The Immortal Duke’s Physician Is an Internist - Chapter 6

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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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No matter how many times you witness someone’s death, it never quite becomes familiar.
Lionel sat on a Garden bench beneath the slanting sun, her mind adrift in memory.
The tender parting from her mother. And in hospitals—both in her past life and this one—she’d seen patients slip away countless times. Yet still, Lionel couldn’t befriend the word “death.”
“Professor Frenscia!”
Someone called from the far end of the Garden. It was Kaylon and Eilery—the assistant who’d risen from his sickbed days ago, coffin already removed.
“How’s your condition, assistant?”
“There’s some discomfort in my chest, but otherwise I’m in fine spirits. And I’m grateful for William’s devoted care.”
“I simply did what was needed. …Eilery, you’re leaving now?”
Eilery nodded, her eyes swollen and puffy.
“I wanted to say goodbye before going to the Boarding School.”
“Of course. Thank you for coming. I wanted to see you off too.”
“I’m going to study hard. I’ll work hard and become a brilliant doctor just like you. When that time comes, will you let me be your assistant?”
“That’s a wonderful dream. I’ll be cheering for your future.”
With that, Lionel drew something from her pocket—a small, intricately crafted Pocket Watch.
“Eilery, do you know something?”
Lionel continued in a tender voice.
“When someone you love dies, sorrow becomes a stone that presses heavily on your heart. At first, it’s so unbearable you can hardly breathe. But as time passes, that stone grows smaller and smaller, until it becomes just a pebble.”
Eilery’s expression grew sorrowful.
“Does that mean the pebble eventually disappears?”
“No. Instead of disappearing, we carry that small stone in our pocket for the rest of our lives.”
Lionel pressed the Pocket Watch into Eilery’s hands.
“Look. Your sorrow is already a small stone now, because of me. So don’t grieve too long. When you eat well and laugh brightly, your father in heaven will be happy too.”
May this small child’s future be peaceful.
May she not suffer too long from her parents’ death—a loss neither of us could prevent.
Lionel prayed this with genuine sincerity.
Eilery gazed at the watch, then suddenly threw her arms around Lionel. Despite her slight frame, she held with surprising strength.
“Thank you so much, Professor. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
The two embraced for a long time, neither willing to let go. Kaylon finally spoke gently.
“Eilery. The carriage is waiting.”
Eilery took Kaylon’s hand and walked away with the light, easy steps of childhood. Lionel watched her receding figure for as long as she could see it.
“You can come out now, Your Grace.”
Blassion emerged from the shade of the trees, his eyes following the path Eilery had taken as he approached.
“Why didn’t you say goodbye to Eilery?”
“I don’t indulge in unnecessary emotional expenditure.”
“Yet you’ve agreed to fund her tuition and living expenses in full.”
“…Kaylon, I never granted permission for you to spread such unnecessary gossip.”
Blassion spoke curtly and began walking forward with long strides. Lionel followed naturally, and they fell into a stroll together.
As they admired the unusual flowers and plants, Blassion broke the silence.
“When did you prepare that watch? It looked quite valuable.”
Lionel answered as though it were nothing.
“Oh, that? It was my mother’s keepsake.”
“You gave away your mother’s keepsake? Why?”
“Well… I’m going to die today anyway. So I thought I’d dispose of my treasured things beforehand.”
Blassion’s footsteps stopped abruptly.
Lionel too came to a halt. For a long moment, they simply looked at each other’s faces.
“Did you forget? The condition was that you’d keep me alive only until William’s passing.”
She wanted to add more—about cremating her body and, though reluctant, leaving a letter for the Frenscia Barony—but something in his expression gave her pause, and she fell silent.
Blassion’s violet eyes fixed on her with an intensity that seemed to pierce straight through.
“How old are you, exactly?”
“I’m twenty, Your Grace.”
“A mere child who barely came of age…why do you face death with such composure? Who are you really?”
Lionel lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug and answered.
“My identity? I’m simply a doctor.”
One who carries memories from a past life.
Blassion’s brow furrowed.
“…No. None of the doctors I’ve known were like you. They refused to admit their own limitations, spouting excuses about divine punishment when treatment failed. They demanded outrageous sums just to treat people.”
Lionel smiled bitterly. From medical school to the hospital, she’d seen more than enough of such characters to find nothing surprising in his words.
