The Consequences of Malice (3)
Just moments ago, Claire had been brimming with confidence; now her expression crumpled in an instant, and Arina frowned with outright displeasure.
"You'd best answer me straight about what you meant by that, Karsein. Don't tell me you're saying you won't eat a meal we watched over with our own eyes from start to finish?"
My eldest sister's posture made it clear she intended to hear the answer one more time, as if she couldn't believe her ears.
Sorry, but my answer wasn't wrong.
"You know exactly what I meant. Why ask?"
I fired back, blunt as ever.
Meaning I had no intention of touching that immaculate food — food that no maid's hand had come anywhere near, under the watchful gaze of my two older sisters.
At that, Claire let out a sharp, scandalized Ha! and, unable to hold it in, spewed out a string of curses.
"Hey, you little bastard. Are you kidding me? What kind of attitude is that toward people trying to help you?"
"Karsein. Admit you were wrong just this once, and I will let it pass. There will not be a second chance."
Two pairs of eyes glared at me, dark and threatening, demanding I take back the words I had just spoken.
Say it again if you must — I did nothing wrong.
This was legitimate self-defense. It was the right attitude. And so I did not back down.
"I haven't done a single thing wrong."
"Why, you...!"
When I kept stubbornly mouthing off to the very end, Claire's hand shot up, ready to strike. If it came down as it was, it would land squarely on my cheek.
"...Claire."
"This one isn't worth raising a hand to. It would only dirty your palm. Besides, he's still a patient. If you wound him, it'll just keep Shayden busy."
Another hand blocked the second sister's raised arm, and the blow never came — but watching her fuss not over the patient himself but over the physician's convenience was so absurd I could hardly stand it.
"Oh, right! We were the stupid ones! We actually worried that a bastard like you hadn't been eating properly, and went so far as to prepare a whole meal for you!"
"You're right. We were stupid. There was never any reason to summon his physician and fuss over his meals in the first place. Leaving a lavish feast untouched — so all that talk of malnutrition was nothing but his own just deserts, then."
"Then keep nibbling on sandy water and salt-soaked swill forever. I hope you foolishly refuse everything we bring you and collapse all over again, you worthless cripple."
Claire stormed out of the room in a huff.
And then, behind her:
"If you won't eat it, leave it. Let the maids have it. To someone like you — lowborn filth with no grasp of gratitude — it's a banquet fit to snap the table legs, but to ungrateful vermin like you, it's too good for your mouth. I truly cannot fathom why I bothered bringing the precious physicians, chefs, and maids of House Bagrand for your sake."
Arina, her blade of a tongue even sharper now, delivered that icy barb and left as well.
Left alone in the room, I was the first to let out a hollow laugh.
"Ha. Too good for the mouth of a lowborn thing that doesn't know gratitude? Hope I foolishly refuse everything and collapse again?"
How hilarious.
"Well, I suppose that figures. What would you two know? You're cut from exactly the same cloth as my sisters back home."
The scoff slipped out of me unbidden.
Watching Arina and Claire mirror each other so precisely — roles aligning down to the smallest detail — the sneer came naturally.
They were nobles, both of them; they had never once known hunger. They'd grown up in wealth, raised strong and healthy. Of course they couldn't have noticed.
But I was someone who had lived like a beggar and learned a beggar's heart, and I knew Karsein's body better than anyone else alive.
That food — in his current condition, it must not be eaten. No matter how sumptuous a spread they'd assembled, no matter how it tempted the eyes and stoked the appetite with its aroma, it absolutely could not go down that throat.
"It's not that he won't eat it, you bastards. He can't."
Toward the two of them, who had laid out a mouthwatering feast fit to snap the table legs without understanding a thing, I sneered, and sneered again.
Helping him, they say?
The gall of it — strutting in with a stiff chin when they were telling him to eat this, then squaring up all self-righteous, insisting he'd done nothing wrong. It was infuriating.
Still brimming with unresolved resentment, Claire stomped down the corridor, grumbling under her breath.
Then, without warning, a small tug pulled at the fabric of her dress.
"Claire?"
She turned to find the adorable youngest standing there, clutching her skirt.
"What is it, Flora?"
Claire beamed and crouched down to meet Flora at eye level. But the moment she did, Flora flinched, her whole body shuddering, then averted her gaze and smiled sheepishly.
"Umm. Nothing. It's nothing at all."
"What do you mean, nothing? If something's on your mind, spill it to your big sister right now."
"I, umm... I forgot what I was gonna say. Hehe."
"Aigoo."
Watching her youngest giggle pointlessly, Claire gently stroked her little sister's hair.
Then it dawned on her that they were standing right near Karsein's room, and just to be safe, she took Flora's hand firmly in hers and steered them the opposite way.
"Flora, why don't you spend today with me?"
"Huh? Why?"
"Well... you didn't eat properly earlier, remember? I want to make sure you actually eat something."
The image of Karsein collapsing in his room kept flashing through her mind, and Flora's skipped meals worried her too.
But Flora objected with all her might.
"Today's my embroidery practice day. So I can't stay with you."
"Ohh. I see."
Embroidery practice, then. That was a relief. With a teacher standing right beside her, Flora wasn't about to collapse the way Karsein had.
"Then I'll just walk you to your room?"
"Okay, Claire!"
Right after she'd delivered Flora safely to her room, Shayden the physician came looking for her.
"Shayden? What brings you here?"
"I heard that the young ladies paid young Master Karsein a personal visit today. That is why I've come."
"..."
