#089
I placed my hands on both sides of Carlisle’s face and looked down at him. The eye drops I had put in my eyes rolled down my cheeks and fell onto his face. There was no change at all on his face.
His breathing was slow and quiet. Somehow it felt like it was getting slower and slower. His hair was disheveled on his forehead and his long eyelashes were neat. I swept his hair back and caressed his cold cheek. I felt strange. To think that his body temperature, which had always burned hot enough to be scorching, could cool down this much.
I quietly lowered my face and kissed him. The sensation of skin pressing softly was still there, but it was too unfamiliar that it no longer felt hot. This was like, as if he had died.
I lifted my face and examined him again. His quietly closed eyes still showed not even the slightest tremor.
Was it right that just eye drops would work? Maybe the eye drops were just a primer and real tears needed to be mixed in. I thought it was an item that would show immediate effects when used, but what’s the point if it’s like this?
It seemed I had to cry by forcing myself to think sad thoughts.
Sad thoughts, sad thoughts.
What was sad again? Maybe because of the Tranquility Potion, nothing particularly came to mind. Was it sad when I first fell into this world? No, that was more lonely and scary rather than sad… it was an emotion closer to fear.
I stared down at Carlisle’s face lying quietly beneath me. I carefully traced his closed eyelids.
I suddenly thought I wanted him to open his eyes. I wanted him to look at me, even with those coldly cooled gray eyes. Why was I feeling this way? Looking at Carlisle’s pale face, there was some emotion welling up inside me.
Swept up in feelings I didn’t understand, I kissed him again. Once more. And once more again.
Plop.
‘Huh?’
Suddenly a tear fell onto Carlisle’s face. It wasn’t the eye drops. Real tears were welling up before I knew it. I was flustered.
“Sniff.”
My chest felt tight. No, should I say it was being torn apart?
The eye drops weren’t physically stimulating my tear ducts. They were really touching my emotions. My emotions that I didn’t even know existed.
I clutched my chest. I couldn’t bear the tightness.
“Ugh… uggh… huh…”
Sobs escaped and I covered my mouth. In addition to the bewilderment of not knowing why I was acting this way, I couldn’t do anything about the waves of emotion crashing over my entire body despite the Tranquility Potion. Had Celia’s or perhaps Licht’s emotions transferred to me? It was hard to tell what kind of emotions they were. I felt sad, sorrowful, and afraid.
Afraid? Of what exactly?
“Open your eyes. Wake up. Why are you doing this to me…”
Without understanding myself, I collapsed on top of Carlisle and cried. Like being swept away by a tsunami, I floundered helplessly against the emotions that engulfed me. Until a large hand caressed the back of my head and a roughly sleepy voice called my name.
“Raon.”
I quickly raised my head and examined Carlisle’s face. Before I knew it, he had opened his eyes and was looking at me. A faint warmth had appeared in his ash-gray eyes that could easily look cold. The unfamiliar blue tint had disappeared without a trace.
“Why are you crying?”
He cupped my cheek with his hand and traced around my eyes with his thumb. That surprised look and touch were uncharacteristically tender. An inexplicable longing surged up. Far from stopping, my tears gushed out even more.
I embraced Carlisle. I couldn’t bear it without embracing him. His muscles seemed to tense slightly as if startled by my sudden action, but I didn’t care. I felt indescribable relief as the coldness left his large, cold body and warmth finally began to slowly rise. To properly feel that warmth, I hugged him even tighter. At the same time, I burst into tears again like a child.
“Huuuuuung…”
I knew I must look foolish, and I had a premonition that this moment would surely become mockery material for a while, but right now I couldn’t care about anything except the overwhelming emotions.
“Raon…”
His hand hesitantly stroked my back. I was grateful for that tenderness and warmth. I rubbed my cheek against his other hand touching my face.
“It’s because of the medicine.”
I made excuses. Even while making excuses, as if that excuse was some kind of indulgence, I burrowed into his embrace like a child and cried even more freely and sorrowfully.
“It’s because of the medicine. Huu, ung, Licht… the mansion owner gave me strange medicine, huuuung…”
“I understand.”
Carlisle patted my back.
“I understand, so just cry as much as you want to.”
At those words, tears poured out as if all the moisture in my body would drain through my eyes. It wasn’t just because of the medicine – maybe I wanted to use the medicine as an excuse and take this opportunity to let out all the sorrow and fear I had accumulated since entering this world, I thought later.
