Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Four: Message Left Behind
From the Gubert Trading Company, not only healers but even carpenters were dispatched, and repairs to the apartment began at a rapid pace. Though the apartment residents looked at them with suspicious eyes, the people from the company said, "We came in response to Ms. Karen’s summons," and Karen nodded in agreement. The Gubert Trading Company was completely unrelated to this fire. Probably to maintain that position, they worked energetically.
Karen’s home was almost entirely burned down. She wondered whether it was worth rebuilding it or not, but seeing the carpenters’ magic make the wood joints of building materials stretch and connect with a "nyuun" sound, Karen was convinced it would be fine in this world.
While watching the carpenters, Karen suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder, let out a scream, and jumped.
“Eek!”
“Hey… is it okay to talk now?”
“W-What… oh, it’s you, Lyos… phew.”
The person she thought was Julius turned out to be Lyos, and Karen patted her chest in relief. Looking around, she saw Julius facing off with two knights at a distance where their voices couldn’t be heard. They were Ehlertt knights. Probably the people who were supposedly guarding Karen.
One of them was kneeling in a deep bow, repeatedly lowering his head to apologize to Julius. The other was talking to Julius with a dignified attitude, hands behind his back, but was tripped by the kneeling knight and fell flat. The knights were probably being interrogated by Julius for not stopping Karen.
But Karen wouldn’t have stopped even if they had tried.
“Thanks for earlier, for helping me.”
“I didn’t do anything, though.”
“It helped that you said that to the guards. The apartment people were starting to look like they were going to knock out the guards to let me go.”
Karen was used to it by now, but by her previous life’s standards, adventurers were mostly a bunch of ruffians. Since they were devout people who cared about the goddess’s eyes, most were basically good people, but it was the kind of public order where discussions naturally escalated to fistfights when they got heated.
They were a gathering of people whose habit, livelihood, and greatest pleasure was daily killing creatures called monsters.
“…Adventurers are all barbaric, every single one of them.”
The well-bred young master sighed.
Karen looked up intently at Lyos’s face.
“You look tired. …Are you okay?”
“Hah, worrying about me—you really are the same as always.”
Lyos mocked Karen, but immediately withdrew that familiar smile and sighed.
“So… you weren’t in love with me after all.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“You devoted yourself to me so completely, anyone would think you were in love. But I’ve never seen that kind of face from you before… I guess that’s just how you are with everyone.”
“W-What kind of face are you talking about!?”
Ignoring Karen’s reddening face, Lyos abruptly stated his business:
“Mother died. In her will, she asked me to deliver a message to you, so I came here today.”
“Ms. Frieda passed away!? Why!?”
“Illness. The kind that potions can’t cure. She said she did something inexcusable to you. She asked me to tell you she was sorry. That’s all I came for.”
As if he had truly come here just to say that, Lyos turned his cloak and tried to leave as soon as he finished speaking. But Karen grabbed the hem of his cloak to stop him. Lyos turned back with an annoyed expression.
“What? Do you want me to apologize too?”
“Earlier, you said that you were wrong about me. Why did you change your mind? You were so stubborn, convinced that you had cured your Bloodline Blessing on your own.”
“…You never noticed that I was fed up with you, yet you notice unnecessary things.”
Lyos ran his hands through his red hair, which would have been neatly groomed when Frieda was alive, messing it up as he spoke.
“I thought about not telling you… But so you don’t get strange misunderstandings if information comes from somewhere else in the future, I’ll tell you in advance.”
“Okay.”
“Mother died from a chronic illness. She had apparently been suffering from it for quite some time. …Remember when Mother collapsed from taking care of me before? She found out when she saw a doctor then.”
It was probably from around the time when Frieda collapsed, so Lyos gave up and began accepting Karen’s care.
“The doctor apparently told her she didn’t have long to live, but Mother didn’t tell either me or you. She thought if she told me, I would despair since I couldn’t even get out of bed yet. She also thought if she told you, you might run away and abandon me.”
“I would never do such a thing…”
“Yes. You wouldn’t. But Mother was always worried about when you might abandon me. If Mother had been in your position, she probably would have abandoned someone like me. That’s why she forced you into an engagement with me and didn’t tell you about her life expectancy.”
Indeed, Frieda had abandoned Karen the moment Lyos got better and could choose better options like Marian. Frieda had pitied Karen. But she probably wouldn’t have tried very hard to persuade Lyos either.
“But Mother’s condition remained stable to a degree that surprised the doctor. It didn’t heal, but the speed of deterioration was very slow compared to other cases—as if some other potion was working instead of ineffective healing potions.”
“Ah…”
Karen realized it, too.
Something among the cooking potions Karen had been making must have been effective for Frieda.
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