“True, there are doctors like that. But I’d prefer you didn’t lump me in with them. I at least don’t play games with human lives.”
“Did you start thinking that way the moment you became a doctor?”
“……I’m not sure? It’s just that any ordinary human naturally respects life, don’t they?”
“Then why did you become a doctor in the first place?”
Why all these questions? Was he saying he’d kill her by becoming some sort of question-mark murderer?
Lionel had the answer to his question, certainly, but she didn’t want to give it.
‘An entire village was wiped out by some mysterious plague. I was the only one who survived. That’s why I became a doctor—to track down that disease.’
Her heart simply wasn’t strong enough yet to bare such a story.
“……Well, I’ll just say that my mother’s death was what triggered it.”
“Your mother—how did she…….”
“Your Grace.”
Lionel cut off the duke’s words mid-sentence. A signal to stop prying further.
“Do I have an obligation to answer everything to the person who’s about to kill me?”
Finally, the question-mark murderer’s mouth shut. Lionel let out a short breath and rolled her shoulders back.
“So then, how am I to die? Stabbed with a sword? Or strangled? I don’t like pain, so please make it as quick and painless as possible.”
Blassion swept his bangs back roughly. Whatever frustrated him so, a sigh escaped his lips like an exhalation of exasperation.
“……You really don’t seem afraid of death at all.”
“That’s not true.”
Lionel denied it swiftly.
“Death frightens everyone, myself included. But I understand something more than that—the weight of a promise once spoken aloud.”
There were regrets, certainly. So much left undone.
But…….
‘Even so, I did my best in this life.’
Perhaps this was a better death than being struck down by a car in her past life. At least she’d managed to comfort one child’s heart.
One could safely say it was a more meaningful life than being married off to some perverse old man.
“I never had any intention of using someone else’s life just to escape an immediate crisis.”
Lionel’s fingers toyed with the Clover Ring still in her pocket. Strangely, her mind grew calm and still.
“Well, I’m ready now. Please make sure it doesn’t hurt. And then, who knows? Perhaps in the next…….”
After considering her words for a long moment, Lionel finally seemed to find her answer and finished the thought.
“Perhaps in the next life, when I’m born as a doctor again……I’ll unravel the secret of your Curse of Immortality.”
Lionel closed her eyes, having said all she had to say. Her mind was more peaceful than she’d expected.
Yet.
Even as considerable time passed, no pain came. When Lionel quietly opened her eyes, a warm sensation touched her cheek.
“Lionel Frenscia.”
Blassion, his hand upon her cheek, spoke her name.
“Do you think this Curse of Immortality could be broken?”
Though he was called a being that existed beyond the divine, his hand was warm like any ordinary person’s.
“Well, truthfully……I never really thought of it as a curse.”
It was a question she’d pondered ever since reading the novel.
Was an Immortal truly created by nothing more than a ‘curse’?
In the original work, Blassion was a knight who served an exiled princess.
He suffered a mortal wound trying to rescue her, and the princess gave him a cursed poison to drink, which resulted in his becoming Immortal.
As time passed and the latter half of the novel unfolded, it was revealed that the heroine was the princess’s reincarnation, and the two shared a passionate night together.
And from that point onward, the narrative stated that the Curse of Immortality was broken.
An ordinary reader would have simply thought ‘how pitiful the duke was, not understanding love’s greatness’ and moved on. But Lionel thought differently.
‘If he became Immortal by ingesting poison, and then the heroine’s bodily fluids or saliva or whatever mixed with his……then couldn’t the enzymes or proteins in her body have stimulated his arrested aging cells?’
That miracle which appeared to be the power of love might actually have had some medical explanation that this Romance Fantasy world hadn’t yet uncovered. This was the hypothesis Lionel had formed.
“I believe your condition is a pathological problem, Your Grace.”
“A disease……rather than a curse?”
“Yes. I can’t say for certain, but……if I took time to examine and analyze your body thoroughly, perhaps I could solve that mystery through medicine.”
“Then.”
The hand that had rested on her cheek now gripped her shoulder. The light in his eyes flickered for a moment, then solidified into something clear.
It was the moment when a man who had lived for seven hundred years found a small hope in a twenty-year-old girl.
“Don’t wait for the next life. Become my physician in this one and find me that answer.”

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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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