Chapter 16
Cassian stared at Yurisiel, who had gone pale. Without changing his expression, he reached out and pulled her hand downward.
The net covering her hair slipped off, and her soft red hair fell loosely around her shoulders.
Cassian didn’t stop there. He gently brushed her hair to one side.
His touch was slow and smooth. It felt strangely kind, but there was something forceful about it too.
The unexpected action made Yurisiel tremble uncontrollably.
“What… what are you doing?”
“From now on, go around like this. Stop hiding behind that ridiculous thing.”
With a sharp snap, he crushed the hairnet in his hand without a second thought.
Only when her red hair fell neatly over one shoulder did the young master seem satisfied. He quietly returned to his seat.
Then, as if nothing had happened, he picked up his pen and resumed sketching.
Yurisiel was left speechless. Once again, she was reminded that to him, she was nothing more than a doll who moved as he wished.
She wanted to tie her hair back up and hide it in the net, to cover it up completely.
But, just like always, Yurisiel couldn’t bring herself to move.
Cassian looked at the empty space where Yurisiel had been standing, then turned his gaze back to the sketch he had been drawing.
Just like she said, calling it a “sketch” was being generous.
It was nothing more than a messy collection of lines forming strange geometric shapes.
No one else would ever recognize her from it. Only she would know.
Cassian liked that about it.
Once she looked at the countless lines shaping the world, her face would twist in frustration.
Because it would remind her of this drawing.
And every time she remembered it, she would think of him.
That soft, clear face of hers would slowly distort more and more.
Even today, she clung to that fake medicine, unable to throw away her last bit of hope. Though she trembled in front of him, she still couldn’t say she wanted to leave.
A satisfied smile played on Cassian’s lips.
She had given him a delightful day. He felt he should repay her in his own way.
He picked up a pair of scissors and reached for the most beautiful flower among those the butler had arranged.
Snip. He trimmed the stem with quiet precision. His face remained expressionless.
On her way home, Yurisiel stopped by the herbal shop and asked old Mr. Tom to prepare the last batch of medicine.
She held it carefully as she made her way back, but her steps were heavy and tired.
Just as she stepped outside again, someone suddenly grabbed her arm.
She turned around and saw Hael.
“Yurisiel, something terrible happened!”
His voice was urgent, and worry filled his usually calm face.
A bad feeling rushed over Yurisiel like a cold wave.
“What is it?”
“Mr. Ritorn has been taken to the lord’s manor. Knights came to arrest him!”
The fact that knights had come meant this was no ordinary situation. For a noble to send knights after a commoner, it had to be something serious.
“You mean that doctor?” she asked, even though there was only one man in the village with that name. She needed to be sure.
To the villagers, he was the only person they could truly call a doctor.
He was the one who diagnosed her mother too.
“Yes,” Hael said, nodding.
Yurisiel forced herself to stay calm and looked Hael in the eye.
“Why? What did he do?”
“They’re saying it was fraud. All the diagnoses he gave out… they were lies.”
“Then… my mother’s medicine…”
Hael nodded again, his eyes filled with sympathy as he looked at Yurisiel’s face, which was about to break into tears.
The medicine was fake…?
Her thoughts became blurry. Her vision went dark, like she was about to faint.
She barely held herself together and started walking forward without direction.
She prayed desperately that someone—anyone—would tell her it wasn’t true.
But just as she feared, the people of Alphonse Village were already in chaos.
When she asked if it was true, her voice barely had any strength left.
The villagers, too distracted by the news, only gave her half-hearted answers and went back to their business.
Left standing alone, Yurisiel collapsed to the ground and let out a silent cry.
No… this can’t be true.
Deep down, she had already begun to suspect it.
She had noticed the medicine wasn’t helping.
Still, she had told herself it must at least be easing the pain.
Now she realized her mother had probably just pretended not to hurt—just to ease her daughter’s mind.
The memory of her mother telling her to return the expensive medicine flashed in her mind.
Even as her mother continued coughing up blood, Yurisiel had clung to the faintest hope that maybe, just maybe, a miracle would happen.
But now…
All of it was a lie.
Had she been wasting her mother’s final days, believing in something completely false?
The heartbreak of having her last hope crushed was unbearable.
Hael caught her just as she collapsed again.
“Don’t worry. There has to be another way.”
But Yurisiel couldn’t hear his voice anymore.
Her eyes, empty and lifeless, made her look even more fragile.
Finally, she spoke, her voice trembling and full of tears.
She remembered the doctor—the man who, despite the village’s discrimination, had once given her the highest wage she’d ever earned.
She had actually begun to suspect it a while ago.
She knew the medicine wasn’t working.
Still, she tried to believe that at least it helped ease the pain.
But now, thinking that even that was just her mother pretending not to hurt in order to ease her daughter’s burden… brought nothing but tears.
She remembered how her mother had looked at the medicine the first time and said it must be expensive, urging her to return it immediately.
Even as her mother kept coughing up blood, Yurisiel had held onto the faint hope that maybe, just maybe, a miracle could still happen.
But now…
It had all been a lie.
Had she really wasted all that time believing something so meaningless, using up her mother’s last days because she was tricked?
The heartbreak of having even her final hope crushed left her completely devastated.
