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Chapter 15
A ladder was thrown down.
Angelina tied the sack securely and tossed it up onto the ship before quickly climbing the ladder herself. Then she urged Naomi, who was about to collapse onto the ground.
“Hurry. Hurry, Naomi.”
Natives burst out from the forest. Naomi, who had briefly sat down to catch her breath, scrambled back to her feet and grabbed the ladder.
Angelina seized Naomi’s hand and pulled her up. The moment Naomi tumbled onto the deck, Alexei cut the rope.
The ship drifted away from the shore.
The natives stopped where they were, only waving their spears in the air.
“What happened?”
“We ran into them in the forest. We went farther in because there wasn’t any food. We turned around and ran immediately, but…”
As Angelina explained, she stopped mid-sentence when she noticed Naomi sprawled on the floor.
She got bitten by a snake.
Naomi lay face-down on the deck, gasping for breath.
Poison symptoms?
Alarmed, Angelina grabbed Naomi’s leg.
Huh?
The area around the bite wasn’t swollen red at all. It looked no different from before.
“Ah… my leg.”
“Does the bite hurt?”
“I think it’s gone numb.”
“That’s because the blood circulation got cut off.”
Franz looked down at her with his arms crossed.
“She got bitten by a snake.”
“Yes, I can see that. The fang marks.”
Watching his calm smile, Angelina untied the cloth wrapped around Naomi’s leg. Only then did Naomi push herself upright with a relieved expression.
“Ahh, now I feel alive.”
She shook Angelina’s hand off her leg.
“That hurts! Be gentler!”
“It wasn’t even venomous!”
“I thought it was poisonous at the time! Something suddenly stung me, and when I looked down, there was this slippery thing there! Do you know how terrified I was?”
Naomi’s shameless complaint made Angelina jump to her feet. Beyond feeling dumbfounded, she was actually angry.
I practically ran myself to death.
The way she’d worried sick about poison spreading through Naomi’s body now felt ridiculous.
“Intentional or not, she definitely got you good.”
Franz said it without the slightest tact.
“Whatever. I was going to bring her aboard anyway.”
“Really?”
“Even the hunter couldn’t kill Snow White in the end.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The natives spotted her. I couldn’t just leave her there to die.”
Franz tilted his head slightly and carefully observed Angelina as she turned her attention back to Naomi’s wound.
I thought she was just a selfish noble lady. Guess not.
Then again, if she were, she wouldn’t climb trees or build houses herself.
“Even if it wasn’t venomous, shouldn’t the wound still be treated?”
Amused by the crown princess fussing over the leg of a girl who was practically her enemy, Franz crouched beside them.
“It didn’t bite very deeply. It’d be good to disinfect it once, but as you can see, we don’t exactly have the proper—”
“Would this work?”
Angelina pulled out a small flask from her waist. Franz opened the cap. When he brought it to his nose, he smelled alcohol.
“You packed liquor thinking it was water?”
“Actually…”
“Really?”
“I brought it for situations like this. It can help start fires too.”
“…Really?”
“Yes, really. I just grabbed whatever I saw without thinking. We were in such a hurry.”
As her gaze rolled away and dropped to the floor, Franz burst out laughing.
“Well, at least it’s useful now.”
“Fair enough. But I am curious why it was tucked into your waist.”
“…I couldn’t sleep last night, so I took a sip.”
“Oh, just one sip?”
“Maybe two…”
Franz shook the bottle, and Angelina trailed off as though she genuinely couldn’t remember. Alexei, who had been standing behind them, stepped closer.
“I didn’t notice.”
“Everyone else slept perfectly fine.”
The wheezing breaths on either side of her had made it impossible to fall asleep. Every time she turned right while tossing and turning, Naomi’s face would suddenly appear. Startled, she’d turn left, only to find Alexei’s face there instead.
After absentmindedly admiring his sculpted profile, she’d wonder what on earth she was doing and lie flat again, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling.
Then memories from her previous life surfaced one after another.
Memories of sleeping huddled together in a tiny room like this.
The faint smell of alcohol from her father after coming home late from work. The dry kiss pressed to her cheek. Her mother scolding him for it.
Back then she’d hated those moments, but now they had become memories she missed dearly, leaving her wide awake.
That was why she’d rummaged through the sack and taken out the alcohol.
“Come to think of it, I do remember hearing someone moving around.”
“Liar. You were snoring the entire time I was drinking.”
