Episode 49

“Gasp! Huff, huff…”

“Miss! Lady Diana, please stay with us!”

It was just like that day.

When I brought the poison and hesitated until the last moment to pour it into the teacup.

Diana, not knowing what was happening, coughing up blood and dying.

Crash―!

The sound of the teacup shattering loudly and Diana’s maids rushing in immediately.

I was arrested as a criminal without a chance to explain.

The only difference this time was that instead of the Marquis’s knights, Edwin was the one who came.

Diana’s labored breathing.

The maid’s frantic screams.

Beep…

All the noise was drowned out by the loud ringing in my ears.

I stood there, frozen, just watching the scene unfold.

I couldn’t move a single finger.

‘…Maybe I’m being punished, trapped in an endless nightmare even after death.’

The ridiculous thoughts I had when I was locked in the Room of Repentance crossed my mind once again.

Being arrested on suspicion of attempting to kill Diana, taken to the imperial prison.

Suffering through horrible torture.

Edwin coming to save me, only to die in my place.

And then being sent back to my childhood to repeat it all over again.

Changing the circumstances a little each time, endlessly.

Forever.

Thinking that I might be trapped in a nightmare like this forever, endlessly repeating this situation, made me wish for death.

‘If I escape from prison, I won’t follow Edwin this time.’

My thoughts drifted irrationally.

‘I’ll break the bottle with my heart in it as soon as I get it. And then I’ll slash myself with the glass shards…’

It was then.

“…Belze.”

Someone roughly pulled me out of my cruel fantasies.

“…Belze!”

“…”

“Belze, breathe.”

A rough hand gently cupped my cheeks.

“Huff…!”

At the same time, the breath I had been holding escaped my lips.

My chest heaved violently.

Until then, I hadn’t realized that I had been holding my breath.

“Are you okay?”

“…Edwin.”

As my vision cleared, I saw the person who had pulled me back from the brink of death.

His sunlit eyes filled with worry.

Seeing my one and only savior, I instinctively blurted out.

“It wasn’t me.”

“…”

“I didn’t do it, Edwin.”

For a moment, Edwin’s expression twisted.

But was it just my imagination?

When I blinked, he was simply looking down at me with a blank expression.

His silence made me anxious.

“Really, I swear! I didn’t do anything…”

“I know.”

“…”

“You didn’t do anything, Belze.”

His words made my legs give way.

As I staggered, he caught me.

“You didn’t do anything? Then why is our lady in this state!”

A sharp voice rang through the room.

I turned my head swiftly to see Diana’s maid glaring at me and Tara.

Tara responded, bewildered.

“We didn’t do anything! She just suddenly started acting this way after eating the dessert…”

“Exactly! Unless there was poison in the dessert, why would a healthy young lady suddenly be like this? What did you do?!”

“Poison?!”

At the mention of the horrifying word, Tara’s mouth fell open.

“Our young lady ate the same thing, so what poison!”

“Since you’re the one serving, you should be able to tell whether it’s poisoned or not!”

“Hey! What kind of nonsense is that…!”

“Cough, cough! Gasp!”

“Miss!”

Their argument was interrupted by Diana’s coughing.

“Lily… my face itches…”

She gasped and whimpered, her breathing labored.

Red, blotchy rashes were appearing on her exposed face and skin.

“Oh no, our lady is dying! We shouldn’t have come here, what a disaster!”

Seeing this, Diana’s maid cried out loudly.

To an outsider, Diana might indeed look as if she’d been poisoned.

But unlike in my past life, she wasn’t coughing up blood or collapsing.

Ironically, this difference grounded me back in reality.

“An antidote! Is there an antidote? Somebody, anyone, call for help!”

“Watch your words. Are you saying the food at Kalios is poisoned?”

Edwin reacted sharply to the maid’s outrageous claim.

“And if it were poison, she’d be coughing up blood or worse by now, not just breaking out in a rash.”

“Th-that’s…”

The maid, who had been so bold and assertive, faltered and lowered her voice.

“Then why is she suddenly like this? She was perfectly fine when we came here…”

“It’s an allergy.”

