Chapter 13

A knock echoed, and Diana looked back toward her bedroom door.

“Come in.”

The moment the door opened, a large bouquet of brilliant flowers leaped into view.

A gentle, soft fragrance wafted from the outstretched flowers.

“Oh…?”

“Well, it felt rather like we got the order of things entirely backward.”

The person who presented the bouquet, Alan, scratched his cheek bashfully with his other hand.

“Next time, let’s go have matching rings made, too.”

“Yes…!”

Accepting the bouquet, Diana smiled, and Alan’s fingers gently stroked her cheek.

“Lady Diana… no, Diana.”

Diana’s heartbeat gave a violent thud.

At that sweet voice, her body felt hot enough to melt.

It felt as though her heart might burst at any moment.

Once she placed the received bouquet on the table, the distance between the two grew even closer.

Before she knew it, Diana’s body was cradled in Alan’s strong arms.

Thud, thud… Whose heart was it that she could hear beating?

Blending into that pleasant, overlapping rhythm, Diana quietly closed her eyes.

Alan’s palm cupped Diana’s cheek—

And their lips met in a tender touch.

This second kiss thoroughly conveyed each other’s body temperature and the tactile sensation of their lips.

The moment their lips parted, Diana, her cheeks dyed with embarrassment, cast her gaze downward and buried her face in Alan’s chest.

Alan’s hand gently stroked Diana’s hair.

It was a gentle, sweet moment for two people whose hearts had finally met.

However, that peaceful time did not last long.

“Signs of a contagious epidemic… is that so?”

“Yes, it seems a few cases have been confirmed in the royal capital. It hasn’t spread widely yet, but… just to be safe, the knighthood is stepping up its precautions.”

At Alan’s words, which were likely meant as casual small talk, Diana’s heart was gripped as if by an eagle’s talons.

(That terrifying plague that caused Father’s death has finally appeared──!)

The memories of her past life still shook Diana’s soul.

If it were merely a dream, she would have forgotten it long ago and wouldn’t remember it with such vivid clarity.

Just hearing the words “epidemic” caused those raw, visceral memories to make Diana’s shoulders tremble.

In her past life, the epidemic had originated in the slums of the royal capital.

Dismissed as a disease spreading only among the impoverished, the royal palace’s response had been terribly sluggish.

All the rare users of healing magic were hoarded by the nobility, leaving virtually no healing mages or physicians among the common folk, and the sick were left completely to fend for themselves.

Naturally, the outbreak only continued to spread further.

Ultimately, the decision made by the royal palace was to seal off the slums—attempting to calm the situation by isolating the source of the outbreak.

Even after isolating the slums, the disease showed no signs of abating.

While the royal palace abandoned the common people, the one who rose to action was Wesley, the Duke of Gazard.

Taking command himself, the Duke investigated the fundamental root cause of the disease while simultaneously tending to the sick.

Thanks to those investigations, by the time they pinpointed the source of infection as rats nesting in the royal capital’s sewers, the Duke of Gazard himself had already been stricken with the fatal illness.

(Fearing that he might infect me, Cordelia, or anyone else in the estate, Father refused even to let us nurse him…)

She remembered the figure of her father on the verge of death, continuing to investigate the disease until the very end.

With time rewound to her academy graduation, she had pushed those unpleasant memories into a corner while spending happy days with her healthy father.

Yet now, she could no longer turn a blind eye to them.

“Lady Diana…?”

“Ah…”

Unaware of the circumstances, Alan gazed into Diana’s face with a look of concern.

Meeting that worried expression, Diana offered a faint, powerless smile.

“Forgive me, the story was simply so frightening that I couldn’t help it.”

“Indeed, when dealing with an illness, there is little we can do.”

A bitter expression floated across Alan’s face as well.

In her past life, the epidemic had broken out only after Alan had already passed away.

If Alan had been alive back then, would he have stopped the royal family’s decision to simply seal off the slums without dispatching physicians or healing mages?

Now, Alan was alive, and the Third Order he belonged to was stepping up its precautions.

(In my past life, I couldn’t even help Father. But things are different now──)

If he didn’t contract the fatal illness, the Duke of Gazard wouldn’t lose his life.

Could they prevent a full-scale outbreak of the deadly plague if they acted from now?

