I Bought the Villains With Money - Chapter 7

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 7.
‘No, teach what? What is there to teach?’
I need to straighten out kids raised with rotten personalities. He didn’t twist himself because he wanted to twist.
I blinked my wide eyes and arranged my face into the most virtuous smile I could manage before speaking.
“Your Highness, if I came on someone’s orders, why would I expose myself like this? And I’m thirteen years old. I’m not at an age where I’d be sent to do something underhanded like that.”
Having inherited only the strengths of my mother and father, my cute and lovable face was one of my greatest weapons.
I knew exactly how much my carefully constructed expression of virtue could soften a person.
“Whoever sent me wouldn’t be someone who likes me anyway. And now that I’ve already been caught, what’s the use of acting?”
But Casion did not fall for my beauty strategy.
‘The brat’s got conviction. He’s making all the right points.’
I liked him.
Still, I couldn’t let him continue to be so insolent. Especially since we’d need to get along going forward.
“You should think before you speak. Not just say whatever comes to mind.”
“That’s not something to say to a woman who barges uninvited into a prince’s palace.”
Was that what bothered him? Me showing up so suddenly?
It was a sharp, irritable observation, but he had a point,
“Just a moment.”
I rose from my seat and stepped outside. Then I knocked properly and asked permission respectfully.
“Your Highness, I am Diana, daughter of House Irenber and designated Head of Household. I humbly request permission to enter your chambers.”
There—extreme deference.
From inside the room came a cascade of baby animal names. When even creatures I’d never heard of in my life began being mentioned, a rough cough followed.
Soon the coughing became gagging sounds.
“…Your Highness?”
I abandoned my half-joking, half-serious request for permission and yanked the door open.
By the time I’d left, Casion had been sitting on the sofa, but now he was crumpled on the floor, coughing. Blood stained both the hand covering his mouth and the floor beneath him.
“Your Highness Casion!”
***
“How is he, Dallas?”
I kept my eyes fixed on Casion, who lay unconscious on the bed, as I questioned Dallas, the House Irenber physician.
“His body is severely weakened.”
“Can it be treated? You can do something, right?”
“I cannot guarantee that a body weakened like this will recover quickly.”
“But a body recovers as soon as an illness passes.”
Dallas exhaled a deep sigh and fussed with Casion’s wrist.
“That’s possible with a fleeting illness, but in His Highness’s case…”
Dallas fell silent. His expression had grown very dark.
Was it difficult for him to speak in front of the patient?
“Dallas, let’s talk outside.”
I ordered Jennis to watch over Casion, then stepped into the corridor with Dallas.
Dallas glanced back at Casion as he followed me.
“Tell me, Dallas.”
Once we’d stepped into the corridor and shut the door firmly—not satisfied with that, I led Dallas into the room across the way. The middle-aged physician followed obediently as I, smaller than him, pulled him along.
“His Highness has little time left to live.”
Dallas invoked the gods as he uttered his shocking words. But I didn’t believe him. I had seen him grow up healthy.
“You mean an incurable disease?”
“Yes. With current medicine, we cannot even diagnose His Highness’s condition. Therefore, we cannot administer treatment.”
And yet Casion had grown perfectly fine and come to my execution ground. That clearly meant there was a cure somewhere.
“Dallas, you did conduct a proper examination, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Miss. His Highness must be suffering greatly right now.”
Dallas began explaining Casion’s condition. Hearing him out, it sounded serious. According to Dallas’s account, it would have been a miracle for Casion to even remain seated.
Yet with a body like that, the fool went around cursing out whoever and whatever. If I judged him only by the force of his spirit while cursing, he could’ve beaten down an ox.
I didn’t know whether to praise his mental fortitude or scold him for being a stubborn idiot who got angry despite his poor health.
“So you’re saying to give up?”
“Miss, it’s not giving up—it’s acceptance. And as you know, the Royal Palace already has the finest physicians on the continent. They are caring for His Highness. There is nothing more I can do.”
How could Dallas speak of the palace caring for Casion after seeing his condition?
This was the moment I questioned Dallas’s eyesight. I pressed him with an edge to my voice.
“When will he wake? You should at least be able to tell me that much.”
“I cannot guarantee that either.”
Dallas was frustrated by a situation where he couldn’t give a single straightforward answer. I understood his bewilderment at being summoned so suddenly and forced to deliver only difficult news, but I was angry regardless.
A state where he could die at any moment—that meant he could die today. That absolutely could not happen!
There has to be a way. That’s why he recovered and made it all the way to the Execution Ground!
‘But just because Casion grew into a healthy adult in the past—does that mean he’ll recover in this life too?’
I fell back into a worry I’d wrestled with before.
My own life had changed, hadn’t it? In my previous existence, I would have met Dayson through Count Kolkos as my guardian by now, but instead here I am in Casion’s palace.
‘Since the past has changed, he could die. Before I come of age.’
Watching him cough until he collapsed made my heart race with panic far beyond the vague dread I’d carried before.
Even if the marriage succeeds, if he dies, I’ll have to surrender the position of Head of Household again.
A minor married to royalty only holds the status of Head of Household as long as the marriage itself endures.
Which means that no matter what, if I’m to inherit the family without wavering, I must keep this marriage alive until Casion and I both reach adulthood.
‘More than anything, I need Casion for my revenge to reach its conclusion.’
I intended to place him on the throne that Dayson coveted so desperately. That would be the finale of my revenge.
‘And I have a debt to repay as well.’
