You Have to Love Me
"It's a cold."
The moment the family physician removed his stethoscope and delivered the diagnosis, Rictman covered his face with one large hand and let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief.
"Oh… thank the heavens!"
He had clearly been terrified. That usually immaculate face was slick with sweat and drained of color, the lines around his eyes carved deeper than before.
The physician spoke gently, as if to soothe him.
"It seems she's been overexerting herself of late. Her vitality is quite low."
"It isn't a fatal illness, then?"
"Nothing of the sort. A few days of proper rest and she'll recover."
I had been fretting that it might be something far worse, and only then did the tension drain from my own body. I sank into a chair as if my legs had given out.
One crisis averted.
When Ania had collapsed without warning, I had feared the worst. I already knew she was fragile. The thought had crossed my mind that she might be harboring some chronic condition I knew nothing about—or worse, something incurable. Thank God it wasn't. Had it been, I would have become a widower less than two months into the marriage.
"Keep her as warm as possible. Her digestion may be weakened, so warm soups or stews would be best."
"Thank you… truly, thank you."
"Not at all. The young lady's health is my highest priority."
Once Rictman had seen the physician out, the mansion finally fell quiet. The maids who had come running in a panic returned to their duties, and Lorelnd—who had been hovering curiously in the doorway—realized nothing serious was amiss and slipped away.
Only Rictman remained, unable to leave Ania's side. The raw anxiety on his face was almost painful to watch. Whether she noticed or not, Ania lay on the bed with a peaceful expression.
"Thank goodness."
When I murmured the words from the foot of the bed, Rictman rose and bowed deeply toward me.
"Thank you, young master Edward."
"There's nothing to thank me for. My wife collapsed—of course I would come."
"Even so… I am grateful. If anything had happened to the young lady, I…"
He couldn't finish the sentence. His voice cracked. Watching an elderly man—hair and mustache gone entirely white—struggle not to weep made me feel, more keenly than ever, just how deeply Ania had been loved growing up.
A woman raised with that much love… why…
Children who grow twisted usually lack affection in their early years. Conversely, those showered with love tend to become fine people. And yet Ania… how had she become a villainess?
Well. There are always exceptions.
She must have had her reasons—but unfortunately, having never finished the final three volumes of the novel, I had no way of knowing the full story.
I approached the bed slowly and laid my hand lightly against her forehead. A warmth slightly above normal body temperature seeped into my palm.
"Rictman."
"Yes, young master."
"You look exhausted. Go rest. I'll watch over my wife."
"I couldn't possibly impose such a burden on you…"
"It's fine. I want to."
Rictman hesitated a moment longer, then bowed and left the room. Only after the door had closed did I sit lightly on the edge of the bed and look at her face.
She was still beautiful. Beautiful enough that anyone would accept the title of the empire's greatest beauty without argument. That someone so ill could look this lovely felt almost unfair.
I watched her for a long while, and the memory of her week-long sulk—whatever had set her off—and of all the ridiculous performances I had staged to coax her out of it, suddenly struck me as so absurd that a laugh escaped me.
When she's lying still like this, she's almost demure.
As if the days she had spent turning my insides upside down had never happened, her expression was utterly serene.
"You have no idea how many people you've put through hell…"
I replaced the cloth on her forehead with a fresh, cool one and walked slowly to the window. Maple leaves, dyed a deep crimson, were falling like rain. Come to think of it, autumn was well underway. The late-spring weather of the day I first possessed this body didn't feel so long ago—and yet somehow it already felt like a distant past. Perhaps the sheer chaos of everything that had happened had made time fly.
And with that thought came the natural next one: worry about what was still to come.
Yohan Radner…
In the novel, Yohan's raid on the mansion took place in early winter, after autumn had ended and the cold had set in. It was no longer far off. And yet no particularly useful plan presented itself. Even if I started practicing swordsmanship and studying magic from this very moment, I would never catch up to the original Edward's skill. Praying that the future would simply change the way the wedding date had been moved up was a gamble. Using a transmigrator's privilege to cut the threat off at the root… that, too, seemed unlikely to work.
