Soon, the murky liquid in the glass flowed into her mouth. Perhaps because it was a poison saved for assassination, there was no taste or smell.
“Fanora!”
But at that moment. Someone’s hand touched it with a loud noise. The outstretched hand knocked away the poisoned glass that Fanora was holding, and the glass that soared into the air soon fell to the floor and shattered into pieces.
“…!?”
Her father, Bael Celsius, stopped her from drinking the poison with a contemplated face.
“A-Antidote. Get all the antidotes in the house! Someone do it now!”
“…”
“What are you doing? Call the doctor!”
Not Hanar, who is trying to save face, and not Purson, who’s still young and time.
The person who didn’t seem to care if I died or disappeared.
Count Bael Celsius. The person who seemed most indifferent to her began to make a fuss about her. But it was already too late. It was less than a sip, but she’s already had enough poison down her throat.
“Ugh...!”
Fanora suddenly sprang up and grabbed her neck, causing her to fall stiffly to the floor. The way she collapsed was more like she was having a heart attack than drinking poison.
“Gasp.”
She felt her vision becoming blurry. That feeling didn’t last long either. After just a few seconds, Fanora lost consciousness.
“…!”
Hanar was shocked and covered her mouth with both hands. Even just now, she suspected, ‘Fanora must have tried to kill Purson with that poison.’ She thought Fanora was trying to drink it alone as an excuse to avoid questions. But she’s really drinking this poison herself?
No more words came out.
“Fanora…?!”
Her son, Purson, was equally surprised. The mother and son were as frozen as Fanora, unable to accept the fact that she had committed suicide right before their eyes.
“Fanora!” Bael Celsius shouted desperately, shaking his fallen daughter’s shoulders.
* * *
It was the next day.
“Excuse me. I’m here to see Lady Fanora.”
“You mean Lady Fanora?”
“It’s rare for me to come to another noble’s house… This is how you do it, right?”
A welcome guest has arrived at the Celsius Mansion. It was a visit from Carl Andras. He hurriedly took out his family seal and showed it to the servant guarding the mansion gate.
The servant then said, “You’re the son of Marquis Andras. But at this moment, we’re unable to receive guests.”
“Is she not home?”
“No. Lady is not feeling well and resting.”
He obviously saw her walking around in good health at the funeral, but she suddenly fell ill?
What is this? Strange. Carl noticed a vague lie mixed in the servant’s words.
He had already come to Aloken’s funeral because he was worried about Fanora, who looked sad throughout the funeral. However, when he heard that Fanora’s condition had worsened one morning, his worries were beyond the limit.
“Then can’t you just pretend that I’m visiting here and go inside?”
Carl spoke again to the servant with a teary face. “I’m really worried. I really need to see her face to face today.”
“But that…”
“Is she so sick that you can’t allow guests to visit her?”
“Due to circumstances, we’re unable to receive guests.”
As Carl didn’t give up, their struggle continued for a while. From the servant’s perspective, it was a harrowing experience. Dealing with a noble wasn’t something to be taken lightly. But it was all the more impossible to get this man into the mansion. It was because Celsius’s eldest daughter is currently unconscious after drinking deadly poison.
“Please go back for today. I’m sorry.”
Carl was embarrassed when the servant, who broke into a cold sweat, refused it.
Did she have such a serious illness? Maybe she was bitten by a bad bug on her way back from the funeral. When this thought occurred to him, his worried mind became even more unsteady.
“I just want to see her face to face just once…”
Carl soon lowered his gaze. But then. His keen hearing heard the sound of human footsteps. This walking step was very similar to Fanora.
“What’s going on?”
“Master.”
“!”
The person who came through the entrance was none other than Count Celsius.
“H-hello.”
“…”
Carl didn’t tend to memorize the names or titles of other nobles. His walk is exactly the same as Lady Fanora’s. However, he knew that the person who appeared was ‘Lady Fanora’s father.’ He readily greeted him first.
