Chapter 7

In the original novel, the Red-Haired Knight suffered from a madness passed down through his lineage for generations. Its primary symptoms were excruciating headaches, violent impulses, and an insatiable urge for destruction. Though his family had summoned the most renowned physicians and administered every known remedy, none had yielded any significant results, just as it had been for his ancestors.

To suppress the madness, the Red-Haired Knight had mastered swordsmanship to become a Sword Master, actively seeking out and slaughtering monsters. He did this because the sight of spilling blood temporarily subdued the insanity clawing at his mind. However, as time passed, the pain and the impulses grew more frequent, and eventually, the therapeutic effect of slaughtering monsters began to wane.

Right as his eyes were on the verge of being entirely consumed by madness, the novel’s protagonist—who had previously suffered a crushing defeat at the knight’s hands—would return as a newly awakened Sword Master to challenge him to a rematch. It was during this encounter that the protagonist’s companion, a wandering miraculous physician, would recognize the knight’s condition and provide a cure. Overwhelmed with gratitude upon finally finding a remedy, the Red-Haired Knight would vow to treat the physician as his lifelong benefactor.

The Red-Haired Knight was, of course, Karon. As the book described, he possessed overwhelming prowess with a blade, suffered from chronic headaches caused by his affliction, and was bound to be gradually devoured by insanity. Left to his own devices, the protagonist’s party would eventually arrive to save him.

However, I fully intended to steal their credit. I might not possess the legendary skills of the novel’s miraculous physician, but I knew a great deal about herbalism. More importantly, I remembered the exact combination of herbs the physician had blended to create Karon’s cure.

Though, there are two minor problems…

First, gathering those herbs required traversing various dangerous locations, including the dense forest, and monsters roamed the wilderness of this world. Second, there was the matter of how the medicine had to be administered.

The original novel included a very specific rule regarding the Red-Haired Knight’s cure: when consuming the medicine, it required the bodily fluid of another person. The text had glossed over how exactly that issue was resolved, merely noting that Karon had taken his medicine diligently and was ultimately cured.

Did they mix blood into it? Wait, if it means any bodily fluid, saliva counts too. Then, surely it wouldn’t be administered like it was that day…?

Recalling the recent incident in the woods, my face flushed bright red in an instant.

“Let’s think about that later,” I muttered to myself.

There was no use racking my brain over the method of ingestion when I hadn’t even begun gathering the ingredients yet. Right now, what I needed to do was focus on the task at hand.

“What are you doing here? Looking for someone?”

I had deliberately waited far away from the training grounds to avoid being caught and lectured by the Knight Commander again. Yet, as if by some invisible radar, the knights who finished their drills kept heading straight in my direction to strike up a conversation. Some were a bit rude, while others were exceedingly polite.

The slovenly knight blocking my path belonged firmly to the rude category. He had cornered me without warning, trapping me against the wall of the storehouse. Karon, Randale, Seyron, and Hwylosen were all exceptionally tall and heavily built, but this particular knight was relatively small by comparison. Leaning in close, he pressed his nose near my hair—a blonde shade I myself hadn’t fully adjusted to yet—and took a deep sniff.

“Ah, you smell incredibly sweet,” he murmured.

Conversely, I was enduring a foul odor every time he opened his mouth. It was clear he held a romantic or physical interest in me, but this kind of attention was deeply unfamiliar and incredibly distressing. If someone ignored me, I could easily ignore them right back, but I had absolutely no desire to reciprocate a gesture like sniffing someone’s hair. I wasn’t the least bit curious about how this man’s scalp smelled.

“With a face like this, and your body is also…”

Huff. He exhaled a hot breath directly onto my face, his gaze dropping and locking below my neckline, as if attempting to peer straight through the fabric of my maid uniform.

By this point, I was seriously debating whether to drive my knee into his shin or deliver a swift kick right between his legs. Then, looking past the knight’s shoulder, I spotted Karon emerging from the training grounds in the distance.

“Oh? Hey!”

