If I Can’t Save You, I’d Rather Die - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

‘Even though I’ve been reincarnated to a good family and cured of the terminal disease, I don’t know when I am going to die because of monsters…’

How difficult it must be for someone to be born in a house where you don’t have to work. My parents coming to my room and hugging me every day was not something that common either. At least, that was the case for my standard.

‘Hmm…’

I was certain that my favorite character died when he had fully killed those monsters. Was there a way for me to help him stop the monsters and prevent his death?

‘…If only he were alive in the first place, the Kingdom wouldn’t have collapsed.’

He was a prodigy knight who died in vain because of a poison he ate when he was a kid. If he was alive, the kingdom wouldn’t have fallen to that state. I wriggled my finger for a moment and wrote his name on the paper.

Schloetz Procyon.

In fact, it was the name that circled around in my head thousands of times when I was reincarnated in this world. Had I been born before he died? It was the name that I had thought hard about.

‘…Still, how can I get to him?’

I was lost in thought. Schloetz was the strongest man in the empire, but he was living a very hard life.

‘First of all, it was time for me to be in the slums.’

Originally, Schloetz was the eldest son of a decent heritage noble family. The problem was Schloetz’s father… While his wife was pregnant, that piece of trash fell for another woman. He tried ways to replace his pregnant wife with the woman he had an affair with, like…

“Your mother had an affair. You are not my child.”

He accused Schloetz’s mother of cheating.

The royal families of the empire, commonly referred to as ‘the pillar families,’ could demonstrate their own unique abilities inherited from generation to generation. However, Schloetz couldn’t use that ability until he reached five.

Using that as a pretense, his father threw Schloetz out.

Still, he couldn’t throw the boy away just like that because others’ eyes were looking at them, so he sent him to become a soldier in the dangerous red district—to a place where those who were pushed out of the family’s succession battle were driven away—a place where no one will care about.

Well, the truth was, he was poisoned.

That’s right. Schloetz’s crazy father was actually putting poison inside his baby food. This fact only came to light after Schloetz went through some incident and got a huge promotion to be the commander-in-chief from only being an abandoned child.

I let out a sigh.

The poison his father secretly fed was to suppress Schloetz ability. Although it will be diminished later over time, the problem was within his father’s mistress.

‘…They both are really the same type of person.’

When his father just sent Schloetz to the red district instead of killing him, she felt anxious and decided to secretly bribe the family caretaker to give him a small dose of poison. Regardless, those piled up little by little on his body and eventually led to his death after he saved the male lead from dying.

Schloetz looked up to the sky somberly. Monsters had crossed the borders, and a state of emergency was declared by the military.

His arm, that blocked a monster from eating the new kid, had already been broken. Well, that didn’t matter. Whenever he breathed, those spots in his chest caused horrendous pain as the poison that had been bothering him since he was a child had completely paralyzed his arm.

He was definitely going to die here.

It was not like he had any attachment to his life. But still, it would have been better if his life had been a little longer.

“Com…commander-in-chief…”

Schloetz sighed when he could hear a voice calling him mixed with tears. Even though he had saved him, that annoying guy didn’t listen to his orders to go back but instead circled around him.

“Go back and guard your post.”

“But…”

“Didn’t you come to the military because you wanted to live?”

“I… I—”

“You are too young to die.”

Schloetz said with a low sigh.

“Don’t die yet. You weren’t born to die.”

That last sentence might be the one he repeated to himself.

Schloetz’s last smile just before his death rammed into my head.

‘This bastard…!’

“You-Young Lady, why are you suddenly crying?”

The maid asked with a trembling voice.

“Do you feel any pain?”

“No… It’s because…the world… is absurd…”

And I was furious as hell….

Still, I couldn’t say that, so I talked in a roundabout way.

“I am… indignant…”

My words made the maids’ eyes open wide as they squealed and hurriedly hugged me.

“The Young Lady is already talking better than the Young Master.”

“Where did you learn such difficult words?”

“Aren’t you a genius?”

“….”

It felt awkward when the maids started smiling widely.

I always thought that I should’ve talked like a child, but the problem was sometimes all kinds of adult expressions kept appearing in my head, perhaps memories from my past lives.

“But still, please don’t cry, Young Lady.”

