Sister-in-law of the Heroine in a Childcare Novel - Chapter 88

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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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Chapter 88

No matter how sturdy the men of the Castrain Family were, sleeping in that posture would absolutely result in his spine creaking and popping when he woke—a sound like “crack-crack-crack.”
Straighten your back, or you’ll be looking at a minimum of seventeen million won in spinal surgery costs—having lived as the soul of a former modern person who’d heard such warnings all her life, I thought I ought to at least fix his posture. After all, he was my savior.
At the very least, if he slept like this all day, his neck would twist.
Should I angle him back against the chair? Or just lay him out flat on the bed? But the body weight of someone asleep or unconscious is heavier than you’d think. Could I actually move him properly with these scrawny forearms of mine?
Ah, forget it. Let me just try. At the very least, I should straighten his neck. I reached out, debating whether to grip his neck or just rotate his head, and brought my hand to his cheek. Since he’d been collapsed with one side of his face nearly buried in the mattress, a gentle push with my palm got his head to turn just fine, but…
‘This feeling is really strange.’
For Raymond to rest his cheek against my palm without any resistance at all—it was so unfamiliar that it unsettled me. My own cheeks began to burn.
Should I have just grabbed his neck or shoulder roughly and rolled him over? But he was asleep, after all. I was trying to reposition him without waking him. Ugh, who was I even explaining this to? Nobody’s listening anyway!
I succeeded in carefully adjusting Raymond’s posture. Even at a glance, the position that had looked so harmful to his spine and cervical discs now seemed far more comfortable.
At the very least, he wouldn’t wake up groaning, “Ow, my whole body hurts!” and then thrash about. Pleased with myself, I deliberately avoided looking at Raymond’s cheeks or the nape of his neck as I slowly rose from the chair. I retrieved my slippers from the floor, padded across the soft carpet, and carefully cracked the door open to peer out at what lay beyond.
Fortunately, the adjacent room had a balcony attached to it.
Hoping to soothe this restless, unsettled feeling with the night breeze, I slipped out without so much as a backward glance. The door closed behind me with a soft creak.

* * *

Creak…
Tap, tap, tap.
Only after the faint sound of footsteps had completely faded did Raymond quietly open the eyes he’d been keeping shut.
Both the sound of the door closing and the footsteps across the carpet had been deliberate, careful—as if she feared disturbing someone who was sleeping.
Yet it was he who had just barely survived death and underwent treatment, only now opening his eyes.
While she’d nervously monitored his condition, fretted over what to do, and carefully adjusted his posture, Raymond had felt every moment of her touch. In truth, he had never been asleep at all.
The somewhat comical way he’d been lying—the way Titania had found him—was because he’d been checking his breath by pressing his fingertip to his nose just before she woke, and the moment she showed any sign of consciousness, he’d instinctively frozen in place and collapsed into that awkward position.
Before he could so much as react, he’d seen Titania’s eyes blink as she surveyed her condition. There was nothing for it but to keep his eyes shut and desperately maintain the pretense of sleep.
Raymond had brought Titania back. High Priest Illian had poured all his strength into saving her life. Yet he’d said something deeply troubling.
‘Well, it’s not that the Healing Force doesn’t work on Her Highness the Princess. It’s just… like last time…’
Something was bothering him, though he seemed unable to pin down exactly what it was. As High Priest Illian tilted his head uncertainly, Raymond found himself anxiously pressing the matter.
‘What do you mean by that? Like last time?’
‘It’s strange, somehow. That is to say, the wound clearly did heal. And she’s breathing perfectly…’
Illian’s expression was deeply uneasy—more precisely, as if something troubled him greatly, but its implications were so unpleasant that he couldn’t bring himself to voice it.
‘I would be grateful if you would tell me any speculation, without reservation.’
‘Well, then. I suppose this is rather harsh to say, but. There is something I teach first and foremost to the young priests who go out onto the Battlefield.’
The light in Illian’s eyes as he spoke was profound—the eyes of a master who had dedicated his life to saving souls and had personally sent disciples into the blood-soaked trenches of war.
‘Cut your ties to the already dead.’
‘…’
‘Divine Power is not omnipotent. If someone truly expires, they cannot be saved. That, too, is the will of the divine. Healing Force is useless on a corpse. You learn it yourself when you try. Ah, this person is dead. There is nothing my power can reach. And so on…’
‘…’
‘But. Last time I thought it was just my imagination, but. Strangely enough, when I first poured my power into Her Highness the Princess. I felt a bizarre sort of rebound, as if I were pouring power into someone already dead. It was only for an instant, and then her body began recovering properly, so I thought I’d been mistaken. But…’
Having heard such things, Raymond could not possibly sleep until Titania woke. His heart had shriveled with dread.
Yet what was Titania’s behavior like?
She worried that his back would ache, watched him for a long while, then gently brushed his hair back. The moment her fingertips touched his skin, Raymond nearly gasped aloud. The shell of his ear burned hot where her fingers had made contact.
When Raymond was awake, he acted like a hedgehog desperately trying to maintain distance. Yet the moment he appeared to fall asleep, Titania lowered all her spines and approached like a hedgehog curled contentedly beside its caretaker, offering her hand. What cruel irony.
Yet he did not dislike it. Quite the opposite—he liked it so much it was a problem. His heart pounded so fiercely that he worried his feigned sleep would be exposed by the sound of his own heartbeat.
…Could it be that she doesn’t hate me?
Could it be that she worries for me, even a little?
When her soft fingers caressed his cheek, gently pushing, then straining as if she didn’t have quite enough strength and grunting as she leveraged her arms and shoulders to press harder.
Raymond nearly gasped aloud in genuine shock. In fact, he was so startled that he trembled slightly.
But Titania, concentrating entirely on the effort of repositioning him, didn’t notice.
Once she’d settled him into what seemed like a more comfortable position, she left Raymond lying directly beside the bed she herself had just vacated, and departed with a satisfied air about her.
She’d even dutifully found her slippers and was hopping away on them like a rabbit bounding across grass. Raymond found himself thinking how adorable she was, then caught himself in surprise.
“…Titania.”
Once he’d confirmed the door was tightly shut, Raymond buried his eyes in the palms of his own hands. So many emotions pressed heavily into his chest that he had no words to describe them.

