Chapter 28

‘There’s no serenity.’

It hadn’t even been a day since she met Cassion, but she could see that this was strange enough for him.

This man, when he slept, always looked strangely serene.

She looked alternately between the blanket in her hand and the man, then she quietly sat up.

Then, she looked squarely at Cassion.

“Cassion.”

She called out to him in a small voice, but there was no response. Even so, there were some small wrinkles beside the eyelids of his closed eyes.

‘No matter how you look at it…’

It looked like he was awake.

The blanket couldn’t have flown over her body on its own, so someone must have covered her with it.

And there’s only this guy in the same room. But he was desperately closing his eyes like this…

Should she point out that she noticed he’s awake or not?

She narrowed her eyes as she looked at him, and she soon reached out to the bedside table.

When she opened the second drawer, there were various first aid supplies there.

‘Ah, there really is something there already.’

Now that she thought about it, she didn’t think they would have left after just treating Cassion.

It was a room with a patient in it.

It was also a five-story room with important guests residing there, so they must have a few first aid supplies on hand.

She was very relieved that she wouldn’t need to bother with calling someone for it.

After roughly rummaging through its contents, she brought out clean bandages, cotton cloths, disinfectants and a topical cream to treat wounds. Right after, the drawer was closed.

Tak.

It closed with a loud sound, but Cassion still wouldn’t budge.

‘At this point, are you really sleeping? How can someone always sleep so well?’

And the blanket… somehow flew on her on its own. Sure.

With that ridiculous thought in mind, Rosetta took the bandages first.

After confirming that this would be the right length for his wound, she removed the blanket covering the man.

And when she did, the sheet was dyed red.

The blood didn’t seep through, but his clothes seemed to have been heavily stained.

‘I would still have to call someone in the end.’

She couldn’t avoid troublesome things.

Maybe that’s why it’s annoying to her.

With a short sigh, she reached out.

Towards the man’s waist.

His clothes were so thoroughly soaked that blood even dripped.

Carefully holding one end of the shirt, she pulled it upward gingerly.

Below where the shirt was lifted, the apricot colored bare skin wrapped with red bandages appeared.

‘More than I thought…’

His body looked good.

No wonder he held up longer when she hadn’t stepped in.

Perhaps it was thanks to repeated exercise and training, even while he was locked up in his room.

A few years ago, Cassion locked himself in his room amid the repeated threats to his life.

His anxiety reached his limit, and he had only one thought.

That even when cornered, he should at least be able to rely on himself.

He had to do something to protect himself.

He couldn’t use magic, so he turned to physical training.

Since his room was small, this was the best he could do inside.

Thus, he chose to train himself from the books he had read. He eventually learned swordsmanship even without fundamental skills.

Truthfully, his plan wasn’t very fruitful.

Aristocrats usually refrained from this method, but he basically learned everything on his own through books.

He also knew this fact.

Nevertheless, Cassion did not neglect a day of training and exercised well.

It was also a kind of compulsion for him. He would think that if he didn’t do this, he would really die.

So it was a routine that he repeated.

Well, looking at his state now, it didn’t seem to be fruitless.

Thanks to that, he had a solid body.

Rosetta reflected on his past as she went over to his apricot skin and removed the dirty bandages.

Her palm grazed over his hard abdomen.

The damp texture had wetted her hands, and at the same time, Cassion flinched.

She looked at his face to see if there would be any small movement, but his eyes were still tightly closed.

To the point that she could feel a vein throb on her forehead.

She stared at the man’s face and felt for the end of the bandage.

It was difficult to grasp, as if looking for the edge of transparent tape.

She raised her finger and looked closely, but she couldn’t see a sign of movement.

Only the muscles of his body that she touched repeatedly contracted and expanded minutely.

While she adjusted the way she sat, she touched his chest and it looked as though he was out of breath.

Whenever Cassion’s body would react, she would stop her ministrations for a while. And by the time he’d be still again, she would move her hand.

Near his belly button.

A little more to the side.

She trailed it down near his waist, then when her fingertips were about to reach his spine—

Tak.

Her wrist was caught.

With a rough touch of his palm, a slight sting could be felt on the inside of her soft wrist.

The hand that held her wrist moved slowly.

He pulled Rosetta’s hand away from his waist and lifted it into the air.

She didn’t try hard to resist, but she followed his movements.

He pretended to sleep so diligently like that, but now he finally admitted that he was awake.

Rosetta kind of pitied him for the foolish acting that made her do this.

“Are you awake?”

When she asked this with a smile, pretending not to know, Cassion had let go of her wrist and sat up.

His cheeks seemed red in the dark.

The ears under his black, tangled hair also looked red.

Even though he lifted his upper body to sit up, his tightly closed eyes only opened then.

Beneath thick dark eyelashes, reproachful eyes flashed open.

