I’m Done With Unrequited Love - Chapter 10
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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 10
After a series of unexpected delays, our arrival at Jonath Territory was greeted by weather that defied the season—warm and inviting despite the winter.
‘I had missed this place.’
I gazed up at the sprawling old mansion before me.
This was where I had spent my entire childhood since my rebirth.
“Good heavens, Fidellia!”
The Marquis and Marchioness Jonath came rushing toward us in greeting.
“How long has it been!”
The Marchioness Jonath wrapped her arms around me and spun me in circles across the floor.
Behind his wife’s enthusiasm emerged a middle-aged man of similar years.
“You send word you’re coming home, then suddenly cancel—where did you learn such manners?”
The Marquis Jonath.
He fixed me with a disapproving stare.
It wasn’t frightening. The head of the esteemed Jonath Family was simply expressing his disappointment.
‘Truly, the man has his moments.’
“My apologies. We had departed from the Train Station when an unforeseen circumstance arose that I could not avoid.”
“Ah, indeed? And what circumstance was that?”
The Marquis crossed his arms and looked down at me.
Fidellia’s lean height was clearly inherited from this broad-shouldered man.
I gestured to Sanna and Kiara, who had been standing uncertainly behind me.
Kiara bounded forward first and positioned herself at my side.
“Good day to you.”
She even remembered to offer a proper bow.
I was inwardly delighted—she performed courtesies without instruction, and though I had worried whether fear might overcome her, she conducted herself with admirable composure.
‘Come to think of it, I ought to arrange proper etiquette instruction for her too.’
Not to mention history, mathematics, natural science, and Corvalian…
Having made a mental note to seek out a tutor soon, I turned my attention back to the Marquis and Marchioness.
Both of them were staring at the small child with eyes wide as saucers.
“This is Kiara, my ward.”
“Fidellia is my guardian.”
An odd sense of déjà vu washed over me.
Only the terminology had shifted slightly. Since I would be carrying out the protector’s role all along, “ward” suited better than “charge.”
For the record, before we reached the mansion I had revealed to Kiara that I was a Jonath, but contrary to my concerns, she seemed neither surprised nor frightened.
‘Nobles are all cut from the same cloth.’
Why was the child so cynical?
“I found this girl at the Train Station. There she was in the dead of winter, skin and bones, shivering pitifully—how could I have simply walked past?”
“Good heavens.”
The Marquis Jonath covered his mouth.
“And I knew nothing of this!”
“Oh, do hush!”
The Marchioness let out an exasperated cry at her husband’s outburst.
When she fixed him with a stern look, the Marquis fell silent and turned away, clearing his throat awkwardly. He was embarrassed himself.
The Marchioness shook her head and led us into the mansion.
“Your father grows stranger with age, goodness knows. Sullen one moment, moved to tears the next—he swings between emotions several times a day.”
……
‘…It sounds like menopause.’
Of course, this world had no concept of such a thing.
Keeping my thoughts to myself, I followed the Marchioness Jonath and the Marquis, whose dignity seemed somewhat diminished at this moment.
“Sanna can use the room beside yours as she always does. Now, let’s see—Kiara, where should she…? Oh my, we’re all out of spare rooms?”
The Marchioness looked flustered as we stood in the third-floor corridor where my room was located, and she began offering alternatives.
“What about a room on another floor, or perhaps the Annex? It would be best if the three of you were close together so you can keep watch over her…though if you’d rather, we could look after Kiara ourselves while you two keep to your usual rooms here.”
In the end, Kiara decided to share a room with Sanna.
Though the Marchioness had offered other options, Kiara insisted on sharing with Sanna rather than cause a fuss, and Sanna accepted this happily.
“This is what true best friends do!”
“Best friends forever!”
The two of them erupted into delighted chatter.
It was worth noting that Sanna still addressed Kiara formally, saying she wasn’t quite ready to drop the honorifics yet.
‘You understand, but I’m not very good at dropping formality with people.’
‘You’re not “not good at it”—you simply can’t drop it, can you? Even with me, and we’ve known each other for years.’