“Carl Andras?”
But on the contrary, Bael could not help but know who Carl Andras was. The story of how he single-handedly brought back the head of an enemy general in the last battle with Sankrit was already famous.
“Yes! I’m the third son of the Andras family.”
“Why are you here…”
Bael Celsius recalled the information he had recently heard. Some nobles praised Fanora as a great person who could form friendships even with a monster like Carl Andras. So, the young man in front of him might be his daughter’s friend.
“Let him in.”
“Yes? Master, but…”
“It’s a situation where we don’t know whether she will open her eyes or not, so how long can we hide it? He will keep visiting without knowing why.”
“…”
“If we at least let her hear the voice of her close friend, things will get better.”
Carl opened his mouth in surprise at the count’s words. A situation where you don’t know whether she will open her eyes or not?
In the end, as soon as he received permission to enter, he almost ran up to the second floor. In the patriarch’s room where he arrived, Fanora, looking pale, was lying still with her eyes closed.
“Lady Fanora!”
She breathed shallowly, her skin was pale, and her black eyelids were completely sunken. Carl almost misunderstood that she was dead. The person lying on the bed looked so weak.
“Y-you weren’t like this yesterday. When I saw you at the funeral…”
At that time, she was in a state of shock, but her body itself was healthy. She had a good complexion and strong heartbeats. But now, even if he checked her pulse, he would be confused whether it was a dead body or a living person.
“What happened?”
How can someone end up like this in just one day!
Carl kneeled down next to the bed with an expression like he was about to cry. Seeing him truly saddened by Fanora’s condition, the servant’s mouth opened by itself.
“That’s… I heard she drank poison…”
“What?”
Hearing the unexpected cause, a sharp voice came out.
“Lady Fanora got poisoned.”
Poisoned? She wasn’t the one who poisoned someone?
Carl was momentarily taken aback.
“Has it been found out who did it?”
But things have already happened.
Carl tried to hold back his tears and questioned the servant. I’ll never forgive that person. How dare they to Lady Fanora! He wasn’t going to leave until he heard what name came up here.
“The lady…drink it herself, Lord.”
“…?”
But what does this mean? Carl felt like his head was going to explode.
Fanora appeared in a critical condition overnight, the cause was poison, and she was the one who drank the poison herself.
Seeing that there are no visible traces of poisoning, I think she took the deadly poison I got for her.
He didn’t know what to do and just stared at Fanora’s face. It was around that time.
“!”
Clang! A sharp sound was suddenly heard in the hallway. Snooping around in other people’s houses wasn’t something a noble would do, but since Carl had abandoned his manners, he checked the place where the sound came from.
“W-wait…!” The servant, who wasn’t confident to touch Carl’s body, eventually didn’t stop him from sticking his head out.
The sight in front of the door that Carl eventually checked was truly spectacular.
“I never thought finding the poison Fanora had would mean this!”
“Calm down, Honey.”
The owners of this mansion were fighting in front of the first room that came out of the hallway. The room was empty, without any objects.
“How could you do this? You got rid of your daughter’s room just because the wedding date was set! Without even consulting with me!”
“You didn’t say anything when I disposed of her furniture.”
“I didn’t know it was from this room!”
Bael raised his voice, pointing to the empty room. He was very angry at the woman standing across from him.
“Besides this, how many other things have you been hiding? Huh?”
“What do you mean hiding? I did my best.”
“Best? You did your best? My daughter has become like that, and you said that you did your best?!”
Count Celsius didn’t raise his hand directly to his wife. He smashed everything he could get his hands on in the hallway.
“There was a reason why Fanora said that. How badly you treat her… to the point she wanted to die.”
“Honey, she did this impulsively because she was heartbroken over losing her fiance. Why do I—”
“Besides, I heard that Purson didn’t even treat his sister like a human being. How the hell did you educate your children?”
