EEA Chapter 6

In one corner of the imperial castle Calise, Clint stood before the firmly closed iron gate of Ailea's castle, scratching his head.

"Is she very angry?"

He thought the crown prince was angry because he had touched his fiancée. That's why he was being sent to the battlefield. However, he hadn't come here to blame Ailea. It was something that would happen eventually anyway, and most of all, it was he who had fearlessly used the castle where the crown prince's fiancée lived as a dating spot. Moreover, since he had kissed a woman who didn't even want it, she was the one who should be angry. He had come here solely to apologize.

He called for Cathy, the maid, to ask her to convey his apology to Ailea, but she wasn't there.

Even without her, there were no working people at all.

Clint looked puzzledly into Ailea's castle, which was dark as if dead. As he looked toward the garden side, he flinched when he saw something white moving.

"Ah, you startled me."

He muttered, patting his chest. A woman in white pajamas was walking barefoot through the garden. To be startled by seeing a person - what kind of disgrace for a knight.

If it weren't for the black spots, he would have almost run away thinking it was a ghost. Ailea came close to the iron gate but passed by Clint as if she couldn't see him.

'Sleepwalking?'

Clint thought as he looked inside the iron gate, and Ailea, wearing a one-piece pajama that came down to her knees and elbows, was swaying toward her room when she tripped on the stairs and fell to the floor.

Clint's expression gradually hardened as he watched her in surprise.

She remained crouched in that state and didn't get up. Rather, she fell into an even deeper sleep. Even though she had fallen hard enough to make a loud thud.

Without time to think, Clint grabbed the iron gate and jumped over it, approaching her.

The night was still chilly.

Clint lifted Ailea's upper body as she lay collapsed on the stairs. Having wandered in the garden in thin pajamas, her body was cold. On her slightly tilted sleeping face, black spots were moving and spreading more and more. Those spots were vividly rippling.

Clint picked her up for now. His expression naturally frowned for a moment. While she was indeed small in stature, this was seriously too light.

He laid her on the bed for now. Clint, forgetting the fact that he had intruded into the crown prince's woman's bedroom, stared at the pitch-black poison spreading across her face. The poison was trying to cover her entire face.

Clint cupped her face with his hands and recalled the basic detoxification magic he had learned when he was very young. It was called detoxification, but at the level ordinary people who weren't magicians could do, he could only share the opponent's poison. Even that required items imbued with power by magicians.

Clint found the only magical tool he could obtain in this room. When he opened the case containing candles, there was a magic circle for controlling fire drawn behind it. When Clint tapped the candle against the magic circle, it lit by itself. He placed the candle on the table and put his hand inside the case to obtain even a small amount of magical power.

Then, slightly above Ailea's face, in the air, he wrote the characters of detoxification magic with his finger. The letters glowed brightly, and the poison began to transfer and spread to Clint's hand. His left hand turned pitch black. Instead, the black spots that had been spreading on Ailea stopped spreading further.

"Indeed, there's no useless knowledge."

Clint said with a proud expression. However, that pride didn't last long. If he hadn't been watching from outside the iron gate, this woman would have just slept on those cold stairs and woken up there. With no one to wake her up, on the stairs.

"What the hell is that bastard Roylin doing."

Clint muttered with a surge of emotion and unconsciously smoothed back her platinum hair. At that action that came out unconsciously from pity, Ailea opened her eyes. And discovering the golden eyes of the man sitting on her bed, she screamed in surprise. Clint hurriedly said.

"Wa, wait! It's me! Don't you remember me?"

"Get out! Get out right now!"

Frightened Ailea mercilessly threw objects around her at Clint. There were banging sounds. Clint blocked the objects flying at him with his arms and shouted.

"I was going to leave anyway! I absolutely won't do anything bad!"

Having woken up to find an unknown man sitting on her bed, she couldn't help but be surprised. Clint looked around, not knowing what to do. Then, thinking he should confirm his identity, he picked up the candle he had lit on the table.

And approaching her, he asked.

"Do you really not remember?"

Fire.

Ailea urgently backed away as the fire approached.

"Please, please put the fire away."

Is she afraid of fire? Clint hurriedly put the candle back in the case. As expected of a woman who had been raised delicately in the imperial castle all her life, she was even afraid of fire. Only when the fire was a bit farther away did Ailea finally feel relieved.

Although she knew the other person was Clint, Ailea was still wary of him. As she wondered why he had come to her bedroom, Clint's left hand, which had turned pitch black, came into her view.

Ailea's heart sank with a thud. Surely not, it couldn't be.

"Your hand... why is it like that?"

She walked toward Clint as if possessed by a ghost. As she stared at his hand in a daze, Clint said.

"Ah, never mind this, more importantly, you seem to have sleepwalking. The wound on your knee is from wandering around in your sleep..."

"What do you mean never mind! Why is it like this? Because of me? Did it transfer to you?"

Ailea's eyes, which had turned pale, immediately filled with tears.

"Is it because of the kiss I had with you?"

Ailea's hands trembled violently. These black spots had never transferred to anyone else. So she thought they weren't contagious, but thinking about it now, she had never had skin contact with anyone since getting sick. Was I not supposed to kiss anyone?

She thought Clint's hand was ruined because of her. As she couldn't breathe properly, Clint frantically waved his hands.

"No, it's not transferred! Absolutely not!"

"Then..."

"I took it out. There was a strange energy spreading in your body. I only know basic detoxification spells, so I can't extract everything from your body, but for the time being, we'll share that poison."

At his words, Ailea paused. She muttered in a daze.

"...You took it?"

By himself.

He shared the poison from her body. Ailea, who had been making a blank expression, grasped this absurd situation and screamed in shock.

