Chapter 32: Flowers (1)

“Ah…”

I was sure that I had told Jean I was perfectly fine with being left behind, but perhaps the idea still bothered him so he reported the matter to Kyle.

“I’m fine,” I shook my head. “I understand the reason why I cannot go. Please tell Jean to stop worrying about me.”

“Alright.”

“Or, if you’re still unsure about it, then maybe you can take me to a better place later.”

Originally, I had intended to just let the topic go after reassuring him I was fine, but somehow my tongue slipped and I irresponsibly suggested taking a trip together. I felt a bit guilty for planting such an idea in his head since I was going to disappear anyway, but maybe this was actually a blessing in disguise. He could always go with the original Riddel later, once she returns to this body. More than anything, I sincerely hoped that they would be able to get along well after my departure.

“I’ll think about it,” Kyle said.

To the normal passerby, his response would have seemed lukewarm at best, but I knew that it meant I had succeeded in convincing him to consider my words and drop the topic for now. Satisfied, I quickly finished wicking the rest of the droplets from his hair and put the towel aside. As I prepared to stand up and head back to the bed, the sight of something strange suddenly caught my eye.

Huh?

Unconsciously, I turned my gaze to Kyle’s right hand, and then my eyes grew wide.

“Archduke, what’s wrong with your right hand? Did you get hurt?”

“…”

Why didn’t Kyle answer me? Had he not even been aware of his injury? I continued to point to his wound as he regarded me silently and offered no response.

“Look at this!” I fretted. “It’s all swollen, you know? Do you know how this happened?”

Kyle kept quiet at my fussing. After a long pause, he finally began to speak, though the first words out of his mouth only annoyed me further.

“It’s not a big deal,” he shrugged.

I hadn’t asked whether he thought it was a big deal or not. What I wanted to know was how someone like him allowed himself to get hurt, and I knew that he was concealing the truth from me.

“How did your hand get like this?” I repeated.

“I spilled tea on it.”

His explanation caused me to doubt my hearing. How could a person whose resting body temperature was cold enough to freeze others get burned from spilling a bit of tea on himself? Wouldn’t that imply that there existed an egregious oversight concerning one of the very critical premises of this world? That couldn’t be true.

By the way, it’s surprising that someone as meticulous as he would be prone to spilling tea on his hands in the first place.

Regardless of how he came by his injury, I couldn’t just ignore the burn on his hand. The injury looked quite swollen and likely required treatment, but he was due to depart tomorrow morning so I decided I would just have to heal him myself before its condition worsened.

“Excuse me, Archduke,” I said as I once again knelt in front of him. “You should have shown this to the doctor when it happened.”

“…”

“Please give me your hand.”

“Are you going to lick it?”

“I won’t lick it!”

My cheeks flared red again. Why was he so obsessed with tongues and licking things? It’s not like he was an anteater in his previous life or something, was he?

Hah, it’s really my fault for telling someone like him about that. I brought this upon myself.

Kyle held his hand out toward me as I approached him and placed mine over his.

“Are you going to heal it?”

I answered him with a small nod, “Why did you ask such an obvious thing?”

My fingers softly grazed his skin. The contact was not enough to freeze me, but it was just long enough to allow me to summon my powers. I concentrated on reversing the damage to his hand until the skin returned to its normal state. After a while, his hand was completely cured, and there was no trace of a burn ever having been there.

“It’s done,” I sat back to admire my handiwork. “Now, it doesn’t hurt anymore, right?”

Kyle raised his head and gazed up at me with an uncharacteristically wide grin. Then, he slightly lowered his head, and I observed how his long, beautiful lashes accentuated his golden eyes. They looked so gentle in this moment, like doe eyes. His face was so close to mine that I was able to intimately study every detail of his handsome countenance.

Is it just me? What is this strange feeling?

Kyle’s irises were beginning to look red to me. Somehow, I felt a terribly cold sensation travel down my spine as he stared back at me, even though I couldn’t sense any murderous intent from him. There was also yet another thing very odd about our situation: why did it seem like Kyle’s face was moving closer to mine?

“Archduke? What’s wrong?”

Kyle kept silent even after I asked him a question, so I started to grow flustered. The intensity of his gaze made me feel as if I was about to be devoured, bitten hard, and swallowed down to my bones.

Yeah, Kyle was acting really strange now.

Only

“Archduke?”

I looked back at him as he continued to approach me, his face now dangerously close to mine—closer than he had ever been before. My heart started beating erratically. All the while, I quickly wracked my brain for something to say to make him snap out of his trance. I couldn’t fathom what was causing him to act this way, but I felt like I was a small prey about to be consumed by a beast if I didn’t make him snap out of it. I decided to try something I had never done before.

“Kyle?”

The moment I called his name, he stopped. A flash of clarity dawned over his eyes as if he had come back to his senses, and then he jumped up from his seat like someone who had just awakened from being possessed.

“I’ll leave you alone for today,” he hurriedly mumbled as he strode away from me.

My heart dropped. I couldn’t find the words to say to prevent Kyle from leaving. I wasn’t able to say goodbye or even goodnight as he left.

Even long after he exited the room, I couldn’t calm down because of how strange the situation had been. My head felt dizzy and my heart was still pounding furiously.

Perhaps this was how our last night together was going to end.