Soon, loud footsteps echoed behind him, and the forest knights flocked over.
Even just hearing the distant roar had made their faces pale.
“Lord Adrian!”
“Oh! Lord Klen was here too? What in the world happened…”
The Knight Commander, who looked around and then turned his gaze to me, stopped his words in surprise.
“There was a strange monster, but it has already fled.”
Klen’s statement wasn’t a lie.
There was a strange, unexplainable monster, and it had disappeared.
The knights frowned, wanting a more detailed explanation, but quickly controlled their expressions.
“Y-You must return to the castle for treatment immediately. Your complexion is not good.”
“Right. Your face is a mess.”
Brother approached to support me.
But the hand that touched my waist suddenly grabbed me tightly and lifted me up with a grunt.
My vision was filled with dark, velvety brown, and my abdomen was compressed.
“I will take Adrian.”
“…”
Klen had thrown me over his shoulder.
The dark, soft fabric visible before my eyes was Klen’s clothes.
“It seems you overdid it today. Please rest well.”
“That’s right. You moved around more severely than usual.”
The words of the knight and Brother seemed similar, but they held completely different meanings.
It was fortunate that Brother’s quiet remark, ‘My body is a bit stiff today, too,’ didn’t reach the ears of the knights.
They would never dream that I had been busy destroying several monster hideouts with Brother.
“Then, I leave the rear to you.”
“Leave it to us!”
There was nothing to clean up, but I relayed the message anyway.
Klen, who had Brother walk ahead, swayed as if he tripped over a non-existent root.
I could hear the knights who were watching us gasp.
Even without raising my head, I felt like I could clearly see their eyes, shaking with anxiety.
And when I thought we were quite a distance away from them, I cautiously opened my mouth.
“Klen, I’m heavy, please put me down. Aren’t you tired too?”
“…It would be a lie to say I’m not heavy.”
His back trembled slightly, indicating he was smiling.
“But please know that your husband is not that frail.”
“…”
When he responded like this, I couldn’t persuade him.
I obediently relaxed my body.
But my stomach, pressed against his firm shoulder, was quite sore.
Would it have been better to say I was embarrassed rather than saying I was heavy and asking him to put me down?
Because of this posture, one of his hands was holding my waist area, and the other was wrapped around my thigh.
I suddenly became conscious of that sensation.
I shifted my gaze to the surrounding scenery and crammed other thoughts into my head.
Eventually, we reached the place where the horses were tied. In the end, I rode with Klen.
Brother obediently followed behind, leading the other horse.
When we arrived at the castle stables, Brother even told us to go ahead and left the tidying up to himself.
This was an exceptionally kind gesture coming from Brother Marcus, who had seen me suffer even worse injuries.
It felt more like him showing off that his stamina was superior than worrying about me.
‘Well, it doesn’t make sense for me to collapse from just that…’
However, Klen still walked with me over his shoulder, making us quite a spectacle for everyone around.
When we arrived at the room, chaos erupted.
Especially Linda and Vis, who were fidgeting and stamping their feet next to me in distress.
I didn’t lift my head, not wanting to get involved in the commotion, and they seemed to mistake that for fainting, making the atmosphere even heavier.
“Did you walk all the way like this?!”
[Everyone stared at us walking like this. Is there a problem?]
Aren asked, seemingly unaware of the issue.
In the eyes of an animal, carrying someone on your shoulder might be no different from carrying them on your back.
I didn’t particularly want to imagine the looks on everyone’s faces when they saw us.
“Adrian looked uncomfortable walking.”
“…Wouldn’t carrying him on your back have been better?”
“No, you should hold a patient more gently!”
The two seemed to be lecturing while also opening the door so Klen could easily enter.
“Hmm. I’ll be careful next time. And we’ll rest now, so please refuse all other visitors.”
“Understood.”
“Do you need anything else?”
“Not right now.”
Klen, who was stepping inside, suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, leaving the attendants behind.
He turned around and spoke quietly.
“Please keep it a secret from Adrian’s brother that he often collapses.”
“What? But…”
“If he finds out that Adrian collapsed so frequently here… he might try to take him back. The marriage can still be undone.”
[What?!]
“Ah!”
“…!”
Two sounds of surprise, one high and one low, harmonized.
And at the same time, my body flinched.
That was already a known fact.
Yet, hearing it confirmed again from his mouth made me gasp, as if the reality had suddenly been thrust into my face.
“A, understood. Please rest.”
As he walked inside, the door closed with a soft sound.
The voice I heard just before it shut, sounded unusually faint and drawn out, unlike her usual self.
Klen, who had walked quickly, carefully lowered me onto the bed and then collapsed beside me.
Turning his body toward me, he let out a large sigh.
Could it be that his stumble when he lifted me wasn’t intentional acting, but real?
I thought he was fine since he lifted me immediately.
‘If he was that tired, he should have just let me walk.’
The shock of taking the full force of that ferocious energy remained, but it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t walk.
Furthermore, the effect didn’t last long, and I was fine now.
“Are you alright? If I had known you were struggling this much, I would have carried you on my back instead.”
“…Even though your own complexion suggests you might collapse?”
“Still, I can easily lift someone like you.”
I held out my arm in front of his eyes, showing off how sturdy I was.
My arm, strengthened by sword training, was neither worryingly thin nor frail.
If I wanted to, I could easily lift him right now, sprawled on the bed as he was.
But he gazed at my arm, and a small smile escaped his lips.
“I am fine. I had that much stamina.”
Klen’s hand reached out, touched my forehead, and then slid down, tracing the contours of my face until it rested on my shoulder.
And gripping my shoulder, he pulled me toward him.
My body, which didn’t resist, immediately fell onto the soft bed and ended up nestled in his arms.
His cozy embrace was the perfect environment for a tired body to lean into and rest.
It would be nice to fall asleep like this, but there was a story only we could share now that we were alone.
“But what was that thing?”
“It seems it was a trap.”
“A trap? The one… that looked like a stain, that curse?”
[No! That was different from a curse.]
Aren, for some reason, landed on the head of our bed.
And it rubbed its body several times as if enjoying the soft sensation that was different from its nest.
“That was a monster summoning spell. It seems to be an application of what we saw at the hunting competition.”
“But the one back then summoned something weaker than the person who stepped on it…”
The creature we encountered this time was definitely not a weak monster, no matter how I looked at it.
No, it looked stronger than any monster I had ever seen in my life.
