Limited Extra Time - Chapter 36

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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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That’s why I never went to see my family physician. …So I came to see the Physician instead.

…Infuriating woman.

Millaiyen Pestellio, leaning against the wall outside the door, muttered under his breath.

He hadn’t meant to eavesdrop.

The room he’d given to Carina Leopold was

near his own, and he’d simply been trying to return to his chambers after cooling the heat rising in his chest.

…calling him irresponsible and wishing aloud that he had no younger brother at all….

As he passed her room, words drifted through the slightly ajar door—words so unlike her that he found himself stopping in his tracks without meaning to.

He had no taste for eavesdropping.

Millaiyen Pestellio was a man of such straightforward character that he preferred to resolve most matters directly

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at least when it came to relationships with people, not monsters or warfare.

At least when it came to relationships with people, not monsters or warfare.

“And that day was the first time Mother ever struck me.”

But the words that followed were so shocking that Millaiyen Pestellio found himself unable to move, forced instead to lean against the wall beside the door.

Stories spilled out—things I would never willingly share, not even on my deathbed.

I had thought I hadn’t properly formed attachments with my family, but the reality was far more serious than I’d imagined.

It wasn’t even my own story, yet I couldn’t understand why my heart ached as I merely listened to another’s tale.

Now I finally understood, at least in part, the strangeness of her sad smile—how she couldn’t take her eyes off the Market during a single visit, how she’d been excited like a child.

He slowly pushed himself away from the wall and made his way to Carina’s Room.

The way she gazed at me with those gleaming eyes, the way she behaved like a helpless child who knew nothing, the way she moved with such frustration.

All of it stemmed from the massive wall that loomed around her existence.

Because she had never broken through the walls that had been erected around her throughout her entire life without her knowledge, because she didn’t even know that her world was suffocatingly enclosed by those very walls, she naturally confined herself within her own frame. She accepted it as inevitable.

If someone were to suddenly erect such walls around Millaiyen, trapping him in a narrow world, he would immediately sense the disturbance and shatter those walls without hesitation.

He possessed both the conviction and the strength to do so.

The Previous Duke of Pestellio had given Millaiyen responsibility and duty, but simultaneously allowed him to experience freedom.

But Carina was different. She and Millaiyen were far too

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different. She had never been given the opportunity to taste freedom. A world enclosed on all sides by walls was her only world. She was trapped within it without ever sensing anything amiss. No matter how narrow that world was, even if she belatedly realized her confinement, she couldn’t discern where or how it was wrong, and thus she knew no way to escape. Those very walls had become her world.

‘Consideration born of coercion isn’t consideration at all.’

It was merely sacrifice crushed beneath oppressive violence. Millaiyen drew a sharp breath.

He had unexpectedly overheard details of her past.

“…I need to hear about her illness directly from her.”

He didn’t want to learn about that by eavesdropping like this.

Millaiyen roughly rubbed his face with hands that had grown cold. He had resolved to involve himself in her affairs. At least until Carina threw filth in the face of that Nocton, he would gladly become her backing, her ally. Millaiyen’s lips twisted into a crooked smile.

* * *

Moonlight poured through the window. Carina exhaled a short breath and irritably rubbed her face a couple of times.

Pressed by the frustration welling within her, she dragged a small tea table in front of the window and sat down, habitually retrieving paper and pencil.

Winston, having heard the story, nodded with an oddly complex expression and posed several questions before

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She jotted something down on paper and postponed the matter until tomorrow.

She withdrew a small notebook from her bosom. As she flipped through the palm-sized journal, the monster she had sketched during the day revealed itself among countless sketches.

After glimpsing the crude and hazy croquet sketch, Carina Leopold slowly drew lines upon the pristine white paper.

She traced rounded curves across the expanse of the page. She drew its face and recalled the chitinous armor that had gleamed like lacquer in the sunlight.

Upon the snow-white paper, horns suddenly sprouted as though they would pierce through a human body and burst forth.

The rough carapace of its back seemed to gather dozens of ridges both large and small, and the hazy form became increasingly distinct and savage with each stroke of her hand.

