Chapter 9
Unlike his monotone voice, the meaning it contained was rather heavy.
*”I can’t bear to watch you cripple yourself with pointless antics right now. If you were to die from a careless move and your name manifested on me within that one year, I’d be done for as well, wouldn’t I?”*
Was that why he had said such things?
Only now did Lirete realize why he had gone to such lengths to take care of her.
“Let’s try an experiment first.”
Seated on the sofa, he gestured for her to come closer.
Lirete hesitated as if wary, but then recalled the shackle around her ankle and reluctantly stepped forward. Valderion stared incredulously at Lirete, who had stopped at a distance just wide enough for a person to pass through.
His foot stomped down on the chain connected to her shackle and dragged it toward himself. The woman, dry as kindling, couldn’t resist and was pulled along.
When she came to her senses, she was standing between his spread legs.
Valderion, leaning back against the sofa, looked up at her silently.
*’Rose quartz.’*
A jewel name that had often accompanied mentions of the now-extinct Margrave House of Blevit suddenly came to mind.
The origin was the pink-hued irises that the descendants of the family commonly possessed. Lirete’s eyes were like that as well. Presumably, that rarity—something rarely seen anywhere—had stimulated Dailun’s greed for anything rare.
Of course, if asked whether she had survived solely for that reason, the answer was no. Dailun had confessed the reason for saving her with his own mouth.
*’She was too pretty.’*
It was because her face was too beautiful to kill outright.
It was a simple, utterly ignorant answer, and thus, truly characteristic of Dailun.
Indeed, there was some truth to that statement.
Lirete recalled that even when the Margrave of Blevit was still intact, she had been renowned in many ways. Even before she had come of age and made her formal debut as a débutante, rumors of her extraordinary beauty had quietly spread among high society. It began with words from someone who had seen her in person, spreading like clouds through the mouths of many.
So much so that if her father had not plotted treason and she had maintained her current standing, it might have been Lirete, not Camille, who now held sway over high society.
“Let’s start by holding hands.”
“Why my hands?”
Lirete, already struggling just to stand this close to him, immediately showed a sharp reaction. She was like a kitten baring claws that posed no threat whatsoever.
“I need to see the extent of your improvement. It’s certain that touching the Name heals you, but if there’s a better method, wouldn’t it be better for both of us to find out?”
The memory of being roughly pressed down and having her back touched the other day resurfaced. The stimulation had been strong enough to make the fine downy hairs on her body shudder and stand on end. A truly strange sensation had swirled inside her, making her extremely tense. She didn’t want to experience that feeling again.
Nevertheless, she was also afraid, not knowing what this man might do.
After hesitating, Lirete recalled the scene earlier that day of him walking in the garden with his fiancée.
*’To this man, this isn’t an act tinged with emotion. Of course it isn’t…… In a way, it’s closer to treatment.’*
With that resolve, her cluttered mind cleared somewhat.
Like someone stepping into an unknown world, Lirete hesitantly uncurled her tightly balled fingers. He was holding out his palm, as if offering to escort her. Her fingertips brushed across it several times. It was a cautious action, like the lingering trace of hesitation.
Valderion gazed at her thin, slender fingers. Last night, when he had lightly touched her Name, he had clearly seen with his own eyes that some of the stiffness had eased.
But in just a few days, it had returned to its original state.
Seeing her fingers stuck together as if fused since birth, he felt a strange sense of frustration. Acting on a sudden impulse, Valderion moved his own fingers, which he had kept still until now, and firmly grasped her hand.
“……!”
Lirete flinched and tried to pull her hand back.
But Valderion was faster, gripping her hand tightly and interlacing their fingers.
His fingers brutally dug into each of the gaps between hers. The gaps between her still freely movable fingers locked together deeply like puzzle pieces, while into the gaps of those stiff and clumped together, he forced his fingers in as far as they could spread.
The man was relentless, as if determined to stamp his presence upon her.
Though it was only the touch of hands, the sensation of some nerve somewhere tightly contracting and then loosening fiber by fiber made Lirete blink in confusion.
When she hurriedly tried to pull her body back as if wanting to escape, Valderion yanked their interlaced hands toward himself. Her frail body, lacking any will to resist, tumbled toward him. Of course, Valderion, naturally broad and sturdy, caught her without even blinking.
“What in the……!”
