AWLITEB Chapter 22

It was a strangely unpleasant sensation.

Her whole body felt oddly languid, her eyelids weirdly heavy.

She wasn't sleepy or tired, yet she couldn't open her eyes or sit up.

Like a cloud drifting between dream and reality, weightless and untethered.

"Bella."

Then a voice hooked into her consciousness and yanked her back toward the waking world.

Bella's eyes snapped open.

"...Your Grace?"

Bella mumbled in a voice cracked and rough.

The person bent over and staring directly at her face from close range was definitely Genos.

Genos examined Bella's face meticulously with those dark eyes before finally straightening.

"If you hadn't woken up by today, I was going to go harvest some awakening herbs, but looks like I'm spared that effort."

"What? Awakening herbs?"

"You didn't wake up for a week."

"A week?"

Bella tried to sit up in alarm, bracing against the bed, but her wrist was pulled back.

A transparent tube pierced into her vein was the culprit.

When she looked up, a pale yellow liquid was being drawn into her body.

"Thanks to that, we had to inject nutrients through essence. It was prepared by the most renowned doctor in the North, so it shouldn't have caused any harm to your body."

"The North? We already arrived in the North?"

"Yes. We kept switching horses and rode without rest. We even took a boat once in the middle. You didn't notice?"

Genos leaned back against a wooden chair and rubbed the bone above his eyebrow with his finger.

Even at a glance, he looked exhausted.

"What did you feed me back then in the carriage?"

"Sleeping medicine, obviously."

Genos answered in a slow, unhesitating voice.

"You said it was whiskey."

"Of course I lied. Did you actually believe that?"

"If I can't trust Your Grace, who can I trust?"

Bella asked with a furrowed brow.

Genos found something amusing in her words—he let out a short laugh and stood up. Heh.

"Why would you do that in the first place?"

"A monster appeared."

"...What? A monster?"

"Yes. Normally they only move within controlled zones, but this one probably came down from the mountains looking for food. We caught it quickly enough."

"Even so, you didn't need to put me to sleep for that."

"When you feel threatened, your power tends to burst out without your awareness. I prevented that possibility."

"So you ended up putting me to sleep for a week?"

Genos looked at Bella with that shameless, handsome face as if to say, So what?

When Bella narrowed her eyes and glared at him—timidly—Genos opened his mouth as if to say, Fine, fine.

"Alright, I'm sorry."

"Yes. Apology accepted."

Genos let out an empty laugh at Bella's satisfied smile.

"I'll call the doctor to check your nutritional status and remove the tube. I'll send a maid to help you wash up too."

"I'm hungry."

Bella blurted it out without thinking.

Unlike the past when she barely noticed hunger at all, now the emptiness in her stomach felt vivid and immediate. Funny how quickly the body adjusted to plenty.

"Then let's eat first."

Genos removed the tube and pulled her body upright in one smooth motion.

Bella blinked in surprise.

"Is that really okay?"

"Why?"

"Can I go to the dining room without getting dressed?"

"I ordered all the staff who finished cleaning and meal preparation to stay in the annex. No one will be there, so don't worry."

Genos grabbed Bella's hesitant hand and pulled her along firmly.

No matter how much nutrition she'd received through the tube, empty was still empty.

Bella hurried her steps and followed Genos out of the room.

As soon as they entered the corridor, a cold breeze blew through—proof she was truly in the North.

Bella instinctively hugged her shoulders and hunched against the chill. Genos looked down at her.

"Cold?"

"A little."

"..."

"You were about to say my body's like a scrawny anchovy again, weren't you?"

"This time I only thought it. Didn't say it out loud."

Genos shrugged, expressing his innocence.

Then he went back into the room they'd just left and emerged with a white blanket rolled up in his arms.

"I'll need to raise the heating level."

Genos draped the blanket over Bella's body. Fwump.

"But am I really allowed to leave the room so undignified like this?"

