Obvious but Certain – Whispers to the Main House
“I-I’m fine! Stop making a fuss and quit crying!”
Cael scolded her in a deliberately stern voice, but Ella’s sobs showed no sign of stopping. Instead, she collapsed to the floor and wept even more piteously.
“Waaah! How can I not cry! Young master, you’ve gotten so weird already! You never talked this sweetly before, and what’s with that speech? It’s like you’re a completely different person!”
Ella’s blunt outburst made Cael’s chest tighten. He’d let his guard down because she was just a young maid, but she’d pinpointed the changes more sharply than expected. If he brushed this off sloppily, it would become a major obstacle to surviving in this unfamiliar world.
Cael cleared his throat and began his performance.
“…It seems I can no longer hide the truth from you two.”
At his serious tone, Ella’s crying tapered off. Weger swallowed hard, his face tense.
“Y-Yes…? What truth?”
“Ella, let me ask you. Before I opened my eyes a few days ago, was there ever a moment when I stopped breathing, even briefly?”
“!!!!”
Ella’s eyes flew wide. She hadn’t even told Weger that the young master had stopped breathing for thirty minutes. She’d been too terrified of bearing the blame for his death.
“Y-Yes… Young master. Your breathing definitely stopped. Your pulse too…”
Her trembling answer made Cael cheer inwardly. Just as he’d suspected. Like when he’d fallen into the martial world fifty years ago, his soul had slipped into the void right after the original owner’s death.
Cael mobilized every scrap of shallow modern medical knowledge he possessed to craft a plausible excuse.
“Do you two know what happens to the human body if it goes without air for too long?”
“W-What happens?”
Cael tapped his temple gravely with a finger.
“Right here. The brain suffers fatal damage.”
“The b-brain?”
“Yes. If the brain isn’t supplied with oxygen through the blood for an extended time, the brain cells gradually die, causing irreversible damage.”
Ella and Weger stared blankly at the unfamiliar words like cells and oxygen. But since the young master had always been cooped up reading thick books, they unquestioningly accepted that he knew obscure medical knowledge they didn’t.
“S-So you’re saying there’s a problem in young master’s head right now!?”
Weger asked, pale-faced, and Cael sighed deeply with a mournful expression.
“Yes… I’ve lost all my past memories. Only fragments remain in my mind—like my name… Cael. The family name I belong to, your name Ella who cared for me, you Weger who stood guard, even that furry mutt—everything’s been wiped clean from my memory.”
“!!!!”
“C-Can’t your memories come back like before? Sniff…!”
As Ella sniffled and asked, Cael slowly, firmly shook his head.
“That’s impossible… Once brain cells die, they never revive. My past is permanently deleted.”
A heavy silence followed.
A moment later.
“U-Waaah! Our poor young master, what do we do…! You can’t remember me! Waaah!”
Ella’s pent-up wailing resumed. Weger bit his lip, staring at the ceiling with reddened eyes.
“It’s fine. I’ve only lost past memories—nothing else about my body is wrong. Quite the opposite. Look. Isn’t my body much lighter and healthier than before?”
It was true. Though his cheeks were gaunt from three days of fasting, a faint flush colored his formerly corpse-pale, sallow skin. His once-unfocused eyes now gleamed with vitality, and above all, his voice carried strength where it had quavered like a candle in the wind.
“But…”
Cael spoke softly to Ella, who kept wiping tears with her sleeve.
“What’s done is done. Clinging to an irreversible past won’t change anything. The lost memories? I’ll fill them slowly with new ones alongside you two from now on.”
His words deeply moved Ella and Weger. Despite amnesia, the young master’s mature, resolute attitude—pressing forward undeterred—was a monumental shift in this annex rife with death.
As if sensing the mood, Oliver, who’d been hiding behind Ella’s legs, wagged his tail vigorously and barked.
“Woof!! Pant pant pant! Woof! Woof!”
It was as if the dog agreed a hundred times over with the young master’s brilliant words.
“So, since my memories are incomplete, I’d appreciate it if you two stuck close and helped me out from here on.”
That sealed it. Ella, tears streaming, gazed at him blankly. Weger straightened, fist to chest in a knightly salute.
“Weger here!! I’ll stake my life to protect Young Master Cael’s health and safety!!”
“M-Me too!! Young master, you must be starving, right!? You haven’t had a drop in three days! I-I’ll rush to the kitchen and bring food!”
Only then did Cael sense he’d safely navigated the crisis, exhaling inwardly in relief. The obvious but reliable method had worked.
“Yes, please. Bring plenty.”
That was when it happened.
“Huh…? What’s that disgusting smell…?”
Weger wrinkled his nose, sniffing. Ella pinched her nose with her sleeve. Oliver sniffed along, then freaked out, pawing his nose and fleeing to a corner with whimpers.
“Whine…”
It was the stench of stale waste seeping from Cael’s skin after three days of circulating the Tai Chi Profound Heaven Heart Method to unblock his meridians. Not enough to form a black crust, but the impurities from decades of decay in a sick body produced an unimaginably foul odor.
“Y-Young master! Your clothes are soaked in sweat! Bath first—before food! You have to bathe right now! I’ll wash you!”
At Ella’s frantic cry, Cael frowned.
“A bath…? W-What are you talking about. I’ll wash myself. You go prepare the meal.”
“Don’t you remember!? Your body was too weak to wash alone! I always helped bathe you! Sniff, sniff! It’s true then… You’ve forgotten even bathing with me.”
As Ella geared up to cry again, Cael pressed his throbbing temple.
I bathed with a girl…?
The Heavenly Demon entrusting his body to a grown girl for washing? Unthinkable.
Sigh… Living as this Cael guy won’t be as easy as I thought.
***
[Annex Report]
Young Master Cael has miraculously revived after ceasing to breathe. However, he has lost all past memories.
— Submitted by Ella (maid)
The vast main residence of the Restis Ducal House. The family head’s office.
There, Silina Restis—Arjen’s second wife and current acting Duchess—sifted through a mountain of territory reports. She managed all the family’s affairs in the Duke’s absence.
Then, her eye caught a document buried at the bottom of the pile.
“Hm? A report from the annex?”
It was from the annex where Cael, her predecessor’s child, resided—a place she’d ignored for months due to silence.
Silina licked her red lips with interest and scanned the hastily scrawled report from Ella.
“Hmm… Died and came back to life, losing all past memories?”
Tap. Tap. Tap—
Her long red nails drummed rhythmically on the ornate desk.
“Interesting.”
Silina closed the document with a cold smile.
“You there.”
“Yes, Acting Duchess.”
A soldier entered the office briskly at her call.
“Go to the northern annex and confirm Cael’s condition with your own eyes.”
“Understood.”
***
And a few days later.
“Huff, huff, huff! Y-Young master! P-Please, come with me!”
On the rugged mountain path behind the annex, Weger in leather armor panted heavily.
Ahead, Cael—in a simple tunic, sweat dripping—bounded up the steep trail like a wild beast.
Cael had firmly resolved to erase his old name from his depths and live fully as Cael.
“Giving up already, Weger!? What use is a guard with such pathetic stamina!”
“Huff, heave, huff! Young master, you’re abnormally fast! How are you climbing like a squirrel with that body!”