The count picked up an ashtray nearby and threw it to the floor. All the items that looked expensive were broken into pieces.
“I thought he’d quit once he settled down, so I let it slide…”
Bael fought with his wife for a long time, and then, unable to control his anger, he went down the stairs, huffing and puffing. In contrast, the countess disappeared to the end of the hallway with a cold face.
“…”
A storm passed. When the fight was over, the servants, who had been watching quietly, came out and started clearing the hallway. Carl also returned to the bedroom after watching the fight.
“That, please keep what Lord saw today a secret…”
“…”
He vaguely realized that the empty room he had just seen was Fanora’s room. It seemed like a fight broke out because the countess emptied her daughter’s room under the pretext that Fanora would get married.
Lady Fanora has been locked up in Jalier’s mansion all this time, right? So she was away, and when she came back, her room was gone? Carl partially sympathized with Fanora’s situation. At the same time, this thought also occurred to him.
His father is also strange. It would have been very noisy with the servants moving things to empty the room, but if he had seen the furniture removed and not realized it was his daughter’s room…
He was in a strange mood. Although he couldn’t figure out the entire situation in his head just from this fragmentary conversation, it was an uncomfortable situation in many ways.
“When will Lady Fanora wake up?”
“We don’t know either. Whether it will be tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.”
However, nothing changed when he struggled alone here. Seeing that she was still breathing after drinking the deadly poison, she must have already taken the antidote. The rest depended on heavenly luck.
“I see.”
Carl said his final greeting to Fanora, who was lying down. “Lady Fanora, I’m not smart. I forgot the address you gave me.”
“…”
“Wake up… You have to say it again. By all means.”
Because she’s a person who is so thorough in her promises that she keeps her contract even while being threatened by Aloken. If he said this, it seemed like she would open her eyes just to keep her promise.
“Then I’ll be back in a few days.”
Carl Andras eventually left the Celsius Mansion without a harvest. That’s how time passed.
Soon, the murky liquid in the glass flowed into her mouth. Perhaps because it was a poison saved for assassination, there was no taste or smell.
“Fanora!”
But at that moment. Someone’s hand touched it with a loud noise. The outstretched hand knocked away the poisoned glass that Fanora was holding, and the glass that soared into the air soon fell to the floor and shattered into pieces.
“…!?”
Her father, Bael Celsius, stopped her from drinking the poison with a contemplated face.
“A-Antidote. Get all the antidotes in the house! Someone do it now!”
“…”
“What are you doing? Call the doctor!”
Not Hanar, who is trying to save face, and not Purson, who’s still young and time.
The person who didn’t seem to care if I died or disappeared.
Count Bael Celsius. The person who seemed most indifferent to her began to make a fuss about her. But it was already too late. It was less than a sip, but she’s already had enough poison down her throat.
“Ugh...!”
Fanora suddenly sprang up and grabbed her neck, causing her to fall stiffly to the floor. The way she collapsed was more like she was having a heart attack than drinking poison.
“Gasp.”
She felt her vision becoming blurry. That feeling didn’t last long either. After just a few seconds, Fanora lost consciousness.
“…!”
Hanar was shocked and covered her mouth with both hands. Even just now, she suspected, ‘Fanora must have tried to kill Purson with that poison.’ She thought Fanora was trying to drink it alone as an excuse to avoid questions. But she’s really drinking this poison herself?
No more words came out.
“Fanora…?!”
Her son, Purson, was equally surprised. The mother and son were as frozen as Fanora, unable to accept the fact that she had committed suicide right before their eyes.
“Fanora!” Bael Celsius shouted desperately, shaking his fallen daughter’s shoulders.
* * *
It was the next day.
“Excuse me. I’m here to see Lady Fanora.”
“You mean Lady Fanora?”
“It’s rare for me to come to another noble’s house… This is how you do it, right?”
