“Um… No, it’s fine! I can do it.”
But as if he couldn’t hear me at all, he simply took the tweezers from me. At the same time, he took hold of my wrist and began treating the wound.
Not knowing what to do with myself in such an embarrassing situation, I lowered my head slightly and looked down at his hands.
His quick movements looked rough and brusque at a glance, but they were surprisingly delicate.
He’s actually kind of gentle.
Judging only by his being a Dragonblood, or by that firmly set mouth, you’d think he was a cold person.
He removed the shards one at a time, gently, as if taking care not to hurt me.
I held my breath and stayed still.
Ugh, this is awkward…
It was the first time anyone else had ever treated me. Back when I lived at the marquis’s house, I’d always had to take care of myself.
And of all people, the one doing it was the Duke of Asheln.
“Bag.”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
My shoulders jumped, and at his casual command, I immediately held out the bag I’d been holding in my right hand.
He took out the disinfectant at once and cleaned the wound.
It was a textbook order of treatment, without a single flaw.
Come to think of it, didn’t he say he’d roamed the empire hunting monsters since he was young?
It seemed his skill wasn’t for nothing. Before long, it was time for the ointment. Only then did something occur to me.
“Oh, wait a moment! The, um, the ointment’s in my pocket.”
“Your pocket?”
“Ye-es… I put it in here earlier.”
I indicated with my eyes the small pocket near the left side of my waist. The space between Cain’s brows twitched faintly.
“You want me to take it out?”
Flush. My cheeks went red as a carrot in an instant. No. That’s not what I meant…!
I felt like I’d given him some strange idea, and I was about to rush to explain when—
“N-no, that’s not what I—!”
“Never mind.”
Cain cut me off flatly, as if it were nothing, reached into his coat, and took something out of an inner pocket. A familiar shape.
It was the ointment I’d given him as a gift.
Cain opened the lid as though it were nothing special.
The ointment, which had been full to the brim when I gave it to him, was already half gone.
Huh. For some reason, my heart went all soft and fluttery.
…He’s actually been using it.
Of course, I’d given it to him to be used. But once I realized the man had been Cain, I’d assumed he’d shoved it into some corner and forgotten it.
To someone who was both a Sword Master and a Dragonblood, an ointment I’d made would surely be nothing special.
Did he like it? It’s already gone down that much.
It felt as if my skill had been recognized when I least expected it.
Cain scooped a generous amount of ointment onto his index finger, as if he were used to it, and brought it to my forearm.
Hmm…
This is kind of embarrassing.
Was it because it was my first time being treated by someone else?
For some reason, it tickled, too.
I felt like I must be making a strange face, so it was hard to look him in the eye. Pretending nothing was wrong, I stole a glance at him.
I could see him with his head bowed, concentrating on me.
The sharp, clean line of his nose was striking. I knew it already, but his good looks were something I just couldn’t get used to.
It was at that moment.
At last, his finger touched my skin. Cain stroked along my forearm, slowly but surely. Without meaning to, my shoulders tensed.
A man’s hand, thick with calluses, so different from mine.
The feel of that hand through the sticky ointment was unfamiliar. It was a strange sensation.
It’s just treatment.
Why am I being like this?
The heat that had been burning in my cheeks for a while now showed no sign of fading.
Ugh. This is no good.
In the end, I turned my head away.
Handsome faces really are bad for the heart. He’d never make a good doctor.
Absolute calm was essential for a patient.
With a face like Cain’s, far from calming a patient, he’d only send their heart rate soaring.
Not that it mattered, of course, since he wasn’t an aspiring doctor but a duke.
While I was lost in thought, I felt the nagging pain in the wound ease considerably.
Stealing a look, I saw that the treatment was coming to an end.
I decided to continue the report I’d broken off.
“About Young Master Jayden.”
When I began slowly, Cain nodded as if to say he was listening.
“I’d like to keep a closer eye on his condition for a while. His fever could rise again at any time.”
“You did say Jayden’s fever had come down.”
“Yes! That’s right. Thankfully, the fever medicine worked well.”
“Impressive. Ordinarily that can’t be done.”
“It’s thanks to the chance you gave me.”
Hmm.
Cain seemed lost in thought for a moment, then spoke.
“You must know. That ordinary medicine doesn’t work on Dragonbloods.”
“Yes, of course.”
It might sound like a drawback, but it was really closer to a blessing. Medicine and poison were only a sheet of paper apart, after all.
Just like medicine, most poisons had no effect at all on a Dragonblood.
Medicine not working was no problem to speak of. They were people who, as a rule, never got sick in the first place.
Only for Jayden, it was a curse.
With Tamutar disease, the power inside the body ran wild and wrecked it. At first you simply coughed and coughed, as if you had a lung disease, but before long, a severe fever would flare up again and again.
Even if the raging power made it feel as though your flesh were being torn apart, there was nothing to be done. Because for a Dragonblood, neither painkillers nor fever medicine worked.
I’d drifted into thought for a moment when Cain spoke, still tapping the tin of ointment as if turning something over in his mind.
“This ointment had a meaningful effect on me as well.”
“Really?”
No wonder. So that was why he’d been using it so much.
He hadn’t been using it out of politeness; it had actually worked. The corners of my mouth crept up with pride.
Hm, but that’s strange.
The fever medicine had been made especially for Jayden, but the ointment I’d given Cain hadn’t been anything like that.
There’s a tiny bit of spikeleaf in it… Is that why?
I was mulling it over when—
“Which is why I’m asking. You seem to know a surprising amount about Dragonbloods.”
“Ah, yes. That’s because there was a book about Dragonbloods at the Devereux marquis’s house. A very old book…”
“You can read the ancient language?”
I sheepishly scratched my head a little. Could I really say I knew it, at my level?
“I don’t know the exact pronunciation, but I can translate it.”
“Self-taught, again?”
“Ye-es. There wasn’t much for me to do while I lived at the marquis’s house. Nothing much besides reading… That’s how I came to read that old book, too.”
The library of that house had been like a refuge for me as a child.
It had been a busy place while the late marquis was alive. After he passed away, everyone stopped going there. The rest of the family didn’t particularly enjoy reading.
I used to sneak into the library often to avoid my family’s eyes.
It was a faded old memory now.
“Hmm. An old book at the marquis’s house. You won’t have it with you now.”
“No. It’s probably still at the house. Oh, but don’t worry! I know everything that’s in it.”
I’d lost count of how many times I’d read that book.
Fifteen times, I think?
To be honest, I’d only done it back then because I had nothing else to read. But now it was knowledge that was coming in very handy.
“Can you tell me the title of the book?”
“Of course, that much is no trouble.”
I took the pen Cain held out and slowly wrote down the title.
The title was really long…
Searching my memory, I wrote out the ancient script one character at a time. Unlike today’s relatively simplified letters, the ancient script was extremely complicated. I wrote carefully so I wouldn’t get a single stroke wrong.
After a long while—
An Analysis of the Mechanisms and Principles of Pharmacological Reactions Acting Specifically Within the Dragonblood Body