As my crying subsided and I began to regain my senses, I was now tormented by the embarrassment of how to get through this predicament more than anything else. For some reason I didn’t know, I was sitting on Carlisle’s thigh with my arms around his neck, and Carlisle was holding my face and constantly kissing my eyes, cheeks, and nose. As if to comfort me while I was crying.
I could say I was swept up in strange emotions because of the medicine, but I couldn’t understand why he was acting this way. Had this guy also eaten the apple and his mind not yet returned to normal?
I should push Carlisle away and check if his condition was normal first, but even though it was because of the medicine’s effects, after clinging like a child and crying loudly, embarrassment swept through me like a storm and I absolutely couldn’t open my closed eyes. It wasn’t just because I was embarrassed, but also because my eyes were swollen from crying and my entire face including my lips was puffed up like steamed buns from Carlisle’s excessive kisses.
It was Freya who naturally created an excuse for me to get away from such a situation.
“Captain! Raon! Where are you?”
Having entered the mansion after sunrise, she was running around looking for us. Startled by that sound, I reflexively pushed Carlisle away and jumped down from the bed. My weakened legs staggered and I almost fell, but Carlisle, who had followed behind me, caught me.
“What, you were both here? Why didn’t you answer? The sun has already… Raon?”
Freya came in, found us, and was urging us when she saw my face swollen with tears and made a puzzled expression.
“What’s wrong with your face?”
She looked back and forth between me and Carlisle. Come to think of it, the atmosphere was a bit strange. I had the face of someone who had just cried hard, and Carlisle was holding my arm with the bed right behind us. The sheets and pillows were messily disheveled.
“Ah, Freya, well, this is because there were circumstances…”
I tried to make some excuse but was flustered and didn’t know what to start with, so I stammered. Carlisle pulled me to his side.
“We were briefly caught in a hypnosis trap. It’s all over so there’s nothing to worry about. Are all the other traps disabled?”
It was a blunt tone as if the gentle atmosphere from just before was a lie. When I sneakily gauged his mood, I could see some dissatisfaction in his expression. Just until a moment ago he had been uncharacteristically tender, but suddenly I couldn’t tell what he was dissatisfied with. Maybe he had just returned to his original self and I was mistaken.
Anyway, Freya withdrew all interest with Carlisle’s single remark.
“The mansion and surrounding area are all open. Free farming possible for 3 hours, no, 2 hours and 55 minutes. Since the space is wide, we’ll have to split up and move, right?”
Since it was an awkward situation where I had burst into tears without context, it was actually fortunate for me that I could scatter and be alone for a while.
When we divided up the areas each would be responsible for and received large-capacity expedition team shared inventory before scattering, I briefly called Carlisle aside to tell him that the hidden quest had been resolved simultaneously and I had also recovered the Fragment of the Sacred Tree. Carlisle was lost in thought for a moment but wasn’t particularly surprised or flustered. Maybe he was surprised but it didn’t show on his face.
“…See you later then.”
When I finished my business, I had nothing more to say so I awkwardly waved and tried to leave. That’s when I briefly made eye contact with Carlisle.
“……”
“…What, why?”
I asked because his staring gaze was puzzling, but Carlisle still just looked at me silently without saying anything. Feeling awkward, I tried to avoid his gaze and turn away when a large hand approached and simply covered my face, sweeping it down. My eyelashes, nose, and lips were pressed and swept by his warm, firm palm. He didn’t really do anything else. He just rubbed my face with his hand like that and then withdrew. With a slightly bewildered feeling, I watched his broad back moving away silently.
“What was that…”
I muttered while touching the face his hand had touched. The trace of his unusually high body temperature remained intact. I felt like heat had transferred over and my face was getting hot too.
Since it was a frozen zone and just a mansion where ghosts had lived, I didn’t think there would be much. But there were surprisingly many rare minerals including the Lightmite that Seiz had wanted. Especially in the greenhouse located inside the mansion, there were more various types of plants than I thought.
Among them, what particularly caught my attention was the apple tree in the middle of the greenhouse. Delicious-looking fruit that had ripened bright red and was glossy hung in clusters.
“……”
It was the apple Carlisle had tried to feed me. It looked ordinarily delicious on the outside, but perhaps because of the atmosphere in the bedroom, I couldn’t think of it as an ordinary fruit. There was a sign next to the tree that said ‘Ice Apple.’ If it were ordinary fruit, I would stock up on it and eat it occasionally to replenish stamina, but this one had too many suspicious aspects for that. It might really be a poisoned apple.
‘I should ask Eira to check the components and effects.’
I gathered up everything that looked decent, including the Desert Rose that had given me trouble. I didn’t forget to gather seeds so I could plant them on my farm if needed.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
