Time Healer Ceres - Chapter 35

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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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“My child, my child is very ill! How much longer must we wait?”
“Please be patient. It’s not your turn yet.”
“We’ve been waiting for five hours since the clinic opened! Why haven’t you let a single person through? How much longer do we have to wait?”
“There are already many others waiting inside.”
“This is……!”
Tears welled up in the woman’s eyes as anxiety gripped her.
Watching her child’s condition worsen by the moment made waiting almost unbearable.
‘Should I take him somewhere else, even now?’
But she’d already tried that. It had done no good.
This was her last hope.
Clip-clop, clip-clop.
Just then, an elegant carriage approached the Main Gate.
The administrator who had been speaking with the woman hurried over at once.
“Welcome, Clio.”
After confirming the emblem on the carriage, the administrator broke into a radiant smile so transformed from the indifferent expression he’d worn moments before that it seemed almost impossible they were the same person.
“I’m feeling rather sluggish today.”
“Of course. Please come inside at once.”
“Much obliged.”
The man, who appeared to be in his early fifties, closed the carriage window he’d partially opened and hurried through the Main Gate.
“Tsk.”
“Sigh.”
“We’re pushed back again.”
Sighs escaped involuntarily from the lips of those standing nearby, watching the scene unfold.
The sight of nobility cutting ahead of them and passing through the gates—people who’d been waiting in line since dawn—had become familiar enough, yet the hollow disappointment never quite wore away.
“H-hey! What about us? When exactly will we be let in? Please, let us go in quickly! Why only them……!”
The woman who had spoken to the administrator before now clutched at him again, her eyes reddened.
She appealed against the injustice of why that latecomer was being admitted first, but the answer that came back was always the same.
“Wait.”
“My child is very ill!”
The woman knew well enough. It was absurd to expect the same treatment as the nobility.
Yet understanding and accepting such things one by one was impossible given how dire the situation had become. The fever burning in her child’s body was growing worse by the moment.
“Please……!”
The woman seized the administrator’s arm desperately.
He recoiled as though something filthy had touched him and shoved her away violently.
“I said wait!”
Thud!
“Ow!”
“Is there a single person here who isn’t suffering?”
The woman staggered and fell. Since she’d been holding the child with only one arm while gripping the administrator, the child tumbled from her grasp and rolled across the ground.
“J-Jen!”
“Uhhh…….”
A faint whimper escaped the child sprawled on the ground.
Without the strength to cry or even move, the child showed no other response.
“Ugh!”
The woman tried to crawl toward her child, but her ankle had twisted in the fall and her movements were severely hampered.
A swift motion.
“……!”
In that moment, a pair of hands reached the child before the woman could, cradling the small form carefully.
A pale, slender hand rose to the child’s forehead.
“The fever is severe.”
It was Seres who clicked her tongue softly.
“How long has the child been ill?”
The woman, stunned by the sudden turn of events, snapped to attention at Seres’s calm voice and hurried closer to her child.
“A-about two weeks. I took him to another physician, but it didn’t help much…….”
That was why she’d come here. Word was that all the skilled physicians had gathered in this place.
Yet even so, she couldn’t get past the Main Gate.
A helpless parent, left to watch her child’s breath fade away, powerless.
Seres patted the woman’s back as she trembled with barely suppressed tears, then straightened her bent posture.
“Let’s move somewhere else for now.”
I can’t examine a child while standing like this.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
Only then did the supervisor, who had been watching the situation with disapproval from the side, stride forward with a loud voice. He meant to stop Seres from spiriting the patient away.
It happened often enough—physicians lurking nearby would snatch away patients who were waiting in the street.
And here, right in front of the Elrcia Count’s Residence no less, someone was brazenly attempting to abduct a patient!
“Damn it.”
“W-what?”
The supervisor’s face went slack with shock at the curse that cut straight into his ears.
Had this young lady just hurled profanity at him?
“That’s right. Damn it.”
Why? Should I offer something worse?
I’ve picked up quite the vocabulary working at the shop lately. You should hear what our regulars say.
Cradling the child, Seres turned slowly to face the supervisor, and one corner of her mouth curled upward in a smile.