As her legs gave out, Hael caught her before she fell.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find another way,” he said gently.
But his comforting words didn’t reach her.
To Yurisiel, it felt like everything had gone silent.
Her eyes, empty and lifeless, made her look even more fragile.
The words she finally spoke, barely escaping through her trembling lips, were filled with tears.
She suddenly remembered Mr. Ritorn, the man who had once paid her the highest day’s wage she had ever earned in a village where people her age were usually underpaid.
“Even Mr. Brown’s family…”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. Her eyes were red and swollen with grief.
Mr. Brown’s daughter had also been treated by that so-called doctor. Ritorn had claimed it was an unknown illness, and in the end, she died.
Then Ritorn told everyone that it might be contagious and warned them to be careful.
Because of that, people started to avoid Mr. Brown, who had just lost his daughter.
And that wasn’t the only case.
As the villagers began digging into Ritorn’s medical records and past patients, doubt turned into certainty.
Ritorn mostly treated people who had already been told by other doctors that their conditions were serious or impossible to cure.
He gave them hope. He told them he could save them.
But not one of those patients ever got better.
Not even her mother, Jane.
Even so, once someone became his patient, they didn’t leave.
Because Ritorn was the only one in Alphonse who didn’t call them terminal.
So people clung to him. He was their last hope.
Even if they had to ignore what was right in front of them.
Now the entire village was in shock. Alphonse had fallen into days of noise and confusion.
The local guards kept summoning villagers to give statements. The questioning continued without rest.
People spoke as victims, and each testimony brought them closer to a truth they might have been better off not knowing.
Ritorn, who had arrived in the village looking well-dressed and kind, who had quickly taken the role of Alphonse’s only real doctor, had now been exposed as a fraud.
Before long, rumors spread that the lord had issued an official exile order against him.
The villagers, still burning with anger, rushed to confront him, but by the time they arrived, he had already disappeared.
With no one left to blame, the fire of their anger quickly burned out.
People in Alphonse began to say it was a relief that they had at least uncovered the truth.
Soon, life in the village returned to normal.
Like always, many of them gathered at the pub early in the morning.
The pub near the docks was a place where people going out to sea often stopped for a quick meal.
As usual, they chatted about how good the fishing might be that day, what the weather was like, and how warm the water felt.
When those everyday topics came to an end, the group fell into silence.
As always, there were some who tried to fill that silence by gossiping about someone else.
“I wonder who reported Ritorn in the first place?”
“Does it really matter now? He’s already gone.”
“Still, someone should at least thank whoever it was. They got that fraud out of the village.”
“You’re right. Maybe it was one of his recent patients.”
“I don’t think anyone had been seeing him lately, though.”
“Could it have been Mr. Brown, the one who lost his daughter?”
The voices of the villagers, caught up in their guessing game, echoed throughout the pub.
In the kitchen, Yurisiel quietly listened to their chatter as she scrubbed the dishes clean like she always did.
But unlike their theories, the person who had reported Mr. Ritorn was probably someone with real power.
If the lord’s knights had swept in that quickly, it meant strong pressure had been applied from above.
From what she knew, the lord of Alphonse never got involved in minor affairs—unless there was something in it for him.
And there was only one person in this territory who could bend the lord’s will.
Her thoughts naturally turned to that young master.
Cassian de Blanchet.
That name always seemed to appear out of nowhere when she least expected it.
But still… why him?
Why would he go so far just to get rid of a doctor who had nothing to do with him?
Whenever she thought of the way he looked at the world—cold, distant, detached like a desert, he didn’t seem like someone who cared about others.
But then again, when she remembered how he kept her close, drawing strange sketches while watching her like a fascination.
Maybe, for someone like him, pushing someone like Ritorn out was just another game. Something to pass the time.
As she reflected on everything that had happened—the investigation, the villagers’ statements—questions she hadn’t even thought of before began to surface.
After finishing her work, she stepped outside without properly saying goodbye and started walking toward Cassian’s mansion, just like she always did.
Her head was filled with swirling thoughts.
In truth, the one who had suffered the most because of Ritorn wasn’t anyone else.
It was her.
She was the one who had spent each day in fear, living with a terminally ill mother.
The villagers only suffered minor problems. At worst, someone had taken the wrong medicine for a cold or a stomachache.
That’s why it had been harder for her to accept that Ritorn was a fraud.
Even when the investigation ended and the guards declared him a criminal, she couldn’t bring herself to believe it.
Because admitting the medicine was fake meant accepting that her mother couldn’t be saved.
As long as her mother was still alive, there was still a chance—no matter how small—that something could be done.
Maybe a real doctor could be found.
Hael had promised he would try. He said there might be a proper cure, and he was doing everything he could—calling in every connection he had in the capital.
But even Hael couldn’t hide the sadness in his eyes whenever he looked at her.
Which meant, he hadn’t found anything.
And if even Hael couldn’t, then what could she possibly do?
There was no hope.
Should she hate the person who destroyed her last shred of hope?
Or should she be grateful that someone had kept her from wasting even more time and effort?
In the end, Yurisiel didn’t know anymore.
At this point, it felt like it didn’t matter who reported Ritorn.
But that thought vanished the moment she opened the door and stepped inside.
