Chapter 42
“I pay my respects, Your Highness. I am—”
He was greeting the male leads, but paused when he saw me.
“So, this is the famous Lady Arios.”
His gaze was noticeably cold and reluctant.
At this point, only eight-year-old Yand would take the word “famous” at face value.
Amid the stiff silence that had settled over the cabin, Yand blinked in confusion, alternating his gaze between me and the duke. Zenta quietly whispered for him to stay still.
Shien, who had been standing next to me with apparent indifference, leaned on the chair back and whispered with his head lowered.
“Shall I kill him?”
Just stay still.
I gently pushed his cheek aside. There was a sound of indignation or sulking, but that wasn’t important.
Jaeger, who had been leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, took a step toward the duke.
“How did you get to the western shelter? The journey must not have been easy.”
His tone had that peculiar interrogative edge typical of his profession, yet the duke replied without showing offense.
“Well… that is…”
Summarizing Duke Lafran’s explanation:
When all three opened their eyes, they were in the Sacred Forest.
They had met by chance at the northern shelter, and even after seeing my note, lacked the courage to act immediately. They survived on water, weeds, and mushrooms, risking their lives to reach here.
However, listening to their story revealed something strange: all three had woken up in the Sacred Forest a week after the incident and had no memory prior to that.
“Is that even possible?”
Feeling my head spin, I looked around at them and got to my feet.
First, let’s follow the usual pattern.
“You’re probably wondering about the situation. Let me explain what we are facing. We are—”
“We’re doomed…”
I sat next to the main gate, casually watching Duke Lafran spout lines that could have come from a low-budget movie.
“A typical apocalypse type,” I thought.
Until now, he had been nervously pacing, repeatedly denying reality, and now he had entered the stage of despair.
“This side seems normal, though.”
Perhaps because I had mostly seen people either fighting zombies energetically or staying unbothered, this reaction felt unfamiliar.
Fortunately, the children’s reactions were normal.
“Hyung-ah…”
“It’s okay, Yand.”
Yand burst into tears, clinging to Zenta. The rabbit, who had been distracted and unable to focus during the conversation, squirmed in the child’s embrace.
I stood by the window, arms crossed, studying Zenta carefully.
“Yand, calm down. Your cheeks will get swollen if you keep crying.”
As Zenta wiped Yand’s tears and lifted his gaze, our eyes met directly.
Surprised, Zenta looked away, then after a moment, seemingly resolved, met my eyes again.
Anxiety, impatience, despair, fear.
His eyes were raw with negative emotions.
Yet beyond these overwhelming feelings, I noticed a curious expression and frowned.
Zenta was observing us.
“What is he looking for?”
Perhaps he had sensed I was hiding something.
Unlike Duke Lafran, the commoner boy Zenta would have honed his intuition through hardships.
In fact, I had kept quiet about the Warp Scroll.
Jaeger looked like he had much to say about it, but didn’t reveal anything that could embarrass me.
Danha also looked puzzled, though after breaking his moral rigidity, he seemed not to distinguish strictly between right and wrong. In other words, the idea that lying is inherently bad had disappeared.
I would explain later why I hid the Warp Scroll from the male leads. For now—
“First, we need to confirm something.”
I examined the clothing of the additional survivors, who were all in despair.
Clothes and hair covered in dirt and dust, a disheveled appearance.
I spoke after looking at the three of them.
“None of you were bitten by zombies, right?”
Flinch.
Duke Lafran shuddered for a moment.
When the male leads and I gave him a suspicious look, he jumped up, waving his hands.
“N-No, I wasn’t bitten! Rest assured.”
Suspicious.
“Hmm, then may I perform a physical examination?”
Duke Lafran bit his lips and looked up at me with displeasure.
“A physical examination? Are you trying to insult me, milady?”
Excuse me?
I wasn’t interested in a man in his mid-thirties either. “You misunderstood. It’s a safety check.”
“Then shouldn’t you also be checked, milady? Who knows if you’re infected.”
“I was going to do that anyway.”
It seemed only fair to confirm the infection status for the new survivors as well.
“If Duke Lafran wishes, I can go first—”
At that moment, my hands began unbuttoning a couple of shirt buttons without hesitation, only to be stopped by four pairs of hands grabbing me—on my hands, wrists, and underarms.
I lifted my head to see four men standing there.
Jaeger’s jaw muscles tensed as he glared at me.
“Don’t you have any curiosity? Button it up.”
On the far right, Danha let out a resigned sigh.
“Milady, there are only men here. Are you aware?”
Ah, so that was the issue.
“Then I’ll have Yand checked—”
As I reached for the table, the Crown Prince gripped my wrist firmly once more.
His eyes beneath the brow ridge were sharp.
“Milady, are you planning to strip here?”
I was flustered.
“I wasn’t planning to take everything off…”
Apparently, they had all misunderstood.
I was wearing a thin slip underneath and only intended to roll up my pants to show my legs.
Blinking in surprise, the Crown Prince let out a deep sigh.
“Now that I think about it, you didn’t recognize men as men in the forest or in the cave either.”
I squinted.
“What… Are you seriously giving advice to watch out for men because you recognize me as a woman?”
Frowning at the thought, the Crown Prince, looking offended, continued.
“Was I next to you and you still fell asleep?”
“…?”
“This face isn’t to your taste?”
“…?”
“How can you sleep without even glancing at this face?”
I was so speechless at his nonsense that I could only gape.
At that moment, Shien stepped past the male leads and carefully buttoned my shirt.
As his cold hand brushed over my chest, I instinctively shrank my shoulders.
Though I had known Shien for only a short while, I already understood: he was very angry.
After buttoning my shirt up to my neck, he slowly lifted his eyelids.
His violet eyes, half-covered by long lashes, were cloudy.
“Ria.”
For some reason, my heart raced.
The feeling was familiar—from being caught unprepared in class, or being scolded by parents as a child.
A sense of tension, a shiver-like sensation.
“Am I scared? No… This is more like anticipation…”
Then, a hand brushed my cheek and tucked my hair behind my ear, making me catch my breath.
Perhaps thinking I was frightened, Shien sighed, as if holding back his anger, and withdrew his hand.
“I want to keep the promise I made to you, Ria.”
“…”
“Will you let me keep my promise?”
His violet eyes curved with deliberate emphasis.
In other words:
‘Before anyone else sees my body and goes wild, don’t take off your clothes, right?’
I couldn’t even protest the terrifying threat and nodded dumbly.
“Good girl, our Ria.”
Shien finally smiled as usual and patted my head.
But…
‘Why do I feel a bit unsatisfied?’
I realized I found a handsome man scolding me… sexy.
I had suspected it before, but maybe my taste is seriously problematic.
“Hey, if you’re done, step aside.”
The Crown Prince, as if it were now his turn, pushed Shien’s shoulders back.
“Hey, milady. You are #@#@%—”
Ugh, nagging.
I tuned out the Crown Prince’s nonsense with my blank stare and leaned forward to look at the bewildered new survivors.
“Let’s agree to skip the physical examination.”
It’s an important procedure for survival, but with the male leads acting like this, it would be unfair to conduct it without them.
“They don’t show signs of zombie infection anyway.”
In the original story, no one was infected, but the empire later announced that if a human is infected, fever, vomiting, chills, and headache appear within half a day.
No one present showed clear symptoms yet. For now, we’d have to wait and see.