Yohan Radner's downfall came no earlier than the following year—after the Emperor declared war on the drug trade and had him arrested. So all I could do was thrash and struggle with everything I had.
"Mm…"
Ania Brontë woke from her deep sleep on the evening of the day and a half after she had collapsed. The setting sun scattered orange light through the room, turning everything soft and warm, and the beige curtains billowed in the breeze until the whole chamber looked like a photograph filtered in sepia.
"Why am I…"
Ania pressed a hand to her foggy head and pushed herself upright. She sat still on the bed, staring blankly around her room. What on earth had happened…?
Then the last of her memories returned in a rush.
"I collapsed."
No wonder her body had felt strange. Ania pressed her fingers to her forehead, blaming her own carelessness. A dull ache throbbed behind her eyes, and a low fever warmed her skin. It was a familiar sensation—she had been frail since childhood. Even a little rough play or a draft of cold air had been enough to knock her flat, and she had spent her early years practically living with a cold. Truthfully, adulthood hadn't changed much.
As she sat thinking, a red leaf slipped through the gap in the window and settled gently on her bed.
"The seasons are changing already…"
Ania found herself remembering a distant autumn. She had been nine, laid low by a vicious flu. From that day on, her father, Valentine Brontë, had treated her as though she were a fledgling that might tumble from the nest at any moment. He ordered the servants never to let her play outdoors. And so, at the age of ten, Ania Brontë was forbidden from running and laughing with other children.
She folded the bitter memory away and looked around the room again. When her gaze dropped, she finally noticed the man she had somehow missed.
"Edward."
Edward was asleep with his arms folded against the head of the bed. The sight of his face eased something bitter in her chest.
"Edward."
She whispered his name and slowly stroked his brown hair. Soft. Warm. Had he been nursing her this whole time? He could have left it to the servants… and yet he had stayed. Looking at his slightly haggard face, Ania felt a flicker of guilt. She had spent an entire week sulking simply because he hadn't kissed her cheek. Of course she was still hurt that he hadn't managed even that simple gesture… and yet.
"No matter how I look at it, that was a bit much."
Ania gazed at him as though she meant to devour him with her eyes. Desire began to gleam in them.
He might not even kiss her cheek now—but someday, this man would come to love her. He would need her so desperately he couldn't bear to be without her. He would want her.
Ania had no words for the base emotion rising inside her. She wanted everything he was. She wanted to make him into a creature who could not live without her.
This must be love.
That it was, in truth, a ferocious possessiveness was a realization for another day. For now, Ania could only call the feeling love. She reached out, laid her hand lightly over the back of his, and smiled.
When I came to, it was already late evening. The sun had long since set, and faint starlight glimmered beyond the window.
"I must have dozed off…"
I had been tired lately. Between frantic sword practice, coaxing Ania out of her sulk, and poring over magic texts… Fortunately, she was still asleep on the bed, her expression peaceful.
If I'd known this would happen, I should have just told Rictman to stay.
Had Ania woken midway and seen me like this, she would only have sulked harder. The man supposedly nursing her, slumped against the bed and snoring.
I checked her forehead lightly for fever, then slipped quietly out of the room. I had sweated through my clothes from sleeping so heavily. A bath was in order.
I was walking down the corridor when a maid rounded the corner, gasped, "Oh my…," and then—smiling warmly—said, "Good evening, young master," before sweeping past. Every servant I met after that reacted the same way: a start of surprise, followed by a fond, almost glowing smile as they went by.
Had the entire household come down with some collective mania? Even granting that Edward's face was reasonably handsome, it wasn't the sort of face that inspired that kind of beaming approval on sight alone.
I was still frowning over it when I stepped into the bathroom—and finally understood the servants' strange reactions.
"What… is this."
On my cheek, clear and vivid, was a red lipstick mark.
"……"
I had thought she was asleep. Had she woken without my noticing? Even so, to do this while I was out cold…
I touched my cheek lightly. In an instant the image of Ania's red lips pressing against my skin flashed through my mind. Her warmth still seemed to linger on my right cheek. A faint unease mixed with a quickening of the pulse.
I wiped the mark away gently and swallowed down the smile that threatened to escape.