The moment Karsein's name left his lips, Claire's brows sharpened into knives. Considering what she'd just been through, she wanted to hear nothing of it.
"Speak. What is it?"
"I wished to ask whether the young master has taken his meal."
At the mention of food, her expression soured even further. Irritation flooding back into her head, Claire answered with a sneer.
"He wouldn't touch a bite even when we brought it to him. Let him collapse or starve, see if I care."
"I beg your pardon? What do you... don't tell me he hasn't eaten?"
"He's the one refusing. What am I supposed to do about it? We ordered a proper meal made — my sister and I went to the kitchens ourselves — and even then he said he wouldn't eat it."
Shayden's eyes went wide with shock.
"That is impossible. After such a prolonged fast, he must be in a state of severe hunger. You are certain he truly refused?"
"Yes! I told them to fill the table with the finest dishes money could buy. Food prepared so cleanly that my sister and I checked every step — from the head chef on down, right up to the instant any maid's hand touched it. And he still refused. So what was I supposed to do?"
And truly, what could she have done? He had turned away a banquet prepared so that not a trace of contamination could reach it.
Worse, he'd had the audacity to act the injured party, as if they were the ones forcing him to eat. When she'd given him one more chance, he'd glared and insisted he'd done nothing wrong.
She couldn't bear to even think about it.
"Good heavens. My lady... are you truly not worried for the young master?"
Shayden recoiled, aghast.
"Worried? What kind of nonsense is that? He's in that state because he won't eat. That's his own doing."
Why on earth would anyone worry about a man who'd been given a cozy room in a ducal estate, dressed in luxurious clothes, and served delicacies every day that the gutter poor could never so much as touch? It was worry no one else would bother with.
Claire answered in a voice bristling with annoyance — but Shayden gaped at her, aghast yet again.
"Where would a patient who has only just regained consciousness find the strength for such food? Dishes like those are not meant to touch a sick man's lips."
"If he's too weak and something ails him, just brew up some medicine under my name. No one in House Bagrand is going to complain about the cost of that."
"Medicine will not solve this. He lacks even the energy to digest. Should hunger drive him to eat those dishes after all, it will only put him in greater danger."
"...What?"
The words — eating it would put him in greater danger — made the world spin before her eyes for an instant.
"Wait — dangerous? What are you saying? Then everything my sister and I brought him is..."
"If rich, hard-to-digest food enters his stomach in his weakened state, it could well cause a dangerous indigestion instead. In truth, it is food he must not eat at all! At this stage, thin rice porridge is the very most he can manage."
With that, Shayden declared that now was not the time to be talking and hurried off to check on Karsein's condition, his steps quick and urgent.
She hadn't known. She'd thought feeding him fine food would restore his health in no time. That was why she'd gone to such lengths.
And it had been, of all things, poison instead?
Claire's fists trembled.
"...You there, all of you."
"Yes, Lady Claire."
"Go to Karsein's room this instant and make sure he doesn't eat a single thing. Hurry!!"
The maids scrambled in a rush, flooding toward Karsein's room.
"Lady Claire?"
"He, he probably didn't eat anything. He said he wouldn't, after all. The porridge... I'll go to the kitchens myself and arrange it."
"Start with what digests easily. He must be fed slowly, little by little, for some time."
"...I understand."
Only then did Shayden breathe a partial sigh of relief, the weight on his mind easing a shade. Claire, by contrast, looked considerably more conflicted.
And then—
Snap!
"Son of a...!"
Someone's fingernail broke.
Not long after Claire and Arina had stormed out, the maids came pouring into my room in a crowd.
They checked the dishes, half-fearing I might have eaten some of it — and the moment they confirmed I hadn't touched a bite, every last one of them heaved a sigh of relief.
So they've finally figured it out, have they?
That cramming rich, hard-to-digest food into the stomach of a weakened patient turns it from food into poison.
In the end, the dishes that had been paraded as some grand act of generosity were spirited away one by one by the maids' hands. They even rolled out the serving cart at the end, and the whole spread vanished without a trace.
But before long, a different set of dishes arrived at my room.
This time, it was food a patient could genuinely eat.
"How humble."
Steam rose from the porridge, and for a body as starved as Karsein's, even that thin aroma was hard to endure. The food they'd brought before had been the kind that made you want to devour it in a blind frenzy — the kind that could turn your eyes black with hunger.
And what sat before me in its place was a single bowl of flavorless rice porridge.
Yet the moment I scooped up a spoonful and slid it into my mouth, the words tumbled out on their own.
"...Damn, that's good."
It was so utterly bland — so why did it taste this delicious? And with the taste came an old, unwelcome memory.
The memory of drooling over the cheap hot bar snack every other kid had, of envying someone's single triangle gimbap, of the corners of my nose stinging the day I ate a discarded lunchbox — pure luck on my first shift at the convenience store.
The memory of kimchi fried rice left behind by a customer, sweet and tangy — I'd griped about people tossing food like this — of a single slice of ham vanishing the moment it hit my tongue, of shoveling down the leftover side dishes so fast there was no time to savor them, and the plate sitting empty anyway.
The memory of feeling full for the very first time in my life. The memory of that day — the first time I'd ever tasted food as it truly was, untainted by anyone's hands.
Even now, I couldn't forget the feeling of a full stomach.
In that house, more times than I could count, the moment one of my family members touched something, I'd lost even the chance to eat it — let alone taste whether it was any good.
"...Huh. What, already?"
By the time I came back to my senses, the bowl was scraped clean.
Hunger status has been fully restored!