“I thought you said two sips.”
“…Three.”
Naomi, who had been silently watching the whole exchange, looked utterly incredulous.
Why are they clinging to my leg and chatting like this?
“Stop laughing and treat it already.”
“Alright, alright.”
Franz shrugged and tilted the bottle.
“Ahhh! That hurts!”
“See? You look perfectly fine.”
“You’re right.”
“It hurts, I said!”
As the two continued joking around, Naomi raised her voice even louder.
“If you want it to heal properly, there’s no choice. Leave it untreated and it’ll get infected. You’ll even end up with a scar.”
“So what if I do?”
“A scar isn’t some kind of medal. What is this? A young girl’s leg shouldn’t look like this.”
Naomi stared blankly at the crown princess examining her leg from every angle.
Why does she look like that? She actually seems genuinely concerned.
It’d be better if she just frowned at me like I was some disgusting bug.
Even those dazzlingly pale legs irritated her. And what irritated her more was the fact that she herself was wavering because of a noble girl’s cheap sympathy.
Naomi jerked her leg aside and muttered,
“What, are you showing off because your legs are so white?”
“…”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because it’s pathetic how you twist that into bragging. And pathetic that I saved someone like you.”
“…It’s not like I asked you to save me.”
“You didn’t say it out loud.”
I shouldn’t have followed her into the forest.
Naomi regretted not staying on the sandy shore and throwing a tantrum until they let her onto the wrecked ship instead. She clutched her snake-bitten ankle tightly.
Should I beg and cry?
The tiny sliver of hope disappeared the moment she saw the approaching woman.
This was the same woman who had knocked her unconscious and argued they should leave her behind afterward.
There’s no way she’d save me.
If I begged, she’d probably laugh in my face and leave.
And yet…
Naomi looked down at her left wrist.
I thought she’d abandon me, but she grabbed me instead.
The voice that encouraged her every time she faltered. The moment Angelina pulled her up without the slightest hesitation. They were still vivid in her mind.
Honestly, it moved her.
“W-why? Why are you looking at me with such a pitiful expression?”
Startled that her feelings had been exposed, Naomi hurriedly asked.
“That was the exact look on your face earlier. When someone looks at you like that, how could I not save you?”
“When did I ever? I did not!”
‘Please save me, please save me.’
“I said I didn’t!”
The warmth that had filled her chest vanished without a trace.
You only saved me so you could make fun of me later.
Angelina had been laughing loudly when Alexei suddenly knelt in front of her. Before she could ask anything, he grabbed her ankle and removed her shoe.
“W-what? Why?”
“Franz.”
Understanding the meaning behind the outstretched hand without explanation, Franz handed the liquor bottle tucked under his arm to the crown prince.
Angelina looked down at her feet, scraped and cut open, tiny beads of blood forming on the skin. In all the frantic running, bits of wood that had slipped into her shoes must have shredded her feet.
Alexei soaked a cloth with alcohol and wiped away the dirt from her foot. The scraped skin stung as though it had been burned.
“Ahh…”
When she winced in pain, he looked up at her with an irritated expression.
Why are you glaring at me like that?
It wasn’t my choice to run through a forest in wedding shoes made for walking across red carpets.
“Honestly…”
The sigh he muttered while lowering his head reached her ears.
“It’s not even my fault…”
When he raised his head again, Angelina flinched.
My foot is the one injured, so why are you annoyed?
Alexei dusted off the tattered wedding shoes before slipping them back onto her cleaned feet.
“We’ll have to buy you new shoes once we reach land.”
“It’s not like I’ll be walking much anymore.”
The moment they arrived at Latria Port, they’d surely rush straight to the imperial palace by carriage.
Marriage or not, she just wanted to throw everything away and go home.
But if she returned home looking like this, her rigid, old-fashioned older brother would definitely nag her to death about honor and dignity.
And then he’d draw a line by saying this was no longer her home.
How depressing.
Come to think of it, her brother and the crown prince felt oddly similar. Were all heirs to noble families like this?
“At least you still remembered to grab the sack.”
Franz nudged the sack tossed carelessly into one corner.
“I barely managed to pack anything. There was only weird stuff inside.”
“Seems that way. Considering the very strange thing you brought back.”
“Strange thing?”
Before the puzzled Angelina, a small, sly shadow suddenly popped out.
Gasp.
Why are you coming out of there?
