A Runaway Villainess, Now Healing In An Enemy Country - Chapter 48

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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【Episode 48】

 

His pale complexion was the same as always and his facial muscles didn’t contort even slightly, yet tears dripped steadily from his metallic gray eyes.

 

So rather than crying, it looked more like water leaking from a broken faucet. Or perhaps like raindrops forming on a picture frame.

 

I had never seen someone cry so quietly before. The fact that it was Davuer made me even more flustered.

 

“Why, why are you suddenly crying…?”

 

I grabbed the edge of my sleeve and wiped his cheek.

 

Even during this, he just stood there blankly as if time had stopped, looking down at me.

 

How much time had passed?

 

Davuer gripped the ring in his palm tightly and spoke. His locked voice was rough.

 

“…I always thought.”

 

“What? Ah geez, this is embarrassing. Come over here.”

 

Since we were standing in the middle of the street and I could feel people glancing at us, I pulled him into a nearby alley.

 

Davuer muttered with a face glistening with moisture.

 

“It wasn’t supposed to be following your words.”

 

When you never listen to anything I say anyway? I thought that but didn’t bother saying it out loud.

 

Instead, I focused on wiping away his tears. My sleeve quickly became damp.

 

The handkerchief I had received from Nishe long ago had been used up stopping Giselle’s bleeding, so I had nothing on hand now.

 

“It wasn’t supposed to be accepting the ring back then.”

 

“…”

 

“We shouldn’t have met from the beginning.”

 

“…”

 

“If all of this was inevitable, at least the one who died that day should have been me.”

 

I froze.

 

My hands that had been moving busily stopped on their own. I stiffened slightly in the position of having my hand on his cheek.

 

It was the next moment that Davuer lowered his head.

 

“You ruined everything.”

 

The brown hair changed by magic hid his eyes, so I couldn’t read what was in them.

 

However, despite that.

 

I realized who the ‘you’ he was referring to was. Even the identity of the original owner of the ring he possessed, which I had been vaguely guessing.

 

“…Do I resemble her that much?”

 

I couldn’t help but ask.

 

Because this man keeps overlapping me with the Countess from a hundred years ago whose face and name I don’t even know. Because he persistently searches for traces of her in me.

 

He answered with his eyes buried in my palm.

 

“Everything.”

 

It was a voice that sounded both like wind and like certainty.

 

Somehow I felt like my lungs were filled with sand. I slowly removed my palm from his cheek and spoke firmly.

 

“…I won’t always look like her.”

 

Dead people are constantly idealized in memory.

 

Even if I overlap with her now, there will surely come a moment when he realizes I’m a different being from her.

 

I probably will never be able to beat her, nor will I be replaced, and whenever he realizes this fact, he might…

 

Become a little colder toward me.

 

“Davuer. You know what my name is, right?”

 

But that’s okay.

 

“…Irene.”

 

Davuer whispered the pronunciation and met my gaze.

 

His eyes, which had just stopped tearing, were red, and he looked somewhat dazed like someone who had just woken up from a dream.

 

I wrapped my hands around his hand that was gripping the ring so tightly his veins bulged, and quietly urged him.

 

“This is a ring that Irene gave you.”

 

So don’t get confused.

 

By the time we returned to the street and naturally blended into the crowd, dusk was beginning to fall.

 

Throughout our walk toward the inn, no conversation passed between us. Only the sounds of other people’s conversations and street noise lingered in our ears.

 

Even during all this, we held hands tightly.

 

‘…That damn magi.’

 

I hadn’t experimented with how far apart Davuer and I could be. If he collapsed from that, it would be a disaster.

 

So for the past few days, the farthest we’d been apart was the distance between rooms separated by a wall, but now this suddenly felt inconvenient.

 

‘It keeps subtly bothering me.’

 

My heart had been a bit like that since the sudden crying incident. I could only describe it as ‘a bit like that.’

 

“Irene. This isn’t the right direction.”

 

Davuer, who lowered his head toward me and pointed this out, had a face completely dry of moisture.

 

Looking at him made me feel like a fool.

 

“…I know. This is a shortcut.”

 

No. That’s bullshit.

 

I had been walking somewhat absent-mindedly, and I should have turned left toward the inn just now, but I kept going straight.

 

It was the moment when Davuer, with his smooth face without a crack, was about to part his lips to say something.

 

Suddenly the street became noisy from a distance.

 

“What? Why did you suddenly stop? You’re blocking traffic!”