Shoving the man out of my way with unexpected force, I bolted toward Karon. He was a fast walker, so I had to move quickly if I didn’t want to lose him. The lingering knight called out after me from behind, but I ignored him entirely.

“Ka—!”

I started to call his name aloud, but I clamped my mouth shut as I remembered how furiously he had snapped at me for using his name without permission. Fortunately, Karon must have heard my approaching footsteps, because he turned his indifferent eyes toward me. It was a gaze that made me question, not for the first time, whether it was even humanly possible to grow close to him.

However, I possessed the knowledge to cure his madness, and I had also received a crash course from Ephel on how to win someone over. I intended to utilize both to the absolute fullest.

“What is it this time?” Karon asked, using one hand to push his red hair away from his forehead.

Even though he had taken my herbs the other day, his opening words were far from kind. Did that mean a single batch of remedies wasn’t enough to appease him? Then again, those herbs only offered temporary relief for his headaches; they weren’t a permanent cure for the madness, and their effects were short-lived at best. They were only useful in an emergency.

“Is your head feeling any better now?” I asked, making sure to use the softest, gentlest tone possible, just as Ephel had advised.

Yet, despite myself, my eyes kept drifting toward his lips. The memory of being pinned and teased while trying to feed him medicine a few days ago flashed through my mind. For some reason, the phantom sensation of that touch had lingered in my thoughts long after the event had passed.

“And what if it isn’t?”

Why does every single sentence out of his mouth have to be so incredibly confrontational? Feeling a bit intimidated, I tentatively held out a water skin I had prepared. He had just finished a grueling training session, so he was bound to be parched.

Instead of taking the offering, he simply stared down at the water skin with a heavy, piercing gaze.

“I thought you might be thirsty,” I explained softly. “I also mixed in a tiny bit of herbal powder that helps lift the mood. Don’t worry, there’s absolutely no bitter taste.”

It was the same remedy I used to prepare for my mother in my past life whenever her temper flared. After having her drink a cup, I would quietly read a book by her side, and the deep creases between her brows would gradually smooth over.

I had given some to the old lady earlier today as well. For the first time, she had actually offered me a genuine smile. Recalling the pleasant morning event caused a small, natural smile to spread across my own lips.

Karon stared intensely at my face, his eyes shifting with an unreadable emotion. As I held his gaze while waiting for a response, my eyes drifted down to his lips once again, forcing me to quickly look at the ground to hide my embarrassment.

Only after a long silence stretched between us did Karon finally speak. “Are you…”

“Are you in heat?”

For a second, I genuinely thought I had misheard him. I had anticipated either a simple thank you or a blunt I don’t need it, but the response that actually left his mouth belonged to an entirely different, shocking dimension.

“What did you say?” I gasped.

“Do you really love hanging around places crawling with men that much?”

Completely ignoring the water skin I was holding out, he continued to throw wild accusations at me. Ironically, the sole reason I was loitering around a place crawling with men was entirely because of him.

The gentle, accommodating tone Ephel had so strictly emphasized cracked instantly, and a disgruntled mutter slipped past my lips before I could stop it. “I only came here because of you, Karon.”

Realizing how futile it was to keep holding out the water skin, my arm finally dropped heavily to my side.

Karon’s brows knit tight. A beat too late, the realization struck me that I had carelessly used his name without permission yet again.

“Ah, I didn’t mean to disrespectfully call you by your name…” I stammered.

“…Can’t I just call you that?” I pressed, deciding to use the slipup as an opportunity to boldly ask for permission. “You can call me Maylin too, Karon. Please?”

If I wasn’t even allowed to say his name, how were we ever supposed to become close? Ephel and Hwylosen called each other by all sorts of pet names, even referring to each other as honey. We weren’t lovers, so using our given names should be perfectly sufficient.

Karon let out a dry, incredulous scoff, completely bypassing me as he strode away without another word.

“Where are you going?” I called out.

I hadn’t expected an actual answer, and true to form, he didn’t give one.

“Aren’t you thirsty?” I asked, scrambling to jog after him.

A few nearby knights stared blankly at the bizarre spectacle we were making. Fortunately, Knight Commander Randale was nowhere in sight.