I can’t live beholden to anyone.
Having thought that far, I shook off my reverie and commanded Dallas.
“Do something. Anything.”
“There’s nothing I can do, miss.”
Dallas didn’t hesitate—he simply gave up.
“Is that what a physician should say?”
“Miss……”
Dallas shook his head at me. He looked deeply uncomfortable. When I realized he saw me as a petulant child, I finally calmed myself.
“Fine. Go back. Find whatever information you can about His Highness’s condition—anything at all.”
A treatment would be better still.
“And you, miss?”
“I’ll leave once His Highness regains consciousness.”
“It’s growing late.”
Worry saturated Dallas’s voice.
“You’re our family’s physician, not my guardian.”
Dallas bowed his head beneath my cold tone. Tall as he was, he seemed to shrink before me. Only then did I remember the shame he must have felt as a physician today.
But I was too exhausted to comfort him.
Casion’s collapse before my eyes and the process of bringing Dallas into the palace had not been easy.
When Casion fell, I laid him on the bed and rejoined the inspection group.
If I hadn’t been careful, I nearly ran into Faulaner searching the palace for me.
‘How horrible.’
My body trembled at the mere thought. I found Faulaner, claimed illness, and slipped out of the Royal Palace.
Then I returned directly to the Third Prince’s Palace with Dallas—through the secret passage I’d noted on my way out.
Don’t think that a brief explanation means the journey was easy. In the Royal Palace, there is no harder thing than to avoid the eyes of others.
By fortune, we arrived at the Third Prince’s Palace without being seen.
Dallas found my behavior suspicious, but he didn’t question it and attended to Casion with diligence.
That alone might have been admirable, but……a physician should strain every effort to the end, shouldn’t he?
I pushed the door open irritably and entered Casion’s chamber.
Casion still lay with his eyes closed. His wrists and ankles protruded skeletal from beneath filthy bedding. I swept my gaze around the room.
Cold seeped through the chamber—the hearth had gone unlit. Spring had come, yet nights were still frigid. Nobles often kept their hearths burning even in summer……
Casion’s blanket was far too thin to keep out the cold, and yellowed stains had rendered it foul.
Dust lay in thick clouds throughout the expansive, empty room.
“Anyone would fall ill living in a place like this.”
Casion’s fingers twitched as though he’d heard me. I snapped to attention and moved to his bedside.
“Your Highness—Your Highness! Can you hear me?”
I grasped him and shook his body. His frame trembled like paper beneath my hands.
Feeling how fragile he was, I quickly withdrew my touch.
I couldn’t tell if the weight loss came from hunger or illness.
I’d clearly seen his fingers twitch, yet no matter how hard I shook him or called out, Casion remained motionless.
The grimy blanket that had wrapped him kept drawing my eye.
“Think good thoughts, wear good things, use good things—and good things come to pass.”
My mother’s words rose in my mind, so I tore the blanket away and draped my outer coat across him instead.
With embroidered flowers adorning the coat and only his head poking through, Casion looked every bit his own age at last.
‘No—who would mistake Casion for eleven? Skin and bones as he is. He has the height; if he’d only gain some weight, he’d look so much better.’
A tender ache bloomed in my chest when I looked at him. Perhaps because I too had lost my parents early.
“Jennis, could you bring one of the servants you truly trust?”
“Now?”
The night was moonless, and darkness lay so complete that one couldn’t see an inch ahead.
I was worried about sending Jennis out alone on a night like this, but once she slipped past the palace gates, there would be a carriage waiting. It would be fine.
“Right, when you come back, bring my blanket and pillow, and the bedsheets too…… I should make a list!”
I’d only meant to ask for a few necessities, but the list kept growing.
Jennis and I searched Casion’s room for paper and a pen.
Jennis muttered that touching the prince’s things without permission would get us scolded.
“I’ll take responsibility. I’ll say I did it all alone. So just find what we need.”
Reassured, Jennis began rifling through the drawers with abandon.
Clothes that looked impossibly small against Casion’s frame and oddly oversized garments jutted haphazardly from the drawers.
Looking at them only made me angry, so I slammed the wardrobe shut and searched the desk instead.
“How is there not a single decent notebook?”
On Casion’s desk sat only a few books—the kind newly literate children would read, clearly gifts from Dayson. There wasn’t even a Fountain Pen, supposedly an aristocrat’s essential.
In the end, I had to tear the endpapers from a book and write using Casion’s blood scattered across the floor, diluted in water. The sensation of writing with someone else’s dried blood was abysmal.
“Aren’t you afraid of going alone?”
I handed the finished note to Jennis and asked.
“He has a lot of friends, so it’s fine.”
Jennis sometimes gave odd answers. She was worrying, but her confident expression made it seem all right to let her go.
“I’ll be back soon!”
Jennis set out from the palace with determination.
I Bought the Villains with Money (Serialized)
Author | Lee In-hye
Publisher | Kim Ju-hyung
Published by | J Plus Media Co., Ltd. – Tiramisu
Marketing | Han Jae-hyuk
Address | 11F, Ace Techno Tower 8th Building, 11 Digital-ro 33-gil, Guro-gu, Seoul (Guro-dong)
Email | [email protected]
Website | http://blog.naver.com/jayplemedia1
ⓒ Lee In-hye 2021
※This work is published by J Plus Media Co., Ltd. under contract with the copyright holder,
and its contents may not be used in any form or by any means without permission from the publisher and author.
Violations may result in criminal and civil legal liability.

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