So the patient wasn’t his concern when they were in urgent need, but he couldn’t bear the thought of losing them to someone else?
“That’s amusing.”
Antonian flinched at the sight of that smile, hastily taking a step back. He knew all too well that his sister had lost her temper.
The wisest course was to stay quiet and keep out of the line of fire.
“You.”
“Me? What?”
The supervisor’s face twisted further at Seres’s blunt address.
Had she gone mad? The audacity, the utter lack of fear!
“How long have you been studying the Healing Art?”
“What?”
“I asked how long.”
“Why would I study the Healing Art?”
“…You haven’t learned the Healing Art?”
The supervisor’s face flushed red, his voice shrill with indignation.
But watching him, Seres felt her breath catch, and she let out an incredulous laugh.
“You manage the Main Gate without even mastering the Healing Art?”
Absolutely ridiculous.
Seres’s smile deepened.
“I—”
“…”
Whatever she was about to say died on her lips at the faint whimper that escaped the child in her arms.
“I’d like to move somewhere else. Somewhere I can lay the child down.”
“Yes? Oh, of course!”
The child’s mother, who had been standing anxiously throughout Seres’s confrontation with the supervisor, quickly hurried forward.
Following her, Seres’s eyes turned sharp and cold, sharper than ever before.
* * *
“Kainel?”
Del, Kainel’s adjutant, turned to him in bewilderment at the sudden order to halt the carriage.
Kainel opened the window and stared out at the street. Following his gaze, Del’s brow furrowed slightly.
“It seems something’s the matter.”
A small child and a woman—apparently the child’s mother—lay collapsed on the roadside.
“Hmm?”
But then someone approached and lifted the fallen child into her arms.
A woman who immediately unleashed a string of curses.
‘Interesting.’
Del found he couldn’t look away from the woman who, with such composed presence, rendered the supervisor speechless.
And yet…
‘I know that face.’
Where had he seen her before?
“…?”
And there was another who watched the woman just as intently as Del did—Kainel.
“Do you know her, sir?”
Del found the situation itself remarkable. Kainel was the sort who paid no attention whatsoever to commotion around him, however loud, if it didn’t concern him.
And this was the first time Del had ever seen him regard anyone with such keen interest.
“The one who feeds me.”
“Sir?”
The one who feeds him? What in the world did that mean?
“Oh!”
Only then could Del recall where he’d seen the woman before.
She was someone he’d encountered at the shop where he’d gone to pack food some time ago.
“And…….”
“And what?”
“…….”
“……?”
…A person who kept rubbing him the wrong way.
Kainel did not take his eyes off Seres as she disappeared into a small speck, walking while cradling the child.
“We’re leaving.”
“Pardon? But the examination——”
Del, who had been pestering him for some time to visit the Elrcia Count’s Residence for a consultation, had only today managed to persuade him to come.
Kainel’s insomnia had been growing steadily worse.
But to leave just like this?
“Look into her.”
“Into whom, sir?”
“That woman.”
At Kainel’s command, Del belatedly turned his gaze back to the window.
Was he talking about that woman from just now?
Surprise filled Del’s eyes.
“Understood.”
Yet almost immediately, Del’s head nodded vigorously.
Whatever the matter was, the mere fact that he was showing interest in something else was cause for deep gratification.
“Still, now that you’ve come this far, wouldn’t it be wise to receive an examination before you go?”
“……”
“…Let’s go home.”
At the sight of Kainel closing his eyes without a word, Del released a long sigh.
It seemed he would need to return here another time.
* * *
“Mother…….”
“Jen! Are you coming to?”
Tears glistened in the woman’s eyes.
When she first moved to a different spot following Seres, she had wondered if this was truly right.
Even consumed by anger and despair, shouldn’t she have waited her turn outside the Elrcia Count’s Residence until the end?
But at that moment when everyone turned away, when she saw Seres lifting the child from the cold floor, she found herself bewitched—obedient to the woman’s will without a second thought.
The woman who had brought Seres to the Inn where she lodged watched anxiously as she examined the child.
Had her choice been the right one?
What if something went wrong with the child? What would she do then?

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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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