Chapter 7

I brought my trembling hand carefully to my mouth. My lips were visibly damp, confirming that I had drunk it.

‘It was today?’

Evan shook my shoulders without mercy, his eyes deadly serious, asking if I had consumed it or not. I swayed with his shaking. And in a daze, I nodded my head.

Immediately, my stomach began to churn. I involuntarily clutched my belly tightly.

“Ugh…”

A groan escaped my lips. The pain felt like my internal organs were being twisted, and the inside of me was boiling, as if I had swallowed molten lava. Then, something hot surged back up my throat.

I vomited without time to suppress it. I retched and brought up something. Something red dripped thickly between my fingers…

It was blood.

I stared blankly at the blood staining my hand. Seeing the blood I vomited, Evan’s face hardened like stone. And Evan shoved his fingers down my throat.

“Spit it out, now!”

I heard his raised voice in my dazed state. Evan’s thick, graceful fingers were aggressively thrust toward me. Evan held me firmly and poked his fingers down my throat.

I thrashed about with a physiological rejection. I tried to push his fingers away with my tongue and struck his back with my fist. But he paid no mind, continuing to prod past my tongue and stimulate my throat.

It became hard to breathe. Tears spontaneously gathered in the corners of my eyes. My throat was burning with pain. From the poison, and from his fingers.

I couldn’t comprehend the sudden situation. Evan had also coughed up blood. As proof that the poison had reached his head, Evan’s eyes were severely bloodshot.

I stopped hitting his back and reached out, gripping Evan’s clothes tightly.

‘Is it really Alosi Poison? Am I… going to become terminally ill?’

I never thought the fate I resolved to avoid would arrive today. And Evan drank the tea with me!

What? Knowing the game content? What good was that now? I ended up drinking the poison anyway!

The servants, who hadn’t yet grasped the situation, tried to pull Evan away, telling him to stop, but he absolutely refused to back down.

“It’s poison! You must spit out the poison immediately!”

Through my blurring vision, I saw Evan’s stern face. The face that had been full of smiles was now rigidly set, looking at me with an expression of intense worry.

The servants were terrified by the word “poison.” I heard Mary running, along with the doctor, shouting for people to move.

My exhausted body could do nothing but gasp for breath. But I used all my strength to tug on his sleeve with a trembling hand.

He didn’t seem to feel my weak pull, only worrying about me. He urged me not to lose consciousness, to hold on, and that I only needed to endure a little longer. He insisted I had to spit out the poison quickly.

‘What about you? Are you okay? You drank the same tea… You… coughed up blood.’

I clearly saw the phenomenon of his eyes turning scarlet, like a snowshoe hare’s. And if it wasn’t my imagination, his complexion seemed to be turning purplish too.

Understanding the meaning of my gaze, he looked into my eyes and told me he was fine. Then he shouted for the approaching doctor to examine my condition.

‘Lies!’

I wanted to scream, but the fingers relentlessly entering my throat choked off my voice, and I vomited up everything I had consumed.

My throat hurt, I couldn’t breathe, and I felt so sorry for Evan—so many emotions churned inside me. I sobbed and gagged.

“Ugh…”

Tears fell to the floor.

Gasping for rough breaths, I continued to vomit while crying. Evan wouldn’t remove his fingers, insisting he wouldn’t stop until my stomach acid came up. To encourage me, he gently stroked my back with a tender touch.

His kind voice soothed me near my ear.

“Shh… It’s okay. You have to spit it all out. Don’t cry.”

I was spitting out the poison… But what about you?

I captured the sight of him in my eyes—worrying only about me, not attempting to vomit himself, and continuing to put his fingers down my throat and wriggle them around until the very end.

In my muddled head, I could only repeat Evan’s name. In the blurring view, the sight of my horrified parents and Piote arriving appeared, and then my vision completely blacked out.

***

I slowly opened my eyes. Darkness filled the surroundings.

‘Is it night already…’

I cautiously tried to sit up but gripped my chest. It still felt like a huge, hot flame was raging inside, churning relentlessly.

“Ugh…”

A groan escaped me. But what flashed through my mind more than the pain was Evan. I waved my hand around to find the pull cord next to the bed and tugged hard on the rope I found.

When I pulled the cord, I heard a clattering sound, and the door burst open. It was my parents and my brother.

“Lep!!”

“Are you alright, my baby??”

I looked up at them, devoid of strength. Seeing my parents’ and brother’s faces made my eyes tear up.

