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Is this real life?
“Oh, thank you! Thank you so much!”
I, Kain Purcell, was currently being showered with tearful words of gratitude as I went around town, distributing the panacea with Felix. I felt like I was dreaming.
The recipient before me had likely been prepared to part ways with his ill family member. He propped up his sick companion’s body so that the two of them could bow to Felix and me.
This man probably assumed that the medicine was nothing but a temporary relief—that the lord was visiting people on their deathbeds to tell them gentle lies like “If you take this, you’ll get better” or “This way, you can at least have peace in your final moments.” Frankly, even I was skeptical, despite being one of the people handing it out.
I mean, you wouldn’t normally think that a small, nondescript vial of medicine could breathe life into a person dying from a mystery disease. It just wasn’t going to be perceived the same way as, say, an effective salve or ointment.
As I handed out the medicine and watched those infected recover one after the other, all I could think was, Huh, this cure-all really is a cure-all. Not the brightest observation, I know.
Okay, I can’t take this anymore. None of this made any sense to begin with. What do you mean, there are tons of deadly poisonous plants growing in Leeuwenhoek? What do you mean, those poisonous plants make an excellent panacea?! I just don’t get it. How can this medicine bring people back from the brink of death?
Lu was all, “I’m confident in its effectiveness, but I’m afraid the townspeople won’t trust medicine made by an amateur.” But an amateur wouldn’t be able to make something of this caliber in the first place!
If it weren’t for my mission to distribute the medicine, I’d fall to my knees right now, yelling, “Nothing makes sense!” Alas, I had to hold back.
Felix had also surprised me. He didn’t trust people easily—or perhaps it was more accurate to say that he was incapable of trust. Now, it wasn’t that he was consciously suspicious of others. It was more like he wanted to trust them, but no one was trustworthy enough.
How many times had I witnessed Felix lament fate because of his curse? Yet now, he was telling the family of a patient who was struggling to breathe, “Find a way to get them to take this medicine, because it will definitely cure them.” He wouldn’t have been able to say that without hesitation unless he truly trusted Lu, right?
In the end, the cure-all worked as promised, and nobody lost their lives to the disease. But there was one more thing that was strange: People who took the medicine glowed for an instant. It reminded me of the light Lu had radiated when she was transferring mana to Felix, and it made me think, It really is Lu who’s saving these people.
And so, the disease was eradicated. The whole thing had been resolved shockingly easily.
Felix, who had been prepared for the possibility that many of his subjects might die, had lost some of his usual gusto. I figured he was just exhausted.
If only I knew.
Patients who’d recovered from the disease were monitored for relapses, and it was my duty to deliver the report to Felix. However, he didn’t appear to be in his office to receive it.
After searching around, I found him in a daze, standing by the detached house.
“What’re you doing?” I inquired, coming up beside him.
Unconsciously, I followed his line of sight, and my eyes landed on a blob of cats.
“Wait, what are they doing?!” I exclaimed.
“Lucille is inside that,” Felix said.
“Uh, what?”
It’s not my fault for not understanding, right?!
I’d seen Lu sleeping under a pile of cats before, but this... This was different. There were so many cats, it made me wonder, Where’d you even find them all? Not a single glimpse of Lu’s body was visible beneath them.
“I’m surprised you could tell,” I said.
“It’s the cats. Their meows are oddly sweet.”
I cocked an ear.
“Meooow.”
“Mreeeooow.”
Indeed, the cats’ incessant meows were unusual. But for the record, I thought the criteria by which Felix had come to this judgment was bizarre too.
Also, for some reason, Felix was observing this nonsensical sight with a grave look on his face.
A thought occurred to me.
“Has something gone wrong?” I asked. “Like, say, did something happen to the people who drank the cure-all?”
Maybe he was hesitating to divulge this to Lu. She’d asked us to keep her informed about everything regarding the medicine’s effects, no matter how trivial. But if she received bad news about it, she’d surely feel guilty.
“No,” Felix said, weakly shaking his head.
“What’s the problem, then?”
“Lucille...is too amazing.”
“Huh? Uh, I mean, I guess so, yeah.”
Sure, Lu was incredible to the point where it was downright weird, but we’d already known that for a while. Why point it out now?
Felix turned to me with a concerned look. “She’s so amazing that I can’t find a way to help her. I want to support her too, but there’s nothing I can do.”
Oh? Is that what this is about?
I desperately tried to hold back my laughter. I knew that if I broke now, he’d never confide in me ever again.
And honestly, I was just as likely to cry as I was to laugh. Felix, the man cursed by fate and feared by the people, who had closed off his wounded heart, was troubled by the fact that he couldn’t help this one girl.
How is this even possible?
“Why don’t you try befriending the cats first?” I suggested. “I mean, it seems like all animals like Lu, but she’s especially popular with these cats. If you end up on their bad side, they’ll do everything they can to get in your way.”
I pondered further potential obstacles with utmost seriousness. Grandpa Randolph and Alice would likely make a fuss too, but the cats’ obsession with Lu was out of this world.
“Oh, that’s right,” Felix murmured. “My greatest rivals are those cats...”
No longer able to hold back, I let out a small chuckle. Felix, the cursed marquess, rumored to despise all people, especially women, was in a tug-of-war over Lu with a bunch of cats. What a happy problem to have.
The expression he currently wore resembled that of a man headed into battle. I warmly cheered him on in my heart. Honestly, I was amused by how silly this all was.
Oh, Lu. You always make me feel like I’m living in the world of a sweet fairy tale.