A welcome guest has arrived at the Celsius Mansion. It was a visit from Carl Andras. He hurriedly took out his family seal and showed it to the servant guarding the mansion gate.
The servant then said, “You’re the son of Marquis Andras. But at this moment, we’re unable to receive guests.”
“Is she not home?”
“No. Lady is not feeling well and resting.”
He obviously saw her walking around in good health at the funeral, but she suddenly fell ill?
What is this? Strange. Carl noticed a vague lie mixed in the servant’s words.
He had already come to Aloken’s funeral because he was worried about Fanora, who looked sad throughout the funeral. However, when he heard that Fanora’s condition had worsened one morning, his worries were beyond the limit.
“Then can’t you just pretend that I’m visiting here and go inside?”
Carl spoke again to the servant with a teary face. “I’m really worried. I really need to see her face to face today.”
“But that…”
“Is she so sick that you can’t allow guests to visit her?”
“Due to circumstances, we’re unable to receive guests.”
As Carl didn’t give up, their struggle continued for a while. From the servant’s perspective, it was a harrowing experience. Dealing with a noble wasn’t something to be taken lightly. But it was all the more impossible to get this man into the mansion. It was because Celsius’s eldest daughter is currently unconscious after drinking deadly poison.
“Please go back for today. I’m sorry.”
Carl was embarrassed when the servant, who broke into a cold sweat, refused it.
Did she have such a serious illness? Maybe she was bitten by a bad bug on her way back from the funeral. When this thought occurred to him, his worried mind became even more unsteady.
“I just want to see her face to face just once…”
Carl soon lowered his gaze. But then. His keen hearing heard the sound of human footsteps. This walking step was very similar to Fanora.
“What’s going on?”
“Master.”
“!”
The person who came through the entrance was none other than Count Celsius.
“H-hello.”
“…”
Carl didn’t tend to memorize the names or titles of other nobles. His walk is exactly the same as Lady Fanora’s. However, he knew that the person who appeared was ‘Lady Fanora’s father.’ He readily greeted him first.
“Carl Andras?”
But on the contrary, Bael could not help but know who Carl Andras was. The story of how he single-handedly brought back the head of an enemy general in the last battle with Sankrit was already famous.
“Yes! I’m the third son of the Andras family.”
“Why are you here…”
Bael Celsius recalled the information he had recently heard. Some nobles praised Fanora as a great person who could form friendships even with a monster like Carl Andras. So, the young man in front of him might be his daughter’s friend.
“Let him in.”
“Yes? Master, but…”
“It’s a situation where we don’t know whether she will open her eyes or not, so how long can we hide it? He will keep visiting without knowing why.”
“…”
“If we at least let her hear the voice of her close friend, things will get better.”
Carl opened his mouth in surprise at the count’s words. A situation where you don’t know whether she will open her eyes or not?
In the end, as soon as he received permission to enter, he almost ran up to the second floor. In the patriarch’s room where he arrived, Fanora, looking pale, was lying still with her eyes closed.
“Lady Fanora!”
She breathed shallowly, her skin was pale, and her black eyelids were completely sunken. Carl almost misunderstood that she was dead. The person lying on the bed looked so weak.
“Y-you weren’t like this yesterday. When I saw you at the funeral…”
At that time, she was in a state of shock, but her body itself was healthy. She had a good complexion and strong heartbeats. But now, even if he checked her pulse, he would be confused whether it was a dead body or a living person.
“What happened?”
How can someone end up like this in just one day!
Carl kneeled down next to the bed with an expression like he was about to cry. Seeing him truly saddened by Fanora’s condition, the servant’s mouth opened by itself.
“That’s… I heard she drank poison…”
“What?”
Hearing the unexpected cause, a sharp voice came out.
“Lady Fanora got poisoned.”
Poisoned? She wasn’t the one who poisoned someone?
Carl was momentarily taken aback.
“Has it been found out who did it?”
But things have already happened.
