I Have No Health - Chapter 11

He couldn’t hide his uncomfortable expression. Aforesaid, Caesar had terrible mysophobia.

‘Oh god.’

I felt sorry for myself first.

After experiencing it firsthand, I could feel how unpleasant it was to be unable to control what your body suffers from.

Mysophobia was, after all, a form of phobia.

Something had become his trauma in some way and got hardened.

Anyone with such severe mysophobia would never be normal.

‘What is a man like him so afraid of to the point where he still hasn’t gotten over it?’

I felt human compassion for him. Or, you could say, comradeship.

“Do you approve?”

He looked at me as he stood at a distance and caught his breath.

I was tormented between feeling shame and pity.

On the contrary, his sharp gaze, akin to a knife, raised my questions.

It was strange that he was willing to do this despite his display of such emotions.

“I’m fine, but I’d rather ask for your approval. Are you all right with it?”

“I’m not.”

“Then why……”

“Because it is necessary.”

He cut off my words and took off his gloves.

The tip of his bare hands revealed through the black gloves were quite red.

His fingertips were chapped, they were either scraped or washed too frequently.

‘How awful.’

Nineina’s face contorted on its own.

I felt as if I was poking through the most vulnerable flesh of a man I should not have seen.

I felt sorry for staring at his wounds, so I hurriedly turned my head.

‘He didn’t do this to Meia.’

In the original story, Caesar was the first to recognize Meia’s magical talent.

He was the one who advised Rubenio that it would be better to assign Meia a magic teacher.

The exact figure of Caesar’s abilities were not revealed in the original work, but at least as far as I know, no one surpasses him.

He used two types of spirits and swordsmanship, but his attitude toward magic was ambiguous.

It is not known whether he refused to teach Meia himself because he really didn’t know how to use magic, or whether he knew how to use magic yet chose not to.

‘When you see him directly teaching me about spirits, isn’t it the latter?’

I don’t know how much the promise meant to him, but seeing that he does this much to strengthen the self-defense of the person he’s assigned to protect, it seems that the weight is not light.

‘Is it okay for me to feel safe?’

I’ve concluded that the probability of losing my life due to an external threat was extremely low.

“Huh?”

I didn’t notice because I was too busy thinking, but a black pocket was right ahead of me.

It was the black pocket on his clothes.

I was surprised when he got so close.

Nineina’s back recoiled and sunk down the sofa.

“What a surprise.. You could’ve given me a heads-up at least….”

“Don’t just approach me like that.”

Caesar’s knees pressed against the sides of Nineina’s thighs. His weight caused the sofa to tilt slightly.

Nineina was trembling to keep her balance and almost fell over his forearm.

Caesar’s face distorted.

It was similar to the defensive instinct of a wounded beast to unconditionally wipe out the unknown being that approached.

‘You look scared.’

My embarrassed eyelids trembled.

She soon regained her composure and placed both hands tightly on her knees.

Reclining on the sofa became more comfortable.

“All right, I’ll stay quiet.”

His hands were still hovering over my face.

A large hand stretched out to cover my entire face, and his shadow, alike to a branch of a giant tree, drew closer.

I closed my eyes without any urging.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of the unfamiliar darkness.

However, the wounds left on his fingertips were engraved in her mind and Nineina could not open her eyes.

“Ha…”

I let out an agonising breath.

As if I was going to die of agony, the trembling of fear came and seemed to press onto my cheek.

“…..”

His gaze was persistent. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel it.

It shook violently, not leaving, with a force like it’s reaching all the way to the root.

I got a little scared. I didn’t say no though.

He must have figured out my distress and whispered.

“I have a hard time understanding you. Why are you still staying idle even when in fear?”

“I do not know. Perhaps it’s because I’m not afraid enough to avoid it?

Because there’s someone else much more afraid.

I swallowed my words and laughed a little.

“…….”

A tense silence ensued.

After quite a while, his fingers moved.

A man who wasn’t afraid of an approaching arrow of iron, found it difficult to move a single one of his hands.

It was as if someone was deliberately pulling him down. His shadow hovered very slowly over my eyes.

At that moment, I could feel the wind blowing and sweeping my hair back.

“…….!”

Afraid that my hair might touch his hand, he let out a small groan.

The warm breeze only pulled my hair back.