"I already told you, everything's clear. Besides, I'd starve to death if I wasted time looking for a cloak or a regular blanket."

Genos led the blanket-buried Bella toward the dining room.

"What? You haven't been eating?"

"You're so anch—"

Genos cut himself off.

He'd caught sight of Bella's brow already starting to crease at the word "anchovy."

"You were so frail and you wouldn't wake up."

"So you were worried? Worried enough that you couldn't eat?"

Bella asked with only her eyes peeking out from the white blanket.

Despite her hunger, her eyes sparkled brightly.

"I didn't completely stop eating. Why would I starve myself that much?"

Genos clicked his tongue and spoke bluntly, without any comforting lies.

"Fair enough."

Bella accepted it without argument.

"Still, you were worried about me, right?"

"Yes. I only ate one meal a day. Satisfied?"

"Yes. Very satisfied."

Bella smiled, genuinely pleased.

Someone skipped meals out of worry for her.

It was a happiness she couldn't have imagined in the basement of the White mansion. The kind of thing that happened to other people, in other lives.

Bella knew perfectly well this was a form of affection-deprivation response, but she didn't feel particularly ashamed about it.

When the people who'd made her this way existed so brazenly elsewhere, she didn't want to hate herself on top of it all. Some burdens you could put down.

"The mansion is really huge, Your Grace."

Bella looked around as they walked toward the dining room.

The Northern region was the largest territory in Genos's Grand Duchy. Fitting, then, that the mansion was decorated so splendidly and beautifully.

"This was the first mansion granted to me. Every single decoration, down to the smallest ornament, was chosen by the Emperor."

Genos spoke with an expression that clearly said he wasn't pleased.

"The scale is so large it's more than a little inconvenient. The main building wasn't enough—there are two additional annexes on either side."

"Is that so?"

"That's why I asked to reduce the mansion size after this, so the estates in my other territories aren't quite this big. They're similar to the capital mansion."

"Makes sense. A large mansion wouldn't tempt Your Grace at all."

The only residence the Grand Duke wanted was the imperial palace, after all.

No other mansion, however grand, could seduce him.

"Here, this is the dining room."

Genos opened the dining room door.

Even the dining room was about twice the size of an average noble family's dining hall.

The large table for twelve was filled with dishes the staff had carefully prepared.

"Wow!"

Bella couldn't take her eyes off the exotic foods and hurried forward with quick little steps.

When the blanket slowed her down, she started hopping like a rabbit toward the table.

Genos shook his head and let out an empty laugh. Heh.

"There are so many ingredients I've never seen before. It's amazing."

Isabella exclaimed in admiration.

She'd occasionally seen the dish of onions wrapped with salmon and lightly seared at social parties she'd rarely attended, like rain in a drought.

The completed dish here looked similar, but it was made with a fish she'd never seen before—white with red stripes.

Even the berries in the salad were shapes and colors she'd never encountered.

Not raspberries, not blueberries, but a strange purple berry glistening with moisture, catching the light like jewels.

"This fruit looks just like a gemstone, Your Grace."

"It just means there's that much of the world you haven't experienced yet. That's why you say things like that about a single piece of fruit. Pitiful."

The Grand Duke spoke casually and pressed Bella's shoulders down, seating her in a chair.

Consideration and social etiquette were concepts the Grand Duke had thrown away entirely—his manner of speaking still occasionally startled Bella.

"If you keep saying things like that, how can I shed my slave mentality quickly?"

"If you don't want to hear it, shed it faster."

"How very gracious of you."

Bella muttered under her breath, barely audible.

Genos pretended not to hear her grumbling and began placing a variety of foods onto her plate.

"The staff said they'd use only Northern ingredients for the table for a while. Of course, we export Northern ingredients across the entire empire, but eating them locally is different, apparently."

"You must be close with the staff. Even though you haven't visited the North in so long."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because the staff chose Your Grace's menu on their own."

