TLIMD 02

The Karseido ducal estate.

Lionel sat on the sofa in the reception room, trying to calm her anxious nerves.

After a while, the sound of a door clicking open was heard, and someone entered. He was a young man with brown hair and green eyes that gave him a friendly appearance.

“Lady Lionel Frencia?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Thank you for coming such a long way. I’m Kaylen Brexter, His Grace Duke Karseido’s aide.”

Kaylen placed a tray in front of Lionel before sitting down across from her. Lionel looked at the plate gratefully, but her movements suddenly stopped.

‘…Beef jerky? Orange juice with a straw?’

Wasn’t tea and cookies what people usually served at times like this?

While Lionel was wondering about it, the interview began. Kaylen looked over the documents she had prepared and was impressed.

“You graduated at the top of your class from the Imperial Medical School, and you were the youngest graduate at that! You truly are a prodigy…! It’s an honor to meet you.”

“You flatter me. By the way, isn’t Duke Karseido conducting the interview? Or is the hiring process handled entirely by you, Sir?”

“Ah, well, actually…”

Kaylen lowered the corners of his eyebrows. He spoke in a small, almost whispering voice.

“I’m terribly sorry to have made you come such a long way, but His Grace has actually ordered us not to hire another personal physician.”

“What? Why?”

“We’ve had dozens of personal physicians come and go over the years, but every one of them caused various problems… I suppose His Grace has simply grown tired of it.”

‘Even so, if thirty-two people ran away, shouldn’t we at least hear their side of the story?’

At this point, Lionel began to wonder if the rumors about the duke drinking blood might actually be true.

As Lionel sat there with a serious expression, Kaylen repeatedly apologized.

“I’m truly sorry. Instead, I can help arrange a position for you somewhere else. If I recommend someone as capable as you, they’ll surely welcome you with open arms.”

Judging by how far he was going to explain himself, it really seemed like getting a job at the ducal estate was out of the question.

When Lionel reluctantly nodded, Kaylen stood up.

“It’s already quite late today, so please stay the night. I’ll have a room prepared for you.”

Spending the night in a mansion where thirty-two people had run away from…

It felt a little unsettling, but Lionel nodded.

Lionel was shown to her guest room.

It was a magnificent room befitting such a grand estate, but surprisingly, the meal provided consisted of nothing more than hard bread and two pieces of beef jerky.

Fortunately, there was apple juice, so at least she wouldn’t choke.

“Do the people in this mansion not have any sense of taste?”

Lionel sucked down her juice as she thought about the members of her family whom she was always nagging.

It might have been understandable for her to feel sorry for her stepmother, who always grimaced while eating rye bread, but Lionel didn’t feel that way at all.

‘Feel sorry for her? As if. She’s a bad woman who’s always looking for an opportunity to sell me off.’

Fortunately, the aide had said he would introduce her to another job, so she would just go there.

Somehow, things would work out.

With that thought, Lionel pulled the blanket over herself and tried to sleep.

She thought the quiet peace would continue until morning.

That was, if someone hadn’t suddenly flung open the door just as she was drifting in and out of sleep.

“Doctor Frencia!! Are you safe?!”

“Huh? Yes, yes?”

“Come out quickly!”

Kaylen, dressed in his pajamas, rushed over and grabbed Lionel’s hand.

Dragged out before she could properly understand what was happening, Lionel ran down the hallway and asked,

“W-What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain later. First, we need to get somewhere safe…!”

Kaylen couldn’t finish his sentence.

He clutched his chest and collapsed with a heavy thud.

Lionel stopped dead in shock.

A mysterious man stood in the dark hallway.

He was large and intimidating, with a fierce-looking face. Bright red blood dripped from the dagger in his hand.

It was Kaylen’s blood.

“You fool. If you had stayed hidden, I wouldn’t have known you were here and would have simply moved on.”

The assailant chuckled unpleasantly.

Lionel froze where she stood.

The man spun his dagger around threateningly.

“Where did the duke go?”

“I-I don’t kn-know…”

“Really? Then you can die, too.”

The assailant raised his hand high.

Lionel glanced around before grabbing a vase from the hallway.

“You think you can stand up to me with that little thing? Foolish. You’d be better off begging me to spare you.”

“Who do you think would beg a pig like you?!”

“Y-You dare run your mouth at me!”

