Free Web Novel"Karvaldr, lower your head and move your hands a little."
I wanted to say that I would handle it myself and tell him to leave me alone, but if I did, it felt like the blood would flow into my mouth.
Do nosebleeds usually bleed this much?
The question crossed my mind, but having no choice, I did as Reisir instructed.
"......!"
Since I deliberately lowered my gaze, I don't know what expression Reisir made after I moved my hands.
But even I couldn't miss the fact that he flinched and his body jerked.
My condition must have been quite a sight.
While he couldn't help but be alarmed when he touched my forehead, this time Reisir said nothing. He silently grabbed my nose and pressed it firmly, trying to stop the bleeding.
At the same time, he quickly wiped the blood smeared around my mouth and lower face with a handkerchief.
Only then could I part my tightly shut lips.
"I'll hold it myself, so let go and back off."
Because Reisir was holding my nose, a ridiculous nasal voice came out.
If I had sounded like this in another situation, the eighteen-year-old adolescent in front of me would have teased me mercilessly.
But perhaps because he had seen blood, his voice was surprisingly calm and subdued.
"Just stay sti... No, since your hands are free, pat Yor or something and calm him down."
"......"
No matter how uncomfortable it is to receive Reisir's help, I can't neglect Yor, who's crying because he's worried about me.
Using hands unstained by blood, I quietly patted the back of the baby dragon, who was crying, "myaong, myaong."
As I did, Vigdís returned with two towels soaked in water.
Reisir, with one hand still holding my nose, took one of the towels Vigdís offered with his free hand and placed it on my forehead.
Vigdís carefully wiped my lower face again with a wet towel, cleaning what Reisir had only roughly wiped away. She even cleaned the blood from my hands.
The way the two of them naturally divided the work to take care of me was dumbfounding.
'It's just a nosebleed. Does it make sense for two people to fuss over me like this...?'
There was no reason it didn't make sense, but it felt like I was receiving undeserved treatment, which made it too burdensome.
Just yesterday, I had thought that I shouldn't get sick this semester at all.
But what kind of chaos is this after only one day?
'I thought the headache was a bit severe, but I didn't know I'd get a nosebleed...'
Feeling awkward, I fiddled with Yor's ruff for no reason.
Fortunately, the baby dragon had stopped wailing and was only sniffling now. It seemed his startled heart had calmed down a little.
After a little more time passed and even the sniffling subsided,
Reisir removed his hand from my nose. After checking that the bleeding had stopped, he let out a deep sigh of relief before immediately launching into a scolding.
"Whew... Just because I pushed for today's gathering doesn't mean I wanted you to drag your sick body here and force yourself to participate. If you were sick, you should have just said so and rested properly in your room. Did you think I wouldn't understand even that much and would stubbornly insist?"
Even without looking at him, I could tell from his voice how upset he was.
Which left me in quite a dilemma.
I want to brush it off as just another influence event.
But I couldn't ignore the fact that this protagonist from someone else's novel wasn't trying to get close to me through tricks. He was genuinely cherishing and worrying about me.
'Still, I have to say something...'
If I just obediently listened to Reisir's nagging, aside from being out of character, it would leave room for the interpretation that I had been moved by his concern.
However, was it because my head was still throbbing and muddled? Or because my heart felt heavy?
No words came to mind, and I could only uselessly open and close my lips over and over.
"Th... even so... Kar said he wouldn't participate in the sparring and would only watch...? So couldn't we ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) say he didn't exactly do anything wrong...?"
"Then are you saying he did well?"
"Kar was alone... No, I mean, since this trouble didn't happen when he was alone with Yor..., couldn't that be considered doing well?"
"Hearing it put that way, I suppose that's true...?"
Vigdís stepped forward to defend me, and Reisir seemed persuaded by her words.
Thanks to the unexpected support, I safely got through the difficult situation.
No, I thought I had gotten through it.
"A, and...! Even if Reisir hadn't strongly encouraged Kar to attend the sparring gathering, Kar wouldn't have rested in his room anyway...! I mean, Kar has insomnia, you know...? So he absolutely wouldn't have been able to rest."
The ending was strange for words that were meant to comfort Reisir and tell him not to blame himself.
But it didn't seem as though she was blaming me either.
Because her voice was filled with a strange conviction, it was difficult to grasp Vigdís's intention from that alone.
So when I turned my gaze toward her face, I met eyes full of pity.
'This... somehow... feels like something is terribly wrong?'
Having insomnia just means you can't sleep. It doesn't mean you can't rest at all.
Nevertheless, Vigdís insisted that I 'absolutely' couldn't have rested and looked at me with pity.
The reason was obvious.
She had misunderstood and believed that my insomnia developed as an aftereffect of the attempted poisoning incident.
'She probably thinks that because I don't know when or who might try to kill me, I can't rest with peace of mind.'
The problem was that Vigdís hadn't kept that misunderstanding to herself.
Although she had never said it outright, she had previously dropped enough circumstantial hints that my insomnia was caused by something that happened during vacation.
Now, while looking at me with pity, she had brought up my insomnia and stated that it was only natural I couldn't rest.
With that, all the clues and circumstances that a web novel protagonist couldn't help but investigate had gathered in one place.
"Karvaldr. Why did you suddenly develop insomnia?"
"...Insomnia is a symptom that can suddenly happen to anyone."
"Come to think of it, starting combat-related courses this semester and spending more time at the Training Tower than in the dormitory could also be called sudden changes."