Bella spoke, thinking of the White mansion's staff who could only begin cooking after getting approval for each menu item, one by one.

"Well. I just didn't really care what food I ate. Though I did tell them to include more soft foods."

"Soft foods? Why?"

"Your stomach's been empty for a week, so obviously. What are you even asking? You're clearly fishing for compliments."

Genos waved his fork at Bella, whose eyes had gone round. Swish, swish.

Bella grinned as if caught and picked up her utensils.

"Then blame Heaven for choosing someone with affection deprivation as your witch, Your Grace. Anyway, thank you for the meal."

Bella's face lit up as she moved her utensils around.

She loved eating. She'd simply had her appetite castrated all those years.

Her poor digestive capacity struggling to keep pace with her appetite was the problem, though.

"I'm thinking we'll tour the Grand Duchy slowly today. I'm planning to ride horses so the residents can see us clearly."

"I've never been horseback riding in my life."

"You're not entering a competition, so don't worry."

"But what if I fall off disgracefully... mmph."

Genos casually stuffed a butter roll into her mouth.

Bella stared at him blankly, the golden-brown bread clamped between her teeth.

Genos crossed his thick arms and shook his head.

"That's another one of your problems."

"What?"

"Too much pointless worrying. Like worrying about dancing at the ball, or worrying about horseback riding now."

Genos clicked his tongue—tsk—and cut into the bloody meat on his plate.

As Bella chewed and swallowed the butter roll and opened her mouth again, Genos immediately shoved meat into it.

"You were going to say you've never learned anything so it can't be helped, and what if you're humiliated, right?"

"..."

Bella rolled her eyes away from his gaze. All the while, her mouth kept moving.

"I'll think about and worry about those things, so you worry about something else."

'What?'

Her mouth full, Bella asked with her eyes. Genos poked at the fragrant fish dish and said lightly:

"Getting executed for treason if our plan fails."

"..."

"Worrying about that seriously should improve our success rate for the great undertaking, don't you think?"

Genos smiled charmingly and ate his fish.

Right. Now that's a proper worry.

Bella reached for some lemon water to calm her startled heart.

A knock sounded on Genos's bedroom door.

When Genos granted entry, Paile came inside and bowed his head.

"Did he talk?"

Genos asked while looking in the mirror and buttoning his shirt.

"Yes, Your Grace."

Genos, who'd been watching Paile's face through the mirror, turned around.

Paile faced the Grand Duke directly and spoke without delay.

"However, he didn't give a name or describe the face precisely. He said the person hid their status, wore a veil, so he couldn't see the face."

"Feed him a small dose of poison. It might be a lie. If his body suffers more pain, he'll talk properly."

"His mind and body are weak—I can't guarantee his survival, so that would be difficult. Also, in my assessment, he seemed to be telling the truth."

"Then what did he confess?"

"He revealed special instructions from his employer."

"Which were?"

"He said he used a trained monster to memorize someone's scent as a signal not to attack that person. And the item used for the scent training was a cup."

"A cup?"

"Yes. After training the monster, he broke it as instructed, so he doesn't have it now, but it was an ordinary glass cup."

A cup?

Genos's face creased.

The evidence was far too vague to identify a culprit.

"Was there anything else?"

"He said once everyone except one person collapsed, he was ordered to release bandits before anyone disposed of the bodies and sweep up all valuable items. He was especially told to take all visible jewels."

"Jewels?"

"Yes."

Genos's expression smoothed.

Finally, a useful clue.

If the goal was money, they'd paid the monster trainer far too much.

Even if they'd invested money hoping to obtain jewels, no sane person would attack a Grand Duke's carriage.

Moreover, no fence would dare trade the Grand Duke's jewels.

Most jewelers could distinguish imperial family jewels. The highest quality gemstones were exclusively reserved for the imperial family.

In other words, if the plan wasn't to sell them for profit, there was a specific jewel they needed.

A jewel they had to obtain regardless of money. Now that was interesting.