(I don’t know what I can do, but…)

She didn’t want to stand by and do nothing only to regret it later.

Alan watched with lingering concern as Diana brimmed with a quiet resolve.

“Hey now, Milady. Why are we heading into a place like the slums?”

“I told you, didn’t I? We’re going to check how far the epidemic has spread.”

The following day, Diana was walking through the backstreets of the royal capital accompanied by her guard, Ian.

Given their destination, she would have preferred to refuse an escort and visit alone, but her position as a daughter of a duke would not allow it.

This was different from when she was a little girl nearly snatched away by ruffians.

She no longer needed an escort—frustrating as that realization was for Diana, she couldn’t simply rob them of their livelihood.

If she had to have one, she might as well bring along someone she trusted: her former escort knight and the current vice-commander of the Gazard Knighthood, Ian.

“I’ve never heard of a ducal daughter visiting the slums, you know.”

“There’s always a first for everything.”

“That’s a pretty unglamorous first to have.”

Though they bantered back and forth lightly, Ian’s gaze swept the surroundings with unyielding vigilance.

“It’s as dreary a place as ever…”

At Ian’s murmur, Diana lifted her face.

The silver hair she had concealed beneath her hood fluttered loose.

“Speaking of which… didn’t Ian come from around these parts?”

“Well, roughly speaking, yeah.”

Though he now served as the vice-commander of a prestigious ducal knighthood, Ian had once roamed the backstreets of the royal capital as an orphan.

The target that the delinquent urchins of the slums had set their sights on was the deep pockets of a worldly-inexperienced aristocrat—the Duke of Gazard.

Yes, despite serving as vice-commander now, Ian possessed a past where he had been caught attempting to pick the Duke’s pocket as a common street thief.

The man who had rounded up those juvenile delinquents, lectured them, and inducted them into the knighthood to reform them was their current employer: Diana’s father, Duke Wesley Gazard.

Though Ian spoke roughly and treated the daughter of his master’s house with casual familiarity, his loyalty to the Gazard household ran deep.

No, that wasn’t unique to Ian alone.

Because Wesley was the kind of man who didn’t merely reform an orphan like Ian and teach him the trade of a knighthood, but went so far as to promote him to vice-commander, the knights adored him and swore absolute loyalty.

Wesley, too, must have found it utterly unforgivable that the slums where these men were born were sealed off without a single physician being dispatched.

“Most of the people I knew are probably gone anyway.”

Despite saying that, Ian narrowed his eyes with a touch of nostalgia.

To Diana, the scenery was merely a filthy, squalid streetscape, but to Ian, it was a place filled with memories.

That obvious truth struck her now, belatedly.

“Still…”

Diana, too, observed her surroundings from beneath the shadow of her hood.

She had pulled her hood down low to conceal her aristocratic features, but it also served to hide her expression.

(This is too wretched…)

Beneath her hood, Diana let out a quiet sigh.

Though she had walked the streets of the royal capital countless times, she had never once set foot in the slums.

Stagnant air.

Filthy, neglected streetscapes.

Along the edges of the alleys, children with soot-stained faces sat directly on the ground.

The walls of the buildings were stained with grime, some even defaced with crude graffiti.

There were no proper shops to speak of; instead, people laid woven rush mats directly on the road to display their wares.

If their goods gathered a bit of dirt, nobody seemed to care.

The overwhelming lack of hygiene cast a dark shadow over Diana’s face.

From various corners of the slums, the persistent sound of coughing echoed without pause.

Among them, some individuals could be seen collapsed and lying prostrate right on the roadside.

Even if someone collapsed, no one paid them any mind.

Tomorrow, they might be the ones lying there.

It was a place where human life held next to no weight at all.

Diana was coming to realize, with visceral clarity, just what the slums truly were.

“Ghk—!”

A man collapsed by the roadside let out a groan of agony.

As he jerked his upper body up in a choking fit, dark, bruised spots stood out vividly around his neck.

“Are you alright?!”

Ian stepped firmly in front of Diana as she moved to rush forward in a panic.

“Cut it out, Milady. If this really is the epidemic, you might catch it yourself, you know!”

“But—”

As Diana tried to continue, her body suddenly tilted to the side.

Her right arm was seized without warning, causing Diana to gasp and look back at the man standing behind her.