"Didn't I tell you before? I simply didn't feel the need to learn what I could already do well, so I decided to study a field I wasn't confident in. And since I was doing it, I put in effort because I wanted to do well... Why do I have to explain even this?"
I somehow managed to gloss it over, but even to my own ears, it lacked conviction.
There was no way someone who had demonstrated his persistence from our very first meeting would be convinced by an answer like that.
"Suspicious. Sometimes, when I look at you, I get the strange feeling that you're being chased by something."
It would have been better if he had mistaken it for a desire for self-improvement, like Professor Radvisin had.
To think he could sense the nervousness I felt.
Though it wasn't the time to be impressed, the thought crossed my mind.
'Indeed, as expected of a protagonist. His instincts are extraordinary...!'
"Not just that. It feels like you've completely changed as a person. And by quite a lot. Can someone really change this much without any trigger?"
After hearing that, I couldn't remain silent.
Being seen as a sleepless person living under the threat of death was better than having my identity questioned.
Having reached that conclusion, I once again repeated the lie I had told Vigdís.
"On the day I returned to the main family residence during vacation, I almost died after ingesting poison."
"What?! You mean someone tried to poison you?!"
"Yes. Does that clear up your doubts a little?"
"Uh, that... if that's the reason..."
Even though I didn't offer any further explanation, Reisir nodded as though he finally understood everything.
Looking at his face, filled with confusion, bewilderment, and concern, my heart grew heavy with guilt.
Knowing exactly what kind of trauma he carried, and knowing how much he cared about me, I still told such a lie.
'Really malicious...'
I withdrew the gaze that had unconsciously drifted toward his face and uselessly brushed my hair back.
Even in the middle of this, I felt irritated with myself for trying to look away instead of properly facing him.
"Who would do something like that to you, and why?"
"I don't know. I couldn't find the culprit."
"Still, there must be someone you suspect. The person who handed you the food that day, or the person who prepared it..."
"I have absolutely no memory of what happened that day. It must be an aftereffect of the poison."
In truth, not only were the memories of that day gone, but all of the original Karvaldr's memories were missing.
Since telling the truth wasn't an option, I toned it down appropriately.
But even this alone was enough for Reisir to take the matter seriously. That much was expected, but...
"Karvaldr. Was the reason you told Ríolíkin to go to the martial arts tournament and prove his usefulness because you needed an escort to protect you even inside the academy...?"
How did he connect it to that?
Since I had considered using Ríolíkin as a human shield, it was awkward to deny it.
It really was like accidentally catching a mouse while backing up.
"No matter how I think about it, wouldn't I be a better escort than Ríolíkin?"
No.
Being near you, the original protagonist, is the most dangerous option.
"Or Vigdís..."
Considering her potential, Vigdís would actually be a decent choice.
It's just that the fact she contributed to Karvaldr's death in the original story and later died trying to save Reisir is unsettling.
"Ah! You don't want to drag your fiancée into danger? Besides, Vigdís is a woman, so she can't enter the male dormitory."
Reisir promptly tore up and discarded the Vigdís option he had just presented.
Not that I had any intention of using Vigdís as an escort anyway, but it was absurd that the only option he left was himself.
"Wouldn't the same apply to you? Isn't this the time for you to focus on your own affairs rather than follow someone around as an escort?"
"What should I be doing instead?"
"You should be investigating the phenomenon that occurred in your family's territory and working to reclaim that land."
I don't know what kind of escorting he plans to do when he's supposed to withdraw from school at the end of this semester for exactly that purpose.
"...Anyway, that place is just abandoned land where nobody lives anymore, right? Since it's considered a negative and ominous place, nobody tries to settle there. Reviving it would be impossible."
Reisir asked in a slightly restrained voice why he had to reclaim that land despite all that.
Even though he already held the answer in his heart. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
"Doesn't your parents' and family's honor depend on it? By reclaiming the territory from the Imperial Family and receiving an apology and compensation, you have to restore the reputation that was tarnished."
"......"
"While you so self-righteously insisted that you absolutely had to receive an apology from me, are you planning not to do the same yourself?"
"......"
"And who knows? Since it's a place where such a rare phenomenon occurred, rare resources might have been created there. If that's the case, rebuilding the territory wouldn't be impossible either. People naturally gather where resources exist."
The countless resources created there because of the emergence of the Demon Realm had already been swept away by the Imperial Family.
But that was limited strictly to the plants growing on the surface.
At most, the investigators they dispatched collected some soil and analyzed its composition. Their interest never extended deep underground.
The rare resources buried beneath the earth remained untouched.
Furthermore, according to the setting, the underground resources created in Reisir's territory surpassed those discovered later in other regions in both quantity and quality.
Thus, in the original story, Reisir pushed forward the territory reconstruction project on the basis of those underground resources.
"Everyone told me it would be better to give up... That reclaiming the territory was impossible anyway, and even if I got it back, there would be nothing to gain except hardship. That it would be easier to just forget that land and move on... Everyone said that..."
Reisir, who had been silent all this time, suddenly began to murmur.
Feeling an inexplicable sense of foreboding, I looked at his face.
His expression was strangely blank.
The moment I saw it, alarm bells rang in my head.
"W, wait..."
"To me..., you're the first person to ever say those things."
I desperately tried to stop him, but it was a meaningless struggle.
Eventually, 'that line,' drenched in cliché, came out of the original protagonist's mouth.