Everything that happened today was because of me. If I hadn’t suggested drinking tea… And I was overcome by the thought that I might have accidentally killed my entire family as well.

“Mom… Dad…”

A voice I could barely recognize as my own emerged from my throat. It sounded like scraping metal on the floor. I instinctively brought my hand to my neck.

My mother hugged me tightly as I cried. She whispered to me repeatedly that I was fine, trying to calm me down. That tenderness made the tears flowing down my cheeks increase, and they burst out like a broken faucet.

“I’m sorry… I… I…”

“Lep, calm down. You don’t need to worry about anything.”

“Right. Your father is right. We can handle everything!”

“But…”

I wiped my flowing tears with my hand again and again.

“What about Lord Evan… Because of me…”

In the end, I buried my face in my hands and cried again. The constant soothing voices beside me only made me burst into tears more fiercely.

‘If only I hadn’t brewed that tea… Evan wouldn’t have drunk it. I… I ruined Evan’s future.’

Why didn’t I remember sooner…? The past days, when I was so excited about getting closer to my favorite character, dissolved like bubbles.

I killed him. It was as good as killing him.

Finally calmed down by the fidgety, comforting voices next to me, I blew my nose into the handkerchief my mother offered.

“Are you calm now?”

“Yes…”

“My princess. Don’t worry. We will take care of everything.”

They said that, but it wouldn’t be easy. To put it nicely, it was an accident; to put it badly, it was a horrifying incident where the precious son of a Ducal family was poisoned while enjoying refreshments at our house.

I clutched the blanket tightly with my hands. And I spoke with a voice that trembled.

“Is Lord Evan alright?”

I could guess what the answer would be, but a part of me desperately wished it wasn’t true.

Silence fell. The fragile quietness, which felt like it could break at any moment, only increased my anxiety.

I looked straight into my father’s eyes. I pleaded with him not to lie, to tell me the truth. Finally, my father, standing nearby, let out a deep sigh and spoke.

“Lep, because he took action quickly, the poison hasn’t permeated your body yet… but Lord Evan…”

“…”

I shook my head vigorously, wanting to deny reality. The thought that it was my fault made me leap up, but I couldn’t steady my body. My mother caught me. She then laid me back down, saying I needed rest.

“Don’t worry. Your father will surely find out who did this.”

I squeezed my eyes shut in despair. Then a large hand was placed on my head. I saw my father’s soft, smiling face.

“Lep, you need rest right now. Just get some good sleep.”

I weakly nodded, and the light went out.

My parents left after telling me to rest well, but I couldn’t possibly rest.

‘What on earth is going on…’

I sniffed and thought.

Originally, I was supposed to be the one who drank the poison and became terminally ill. If that was the Alosi Poison, that is. And looking at this situation, those tea leaves were definitely the Alosi Poison.

I tried to organize the situation as objectively as possible.

‘I was drinking tea with Evan… Evan coughed up blood, and then I coughed up blood. And the tea leaves were received at Young Lady Chaoka’s tea party, and the Chaoka family is…!’

I felt like a large rock was dropping from above. A sudden realization. I punched the bed with my fist.

“That’s right… The Chaoka family was…!!”

The name of this family had only been mentioned once in a conversation between the heroine and Lepina! It wasn’t even about a capture target, and it happened years ago. Honestly, it was a miracle that I remembered it.

In the game, after brewing and drinking the tea leaves brought by the Chaoka family, Lepina became poisoned with the Alosi Poison.

At that time, no one knew of the Alosi Poison’s existence. The Clies family only suspected poison, but since there was no evidence of it, they couldn’t pursue any action. There was no way to prove a poison that didn’t react to silver and was unknown to everyone. All that happened was that the sickly Lepina suddenly collapsed and was given a terminal diagnosis due to unexplained hemorrhaging and organ damage.

However, the truth was that it was an assassination attempt.

Alosi Poison is a toxic herb native to the distant desert empire of Zeiran. It is rumored to bloom from the corpse of a scorpion. It was that much of a mythical entity, seen only by a handful of people. It was only mentioned in very old, obscure books. It was a toxic herb that was difficult to obtain and whose very existence was ambiguous.

In the original game, the identity of the Alosi Poison was only revealed through an herbalism book that traveled across the sea and land. The heroine of the original story used this book to find the clue to treat Lepina Clies.

But that was far in the future. I buried my face in my hands in self-reproach.

I wanted to save Evan right now. I had only briefly coughed up blood, yet I experienced the burning pain of my esophagus. So what about Evan? Was my favorite character going to die because of me? My head throbbed with a headache.