Carl tried to hold back his tears and questioned the servant. I’ll never forgive that person. How dare they to Lady Fanora! He wasn’t going to leave until he heard what name came up here.
“The lady…drink it herself, Lord.”
“…?”
But what does this mean? Carl felt like his head was going to explode.
Fanora appeared in a critical condition overnight, the cause was poison, and she was the one who drank the poison herself.
Seeing that there are no visible traces of poisoning, I think she took the deadly poison I got for her.
He didn’t know what to do and just stared at Fanora’s face. It was around that time.
“!”
Clang! A sharp sound was suddenly heard in the hallway. Snooping around in other people’s houses wasn’t something a noble would do, but since Carl had abandoned his manners, he checked the place where the sound came from.
“W-wait…!” The servant, who wasn’t confident to touch Carl’s body, eventually didn’t stop him from sticking his head out.
The sight in front of the door that Carl eventually checked was truly spectacular.
“I never thought finding the poison Fanora had would mean this!”
“Calm down, Honey.”
The owners of this mansion were fighting in front of the first room that came out of the hallway. The room was empty, without any objects.
“How could you do this? You got rid of your daughter’s room just because the wedding date was set! Without even consulting with me!”
“You didn’t say anything when I disposed of her furniture.”
“I didn’t know it was from this room!”
Bael raised his voice, pointing to the empty room. He was very angry at the woman standing across from him.
“Besides this, how many other things have you been hiding? Huh?”
“What do you mean hiding? I did my best.”
“Best? You did your best? My daughter has become like that, and you said that you did your best?!”
Count Celsius didn’t raise his hand directly to his wife. He smashed everything he could get his hands on in the hallway.
“There was a reason why Fanora said that. How badly you treat her… to the point she wanted to die.”
“Honey, she did this impulsively because she was heartbroken over losing her fiance. Why do I—”
“Besides, I heard that Purson didn’t even treat his sister like a human being. How the hell did you educate your children?”
The count picked up an ashtray nearby and threw it to the floor. All the items that looked expensive were broken into pieces.
“I thought he’d quit once he settled down, so I let it slide…”
Bael fought with his wife for a long time, and then, unable to control his anger, he went down the stairs, huffing and puffing. In contrast, the countess disappeared to the end of the hallway with a cold face.
“…”
A storm passed. When the fight was over, the servants, who had been watching quietly, came out and started clearing the hallway. Carl also returned to the bedroom after watching the fight.
“That, please keep what Lord saw today a secret…”
“…”
He vaguely realized that the empty room he had just seen was Fanora’s room. It seemed like a fight broke out because the countess emptied her daughter’s room under the pretext that Fanora would get married.
Lady Fanora has been locked up in Jalier’s mansion all this time, right? So she was away, and when she came back, her room was gone? Carl partially sympathized with Fanora’s situation. At the same time, this thought also occurred to him.
His father is also strange. It would have been very noisy with the servants moving things to empty the room, but if he had seen the furniture removed and not realized it was his daughter’s room…
He was in a strange mood. Although he couldn’t figure out the entire situation in his head just from this fragmentary conversation, it was an uncomfortable situation in many ways.
“When will Lady Fanora wake up?”
“We don’t know either. Whether it will be tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.”
However, nothing changed when he struggled alone here. Seeing that she was still breathing after drinking the deadly poison, she must have already taken the antidote. The rest depended on heavenly luck.
“I see.”
Carl said his final greeting to Fanora, who was lying down. “Lady Fanora, I’m not smart. I forgot the address you gave me.”
“…”
“Wake up… You have to say it again. By all means.”
Because she’s a person who is so thorough in her promises that she keeps her contract even while being threatened by Aloken. If he said this, it seemed like she would open her eyes just to keep her promise.
“Then I’ll be back in a few days.”
Carl Andras eventually left the Celsius Mansion without a harvest. That’s how time passed.
