like a newborn. Did you lose your mind for a moment?”
“Then why didn’t you get the antidote, before ‘I lost my mind’?”
Hart shot back without batting an eye.
Patrick’s dumbfounded gaze turned to the child. The child tilted the head and blinked her pink eyes.
The corner of Patrick’s mouth twitched upward.
“Pink eyes? Is the genius physician you’re talking about ‘Laura Koch’ brother?”
Hart nodded.
Patrick burst out laughing and muttered in annoyance.
“You’ve been looking for her all along, haven’t you? Then the child’s father must be…”