Realizing her terribly twisted position on the sofa, Lirete struggled to pull her hand away. Valderion, unconcerned by her efforts, focused on moving his fingers as he pleased.
As if surrendering to his fierce concentration, the stiffly locked gaps between Lirete’s fingers began to loosen.
Valderion pushed his fingers into the spaces between hers relentlessly, as if exploiting that change. At his tenacious, never-say-die persistence, Lirete’s thick eyelids fluttered.
His fingers, having forced their way in by prying open the seams of what had been stuck together, rubbed against the intimate inner spaces as if chafing. After repeating this several times, the three fingers that had been like a single mass gradually spread apart, regaining their original shape.
Valderion perceived this visually, and before that, through touch.
“It’s effective, but noticeably slow.”
As if to be thorough, he fiddled with their already fully separated fingers, keeping them interlaced.
Even though it was essentially part of the treatment and the goal had already been achieved, his actions were persistent.
Lirete, her head spinning and unable to collect herself, finally pushed against his chest and rose from the sofa after a moment.
She had flailed about so frantically that her once unwrinkled dress was now a mess. Valderion, who had been beneath her, was much the same. Particularly, having already loosened his cravat, he looked even more disheveled.
“We’ve confirmed it’s effective, so that’s enough.”
Valderion slowly raised his upper body.
Even though he had straightened his posture, his clothes were so rumpled that he somehow seemed untidy. Contrasting with his usual neat, unruffled appearance, it was somewhat unfamiliar.
“You wouldn’t want to stay in that state forever either.”
Lirete quickly grasped the implications of his words.
She recalled the relentless way he had toyed with her during their earlier struggle. Those harsh, inconsiderate fingers. The thought that she would have to endure such treatment again made a wave of revulsion rise rapidly from within.
But thinking of the *shackle*, she couldn’t be honest.
Lirete pressed her lips tightly together and remained silent.
“Thirty minutes a day. That’s the maximum amount of time I can spare for you.”
“……”
“During the day, I have various schedules, so it might be difficult…… Nighttime would be better.”
Though she had said nothing, he spoke as he pleased, making it clear that he had never given her a choice in the first place.
“If you agree to comply obediently during that time, I’ll remove the shackle.”
*Just as she thought.*
Valderion, true to form, proposed the condition of removing the shackle in a base manner. No, since a condition already existed, it wasn’t a proposal.
It was an order.
As if already anticipating her helpless position of having to obey, Lirete stubbornly stared only at her own feet. The fact that even amidst this, the chain still grated on her vision, made her feel a pang of sorrow.
—
* * *
After that day, two changes occurred in Lirete’s bedroom.
The first was the disappearance of the chilling sound of the iron chain that had accompanied the winter. There was nothing inside the bedroom that stopped Lirete’s steps any longer.
The second was the hourglass placed at the center of the bedside table.
The volume of sand inside the hourglass, which was not small in size, was precisely calibrated to a thirty-minute cycle.
When flipped, the glittering golden sand fell through the narrow, thin gap, and fell again. Until thirty minutes had passed, there were no exceptions or variables.
The hourglass stood firm, like a solemn guardian of this time.
“Ngh……”
Lirete shrank her neck at the sensation of her palm being mischievously pressed.
It made her want not only to pull her hand away immediately but also to hide somewhere. Swallowing hard, Lirete straightened her back and tried to release the tension in her fingertips.
If one were to ask why she was struggling so much over merely pressing palms together, the problem lay in what came next.
Unlike Lirete, who was full of various discomforts, Valderion sat comfortably with one leg crossed and leisurely bent his fingers.
Their pressed palms twisted, and naturally, fingers intertwined like tangled thread.
The man still had a brazen quality about him.
Indeed, his expressionless features showed no tension anywhere, and his posture, an impeccable model of nobility, was so casual that it wouldn’t have been strange if he were holding a book or a glass of wine in his other hand.
“Relax your strength.”
He noted the stiffness, not from the Name’s symptoms but from her being too tense, and faintly furrowed his brow.
Lirete let out a long breath as if sighing and composed herself. Seizing that gap, she glanced to the side.
Toward the hourglass.
Contrary to her earnest wishes, the volume of sand that had fallen to the bottom of the glass vessel was pitifully small.
It seemed not even five minutes, let alone ten, had passed.
