The Guardian Knight of Affection-Starved Young Ladies

14 – Eliana (03)

015.

Nine years since she got sick. Seven years since she was confined to her room.

How much she hated that cursed disease that was eating away at her body.

There were many times she wished she wouldn’t wake up in the morning.

The hunger that could be solved with magic tools only supplied nutrients to her body, and it had been a long time since she tasted anything.

The pain near her heart kept her awake at night.

The hardest thing to endure was loneliness.

She remembered the contents of the letters she exchanged with those she had been close to in the past, even though none of them remained.

Complaints about various educations that came flying through the letters.

Eliana was just envious.

They expected too much from her.

Learn this here, learn that there.

She was just envious of their complaints about not having personal time in their lives.

Because she wanted such a life too.

She didn’t care if it was annoying and hard, she wanted to be expected, cared for, and loved by someone.

She wanted to live an ordinary life like others.

Every time she thought that, what caught her eye was the unchanged scenery of the garden and the room for years.

Eliana was suffocating from the familiar tightness.

At one time, when I heard the news that everyone around me had died due to a rampant disease, I thought I was going crazy.

The more it happened, the more I craved love.

I missed the faces of my father and mother,

I missed the conversations with my siblings.

Am I still Eliana of the Lakatus family?

Locked in this room, unable to be of any help.

Instead, I am nothing more than a family burden and a ticking time bomb that could explode at any moment.

Looking at the brooch my mother gave me a long time ago, and then turning my head to look out the window, was a small comfort.

Because I was the last line of Eliana Lakatus.

-Hello.

Change came one day.

A voice I had never heard before.

A figure I had never seen before.

At first, I thought it was Emma.

She, who had no mana at all, barely managed to stay by my side for a few minutes.

But even Emma couldn’t come near the desk next to the bed.

But what was it?

A voice heard right next to me.

Eliana knew well the state of her ears.

For the voice to be heard so loudly, there was no other way but to be right next to her.

One day, a boy who came to her approached her calmly.

His voice was indifferent, as if the cursed disease didn’t bother him at all.

The painful voices of those who tormented her were nowhere to be found.

It was both fear and curiosity.

The boy willingly became her companion.

He dismissed her fears of getting attached, saying it was okay to push him away.

The boy, who came as her guard, knocked on the door every day without fail.

The time spent together only increased.

The boy’s name was Kalen.

Kalen, who seemed to lack eloquence, tried to find common interests. That effort was quite amusing.

Then, before she knew it, she found herself reminiscing about old stories on the topic Kalen had brought up.

Were there really so many things that happened in the past?

Perhaps she had forgotten everything after falling ill.

Eliana didn’t realize that she had repeated the same stories several times.

Until the sun turned into the moon. Kalen silently listened by her side.

That was so reassuring.

When did the conversations, which Kalen always initiated, start being initiated by herself?

Why did she chatter so much about her extremely personal interests and curiosities, which Kalen knew nothing about?

When did her body start facing the window?

I wish Kalen would listen to me.

I wish Kalen wouldn’t leave my side.

I wish I could spend all day matching my gaze with Kalen’s.

– These thoughts lingered in her mind.

Gradually, the lingering thoughts grew in size.

Compared to the seven years trapped in the room,

The seven days spent with Kalen were hundreds, thousands of times more intense.

The love Eliana had so desperately wanted was being fulfilled in a different way.

She knew well that it was selfish.

She also knew well that Eliana of Lakatus shouldn’t be selfish.

She had missed so much,

But she didn’t want to miss the boy in front of her.

It was the moment Eliana let go of her obsession with Lakatus.

And at the same time, something entirely different began to fill her heart.

The wave that rushed in was impossible to stop,

The girl couldn’t control her emotions.

They say good things bring more good things.

Finally, the news came that they could go see the long-awaited Winter Island.

As she vaguely looked at Kalen, who delivered the news…

Well, she couldn’t quite understand her own feelings.

It was the Winter Island she had longed for so much.

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It wasn’t as joyful as I had thought.

At least it was a relief that Father hadn’t forgotten about me.

Winter Island or whatever.

In Eliana’s blurry vision, the figure of a boy filled her sight.

What did his face look like?

What was it that she felt when she touched around his left eye?

…Why was he so kind to her?

Questions piled up like a mountain.

The carriage started moving.

The fact that she couldn’t talk to Kallen was more frustrating than she had imagined.

Her body was always close to the coachman’s seat,

and at night, even when she brought Kallen in to meet her eyes, it was the same.

If she had known she couldn’t talk to Kallen all day, she might not have gone to Winter Island.

Eliana spent a whole day coming up with an answer to that dilemma.

Her body started feeling strange about two weeks later.

Her hands and feet were cold, and her eyes and ears were in worse condition.

What worried her most was the unpleasant fluttering she felt near her heart.

Eliana knew all too well what that was.

The worst memory that came from her incurable disease.

Just thinking about that day still made her breathless.

The first thing that came to her mind was Kallen.

What if Kallen ended up like that too?