* * *

The sunlight streaming through beat warm against her eyelids.
It was remarkably fine weather. All the more so when she thought of the war-like days she’d endured just yesterday.
A gentle breeze drifted through the open window, and the hair of the person lying in bed swayed softly in the light wind. On that beautiful afternoon, the maidservant Barbara gazed at the bright-eyed, platinum-haired girl Titania—who was smiling somewhat sheepishly—with cold eyes.
“You have to drink all of that.”
Titania looked down at her lap with a stricken expression. A small white bowl sat there, brimming with a liquid so dark it was nearly black. With the face of someone who couldn’t even imagine what might have been put into it—Barbara, who had brewed the medicine according to High Priest Illian’s instructions, was certain that if she revealed the medicine’s contents, Titania would absolutely refuse to drink it—her pale face was etched with fear. It was an expression Titania had never worn even when she’d hurled herself without hesitation at the horde of Magic Beasts in the Imperial Palace.
“…It’s too bitter.”
“You nearly threw up from all that sweetness last time, so this is where the dessert ends.”
Barbara gestured firmly at the tiny chocolate piece, no larger than a bean, sitting in a small glass beside the medicine bowl. Titania’s expression grew even more stricken. Yet Barbara showed no signs of relenting.
Barbara, who had attended to Titania since her recovery in the Empress’s Palace, was a maidservant educated there from earliest childhood. As the daughter of a handmaiden the Empress had brought from her own family’s house, the Marquis of Integria, her standing was beyond question.
She surpassed most nobly-born handmaidens and was versed in etiquette. The Empress had thought that someone of her caliber following after her would prove invaluable to the Princess.
Yes, Barbara herself had believed the same. Yet when that incident-prone Princess began throwing herself into various dangers without sparing her own body, Barbara had worried that she might be set aside with the excuse that she was ‘merely an ordinary maidservant, one of the Empress’s people,’ and left behind to tend to mundane tasks.
Barbara was no fool.
It was absurd to believe the Princess harbored no secrets, when she’d taken up a sword she’d never so much as seen before and began cutting down Magic Beasts. The way the Castrain Family followed the Princess like ducklings chasing their mother. The way they’d been assigned to her. The way the Princess seemed to trust the Castrain Family while simultaneously erecting subtle walls between them.
She understood it all.

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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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