Chapter 8
As I kept driving Cassis into a corner by pretending to be oblivious, the way he looked at me changed day by day.
It was a day when I had tea time with Cassis.
He was staring at me with a wary look on his face, as if determined never to get caught off guard again this time.
Whether he did or not, I smiled brightly and began to gently provoke him.
“Cassis, since you’re so grown-up, you’d prefer black tea over milk with your cake, right?”
I quickly pulled the milk placed in front of Cassis over to my side.
At that, Cassis pulled the milk back in front of himself and retorted.
A gentle smile played on his lips, but the words coming out of his mouth were quite different.
“Yveline, you’re so greedy. Trying to drink all the milk by yourself.”
Hmph. Whatever.
“No, you said so yourself last time, Cassis. You asked who still drinks milk with cake unless they’re a child. You even said that to truly appreciate the taste of cake, one must have it with black tea. So I’ll drink this.”
“When did I ever—”
“May, isn’t Cassis amazing? I can’t drink black tea because it’s too bitter for me. As expected, he’s so grown-up.”
Before he could argue back, I quickly sought agreement from the maid standing nearby.
May said with a surprised look, “Oh my, Young Master! I’m so sorry. If I had known earlier, I would have brought black tea instead. I’ll bring it for you right away.”
“……”
“Yay, wonderful! May, please bring black tea for Cassis from now on.”
“Yes, I will, Young Lady.”
“Cassis, next time, feel free to give instructions to the servants directly instead of just telling me. Even though this is our home, you’re basically family to us, too. Got it?”
When I spoke with a bright smile, a shadow fell across Cassis’s face. He reluctantly nodded his head.
When May brought the black tea, Cassis drank it with a tearful expression.
The moment a sip of the bitter tea went down his throat, his face naturally scrunched up.
Hehehe. This is only the beginning.
I wore a villainous smile as I watched Cassis force himself to drink the black tea while pretending to be completely fine.
In the end, Cassis wore himself out after just a few days and gave up.
Judging by how he no longer fought back like his life depended on it as he did before, it was certain.
There was no way a guy who had been here for barely a month could match me, someone with 10 years of experience living in Montes.
This was my territory.
A space that was completely mine, where there was not a single place I didn’t know, nor a single servant I wasn’t familiar with.
On top of that, since I had been keeping a close eye on Cassis all this time, I knew my enemy all too well.
How dare you throw down a gauntlet to me?
Completely forgetting that Cassis was the male lead, I was strutting around doing whatever I pleased.
Today, as expected, I waited for Cassis to tease him, then ran up to him and greeted him cheerfully.
“Hi, Cassis!”
“Haah.”
The moment Cassis saw me, he let out a deep sigh. He looked utterly exhausted, as if he had already been thoroughly worn down by my focused attacks.
Regardless of his mood, I opened my eyes wide and bright, and asked, “Do you have any errands for me to run today?”
“What is wrong with you, seriously?”
“Huh? What do you mean? I’m just doing this because I’m worried about you since you’re sick. Do you dislike me talking to you that much?”
“…Please stop, Yveline.”
Cassis muttered weakly, his face pale as a sheet.
Huh?
His reaction was different from usual.
“Cassis?”
Only then did I notice that Cassis’s complexion was terribly off, and I addressed him once again.
“Are you sick somewhere?”
“Whose fault do you think this is? Haah, mind your own business, seriously.”
Cassis pushed my hand away roughly and flared up in anger.
Then, as if he didn’t even have the energy left to fight, he trudged away.
I stared blankly at Cassis as he walked further away. Strangely enough, his hand had felt exceedingly hot when it touched mine.
“What the… Is he really sick?”
When someone tells you not to care, you end up caring even more.
All my attention was already fixed on Cassis. Running a fever was a clear sign that something was wrong.
Besides, for some reason, I hated seeing Cassis walking away so weakly and slumped over.
I rationalized that it was just because when the enemy army lost the will to fight, it drained my own strength too.
Why does he have to get sick and make it so hard to tease him?
And he seems to have a fever; isn’t it dangerous to leave him alone?
I quickly instructed a nearby maid to fetch his personal physician.
Cassis was lying in bed, drenched in sweat.
I placed a wet towel on his forehead with a tearful expression.
That was a close call.
It made me dizzy just imagining what would have happened if I hadn’t called the doctor just in case.
When I went to Cassis’s room with the doctor, Cassis was collapsed helplessly on the floor.
If you’re sick, you should say so. Who’s going to know if you just endure it like that?
I looked displeasedly at Cassis for foolishly suppressing his pain.
At the same time, I felt pitiful, wondering if he had felt self-conscious while staying in this house.
Even though I teased Cassis, I had been careful with my words and actions so that he wouldn’t feel the sorrow of living in someone else’s home.