In a moment of dizziness, Eliana tried to tell Kallen but soon gave up.

Eliana of Lakatus had to abandon her selfish desires.

But ‘I’, Eliana, dared to wish that Kallen would stay by her side, even in the face of that terrifying disease.

Eventually, the feared event occurred, and Eliana immediately regretted it.

She had recalled an old memory, but what happened was far greater than that.

Because of her selfish heart, Kallen was about to die.

But no voice came out.

The words that came out were not her true feelings but the screams of her body.

I had to quickly tell Kallen to run away, but I couldn’t.

‘I am foolishly causing harm until the end.’

Still, it was fortunate.

Because Kallen is a smart man.

If he notices something strange, he will run away on his own.

And the moment the pain significantly decreased,

was when I was embraced in Kallen’s arms.

*

It felt like my brain was being turned upside down from the pain, but I remember everything.

That Kallen didn’t run away, but held me in his arms.

That he whispered hope to me, who was uttering useless words.

That he stayed by my side, not caring about the scars on my body, or the blood and vomit I expelled.

In the midst of the terrible pain, that alone was clear.

The fact that Kallen didn’t abandon me and stayed by my side until the end.

If it’s Kallen, he must remember the words we shared.

Otherwise, there would be no reason to hold me.

The nanny, the head maid, the old butler, the internal and external managers, the knights, as well as my siblings and parents.

Everyone gave up.

And in the whole world, only one person.

Only Kallen stayed by my side.

This person stays by my side until the end.

He sacrifices this much for me.

Regret turned into hope, hope into earnestness, and earnestness into dependence.

Though I was hurting Kallen, Eliana wanted to be a little more selfish.

Wouldn’t it be okay to rely a bit more?

After all, Kallen is my guard.

Because he is smart, he will distance himself if he gets hurt.

Eliana was not much different in being smart.

She knew that such wounds couldn’t possibly not hurt, and that even without the wounds, her hemoptysis and vomiting alone were enough to keep him away.

As I said, Eliana decided to be selfish.

Kallen continued to whisper hope even in the midst of it all.

The only thing that echoed in her mind, which felt like it was about to burst, was that whisper.

The illness was certainly much more painful than before.

Yet now, she felt overwhelmingly relieved.

The belief that Kallen would stay by her side.

The reality that it hurt less when she was with Kallen.

The girl’s world was entirely filled with the boy.

How many days had passed like that?

Srrk-

Eliana quietly raised herself.

‘…Sleep?’

Sleep, she thought.

Fainting would have been more natural.

She had never fallen asleep while in such pain.

But it was different.

Her body felt refreshed, and her mind was clear.

“…It doesn’t hurt.”

Eliana quietly muttered as she touched her head.

The head that had hurt so much as if it would break was fine.

Before that incident repeated outside the mansion, even before she suffered from this cursed illness.

Her mind… was clear.

“…”

At the same time, what came into view was a clear and distinct scene.

Things that had always flickered like shadows were now so vivid.

The coachman’s seat, not the inside of the carriage.

The blanket covering her body.

The horses that seemed to be asleep and the wide, sprawling plains.

Eliana blankly raised her head and looked at the sky.

The sun was stretching.

Eliana was not foolish.

I knew well what that meant.

From the great wizard to the eccentric doctor in the mountains.

Nine years since I was afflicted with the cursed disease that the whole world had given up on.

Eliana finally regained her old world.

She could walk.

Upon waking up and realizing this, the first thing Eliana did was not to feel overwhelmed.

“Kallen…”

She set out to find Kallen, who was not in the carriage.

From her memory before falling asleep, Kallen seemed to have gone to wash the blankets.

It wasn’t difficult to find his location.

Because she could see it.

The smoke from the fire Kallen had lit was so vividly visible.

However, her legs, which hadn’t moved for so long, didn’t move as she wished.

It was definitely different from when Kallen had made her walk with magic.

Stumbling and somehow managing to walk, Eliana,

Crackle- Crackle-

Found Kallen sitting with his back to the campfire.

She wasn’t sure if it was magic, but blankets and Kallen’s clothes were hanging in the air.

The crackling sound of the campfire brought another joy.

Eliana cautiously approached Kallen.

Judging by his light breathing, he seemed to be asleep.

Kallen, who had never left her side for a moment, seemed to have taken care of the piled-up work after seeing that she was okay.

As if it was a ritual engraved beyond habit.

Eliana naturally moved in front of Kallen to match his eye level.

“…”

She held Kallen’s face and stared at him intently.

Thump, thump.

The disease that had tormented her heart and mind had disappeared without a trace.

Instead, her heart seemed to beat faster than when she was ill.

How is your head?

It felt far from being stuffy, more like a feeling of being dazed yet tightly swollen.

Carefully, so as not to wake him.

She touched his face, fumbling with her fingers.

Her eyes were fixed on Kallen, not moving an inch.

“…So, this is what you looked like.”

The face she had imagined from what her mother had told her when she was very young,

was incomparable to the face she liked so much now.

Eliana, with a faint blush and a smile, looked more beautiful than ever.