🔊 TTS Settings
~Chapter 16~
Shariette knew the weaknesses of Iden, who worked in the same field and whom she had known for a long time back in Argen.
She deliberately poked at his nerves with things that might seem trivial to others.
“Ah, my mistake!”
Pretending it was an accident, she dropped a scrap of paper on his obsessively organized desk.
“Maybe your head is as empty as your hair is white?”
“Are you asking if my hair was always white?”
Every time she made a sarcastic remark, she replied with nonsense as if she hadn’t understood what he meant.
“Did you touch my desk?!”
“I don’t know, maybe the wind blew?”
She moved objects two or three inches from their usual spots.
“You crazy woman! Who dared to mess with something this important…!”
“You told me to clean, so while I was at it, I reorganized the reagent cabinet too.”
“Aaargh!”
She completely cleaned and rearranged equipment and reagents that had been organized to his standards.
“Berdette! You changed things again…! When did you touch this?!”
“You looked busy, so I organized it to make it easier to find.”
She pulled out all the books sorted by thickness and height and reorganized them by title.
“Don’t touch anything, please! Damn it, where did this crazy woman crawl in from?!”
…Considering Iden’s obsessive-compulsive tendencies, it was nothing less than an act designed to drive someone insane.
In fact, in the past ten days, Iden had been on the verge of losing his mind, facing this walking ball of stress.
Like the precise markings on a cylinder, his life had been exact and as delicate as glass — never encountering such a foreign element.
Even when he was at the Royal Academy, working at the Argen Marquisate, and now at the Rubellot Ducal House —
No one had ever provoked him like this!
Even Heron, the current duke’s physician, left the management of the dispensary entirely to him.
Shariette was like a stone thrown into a calm lake — no, like a rock shattering a glass window.
Now, even seeing that white head of hair walking toward him from afar made his anger boil.
“If this were Argen, they would never have let something like that wander around!”
Damn Rubellot!
Stupid, soft Rubellot!
In that respect, Matthias Argen, the young marquis he once served, was the best employer.
Strictly speaking, he was the employer’s son, but he was practically the acting supervisor.
‘There are many useless things in the world. If something gets in your way, you can throw it out. One excellent researcher is worth more than all of that.’
He was capable, trusted, and granted great authority.
Ability. Skill. Efficiency.
A world that was completely rational and logical.
Everything was perfect there.
‘Ah, do whatever you want with everything else, but don’t touch Blanche’s toys. My little sister really hates it when someone touches her things.’
Except for one thing.
Come to think of it, that apothecary Blanche kept as a toy was about the same age as Sharsha.
‘Was it Sharsha?’
She always got in the way of research, wasting her exceptional talent without using it.
Even the blessing Blanche desired so much…
Even the talent Iden — once called Franz — had longed for so much…
That woman, who had everything, wasted her life as nothing more than a lab rat.
He really hated that type of person.
God never gave such gifts to those who desperately wanted them, instead tossing them like scraps to fools who wouldn’t use them.
Still, no matter how much he disliked her, she wasn’t as bad as that crazy woman, Shariette.
“Anyway, Sharsha would have been thrown away and fed to the fish a long time ago. Tsk.”
‘Lord Matthias, here is the report for the last week.’
‘Good work. How is Sharsha?’
‘After the eleventh, her vital reactions slowed significantly. Since you ordered me to keep her alive, I’ve stopped for now.’
From the state he last checked before coming to Rubellot two years ago, there was no way she was still alive.
‘All her readings are negative, so I don’t think you’ll get the results you want. Without Latium’s blessing, she would have died at least ten times by now.’
‘No, I mean, how is her reaction?’
There wasn’t much to say. Unlike the others, that unpleasant woman never once screamed.
She was like an empty shell, a living corpse.
Matthias had seemed to expect a more human reaction.
‘Nothing special.’
‘Hm, she was always a bit dull… maybe she’s completely broken now. Blanche won’t like that.’
‘Still, since Blanche ordered it, I made sure there was no damage or permanent harm.’
‘Good work. I’ll handle the rest.’
Standing on the exact opposite of reason was Matthias’s younger sister, Blanche — the treasure of the Argen Marquisate.
Even Iden, who refused to deal with irrational people, never disobeyed her orders.
Her words were the law of the Marquisate.
The Marquis of Argen himself acted as if he would bring her the whole world if she asked.
Thanks to that, Sharsha, Blanche’s cherished toy, remained perfectly preserved despite being nothing more than a lab rat.
‘She threw away her own blessings.’
Tsk. Iden Evans — once Franz — clicked his tongue. Who told her to steal Blanche’s things? Such is the foolish end of hypocrisy.
The more he thought about it, the more he missed his previous workplace.
He had never doubted that he would return to his position once his job was done, but he hadn’t expected Argen to be reduced to ashes overnight.
Still, even if he didn’t like it, leaving at that time had allowed him to survive the catastrophe called Noxian Rubellot.
Even when all the spies planted here were exposed and executed, his different hiring time had kept him safe.
And he would survive in the future.
For a long time.
Preferably forever.
“To do that, I’d better get rid of her quickly.”
Even if she was unpleasant to look at, the fact remained that Shariette had succeeded in making a sleeping drug for the young duke.
It was unsettling that even after watching her make it, there was nothing special to it — but whether Noxian slept or not didn’t matter to him.
“No matter how she did it, the fewer variables, the better.”
Noxian Rubellot, who had been wandering around the kingdom as if possessed, had finally returned.
After two years of rotting in this pathetic, useless place, it was finally time for him to reap his reward.
Whatever the background or his intentions, Iden’s decision to get rid of her was exactly what Shariette had planned.
From the beginning, her goal was just one — to redirect his attacks toward herself.
The first priority was to stop his attacks on the duchess and Nixia.
‘The two people he can observe closely every day have become his targets.’
She didn’t know why he was controlling the dosage to delay the symptoms, but he was clearly waiting for the perfect moment.
‘Then he won’t welcome sudden variables.’
So Shariette decided to become that “variable” herself — to interrupt Iden’s plans and make herself his focus.
In the meantime, she would find a natural way to get the antidote into the mother and daughter, buying herself time.
While thinking about what method would seem natural, she found herself in front of an old-fashioned door.
Knock knock.
She knocked, then stretched her mouth into a wide, polite smile.
She was here to meet the most difficult person in this mansion.
Sitting across from her, imitating a reasonably polite expression —
The duchess, Marianne, with a face as bright as spring sunlight, pushed a three-tiered tray toward Shariette and smiled warmly.
“Miss Shariette, have a taste. Our pâtissier is from the royal kitchen, so he’s very skilled.”
From the change in address, it was clear she was very favorable toward the new physician who had made her son human again.
And that was exactly why Shariette found it hard to deal with this gentle, high-born lady.
The last noblewoman she had met was the Marchioness of Argen.
It’s not worth describing how the legitimate wife treated the illegitimate child who had stolen the blessing meant for her daughter.
“Don’t feel pressured, Shariette. She’s just this happy,” Nixia said with a gentle smile as she watched.
If Shariette could measure the warmth of a smile, she thought there would be a difference of about 15 degrees Celsius between the duchess and Nixia.