The assailant was offended by the word ‘pig’ and reached out toward her.

Lionel hurled the vase with all her strength.

“Aaaah! Get away from me!!”

Crash!!

Against the backdrop of shards scattering in every direction, the assailant’s body suddenly soared into the air.

For a moment, Lionel wondered if she had somehow thrown the vase with superhuman strength.

But that wasn’t it.

Thud!

A tall man who had kicked the assailant in the head gracefully spun once in midair.

Amid the glittering porcelain shards, the man’s white hair fluttered like snow.

He soon landed gracefully on both feet and straightened himself.

He was a man dressed entirely in black, with an astonishingly handsome face.

“Who are you? Why are you here?”

His purple eyes were sharp as he interrogated her.

Lionel awkwardly picked herself up and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“I-I came for an interview.”

“…”

The man narrowed his eyes and stared at Lionel for a long moment.

Feeling awkward, Lionel briefly looked away.

That was when she saw the assailant sprawled out on the floor.

The man whom she had thought was already dead twitched his hand.

Then, in an instant, he sprang back to his feet.

“Wait, behind you!!”

Lionel screamed, but the assailant was already charging forward.

“Duke! Today, I will definitely take your blood!!”

The angle at which the man turned and the point where the assailant’s dagger struck were perfectly aligned.

Then came the unmistakable sound of flesh being pierced.

Stab!!

The dagger pierced the man’s heart.

Faced with the horrifying sight before her, Lionel could no longer think straight.

She grabbed another vase from the hallway.

“Aaaaaaah!”

Crash!!

This time, the vase struck the back of the assailant’s head perfectly.

Having been hit in the head twice, the man staggered backward several steps before collapsing onto the floor once more with a heavy thud.

Lionel threw down the broken piece of vase she was holding and rushed toward the man.

He was tightly gripping the dagger embedded in his chest.

“Huh? W-Wait, you can’t pull that out!! You absolutely can’t—”

Whoosh!

Blood gushed from the wound like a fountain the moment the dagger was pulled out.

Without thinking, Lionel shouted furiously.

“I told you not to pull it out, you crazy idiot!! Do you actually want to die that badly?!”

“…If I could die, I would gladly do so.”

“What?”

Lionel stopped.

Something about the situation felt strange.

‘…This man was stabbed through the heart, so why is he acting so fine? And that’s a considerable amount of blood loss.’

No, more importantly, shouldn’t he be in so much pain that he couldn’t even move?

“Tsk. This has become troublesome.”

The man roughly grabbed his shirt and pulled.

The buttons popped off one after another, revealing his solid upper body.

Lionel was briefly distracted by the finely sculpted muscles.

Then she saw what was happening before her eyes and widened them.

The wound on the man’s body was rapidly healing.

It was as if someone had pressed the 16x playback button.

“Ah…”

Lionel finally understood.

She had remembered her past life as a doctor, but for years, she had had absolutely no idea which novel she had been reincarnated into.

But now everything became clear.

This was the world of the tragic novel The Unfading Flower, which she had passionately read before her death…

And the man standing before her was Duke Blasion Karseido.

He was the male protagonist of the novel, and at the same time, an ‘immortal’ who had lived for more than 720 years.

“…What an unlucky woman you are.”

The duke smiled meaningfully.

He bent down toward the frozen Lionel.

Coldness emanated from his flawless, beautiful face.

“As you can see, I don’t die even if my heart is stabbed, and I don’t die no matter how much blood I lose.”

“…”

“And now, you’ve learned that secret. So, let’s take our time and discuss what to do with you from here on.”

It was true.

In the novel, the duke had protected his secret by killing people like this.

Therefore, Lionel was indeed in danger of being killed here…

But her thoughts suddenly went in a completely different direction.

“No, wait!! If you’re immortal, then you don’t need treatment, right? You heal on your own?”

“…What?”

A patient who could recover on his own even after being stabbed through the heart!

As a doctor, this was the most wonderful—and strangest—patient, no, person she could possibly ask for.

Once she realized that, there was no reason to hesitate anymore.

“It’s honestly hard enough dealing with two emergency patients by myself, but you’re saying you don’t need treatment? Then move! Right now!”

Lionel shoved the duke aside and sprinted forward.

She checked Kaylen’s condition, who was still lying collapsed in the hallway, and shouted,

“Bring my bag from the guest room! Right now!”