‘You idiot.’
Could there be anything more pathetic than an adult seeking validation through an abused twelve-year-old child?
Enoch might only be seventeen, but the me occupying this body was a full adult.
And everything I was feeling right now belonged entirely to my own emotions, unrelated to the original Enoch.
I cautiously sat on the edge of the bed.
Caelus tossed slightly, but he didn’t wake up or furrow his brow.
So as not to disturb his sleep, I floated the ball of light a bit further away and patted his back.
‘At least sleep peacefully.’
While patting his back in a steady rhythm, I eventually drifted off to sleep as well.
“…Mother. Heuk, Mother…”
The thing that snapped my consciousness back from below the surface of sleep was a low sobbing.
Startled by the sound, I snapped my eyes open.
“Caelus?”
“Heuk… Mother…”
Tears were streaming down continuously from his closed eyes.
When I reflexively touched his face, Caelus rubbed his wet cheek against the inside of my palm.
“…Hurts.”
“…”
“It hurts… so much…”
‘It hurts?’
I lightly lifted the blanket covering Caelus’s body.
Doing so revealed his two small hands clutching his stomach tightly.
“Your Highness?”
I lifted Caelus’s upper body halfway up.
As I shook him gently, his closed eyes opened about a third of the way.
His lips parted as he muttered something, but the sound was too quiet to hear clearly.
“Your Highness, does it hurt?”
At my question, Caelus nodded with difficulty.
“Where does it hurt?”
Through his slightly parted lips, a squeezed-out voice leaked.
“Stomach…”
‘His stomach hurts? Why?’
The moment the question arose, realization struck the back of my head.
I tended to eat my food on the slightly spicier side.
And the curry had suited my taste perfectly.
‘Ah…’
Caelus was still so young.
Putting aside whether he liked the taste or not, feeding him spicy curry was bound to upset his stomach.
I.. simply hadn’t thought that far ahead.
I wasn’t used to taking care of anyone, let alone myself.
‘It must have been really spicy for him.’
Come to think of it, he did seem to drink quite a lot of water.
I also recalled him keeping his mouth tightly shut as if enduring something.
It was frustratingly pathetic that I couldn’t even remember those details clearly.
‘This is driving me crazy.’
What could he have been thinking?
Did he even realize it was weird for the food to be that spicy?
His tongue must have been stinging and painful, so how did he endure it?
Don’t tell me he has grown so accustomed to mistreatment that a pain like this is nothing to him.
“…Medicine?”
I needed to find medicine.
As I tried to get up, Caelus caught the edge of my sleeve, still groaning and unable to speak properly.
“Your Highness, I’m going to look for some medicine. I’ll be right back, so could you please wait just a little bit?”
Only then did the strength slowly drain from the hand gripping my sleeve.
After pulling the blanket right up to Caelus’s chin, I hurried out of the room.
Damn it, there is no medicine.
I ransacked every spot likely to hold daily necessities, but nothing resembling stomach medicine was anywhere to be seen.
All that was there were things like ointments used to heal wounds and bandages.
“This is a total mess.”
If his stomach hurts, he needs to take medicine to get better.
‘Medicine… surely there must be medicine, right? No, is it just not the era for it yet?’
Even if stomach medicine didn’t exist in this world yet, there should at least be potions.
The thought crossed my mind, prompting me to frantically check every single bottle containing liquid, but none of them appeared to be a potion.
‘There’s nothing.’
There truly was nothing.
“Haa…”
I could feel my forehead growing damp with a cold sweat.
When I brushed my bangs back, my palm came away slick.
Resting my hand against my forehead, I surveyed my surroundings once more.
The miracle of medicine suddenly catching my eye did not happen.
My vision was met only with the sight of a cluttered, chaotic room.
‘What should I do? Should I go out right now?’
If I went to the village, I would probably be able to procure a simple potion for an upset stomach.
The problem was… it was late at night.
Back in Korea, pharmacies didn’t stay open late into the night either, let alone in this world.
I harbored a faint hope that a quest might pop up to give me a hint, but even that was expecting too much.
‘To make him wait like this until morning, he seemed to be in too much pain.’
To the point of crying out for his deceased mother.
‘Seriously, I hate how stupid I am.’
Out of habit, I slapped my own cheek hard a couple of times.
My cheek quickly grew numb and stinging.
But I didn’t have time to wallow in self-loathing.
Shaking my head violently, I headed toward the kitchen area.
Maybe some warm soup would soothe his stomach.
I suddenly remembered seeing some soup powder among the ingredients earlier.
I bent down to pull the soup powder from the crate.
In that moment, my chest caught my reflection.
‘Wait a second.’
Come to think of it… there was the curse.
The curse the Grand Duke had carved into Enoch’s body while researching immortality.
Enoch had ultimately turned out to be a failure, but the curse remained exactly as it was, permanently altering Enoch’s physical form.
Turning his body into a bizarre vessel that would suffer the illnesses and pain of anyone who drank his blood.
At a glance, one might wonder how this could possibly be considered a curse.
However, the reason was simple: the stigma embedded in his chest—the curse originating from it—was continuously eating away at Enoch’s life force.
‘And despite devouring his life force, its healing capabilities weren’t even that outstanding.’
There was a limit to the pain and illnesses Enoch could take upon himself.
Furthermore, this ability wasn’t even the outcome the Grand Duke had desired.
He had hoped to use it to extract the life force of others to regenerate his own body.
Enoch’s condition was merely one of the countless errors produced during the experimental trials to achieve that.
‘There were plenty of test subjects who were superior and more useful than Enoch.’
Consequently, the Grand Duke decided to use Enoch for a more practical purpose.
It just so happened that he possessed a reasonably decent talent for magic.
Upon discovering this, the Grand Duke raised his blood-related illegitimate son to be an assassin to be used and discarded at convenience.
‘Thanks to that… it resulted in him becoming the prince’s kidnapper.’
Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing for Enoch, I had no way of knowing.
Regardless, a simple stomach ache shouldn’t be difficult to absorb.
It would hurt a bit, but it was better for me, someone older, to endure this pain rather than a young child.
I was about to head straight back to Caelus’s room when I paused.
My initial plan was to simply cut my finger and feed him the blood.
‘Is this really okay, though?’
