“Karbaldr, lower your head and move your hand away.”
I wanted to tell him to leave me alone and that I’d take care of it myself, but if I did, I was afraid the blood would run into my mouth.
‘Do nosebleeds usually bleed this much?’
With that doubt, I reluctantly did as Reysir told me.
“……!”
Since I’d deliberately dropped my gaze, I had no idea what kind of expression Reysir made after I moved my hand away.
But I couldn’t miss the way he flinched and his body tensed up.
I must look like quite a spectacle.
He couldn’t hide his shock when I touched my forehead, but this time, Reysir didn’t say a word and silently pinched my nose to try to stop the bleeding.
At the same time, he swiftly wiped the blood off my mouth and jaw with a handkerchief.
Only now could I part my lips that I’d been keeping closed.
“I’ll hold it, so let go and move away.”
Because Reysir was pinching my nose, his voice came out in a funny, nasal tone.
If I’d made a sound like that in any other situation, the 18-year-old in front of me would have teased me in a playful tone.
But maybe because he’d seen blood, his voice was surprisingly calm and subdued.
“Just stay still… No, if your hands are free, calm Yor down by patting them gently.”
“……”
No matter how awkward it was to accept Reysir’s help, I couldn’t just ignore Yor, who was crying out of worry for me.
With a clean hand that wasn’t stained with blood, I gently patted the back of the mewling baby dragon.
While I was doing that, Vigdis returned carrying two towels soaked in water.
Reysir, still holding my nose with one hand, took one of the towels Vigdis handed over with his other hand and pressed it to my forehead.
Vigdis, meanwhile, used the wet towel to carefully wipe the lower half of my face, which Reysir had only wiped quickly. She even wiped the blood off my hands.
The way the two naturally divided the tasks to care for me left me speechless.
‘Is it really necessary for two people to fuss over a simple nosebleed like this…?’
It’s not as if it’s a problem, but I felt like I was getting way too much attention—it was overwhelming.
Just yesterday, I’d resolved not to get sick this semester, at least.
‘And yet, how did things end up like this in just one day?’
‘I thought I just had a bad headache… I didn’t expect a nosebleed too…’
Feeling awkward, I fidgeted with Yor’s mane for no reason.
Fortunately, the baby dragon had stopped wailing and was only sniffling now. It seemed their fright had calmed down a bit.
A little more time passed, and even the sniffles faded away.
That’s when Reysir took his hand away from my nose, let out a deep sigh of relief after confirming the bleeding had stopped, and then started to scold me.
“Phew… Even though I insisted on today’s meeting, I never meant for you to force yourself to attend when you’re sick. If you weren’t feeling well, you should have just told me and rested in your room. Did you really think I’d be so unreasonable that I wouldn’t even understand something like that?”
Even without meeting his eyes, I could tell from his voice just how upset he was.
So it was incredibly awkward.
I wanted to just brush this off as another emotional event, but…
I couldn’t ignore the fact that this protagonist from someone else’s novel was truly worried about me, not just trying to get closer with some ploy.
‘Still, I should say something…!’
Simply listening to Reysir’s nagging without protest would not only break character, but also make it look like I was touched by his concern.
‘But was it because my head still throbbed and felt foggy? Or was it because my heart felt heavy?’
I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I kept opening and closing my mouth for no reason.
“But… Kar said he’d just watch the spar and not participate, right…? So it’s not like he did anything wrong, is it…?”
“So you’re saying he did well?”
“In a way… isn’t it better that this happened while Kar was with us, and not alone—or just with Yor?”
“Now that you mention it… that’s true.”
Vigdis stepped in to defend me, and Reysir seemed convinced by her words.
Thanks to the unexpected support, the awkward situation was safely resolved.
Or so I thought.
“And also…! Even if Reysir hadn’t pushed Kar to join the sparring, there’s no way Kar would’ve just stayed in his room to rest…! I mean, Kar has insomnia, right…? So, there’s no way he could’ve rested.”
Her words were strange—not quite comforting Reysir that he didn’t need to blame himself, but not scolding me either.
Her voice was filled with a strange certainty, making it hard to discern her intent.
When I looked over at her, I saw a gaze full of pity.
‘This… Something’s really gone wrong, hasn’t it?’
Having insomnia just means you can’t sleep, not that you can’t rest at all.
Yet Vigdis pitied me, insisting with conviction that I absolutely couldn’t rest.
The reason was obvious. She mistakenly believed I’d developed insomnia due to the attempted poisoning incident.
‘She must’ve assumed that I can’t rest peacefully because I don’t know who might try to kill me at any time.’
The problem was that Vigdis hadn’t kept this misunderstanding to herself.
She hadn’t said it outright, but she’d previously been led by circumstantial evidence to believe that my insomnia was due to some incident over break.
Now, by mentioning insomnia and looking at me with pity while saying it was only natural that I couldn’t rest, she’d provided all the clues a web novel protagonist would never ignore.
“Karvald Austri. Why did you suddenly get insomnia?”
“…Insomnia can happen suddenly to anyone.”
“Now that you mention it, it was a sudden change for you to start taking combat classes and spend more time at the Tower of Training than the Dormitory this semester.”