It was strictly just revenge to the exact extent of what Cassis had done to me.
And yet…
Seeing him this sick made me feel gloomy, as if I had been needlessly showing off my strength against a sick child.
Cliff, his personal physician, said that Cassis had fainted because too much mana had accumulated in his body, and quickly cleared his meridians.
However, he added that if Cassis had been taking his medication on time, mana wouldn’t have accumulated to this degree.
Naturally, the Count and Countess’s expressions darkened.
When Mother was upset, saying that they seemed to have neglected the sick child too much, even my heart ached.
A sick kid couldn’t even take his medication on time… Making people worry.
I looked compassionately at Cassis, who was asleep with a pale face.
According to Paul, he had delivered the medicine properly every day.
Which meant that Cassis had either intentionally avoided taking the medicine, or the medicine was no longer effective.
My parents naturally assumed that the medicine had lost its effect.
Well, given Cassis’s mature behavior so far, they would never imagine that he had stashed the medicine away.
However, I thought differently.
Based on my experience as a kindergarten teacher in my past life, something smelled fishy.
When working at a kindergarten, you often see kids who hide their medicine.
Because the medicine smells awful and tastes bitter, they don’t want to drink it, but fearing they’ll be disliked by the teacher if they don’t, they pretend to drink it and secretly spit it out.
Of course, Cassis might not have done that, but having already witnessed his two-faced personality, it was a reasonable suspicion for me to have.
No matter if he was the male lead of First Love, there was no way he was mature even in his childhood.
And as expected…
“Ah. Found it.”
I called out Eureka! as I discovered a box tucked deep under his bed.
Inside the box was medication that had been spat out or secretly hoarded.
Considering how deliciously he ate the cake earlier, he clearly didn’t want to take it because of the bitter taste.
“Sigh. What a troublesome male lead.”
Confirming his perfect crime, I let out a deep sigh.
I pushed the box back under the bed and stood up from my seat.
For now, I intended to talk to him once he woke up.
Honestly, I could have told my parents right away, but my gut signaled a red light warning me not to do that.
There was no point in getting the adults involved if it was only going to put Cassis in a difficult spot.
It wouldn’t be too late to tell them after hearing the whole story from him directly.
Right at that moment, Cassis began to groan as if having a nightmare, and suddenly grabbed my hand firmly.
“Whoa!”
Startled, I looked at Cassis. He was looking at me with unfocused eyes, sobbing.
He opened his mouth and kept saying something, but it was hard to hear.
I quickly pressed my ear close to his face and asked, “Cassis, what’s wrong? Does it hurt a lot?”
“Sobbing… I’m sorry… Mommy… Don’t go…”
“Mommy? I’m Yveline.”
“Mommy…”
It seemed his severe fever had made him mistake me for his mother.
Cassis held my hand tightly and kept whimpering, as if afraid I might run away.
Clear tears were welling up in his blue eyes, overflowing and falling drop by drop.
He was crying so piteously that my heart felt a strange twinge.
In the end, I sat back down in the chair and comforted him.
“Yeah. Mommy won’t go anywhere. So sleep well and get better quickly, Cassis.”
Only then did Cassis seem relieved, slumping weakly and returning to an even, quiet breathing a short while later.
The grip on my hand loosened as well, but for some reason, I couldn’t pull my hand away right away.
He must really miss his mother.
Well, he was only 12 years old, so it must be hard to live apart from his parents.
Huh? But wait, did the Duke and Duchess of Urquhart ever appear in First Love?
I tilted my head at the sudden question that popped up.
If he was this close to his parents at such a young age, they should have appeared at least once in the novel, but the Duke and Duchess of Urquhart never made an appearance.
In fact, even the mother he was tearfully calling for right now never appeared.
Come to think of it, by the time Cassis came to pick up Elissa in the novel, he had already become the Duke.
Which meant that the Duke of Urquhart might have passed away.
Usually, titles are passed down when the predecessor dies.
Of course, it would be different if the previous duke chose to abdicate early, but given that they never appeared at all, the theory of their death was much more plausible.
Just then, my head throbbed with a sharp pain.
It was the pain I felt whenever I tried to dig too deeply into the memories of my past life.
This was one of the reasons why I couldn’t think deeply about the original novel’s plot.
Ah, I don’t know.
I rested my head on my arms on Cassis’s bed. If I thought about it any further, my brain felt like it would overload.
Lying face down, I glanced at Cassis’s peacefully sleeping face.
Just as described in the novel, Cassis’s face was truly something one could never tire of looking at.
“When you’re sleeping, you really look like an angel.”
I stared blankly at his silver eyelashes and began counting them with my eyes.
Before I knew it, I had drifted off to sleep in a matter of moments.