 

“The Countess? Isn’t that person the Countess?”

 

Using this as a signal, the murmuring of the crowd gathered in the street spread like fire meeting oil.

 

“The Countess is out doing volunteer work right now!”

 

“She’s giving out divine power for free!”

 

“Countess! Please, please put divine power in my leg!”

 

The excited people ran roughly and chaotically in one direction as if stampeding, which was mind-numbing.

 

Just before I could be pushed over or hit in the shoulder, Davuer pulled me into a building’s side alley.

 

With two people entering, the space was tight. It seemed even more cramped with trash from street stalls piled up.

 

“…Why?”

 

Sure, the beloved Countess had been going out to volunteer as regularly as eating meals, but the timing was really bad.

 

With the impending engagement ceremony preparations making even two days feel insufficient, surprise volunteer work without notice?

 

Moreover, the current scene was extremely strange.

 

Typically, the Countess’s volunteer work involves deploying a large number of guards for safety. However, looking at the street that became a mess in an instant, there seemed to be no controlling knights or anyone else.

 

A chilling feeling rose from my toes.

 

“I need to check what’s happening.”

 

Then Davuer answered like a quiet sigh.

 

“I knew you would say that.”

 

* * *

 

We arrived a step later than others at the epicenter of the situation where Lishie had opened a free clinic.

 

The junction leading from 7th Street to the slums.

 

If the earlier street was chaos, this place was rather hell. People tangled around Lishie were screaming things that could have been pleas or curses.

 

“Countess! Me first, me first please, Countess!”

 

“Hey! Are you really crazy? I came first!”

 

Lishie, who didn’t even bother to hide her distinctive face, spoke with a smile that cast no shadow.

 

“Please calm down. I will heal the pain of everyone here today.”

 

“Ah, Countess!”

 

“Because that is God’s will.”

 

…It was too strange.

 

She was pretending to be fine but seemed to creak like a chair with uneven legs. She didn’t seem like the Lishie I knew.

 

But she was indeed using divine power to heal people. Someone’s severed finger regrew, and someone else’s illness was cured.

 

“…Undoubtedly divine.”

 

Even Davuer, who was seeing this Countess for the first time, admired her so. I also had no disagreement with that divinity.

 

However… is that woman really Lishie?

 

I don’t know why she keeps feeling like something else entirely. It was purely just a ‘feeling,’ so the reason wasn’t convincing.

 

“Don’t worry. God is watching over us. As the Countess, I…”

 

That’s when it happened.

 

Breaking through the countless people gathered here, Lishie’s golden eyes looked directly at me without any gaps.

 

A fleeting moment of blinking passed.

 

“…I, I am, I…”

 

Lishie’s smiling face crumbled.

 

“Ah!”

 

That wasn’t all. Soon she grabbed her head with both hands and let out a pained groan.

 

However, there was no time to wonder.

 

Thud! Thud!

 

Immediately, the dull sound of metal striking the ground and angry shouts covered the entire street like thunder.

 

“Everyone move aside!”

 

It was a man wearing knight’s uniform with half-armor over it. He appeared with his aura wrapped around him like killing intent, cutting through the crowd along with a dozen other knights.

 

“We will identify everyone gathered here. No one leave your position!”

 

And I knew that man’s face well.

 

Wasn’t it Sir Pelbarte, the Prince’s direct knight.

 

‘That means… surely not.’

 

Among the knights moving busily under Pelbarte’s orders, the back of a knight who picked up and carried the unconscious Lishie caught my eye.

 

It was as if my gaze was drawn by magnetism.

 

The knight uniform of the Imperial Guard. Black hair covering the nape of his neck. He seemed like a completely different person, but I could recognize him at a glance.

 

It was Chessier.

 

He was hiding his identity among the group of knights. If I turned my head, our eyes might meet…

 

‘Damn it.’

 

Our eyes briefly met.

 

Right after, Chessier handed Lishie over to another knight and turned toward me, so I hurriedly buried my head toward the ground and quietly moved behind Davuer.

 

For now, the disguise of changed hair and eye color was all that concealed me. If he came close, if he pulled back the deeply worn robe, he would recognize me immediately.

 

What should I do. Should I use recognition disruption magic?

 

But magic that affects the mind has many variables.

 

“Hey, look at me for a moment.”

 

Chessier’s voice was heard from right beside my head.

 

At the same time, my shoulder was suddenly pulled.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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