* * *

“Head Housemaid, I shall take my leave now,” I said politely, returning the used cleaning supplies and water bucket back to their proper storage places.

The head housemaid turned a sharp, critical glare upon me to verify my work. “Did you thoroughly clean the old lady’s quarters?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And is the old lady resting?”

“Yes. She fell asleep just a moment ago.”

The elderly woman wasn’t particularly difficult to care for. My duties consisted of managing her meals, supporting her weight for short walks, washing her body, letting her look out the window, and reading aloud to her once she was settled in bed. She would usually drift off to sleep quite peacefully.

In fact, spending time in her quarters allowed me to shed much of my constant tension and worry, offering a rare pocket of tranquility. Ever since waking up in this entirely unfamiliar world, I had been fluxed into constant interaction with strangers, and a part of my mind still felt deeply estranged from it all.

“Very well. You may go.”

“Thank you!”

The very instant the permission left her mouth, I bounded out of the room. Behind me, the sharp, mocking whispers of the other maids immediately pinned into my back.

“Look at her rushing off. I bet she’s going to seduce those naive knights again.”

“I wonder who she’s desperately running to see today?”

Standing among the group, Ephel looked thoroughly uncomfortable with the gossip. I stopped mid-stride and sharply spun around on my heel. The maids, who had been openly badmouthing me directly within earshot, flinched violently at the sudden movement.

“I am going to meet the Red-Haired Knight,” I stated flatly.

Since they seemed so dying to know whom I was meeting, I saw no reason not to give them an exact answer.

Without wasting another breath on them, I headed straight toward Karon’s usual haunt. According to what Ephel had gleaned from her boyfriend, Karon was bound to be slacking off on top of the hill at this exact hour. It was the very same hill where we had first crossed paths.

As I approached the massive oak tree at the summit, I found Karon exactly as expected—sprawled out comfortably beneath the shade.

No matter how many times I beheld it, his physical appearance was striking enough to leave me entirely breathless. Was it truly possible for a human to be that beautiful simply because he was a character inside a novel? Letting out a soft sigh, I called out his name.

“Karon.”

I had no desire to be called a rat again, so I wanted to make my presence known beforehand, but his closed eyelids didn’t twitch in the slightest.

I paused, debating my options before taking a few tentative steps closer. I didn’t want to disrupt his rest, but if he was simply resting with his eyes closed rather than sleeping, I had things to discuss with him. Of course, if he was truly asleep, I had no intention of forcing him awake.

Suddenly, the sight of myself tiptoeing toward him felt painfully reminiscent of a mouse creeping through corners. A wave of embarrassment washed over me, but by then, I had already arrived right at his side.

Perhaps it was because he spent so much of his time slacking off in the shade, but Karon’s skin was noticeably fairer than that of the other knights. Then again, it might have just been a trait he was naturally blessed with.

Completely forgetting my original purpose for coming here, I slowly bent my knees and crouched down directly beside him.

Watching Karon while he was peacefully asleep made my heart pound far faster than I had anticipated. My chest was hammering with an intensity that eclipsed the excitement of finding a rare herb in the wild, making me wonder if I was the one who desperately required a medical sedative.

“Karon,” I whispered, but there was still no reaction.

He really was fast asleep. Finally setting my anxieties aside, I allowed myself to openly observe his features to my heart’s content.

Right at that moment, a single vibrant green leaf detached from a branch overhead, fluttering downward until it landed gently right on the center of Karon’s chest. I extended my hand to brush it away—only for Karon’s eyes to snap wide open, staring straight into mine.

Startled out of my wits, my hand slipped completely as I tried to pull back, causing my upper body to lose its balance entirely. Thud. Before I could even register what was happening, I found myself collapsed flat against Karon’s chest. His solid, heavily muscled torso was pinned directly beneath me.

“…The weather is quite warm today, isn’t it?” I stammered.

Quickly shifting my still-extended hand, I began frantically waving it back and forth like a makeshift fan, attempting to fan a cool breeze over his face.

Karon stared up at me, looking entirely incredulous at the display. “Are you insane?”