Please Leave The Sickly Villainess Alone

What on earth had I just seen?

I dropped the artifact with a thud and collapsed on the spot.

“Ria, what’s wrong! Are you okay?!”

Lihid grabbed my shoulders.

The sunset dyeing the sky was illuminating the field yellow.

I looked at Lihid and a tear fell.

“It’s because of me, Lihid…”

Tears made my vision ripple.

“Because of me…”

As I muttered in a daze, Lihid soon embraced me and said:

“I don’t know what you saw, but it’s absolutely not your fault. You were only three years old then!”

Yes, I was very young.

And I too was a victim kidnapped by Duke Kablos.

However, if Vincent hadn’t opened the door after hearing my crying, Lihid’s family’s death wouldn’t have happened.

I cried for a while in Lihid’s arms.

After some time passed, when I finally stopped crying, Lihid said to me:

“It’s not your fault.”

Lihid repeated the same words until my ears were calloused.

“Okay.”

“I’m telling you it’s not your fault.”

“But you haven’t heard what I saw yet.”

“Still, it’s not your fault.”

“I got it…”

Maybe because the shock had subsided a bit now, I could think more realistically.

“Lihid, I’ll tell you what I saw now.”

I relayed all of Vincent’s memories to Lihid.

After I finished speaking, I looked at him carefully.

Lihid also looked back at me with his purple eyes.

“Lihid, that… I must have been sick then. That’s probably why I cried like that…”

At that moment, Lihid hugged me.

He stroked my head with his other hand and spoke in a strained voice:

“You fool, you’re a victim too! And at just three years old…”

“…”

That’s right. Young me was torn away from my family’s arms and kidnapped to the Kablos Duchy.

After I had served my purpose, I was sent to the orphanage and abused by Layola.

“Uu, uhuhu…”

My precious family members had lived for 15 years with nails driven into their hearts.

I even faced doubts about whether I was really Duke Rayes’s child, even now.

My fate had been severely twisted due to someone’s selfishness.

“Sniff, sniff…”

“This is the first time I’ve seen you cry like this… It makes my heart ache even more.”

Lihid comforted me, patting my back like a big brother.

“What on earth did that madman do with a mere three-year-old child…”

The reason Lihid’s family had to be attacked by assassins, and the reason I had to be kidnapped and sent to an orphanage.

“He transferred a part of my magic to Senia.”

That was also the reason Senia, who wasn’t a direct descendant of Rayes, could become a healing mage.

“Why on earth…”

Lihid spoke heatedly but then said as if something had occurred to him:

“Come to think of it, Duke Kablos’s daughter was so sick when she was young that it wouldn’t have been strange if she died. Could it be…”

“It’s probably what you’re thinking, Lihid.”

“So she used healing magic to recover her body on her own.”

I nodded.

“I’ve found the truth, but… you’re still denied legitimacy.”

That was true.

Until now, I had thought it was enough for only me to know about my legitimacy.

However, after learning the circumstances of how my fate diverged, that thinking changed.

Senia and I were constantly compared.

From our origins to our abilities.

Those malicious towards me brought up my origins first, and Senia called me a fake and said I was lowly.

But as it turned out, I was the reason Senia awakened as a healing mage.

The fake was none other than Senia.

I thought that before leaving for another country, I should at least set this fact straight.

“I saw the nanny who kidnapped me in Vincent’s memory.”

Vincent called the nanny Grenne.

He didn’t know that Grenne was Duke Rayes’s daughter’s nanny, and only thought she was Duke Kablos’s subordinate.

On the day the Duke’s daughter was kidnapped, Grenne was leaving the ducal mansion with a pale face.

Vincent asked her where she was going, and Grenne, who had been particularly close to him, only told him her whereabouts.

“I don’t know if she’s still there, but… she’ll be in Eaven’s red-light district.”

According to Vincent’s memory, who knew the internal affairs of the ducal family well, it was where Grenne had been before being taken in by the Duke.

“Even if we find the nanny, it can’t be perfect evidence that you’re the Duke’s real child.”

“That’s true…”

“For now, let’s try to find that woman, and when the ducal family members return, it’d be good to go to the temple.”

“The temple…?”

“It’s not well known, but the High Priest has the power to discern bloodlines. He should be able to clearly prove the relationship between you and the Duke.”

That was something I learned for the first time.

If the High Priest was a member of the ‘Sole Saintess Faction’, he might not help me, but there was nothing to lose by trying.

* * *

The red-light district at sunset was quiet as a mouse except for a few wanderers on the streets.

First, we came here to find the nanny.

It was when we were looking around the streets for the nanny who would have a noticeable appearance like Creya.

I felt a hand tugging at the hem of my clothes from behind.

“…Huh?”

When I turned around, it was a small child.

“Mister, please buy my flowers for the pretty lady.”

The child said, showing her flower basket to Lihid.

Lihid smiled slightly and bought flowers from the girl, basket and all.

“Th-Thank you so much…”

The girl bowed her head deeply, seemingly not expecting to sell so much.

Lihid said to such a girl:

“You know, we’re looking for someone…”

“I know everyone living around here. I greet them every day while selling flowers!”

“Really? Then… do you know a woman named Grenne? She has green hair.”

“Grenne? If it’s that person, she used to live in that house!”

The girl pointed her finger at a shabby house.

“She was my regular customer.”

“Ah, thank you.”

We were about to hurry towards the place we had finally discovered.

The girl’s voice stopped our footsteps.

“But she died two years ago. No one lives in that house now.”

“…I see.”

Although we hadn’t come with high expectations, it was inevitable to feel deflated.

“Grenne talked a lot with me and was my best friend. So she left me a letter before she died. She told me to give it to someone if they ever came looking for her…”

The girl rummaged through her clothes and took out a white letter.

“I don’t know if you’re the people Grenne meant, but this is the first time. Someone looking for Grenne. So I’ll give you this. I haven’t read it yet either.”

The girl handed me the letter and ran off to the other side of the street, saying it was getting late.

“…”

I opened the letter.

It was addressed to her daughter, Creya.

It explained the reason why she had disappeared without a word to her daughter.

Grenne confessed in the letter about kidnapping me, as if confessing her sin.

She said it was an inevitable choice for Creya, who was in Kablos’s grasp.

She ended the letter by saying that if she died, Creya would have to repay the debt to me and Duchess Rayes in her place.

“This is the end.”

Although I couldn’t hear a direct apology, seeing Grenne’s letter, which seemed to be plagued with guilt, made me feel as if I had received an apology.

That fact alone made me choke up.

Lihid, who was beside me, wrapped his arm around my trembling shoulders.

The setting sun cast long shadows at our feet.

* * *

The next day, I took another day off.

It was to go to the temple.

After yesterday’s events ended and Dad returned home, I asked him, and we were going to the temple today.

Drehan and Miller also followed me without knowing the reason.

For now, I used the excuse of the letter that had come for me last time.

One of the sacred families composing the temple, the Heilo Count family, had requested me to visit the temple.

At the time, I had refused, saying I was busy with Magic Tower work, but now I had a reason to go to the temple, even if it was just an excuse.

‘I hope this will be at least a small compensation for the wounds we’ve received all this time.’

I prayed earnestly in my heart.