"Are you crazy? Why did you do such a thing! Did you know what would happen!"

"Ca, calm down! It's better than taking it all alone! Besides, I forced a kiss on you, so I should pay this much of a price!"

"Even so, why did you... Do you know how agonizing this is? People will..."

"People will what?"

Ailea continued with a trembling voice.

"Say that you're cursed..."

Why did I return to two years ago? I should have died instead. Then, I should have died in the fire.

To the despairing Ailea, Clint said as if making an excuse.

"I won't have the luxury to worry about this much. I'm going to be busy."

"What... do you mean?"

"I'm going to the battlefield soon. I have to take twenty knights and seize a castle where a thousand soldiers are stationed. Well, it's basically telling me to go die."

"Why, why to such a place..."

Clint was about to say that Roylin sent him, but he closed his mouth. He thought he was going to the battlefield as the price for kissing Ailea.

If she had known I would be driven to a death trap, she wouldn't have told Roylin that she was kissed. That's why she's so surprised, knowing nothing. That's what he thought.

He had come here to apologize, not to blame Ailea. Clint said playfully.

"That's what I'm saying. I drew lots."

He lied like that. Ailea tried hard to stop her tears. Looking at Clint's enchanting face shining in the moonlight, she opened her mouth.

"Clint... You're Captain Richars, right? Of the Thillip Knights."

"You know me?"

"I know you. Everyone in the castle is wary and curses you, saying there's no woman you haven't touched."

"I did do things that deserve cursing..."

Clint awkwardly scratched his head. He continued.

"But let's be clear about this. It's not that I touched them, but those ladies touched me."

"You should have refused."

"Don't lecture me."

Ailea quietly observed the grumbling, fresh-faced young man. Ailea had known him since childhood. And she also knew about him two years later.

He was the hero of this country who would recapture from Geneta Castle to Philio Castle, which Teniac had lost to the Kanna Empire two years later, and he would soon be the current owner of the outer castle from which Ailea would be expelled.

Born as the second son of the third son of the Richers family, he was far from nobility, but two years later, he would receive the title of duke and live in Philio Castle.

Just before her death, Clint had become so famous that even Ailea, who was stuck in the outer castle, could hear rumors about him. From what she heard through rumors, he was such a cruel and cold man. Clint, who hadn't yet spent two years on the battlefield, was still a naive kid with some warmth left in him.

Ailea held the hem of her pajamas with both hands, lifted it slightly, and greeted.

"I'm Ailea. Ailea Elgar Yuliana."

Elgar Yuliana. At that name, Clint paused. He soon continued.

"I often heard Captain Ron bragging about his daughter."

"My father did? That's not like him..."

"He was completely different inside and outside."

Clint said cheerfully.

The Thillip Knights were annihilated in the last war, leaving only five minors. Ron also died in that war. Their deaths were never in vain. Because of them, the Kanna Empire lost a massive army.

Even now, seven years later, the Kanna Empire hasn't been able to rebuild its army. Right now, in this war, Clint was scheduled to recapture five castles. But because Ailea had regressed, the curse had transferred to his hand.

Ailea felt sadness welling up inside her again.

If it wasn't transferred because of the kiss, this still wasn't a disease as Ailea knew it to be. During the two years living in the outer castle, these black spots had never made her body hurt. They had never transferred to anyone else.

Only her heart had hurt. Only her heart had been wounded.

Ailea asked.

"Which castle are you going to retrieve?"

"Geneta."

"Ah, Geneta as expected!"

She exclaimed in admiration.

Clint Richers' brilliant life would begin in earnest from now on.

The knights he led would soon recapture Geneta Castle. From what Ailea had heard, the twenty Thillip Knights dug a tunnel that passed under the Geneta Castle gate toward the underground prison, and on the night when a party was held at the castle and everyone was asleep, they rescued the Green family from the prison and joined forces with them to shoot flaming arrows and annihilate the drunken and sleeping soldiers of the Kanna Empire.

With Clint's cautious strategy, the Thillip Knights succeeded in recapturing Geneta Castle without a single casualty.

And from there, they would recapture castles one by one to the south, and two years later, they would recapture even Philio Castle.

At her admiration, Clint briefly thought that Ailea was a woman who knew nothing about the fear of war. Otherwise, how could she be happy as if she had heard about going on a trip when he said he was going to recapture a castle where a thousand people were stationed?

Just as Clint's expression was about to frown slightly, Ailea said in a firm voice.

"You won't die."

"Huh?"

"You'll live. You will live."

Ailea looked at Clint's hand pitifully. She earnestly hoped inside that this poison would not spread further in his body. She smiled desperately.

"And this hand too, it won't spread further."

It won't spread. It will be different from me. Because he's a strong person. She strongly trusted Clint, his future.

At that desperate smile, Clint realized that Ailea hadn't admired him because she didn't know the fear of war. Her hands, which she couldn't hold his hand for fear that he might hate her body and raised and immediately lowered, were trembling.

"So don't worry too much."

Who's telling whom.

Clint found it hard to keep looking at her face. That woman was strange. He felt sorry for her for no reason. What was there to pity about a woman who would soon become empress? ‘Even with my shallow knowledge, I could easily share this curse. So that trivial disease would be cured soon.’

Because it was too late, Clint left. Ailea leaned her upper body out the window and said to Clint walking through the garden.

"I'll pray, a lot."

May this agonizing curse devour her right now, as long as it doesn't torment that man. She wished. Clint looked back at Ailea.

The mouth of the man who always smiled like someone with a screw loose was firmly shut.

He didn't believe in prayers and such.

Still, if she was going to pray anyway, he wished she would pray for herself, not for him.