“Didn’t I tell you before? I didn’t feel the need to study things I was already good at, so I decided to learn something I’m less confident in. And since I want to do it well, I worked hard… Do I really need to explain even this?”
I managed to make something up, but even to myself, it sounded unconvincing.
Given how persistent he’d been since we first met, there’s no way he’d be satisfied with an answer like that.
“Suspicious. Sometimes, you seem strangely anxious, like you’re being chased by something.”
If only he’d misunderstood, like Professor Radvisin did, and thought it was just my drive to improve.
But I never thought he’d actually sense my anxiety.
It wasn’t the time to be impressed, but I couldn’t help but think, ‘He really is a sharp protagonist character…!’
“Besides that, it just feels like you’ve changed a lot overall. Can someone really change this much without any reason?”
After hearing that, I couldn’t just stay silent.
Better to be someone suffering from insomnia due to threats than to have my identity questioned.
Having reached that conclusion, I repeated the same lie I’d told Vigdis.
“On the day I returned to the Capital for the holidays, I almost died after being poisoned.”
“What?! Are you saying someone tried to poison you?!”
“Yeah. Does that clear up your suspicions a bit?”
“Uh, well… If that’s the reason, then…”
Even without elaborating, Reysir now nodded, as if everything made sense.
Seeing his face filled with confusion, shock, and worry, I felt a pang of guilt.
Knowing exactly what kind of trauma he had, and knowing he genuinely cared about me, yet still lying to him like this…
‘Truly despicable.’
Without realizing, I tore my gaze from Reysir’s face and ran a hand through my hair.
Even now, I was annoyed at myself for not being able to face him properly and trying to avoid his eyes.
“Who would do such a thing to you, and why?”
“I don’t know. The culprit was never found.”
“Still, you must at least suspect someone. Like whoever gave you food that day, or whoever prepared it…”
“I don’t remember anything from that entire day. Maybe it’s aftereffects of the poison.”
In reality, it’s not just that I lost a day of memory—I’ve lost all of the original Karvald Austri’s memories.
But there’s no point in telling the full truth, so I glossed over it.
Even so, Reysir was bound to take the situation seriously. That much was expected.
“Karvald Austri. The reason you told Liolikin to prove his worth by entering the tournament was because you needed a guard in the Academy, wasn’t it…?”
‘How does it connect to that?’
I did think about using Liolikin as a human shield, so I couldn’t really deny it.
Like catching a mouse by accident while backing up.
“Wouldn’t I make a better guard than Liolikin, though?”
No.
It’s most dangerous to be by your side, the original protagonist.
“Or maybe Vigdis…”
In terms of potential, Vigdis would be a decent choice.
But the fact that she contributed to Karvald Austri’s death in the original and died saving Reysir leaves a bitter taste.
“Ah! You probably don’t want to drag your fiancée into danger. And since Vigdis is a woman, she can’t enter the men’s Dormitory anyway.”
Reysir tore up the Vigdis option he’d slyly presented to me.
Not that I planned to use Vigdis as a guard anyway, but I could only be dumbfounded that his last remaining choice was himself.
“You’re not an option either, are you? You shouldn’t be trailing after someone and playing guard at a time like this, right?”
“Then what should I be doing right now?”
“You should be investigating the phenomena that happened in your fief, trying to reclaim the land, and preparing to drop out at the end of this semester! Why are you talking about guarding someone?”
“…That place is just abandoned land now, isn’t it? No one wants to move there since it’s an unclean and ominous place. I doubt I could ever revive it.”
Reysir asked in a slightly hoarse voice, as if questioning why he should reclaim the land, even though he already knew the answer.
“Isn’t it about restoring your parents’ and your family’s honor? You have to reclaim your fief from the Imperial Family and get an apology and compensation to recover your damaged honor.”
“……”
“You always insisted on demanding an apology, but are you planning not to do that anymore?”
“……”
“Who knows? Since strange phenomena happened there, maybe rare resources have emerged. If so, rebuilding the fief isn’t impossible. Where there are resources, people always gather.”
All the resources that appeared on the surface due to the Demonic Realm incident were already scraped away by the Imperial Family.
But that was limited to the plants growing on the surface.
The investigators they sent only scooped up a bit of dirt to test, but never dug deep underground.
So, the rare underground resources buried in Reysir’s fief remained untouched.
In fact, the underground resources in Reysir’s land were superior in both quantity and quality, later outclassing those found elsewhere.
That’s why, in the original story, Reysir used these underground resources as the basis for rebuilding the fief.
“Everyone’s always told me to just give up… That reclaiming the fief is impossible anyway, and even if I do, there’s nothing to gain but hardship. That it’s better for my peace of mind to just forget about it and move on… That’s what everyone said…”
Reysir, who’d been quiet all this time, suddenly began to mutter.
A sense of unease crept over me, so I looked at his face and saw an empty expression.
The moment I saw that, alarm bells rang in my head.
“W-wait…”
“You’re the first person who ever said that to me.”
I hurriedly tried to stop Reysir from saying any more, but it was a futile struggle.
In the end, the cliché line, dripping with tropes, came out of the original protagonist’s mouth.