Naturally, I could feel my white forehead exposed between my tangled hair.

Just in time, It was the spot that Caesar was about to touch.

He reached out slowly again.

He took his sweet time, and I kept my eyes shut.

“You’re…….”

His breathing eased a little bit.

‘Cold!’

As his hand touched Nineina’s forehead, her lips tightened.

His hands were so cold that chills seeped throughout my body every time they brushed by. It was strong enough to make my shoulders tremble.

Nineina thought that she might even catch a cold due to his body temperature, which was a bit silly and unrealistic.

Caesar’s hand gestures, which were like a slashing wind, were getting faster. The green mana, which was fluctuating with his performance, finally permeated Nineina’s skin.

“It’s done.”

After finishing it off by compressing Nineina’s forehead with his index finger, he hurriedly fell from her side.

“Ugh!”

Not what Caesar intended, but it felt like an unpleasant slap on the forehead.

For a moment, I thought that this was a bit too much.

I opened my eyes wide.

“You……… Are you okay?”

Oddly enough, my words came out as a worry.

“…….”

In consideration of the fact that I see him catching his breath under a large oak tree with both knees bent.

His chest fluctuated up and down like a man who had just ran a marathon.

Caesar, who had parted his lips blankly, answered.

“No. I feel dizzy.”

“…Could you not say that so openly? You wound me.”

I joked about the painful truth.

I felt like I had a lousy lover who wouldn’t kiss me because I was disgusting.

Of course, he and I weren’t in that kind of relationship, but the feelings I got were the same.

A moment later, he straightened his back and murmured as he looked down at his trembling fingertips.

“My head feels so nauseous. It’s been so long…….”

I decided to ignore Caesar’s words.The more I listened, the more my heart broke.

‘He’s a sick man.That person’s heart is broken.’

I muttered in my mind and regained my composure.

“I’ll get going first.”

He walked away without looking back at me.

He seemed to be looking for the nearest place to wash up.

“Aren’t you going to wear your gloves?”

I asked, pointing to the gloves dumped on the floor.

“I think it might be infected.”

“Yeah, my heart is broken, too.”

I was able to respond to his cold disgust with a vain smile. Now that I’ve done it, it doesn’t matter.

It’s ridiculous at this point.

He looked at me for a moment as if he had something to say, then turned around and quickly left the place.

“Wow……. That was rude of me.”

And as expected, his expression did not stay the same.

In my mind, my evaluation of him went down.

‘Hmm?’

But it soon became subtle. Even though he hated physical contact so much, he endured all of that for me.

‘Isn’t this like repaying grace to an enemy? In a way, you were just trying to help me. You even asked for my permission.’

As Nineina sat blankly, contemplating, the butler appeared from the side where Caesar had disappeared.

“Master, wouldn’t it be better if we went in now?”

Unwittingly, I turned my head and looked in the direction of his disappearance.

“Did you hear me call for you?”

“Did you? I only came here because Count Adelman passed by and told me to approach you….”

His official position was Count, so Count Adelman must be Caesar.

Even after Rubenio became Duke, Caesar only called him ‘Rubenio’ without any honorific title, though that may not be all there is to it.

‘So he asked you?’

I thought it would make me feel a little more comfortable if I heard that it wasn’t, so I tried a trick, but ended up getting hurt.

Caesar probably sent someone in the midst of distress, worried about the tofu doll who would have been left alone.

Even if his actions were based solely on promises, as long as it was for me, I was grateful to him.

My evaluation of Caesar, which had dropped for a while, returned to square one.

“I really can’t understand him in person.”

“Yes? Master, what do you mean by that………?”

“Nothing. I was talking to myself.”

I waved my hand dismissively to the butler.

The butler stared at me for a moment and whispered earnestly.

“Then, would you like to go back now?

The butler’s eyes were red.

The literal meaning behind his trembling eyes is, ‘It’s not good to stay around too long, so please go back!’

But right now, I didn’t want to miss the sunlight that I had just brought upon myself.

While thinking of a way to change the subject, I unintentionally looked at the place where Meia was, still sitting on her knees.

Maybe it’s because Meia had been kneeling for a long time, but the grass beneath her was folded.

“What punishment should I give Mayer? I don’t know much about that, so I’d like to hear the butler’s opinion.”