I approached them calmly and spoke.

“An… allergy?”

“Yes. You don’t know what an allergy is? It’s what happens when you eat something that doesn’t agree with you.”

The maid looked bewildered.

As I reached out to touch Diana, the maid pulled her back, eyeing me warily.

“What are you trying to do?!”

“If you leave her like this, she won’t be able to breathe. Is that what you want?”

I stared at the maid, and she hesitated.

She seemed to be gauging whether the food at the Duke’s house could be poisoned.

It was a truly ridiculous thought.

It was an utterly baseless and unreasonable attempt at poisoning, without any grudge or reason.

“If something happens to Lady Diana, the Marquis of Barrelotte will not stay silent!”

Perhaps realizing that accusing us of poisoning was too much, the maid snapped and handed Diana over to me.

I sighed and placed my hand near Diana’s neck.

The yellow energy, now swollen and rippling, represented an allergic reaction or an immune disorder.

Unfortunately, allergies couldn’t be “healed” in the traditional sense.

They could only be temporarily alleviated.

Thus, the only way to manage them was for the individual to constantly be cautious.

‘…But did Diana really not know?’

Ignoring my pounding heart, I focused on gathering my holy power.

First, I needed to address Diana’s breathing difficulties.

Whoosh―!

Soon, a bright light burst forth from my palm.

It wasn’t difficult to calm the yellow energy.

“Huff, huff…”

Diana’s pale complexion began to brighten.

Her labored breathing gradually stabilized.

When the yellow energy stopped shrinking at a certain point, I withdrew my hand.

“Lily… Sister…”

Diana finally spoke in a weak voice.

“Oh my, Lady! Are you okay? What is all this? Can you get rid of these hives too?”

The maid, teary-eyed, urged me.

Although Diana’s breathing had returned, the red, blotchy rashes on her skin remained.

Since the urgent treatment was done, it was better to use medicine rather than healing power.

‘This is like saving someone from drowning and then being asked to hand over your bundle too.’

Annoyed by the maid’s ungrateful attitude, I frowned.

“I can’t do that.”

I replied coldly and turned away from them.

“Tara, are you okay?”

“…Yes, yes. I’m fine, Miss.”

Tara was trembling, her face pale from the accusation of attempted poisoning.

‘Because of me, Tara always…’

I felt a slight sense of guilt for her constantly being caught up in my troubles.

I decided that after this incident, I would let her pinch my cheeks twice as a way to apologize.

“Hey. Could you call Grandpa Gordon? And ask him to bring some Povlata juice with him. Please.”

“Yes! I will. I’ll be right back!”

Fortunately, she quickly regained her composure and ran out of the room.

“And you.”

I then turned to Diana’s maid.

“You don’t even know what kind of allergies the child you’re taking care of has?”

“T-that’s…”

The maid flinched at my cold question.

She couldn’t meet my eyes and mumbled her response.

“I-I heard once that she has an allergy to apricots…”

The maid muttered in a timid voice.

Suddenly, Edwin gave a meaningful smile.

“Then we just need to find any food that contains apricots.”

“…”

“But can you handle it? Calling an allergy a poison is quite a bold accusation.”

“Gasp!”

Like Tara earlier, the maid’s face turned pale.

She had rashly accused the Duke of Calios’s household of poisoning.

And the cause of the allergy might not even be something from the Duke’s house.

The maid mumbled, her face ashen.

“T-then where did she consume it? She had lunch at the Marquis’s house. Here, she only had dessert and tea…”

“Cough, cough! Lily, I’m okay, please stop…”

At that moment, Diana stopped her maid with a dry cough.

She then turned her head towards me.

“I’m sorry, Young Duke. I caused a commotion… cough, cough!”

No, I was mistaken. She was addressing Edwin, not me.

As her coughing grew more intense, Edwin frowned.

“Enough. Stop talking.”

Uncomfortable with her weak voice, he sighed.

“I just wanted to have some delicious food with Belze after meeting her for the first time in a while…”

Diana’s purple eyes welled up with tears as she sniffled.

At that moment, I knew for sure.

‘It’s the pecan pie.’