“You knew.”

“What exactly?”

“That I was awake.”

“Gosh, of course not.”

When she answered with a smile, Cassion’s lips gaped open as if he was dumbfounded.

“It was obvious that you were sleeping because your eyes were closed.”

“Does a sleeping person flinch like that?”

“Oh, what else should I have done. Your bandages were all soaked. If we leave it as is, your skin would only get bad.”

When Rosetta answered calmly and pointed to his waist, Cassion looked down and clutched his shirt.

“I’ll do it. Give me the bandages.”

With a little urgency in his voice, he reached out his hand.

It was also a bandaged hand.

And it was stained red, too.

Rosetta glanced at his hand, placed the dry bandages on the bed, then took his hand.

For a moment, his fingertips flinched and closed like wilted flowers.

It wasn’t until she grabbed the edge of the bandage and pulled it by force that the hand opened up again.

She felt his gaze on her.

But then the eyes that stared blankly at her hurriedly went away, as if it belonged to a child that was caught doing something wrong.

When she shifted her head to try and meet his shifted gaze, those eyes were averted further again.

‘What’s wrong with you?’

He could look at her properly before.

“If you were awake, then you could have sat up and cooperated. Why did you pretend to be asleep? Perhaps you did that because you wanted me to treat your injuries?”

“It’s not like that.”

The answer was both impatient and firm.

Rosetta had been untangling the bandages, but she stopped moving her hand.

“Then?”

She grabbed his chin with one hand so that his eyes wouldn’t try to look away again.

“Then what?”

The crease between Cassion’s eyebrows deepened at the repeated question.

His lips opened and closed, then, he gulped dryly first before opening his lips to speak once more.

His pupils escaped once more as he looked down.

For example, near her lips…

“Earlier, in the alley…”

“In the alley?”

“Towards me… lips…”

The man who said that pulled away from her grasp.

It wasn’t difficult to do since Rosetta wasn’t gripping his tightly in the first place.

After pulling his hand away, Cassion turned to face her.

The face reflected beneath the moonlight was flared up, as red as an apple.

After listening to his soft breathing for a while, Rosetta tried to understand the broken, stuttering words he spat out.

‘Earlier in the alley, to me… Aha.’

With the combination of his words and his heavily flushed face, and also how he secretly looked at her lips.

It wasn’t difficult to infer what he was saying.

“You… You’ve been awake since then, huh?”

From the moment Rosetta locked lips with him.

No wonder. But she was frightened that he wouldn’t wake up, that’s why she did that.

She thought she was doing that to save him, but it turned out that he had already woken up before she even breathed into him.

Then he would have been frozen in an incomprehensible situation.

There was no such thing as CPR here.

Kissing a dying person was not a situation that could be understood except for the old cliché in a classic novel such as this world.

Moreover, the situation was like she was a person from a remote island floating adrift suddenly kissing someone because the chance presented itself…

Right now, perhaps Cassion was thinking that Rosetta was a shameless person.

Not just the usual shameless person, but a terrible kind of shameless person who would pounce on an unconscious man like that.

“Haha.”

Really, it was a ridiculous misunderstanding that made her laugh in vain.

Beyond the short laugh, she felt a bewildered gaze on her.

Even that gaze was funny, so she couldn’t stop laughing.

Suddenly, she came to a realization only then.

‘Hold on. That means…’

The realization that sharply hinged on that misunderstanding, like an important clue that shouldn’t be missed.

Her laughter, which was dying down gradually, stopped for a moment.

‘If Cassion woke up before I breathed into him…’

Huh.

This time, the laugh had a different reason behind it.

For instance, towards this damn fate, something like awe, delight, resentment.

“Why the hell did you do that?”

By the time she was thinking about how colossal of an enemy this ‘fate’ was, the man’s question broke the silence.

His voice was as rigid as his frozen body.

Instead of answering him, she grabbed his hand.

When his hand on the bed was dragged forward, his upper body gave way and got pulled in.

Face to face with her.

Only one handspan apart. Beyond that, the distance was short as she could see a clear reflection on his black pupils.

Her smiling face could be seen in his red eyes.

“I was trying to save you.”

She didn’t avoid the gaze of the bewildered man.

‘So don’t you dare run away from me again.’

With her eyes fixed on Cassion’s face, she began to untie the bandages wrapped around his hand.

“You… stopped breathing.”

As she said this calmly, the face in front of her hardened.

It was similar to how he looked earlier when he was previously that pale man who stopped breathing.

If there was no warmth in the hand she was holding now, she would have thought that he had collapsed again.

And the pale man’s gaze reminded her of the past.

“Then… That…”

It wasn’t just a feeling?

His shallow murmur fell into the dark expanse of the room. The man’s empty hands fumbled onto the back of his neck.