Weren’t You the One Who Was Dying? Chapter 3

For a moment, I even forgot what I had been thinking and just watched him walk toward me.

“……”

By then, Ehit had come right up to me. His unkind, indifferent gaze was still fixed on me.

He opened his mouth in a stiff tone.

“Where should I go?”

A brief silence settled over the infirmary lobby.

What? Was he asking me?

“Dapflen, Exam Room 3 is open!”

“C-Colonel, please come this way. I’ll take a look at your injury!”

The surroundings suddenly grew noisy again.

Ehit walked past me and headed for Exam Room 3. While people rushed to guide him, I just stood where I had been.

Why had Ehit suddenly come to the infirmary? Could there be someone here connected to him?

No, thinking about it, Ehit was in the navy. He must often fight pirates or monsters, so maybe it was natural.

Just as Oliver, a senior healer, opened the exam room door wide and guided him inside, Ehit stopped. Then he turned back toward me and asked,

“Aren’t you coming?”

The infirmary fell silent again.

I glanced around. Everyone’s eyes in the infirmary were on me.

Only then did I realize what I was supposed to say.

“……Let’s go in.”

I gestured and moved toward the exam room. Ehit followed me inside.

There were plenty of healers in the infirmary. So why had he singled me out, as if by prior agreement?

The unexpected situation made me feel uneasy.

Inside the exam room, Ehit’s expression as he sat facing me wasn’t much different from when we first met at the Fallen estate. A cold, emotionless face formed by sharp eyes.

I briefly imagined that expression breaking into a smile. But since his base was so cold, all I could picture was a sneer or a mocking smile.

“What brings you here? What’s wrong?”

Ehit, who had his arms crossed, only stared at me without answering.

“Where are you hurt?”

They said he had a blunt personality, and sure enough, there was still no reply.

After I pressed him about three more times, he finally uncrossed his right arm and held it out.

‘Why would he want treatment from me, someone he has no connection with? Did Dellers recommend me?’

Dellers was said to be Ehit’s adjutant in the navy, so it was possible.

Whether it was because of Ehit’s humorless face or his heavy presence, the exam room was filled with a suffocating atmosphere.

“……There’s something I’m curious about.”

To break the silence, I spoke to Ehit again.

“Why did you choose me? We don’t even know each other.”

“I didn’t choose you.”

“Then who did?”

“My grandmother did.”

“……?”

Uh…… if a grandmother chose the healer, that did sound reliable……

“She sounds like a very kind grandmother.”

I gave what I thought was the most appropriate reply.

But had Ehit’s grandmother ever visited the infirmary? She was from the Cloyden family, after all.

‘Wait, if it’s Ehit’s grandmother, isn’t she the Duchess?’

Among the many titles held by the Cloyden family, the head who held the ducal title was Ehit’s grandmother.

Even if I’d been busy, I felt like I wouldn’t have forgotten treating a duchess.

‘Maybe she just heard good things about my skills and recommended me.’

If so, that was something to be thankful for, but……

“And we’re not complete strangers. You spoke to me with strange words at that banquet.”

“Ah, those strange words…….”

I had used a pretty awkward, pick-up-line-like line at the Fallen estate. But he remembered that?

“I’m curious. Just what method did you use to persuade my grandmother?”

“What?”

“The approach you used on me at that banquet was so typical that I never expected you to have that level of skill.”

“Skill? What are you talking about…….”

It sounded as if he thought I had gained something from him.

Ehit leaned in slightly, studying my expression, and replied with icy eyes.

“You already know, don’t you? That my grandmother chose you.”

It seemed he was referring to her recommending me as a healer.

“Oh, well, I’m grateful for that.”

“Wasn’t that your goal from the beginning when you approached me? At that banquet, too.”

“What? Not at all.”

“You even pretended to fall and threw yourself into my arms.”

“I really did fall.”

“And you’ll pretend you didn’t linger around me for days?”

Listening to him, it sounded like Ehit thought I had gone that far just to attract a wealthy, prestigious client. Being the personal healer of someone like him would certainly raise one’s standing in the infirmary.

But I had no intention of doing that at all.

‘In the original story, everyone in Sea Flower ended up a victim of that messed-up plot.’

If I got involved with the main characters, wouldn’t I likely end up the same? I felt like I needed to cut off any chance of being entangled with Ehit, even if it meant pretending not to know.

I answered in the calmest voice I could manage.

“Me?”

“You came around the naval base every day like that. You can’t deny it.”

“I was just visiting a friend.”

“And your eyes were always on me.”

I could feel his gaze. Unable to ignore that stinging look, I eventually lifted my head.

“You must have been trying to do something with me, disguising it as coincidence…….”

“What?”

Startled, I waved my hands quickly.

“No, absolutely not!”

What if I really ended up getting strangely tangled up with this man? There was no way I was becoming his personal healer, right?

Being the personal healer of a male lead who was always getting injured, cut, and was even terminally ill would clearly be a straight path to suffering.

“You’re denying it to the very end.”

“Yes, I am. I honestly have no idea what you’re trying to say, Colonel.”

“You don’t know.”

“I’m not an ambitious or greedy person, so I truly don’t understand what you mean.”

Flustered, my speech came out a bit awkward. Tired of waving my hands, I frowned and looked at Ehit.

“So where are you hurt? Please just tell me that.”

“I’m not hurt anywhere.”

“…….”

Ehit said that confidently and stood up from his seat.

He was backlit by the light coming through the exam room window, and the cold look in his eyes as he gazed at me was shadowed.

“If you’re going to insist it’s not the case, then I expect you to prove it with your actions, all the way to the end.”

For a moment, I saw a sharp glint flash through Ehit’s eyes.

Had I imagined it?

As I stood up to look more closely, Ehit turned away. Without even a greeting, he left the exam room.

 

 

 

****

 

 

 

After Ehit left, the infirmary, which had grown a bit quieter, quickly filled with talk about him.

“Dapflen, what did the colonel say to you?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“But the way he singled you out and took you with him earlier……”

At the words of the senior healer Oliver, everyone leaned in to listen. I waited for what he would say too, my expression a little uneasy.

“It looks like he has his eye on you as a personal healer, Dapflen.”

I let out a deep sigh at his words.

“Does it really seem that way?”

“It does.”

“I was actually worried about that too.”

“Worried? Isn’t that a great thing?”

“Well, anyway.”

He had shown me a sharp attitude, but Ehit’s personality was originally described as cold and harsh.

If someone like that had come all the way to the infirmary just to talk to me, it was hard not to think he had some purpose related to me.

“By the way, about what we were talking about earlier…….”

The topic about Ehit naturally returned to the unfinished talk about his fiancée. Right now, everyone thought of her as a lucky woman—but in the end, she was someone destined to shoulder every kind of misfortune.

‘I really shouldn’t get involved with Ehit at all…….’

Listening to the others talk, I sank deep into thought for a long while.

Yes, getting tangled up with the original story would only end like that. From now on, whether it was Ehit’s fiancée or anything else about him, I shouldn’t even be curious.

But it didn’t take long for me to find out who that unfortunate fiancée was.