Still hugging me, the maid carefully wiped my cheek with a soft handkerchief.

“If the Young Lady cries, the lord and the madam will cry too.”

“Then…I won’t cry…”

“You’re very kind-hearted.”

I still couldn’t speak long sentences smoothly yet, and I could only speak slowly because my vocal cord had developed a bit late. However, I didn’t feel impatient nor anxious because I was getting better as time went by.

Perhaps when I turned fourteen, I would be good at speaking just like others.

‘Now, I could move my body quite freely.’

Since my body had improved quite a bit since four days ago, it was time to see Schloetz. Truth be told, even though I should have just laid in bed and rested, Schloetz’s misfortunes couldn’t wait.

‘Even now, I’m sure he’s still taking that poison, and he didn’t have anyone to talk to about his pain…’

It broke my heart every time I thought about it. I should go and see my precious favorite character right now.

I clenched both my hands tightly.

“It’s a noble.”

“A noble.”

I could hear the carriage rolling out of the window. I heard it very well since I purposefully opened the curtains and the windows.

When I glanced at the scenery outside, this gray and dark place seemed to indicate that it was the slum… the Red District, one of the dark zones located on the outskirts of the empire.

It was a place where not only the poor lived here but also a place where all illegal things happened because of poor security. Perhaps that was why those good-for-nothing thugs stood tall on the streets while those insignificant thugs faltered when they saw a decent carriage guarded by a seemingly fierce knight.

‘I was glad I could come.’

There was an orphanage sponsored by the Lefebvre in this red district.

‘I was really worried that I couldn’t come here…!’

To see Schloetz, I’d been racking my brains.

The first thing I did was slyly talk about the corruption in the orphanage during the tea time I usually did with my parents every day as if I heard about it just by chance. Since I was a sick and almost-dead child, those two who were very affectionate with me didn’t ignore me.

Thanks to that, soon, a team of investigators will be dispatched to the orphanage. The moment I heard it, I clung to Mother’s leg.

“Me! I…will go! I want… to go there—!”

I gave an excuse that since I used to be very sick and had been getting better little by little, I wanted to help them, too. Even though I was feeling fine when I was sick because I had nice parents, how awful would life be for individuals who did not have it?

Mother’s eyes turned red when I caught her off guard by clinging to her legs.

“How can our Vlandea be this kind?”

She also smiled while asking what she should do about me speaking more maturely than Enrico. Anyway, after she discussed it with father, I finally joined the investigation team. I ended up borrowing my collateral family’s young lady’s name.

“Please get off, Young Lady.”

The moment I got off the carriage with the footman’s help, an adequate orphanage caught my eye.

…Eternal Spring.

A grand name that didn’t suit an orphanage filled with corruption.

“Who…are you? Which family do you belong to… My Lady?”

It seemed that the head of the orphanage didn’t expect the noble carriage to stop in front of the orphanage as the head who rushed out looked at me with a very flustered face.

“If we look at this… it was for 100 people… Aren’t half of the orphan babies?”

“Th-that’s—”

“The amount of rice… is this much? Do babies… usually eat this much?”

“It’s not like that, the children ate a lot of food for breakfast…”

At those words, I stared at the Head, who was sweating profusely.

“You’re a liar.”

“….!”

He definitely understood what I was saying. It was clear he committed corruption and accounting fraud by faking and making a new ledger. However, I couldn’t just say that, so I tried as much as I could to talk like a child.

“My brother…once said to me. Account… fraud? Anyway… it was that.”

The inspector that stood behind me said.

“Are you talking about accounting fraud? Did the Young Master tell you that?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he also tell you that the head of the orphanage is doing accounting fraud?”

“Yeah.”

“Then, this will be easy to explain. The number of children needed to eat per meal was counted seven times more than it should.”

It was amusing for him to report the result to a child, but this place had a very strict caste system.

The inspectors who were sent from home did an outstanding job. If I could say, it was like looking at a grim reaper but with pen and paper? The orphanage soon turned disordered, and I could see the children looking at the inspectors who were inspecting the books with fear in their eyes.

Originally, although I came to see Schloetz, it didn’t feel good to see skinny and dirty children in person.

How upset they must have been because donations from Lefebvre’s family look like this…

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