Chapter 49
ON standby at Rhad’s house—the Mende Family Manor—Selena sipped her tea and eyed Vigo as he jotted information down.
“…Vigo?”
“What?”
“Hasn’t Yuki seemed a little strange lately?”
The hand running the feather brush across the paper stopped. Vigo looked up from the paper at Selena. His face seemed to ask what it was she was trying to say.
“Vigo, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how openly strange Yuki has been acting?! There’s a limit to how oblivious you can be!”
Recently, Yuki had been acting out of character. The severity of her health played a part in her behavior, but there was something more to it that had her giving Selena the cold shoulder.
“…I’m telling you, something isn’t right. It’s almost like she’s hiding something.”
Selena contemplated whether she had done something to offend Yuki, but nothing came to mind. If she had to dig for something, her distrust of Rhad could have been a factor. Perhaps not trusting Rhad put Yuki in a difficult position and was the source of her odd behavior.
“It’s probably bad to say this when we’re borrowing a room in his manor, but he seems like a big fat phony. Especially his attitude toward Yuki. What’s with all that Lady Yuki and bowing junk? I don’t like him.”
“That’s just a symptom of your desire to monopolize the people you care about…. In any case, I believe her change is due to becoming aware of her ability.”
Selena dropped her teacup and swiftly caught it with her left hand before it smashed on the floor. Some of the tea spilled over the side and splattered on her boot. She rubbed it off with a napkin. She had a hunch of where the information slipped from.
“That man noticed her power. It’s my assumption he told her.”
Since they started confining Yuki to her room, Selena witnessed her worsening health improve whenever she rested. And then, out of nowhere, her health began a steady decline with no improvement.
“Around the same time her health got worse she became aloof with us…”
“And from there not only did the number of patients increase dramatically, but they began healing at a much faster rate as well,” Vigo added.
“What? I didn’t hear anything about that!”
“I would say that’s the reason for the little lady’s rapidly deteriorating health and lack of recovery,” Vigo speculated, placing his feather brush down and wiping the ink from his fingers.
“…I’m of the opinion it’s unwise to let Yuki use her powers any more than we already have.”
“I agree. I plan to make the queen her last patient.”
“…Are you all right with that, Vigo?”
Allowing Yuki to stop healing at the queen meant letting the other patients die when they could be saved. Doing so involved overlooking people they could rescue with Yuki’s power.
“Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not so blind as to attempt saving every human in the world.”
“Yuki seems gullible enough to try.”
“She does,” Vigo laughed tiredly. He stroked his thick beard and exhaled. “…But her exhaustion and deterioration is far worse than Lord Cahn’s ever was.”
“Because she’s still young?”
“No. Lord Cahn was nowhere near as drained at the same age.”
“I see.”
Yuki learned about the existence of her power. Selena had no doubt Rhad was involved. What was Yuki thinking now that she knew?
“Hey, Vigo, what have you been writing?” Selena asked as Vigo picked up the brush and jotted various things down on the tawny paper.
“…I want to learn what kind of power the little lady possesses.”
Peering over at the notes he was making, she saw the names of successive generations of Rvydom’s kings, their powers, and how they related to each other. He must have started keeping notes for quite some time, because there was a massive pile of paper sitting on his desk. Then she remembered how Vigo’s memory was on par with Rifaenotis and he had a strong spirit of inquiry.
“What is this?” she asked.
“My attempt at writing about all the kings I can remember. In the history of our kings, not one has had a power that eats away at their lifespan. Yet the rate our little lady is wasting away can only mean it’s killing her.”
How many generations of kings had he written out? Just looking at the pages of text gave Selena a headache. His ability to memorize things to such a detail was astounding.
“She would have died a long time ago if she were handing away her own lifeforce to heal people. Then that leads us to the theory she manipulates the time inside our bodies and resets the clock to before the illness or wounds happened. But this theory fails when it comes to diseases that existed from birth. This leads me to believe she is amplifying the natural ability all humans have to recover. If that’s true, then her ability is similar to Lord Cahn’s.”
“That’s a longshot.”
“Can you come up with a better theory? The people of Rvydom who possess the ability to heal can only forcefully seal an external wound back together like glue. Internal wounds, external wounds, diseases—they’re all the same to the little lady’s power.”
“When you put it that way, it sounds just like Lord Cahn.”
“But the drain and consumption rate of hers is mindboggling.” Vigo brooded over the problem. Selena joined him in pondering the cause.
What was the difference between Cahn and Yuki? The difference in their experience? The difference in age?
“…What about the notion a Witch is restraining her power?” Selena offered.
Vigo blinked. “It’s plausible,” he muttered and added a note to his paper. He turned away from her and focused on the blank space on the page, running his feather brush along it as he stroked his beard.
He’s kind.
The man who stated he didn’t mind if Yuki died because of them using her power to heal people was the same man who was deeply troubled by what effect her power had and what side effects came from it.
I wonder how much he will suffer if Yuki is permanently damaged by what we’ve made her do. Almost certainly Vigo would blame himself for mistakenly believing Yuki’s powers fell under the same rules as Cahn’s. Regret would plague him for the rest of his days. What a foolish man. And I am an irredeemably foolish woman for letting my heart go wild for him.
Selena’s self-mocking laughter was hidden by the sound of frantic footsteps running outside the room. The door was thrown open and Rhad came inside to announce heart-stopping news that erased all laughter.
“Lady Yuki collapsed. She is presently asleep inside the room granted to her inside the castle. I request you examine her.”