The demonic beast Herta appeared as though it might leap from the drawing at any moment, ferocious and wild.

Its sharp teeth looked menacing enough to gnaw and devour something in an instant, and its golden eyes gleamed with malice.

Carina Leopold paused as she reached for her paints while gazing at the sketch.

‘Now that I think about it, there’s nothing here.’

She had left behind everything that would be burdensome. All she had brought were the paints and pencils she used frequently.

Without an easel or palette, and with only a few varieties of paint and brushes, applying color immediately was impossible.

Carina Leopold gazed down at the paper with longing eyes.

She loved that moment—when she applied color, let it dry, when the form within the drawing met her gaze and slowly emerged into the world beyond the paper.

What emerged from the paper always looked solely at her.

‘…It feels somewhat strange, as though I’m using a newborn child,’

But still, she wanted to be of help to him.

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Rather than countless people dying and suffering, rather than Millaiyen—whose gaze she had unconsciously come to follow—facing danger, it was better to add one more weight to a life already forfeit and tip the scales slightly.

A step taken by no one else but myself, of my own volition.

For the first time, I genuinely wished to move for Millaiyen’s sake, driven by my own desire.

I longed for his safety—for that person who had worried sincerely about the troublesome burden that had appeared so unexpectedly.

I gazed down at the sketch with all its lines completed, then rose with the paper in hand and placed it in the desk drawer.

‘Tomorrow, I must purchase what I truly need.’

I hadn’t brought such a large sum of money, so making do with what remained would be rather precarious.

Yet asking Millaiyen for funds felt…

‘…embarrassing.’

Beneath the moonlight, I touched my cheek, my face flushed with heat.

How could the daughter of Leopold House lack even the means to purchase inexpensive art supplies?

“Hmm…”

It wasn’t a matter of pride, precisely.

If asked, I could plead necessity to anyone in the world for the sake of my art, but not to him.

From him alone, I wished to receive neither pleas of want nor pitying glances.

If this is what one calls needless pride, so be it. What can one do when the heart has already tilted?

“Ah.”

I rummaged through the desk drawer and withdrew a small box.

It was a neat wooden box, unpretentious yet refined.

Click—as I carefully opened the box’s lid, a faint gleam emerged from the darkness, and

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A small jewel that gleamed even more brilliantly came into view.

It was a crude necklace adorned with a peculiar stone called ‘Haron’ that Millaiyen Pestellio had given me.

“It’s a custom of the Northern Territory. There’s a superstition that if you give it to someone with a weak constitution, they’ll become healthy.”

“I hope you’ll grow well.”

While it wasn’t adorned with flowery rhetoric,

those words stirred my heart more profoundly than anything I had ever heard before.

I carefully placed the stone, which gleamed even more brilliantly under the moonlight, upon my palm.

Whether it was mere illusion or not, it felt as though a cool energy emanated from the stone and seeped into my body. My burning insides seemed to cool slightly, and the fatigue began to dissipate.

“It’s like magic.”

I held the stone up to the moonlight.

After caressing it several times with my fingers, I carefully placed it back in the box as though polishing it.

I set the box beside the uncolored sketch of Herta, then rose carefully from my seat.

It was already dawn, with moonlight and silence settling over everything.

Gazing at the drawer with regret at not having finished the painting, I tucked myself into the blankets.

* * *

“You could have gone alone.”

“Yesterday’s matters became unexpectedly complicated, so I couldn’t inspect the grounds or have your winter clothes fitted.”

Millaiyen Pestellio shrugged his shoulders and naturally lifted me into the carriage.

By now, accustomed to his sudden movements without warning, I stiffened

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It hardened.

Millaiyen said something to the Coachman, then quickly climbed into the carriage himself.

“You didn’t wake up early this morning, it seems.”

“Pardon?”

“I didn’t feel your gaze today.”

At Millaiyen’s softly spoken words, Carina Leopold’s face flushed crimson.

She had no difficulty grasping the meaning behind his remark.

He was referring to what she had said before—that she sketched him during his dawn exercises.

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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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