‘Well, formal speech is stuck on your tongue just as much, so what are you complaining about?’
I conceded at last.
Not because I was afraid of Sanna—not at all.
Once we’d been assigned our rooms, the two of us settled into a peaceful routine.
With my Terminal Condition and the need for Self-Treatment, I used the excuse of a final rest to laze about for a week. It was such bliss that I barely thought of Ernan Cleor.
And after that week passed.
I threw myself into making medicine in earnest.
I asked if I could use one of the rooms in the Annex as a laboratory, and the Marquis and Marchioness Jonath readily agreed.
Thus, Willow Leaves, Yew Tree, Coptis, Periwinkle, and all manner of medicinal herbs began to fill one corner of the Jonath Mansion.
But there was a problem.
I plucked leaves one by one from a fresh-cut willow branch and stared blankly at the Beakers, Conical Flasks, and Tripods scattered across the desk.
Well, extracting components from plants isn’t difficult in itself.
I’d earned a doctorate in biology, so I knew which components could be isolated from which organisms—what combinations yielded what compounds. It was all lodged in my head.
But now I had to take those components and combine them into something that might be medicine or might be poison.
In other words, I had to merge specific compounds to produce what might be called a therapeutic effect.
And I’d have to test millions of medicinal combinations until I found one that worked—possibly even extending to molds and fungi, given that Penicillin could be extracted from blue mold.
The final tragedy was that I’d have to ingest it.
I couldn’t test it on anyone else, so if I died conducting clinical trials on my own body, I’d simply be another corpse.
…
That seemed more efficient.
But I was the sort of person who, once I started something, had to see it through—a bit mad, perhaps—so I hauled myself up from where I’d been sprawled on the floor and began methodically preparing for research.
Here I was, no expert in the field, claiming I could create a vaccine for a rare illness with no known treatment. That was my own stubborn choice.
I pressed the Academy Director to send me every pharmaceutical thesis in their collection, and I read through them all.
Among the papers, the Academy Director had tucked a letter that read:
[What a character you are.>
I couldn’t deny it.
But anyone would do the same. I didn’t need to look far—Ernan Cleor himself was proof.
Thud!
I smacked my forehead against the desk.
Focus.
I rubbed my aching forehead and turned the page.
What I’d been reading lately were old texts and manuscripts.
My cursed Genetic Illness was an ancient condition passed down through generations, so naturally there should be old records of it. That was my reasoning.
I gathered any resource I could find—books, papers, anything—and read whatever came my way.
There were no meaningful results. If anything, a poorly designed encyclopedia titled “Compendium of Rare Illnesses” proved more informative than the academic fare.
I knew from experience that a walk was the best remedy for a stuck mind.
I stepped out into the Garden to get some air.
Winter had left the Garden barren, so I cut across it and onto the Walking Path beyond.
The grounds surrounding the mansion were vast enough that one could easily get lost—yet the winding path, true to its nature, inevitably led the wanderer back to the Jonath Mansion.
Look where my aimless feet had finally carried me.
To the Practice Ground on one side of the Jonath Mansion.
Of course, it was barely used anymore and only dust clouds stirred across it. This was because, after the nations of the continent signed the Peace Treaty, the Emperor forbade nobility from maintaining Private Armies.
Families could keep only minimal escort forces; anything more was illegal. The treaty had been signed more than thirty years ago, so the Practice Ground had been empty since before I was born.
Then a thought struck me.
The experimental Mini Lamp.
At the thought of it possibly burning away right now, my stomach sank.
If a fire started, this mansion and the surrounding forest would…….
I was about to cut across the empty Practice Ground and head back to the Annex when something caught my eye.
Something that appeared in my line of sight at that very moment.
I narrowed my eyes, peering intently at the undergrowth at the far end of the Practice Ground.
Rustling leaves, and beside them, some kind of mass.
‘Pink.’
The first thing I registered was that half of that mass was pink.
‘A child.’
The second thing I realized was that what I’d taken for a shapeless heap was actually a human child.
‘…The original heroine?’
And finally, what dawned on me was the possibility that this girl might be the original heroine.
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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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