Please Leave The Sickly Villainess Alone

It was a waterfall as brilliantly sparkling as the stars studding the night sky.

It seemed a water fairy might emerge at any moment with a ‘pop’ sound.

While the waterfall powerfully gushed forth from up high, the cave entrance was situated below, making it easy to enter.

That was how the original Senia had readily discovered and taken shelter inside as well.

“What an incredible coincidence. That ‘Purification Crystal’ you mentioned looks exactly like this.”

Having entered the cave, we had to raise our voices over the crashing waterfall to hear each other.

Luka gazed at the azure crystal before us with an expression wondering how such an astounding coincidence could occur.

Even in the darkness, the crystal emanated a faint bluish glow.

I swiftly reached out and plucked the crystal embedded in the cave wall.

Though if there was one issue…

“It’s a bit too big to swallow…?”

The idea of trying to gulp down a crystal that size made me apprehensive I might choke to death.

Senia had been able to place her hand on the crystal as a healing mage to absorb its holy power, but that was only possible due to her abilities.

‘For Luka to absorb it, swallowing seems the only way…’

Humans unable to absorb it had to ingest the crystal, which would then dissolve within and infuse them with its holy energies.

Then Luka calmly spoke up from behind me.

“So you’re saying I have to eat this?”

Alarmed as he took the crystal from my hands, I said:

“W-Well, yes, but this isn’t exactly swallowable…”

Crunch-!

That sound was Luka smashing the crystal against a rock, instantly pulverizing it to dust with astonishing brute force.

He then gathered the powdery remains and unhesitatingly gulped them down.

“…Why are you so recklessly trusting if my words turned out to be lies?”

I was worried. What if his blind faith ended up backfiring on him later?

After neatly swallowing the crystal, Luka opened his mouth to tell me:

“I’ll do anything Ria says. Even if you told me to drink poison, I would.”

His gaze shone with infinite trust, momentarily taking my breath away.

Though the cave was dark, those ruby-like red eyes piercing into mine showed no signs of dimming.

For an instant, the eyes I had gazed into countless times at the orphanage felt somewhat unfamiliar.

Then Luka suddenly seemed dizzy, using the cave wall to steady himself as he shook his head vigorously.

Eventually, he ended up on one knee, so I rushed over in concern.

“Are you okay?!”

Was his memory resurfacing? Those vivid red irises wavered unsettlingly.

Perhaps the memories flooding back weren’t all pleasant ones.

If the unpleasant ones outnumbered the good…

I embraced him with both arms.

Though he had grown too large to fully fit in my embrace like before, I still held the child close.

Luka closed his eyes, seemingly revisiting a long recollection as he accepted my warmth.

After what might have been dozens of minutes, Luka finally reopened his eyes.

“Ria, I’m alright now.”

Hearing the steely tone laced into his voice tickling my ear, I faced him directly.

“Your memory… came back?”

He smiled and nodded at my words.

“Were you happy in the past?”

This time, he shook his head slightly. The hand entwined with mine trembled faintly, likely still adjusting to the influx of regained memories.

“Luka, do you know where you need to go now?”

“Yes. There may be no one to welcome my return, but there is certainly a place I must go back to.”

No welcoming party… Returning to such a place didn’t sound joyous at all.

As my head drooped heavily from the sudden weight, Luka lightly ruffled my hair with an understanding smile.

“The place I must return to is wherever Ria is. Even if we end up heading different ways for a time, always.”

After faltering wordlessly, I finally voiced the question I had to ask.

“Then tell me now. Who were you originally?”

I steeled myself firmly.

Luka smiled wryly before opening his mouth.

“Arzenluka Blake De Greffin. The Crown Prince who had been missing and kidnapped for the past two years. The one you told me about from the stories long ago, Ria.”

I had indeed mentioned the missing Crown Prince to Luka while explaining the imperial family, though no official portraits existed – the newspaper only described him as a black-haired boy in his teens with red eyes.

How would an ordinary person react in this situation?

“Wh-Wh-Whaaat?!”

Clapping a hand over my mouth, I plopped down on the spot in disbelief. But feeling that wasn’t quite enough, I blurted out again:

“Y-You’re the Crown Prince?!”

That seemed sufficiently dramatic.

* * *

After the commotion in the cave, we set off walking through the forest once more.

Had I been an ordinary person unaware of the novel’s story instead of a reincarnator, I might still be doubting Luka’s claim of being the Crown Prince.

So I repeatedly questioned whether it was truly real while feigning disbelief several times.

Smoke billowed from the orphanage chimneys visible through the trees.

It was only a matter of time before Miss Layola burst out barefoot with her hair undone in disarray to give chase.

Still, it wouldn’t be easy for even her to track us through the deep woods we had trekked through since before dawn.

We strolled along, inhaling the crisp morning air.

“So Luka was the Crown Prince.”

Though I had known, it still didn’t fully sink in that the boy I had regarded as a mere fellow orphan was actual royalty.

To me, he was simply an old soul who needed me to tightly hold his hand every night just to fall asleep due to insomnia.

At my words, Luka let out a soft chuckle and nodded.

“You know you’ll have to give this sister a huge gift later on, right?”

“Like a mere gift would be enough? If you want, maybe an entire country…”

“That’s enough.”

He always abruptly says weird things out of the blue sometimes.

Dawn broke, and as the sky gradually brightened, the starlight faded. Fortunately, we emerged from the forest onto a paved road following a railway line overgrown with weeds and nameless wildflowers, likely long unused.

I took Luka’s hand as we walked in balance along the railway tracks, just as I had once held my mother’s hand in my previous life.

Watching our feet striding forward, I asked Luka:

“Do you think they’ve realized it by now?”

“Probably. They would have cleaned up after us, so while they know we escaped, our route is likely unclear.”

Before leaving, we had concealed both the excavation site and our exit path under the clothing piles in anticipation of a pursuit.

I suddenly posed another question.

“You said you were kidnapped. Do you know by whom?”

“Well-trained knights wearing unadorned armor, their faces concealed. I couldn’t identify them based on the lack of emblems.”

Luka furrowed his brow, seeming to recall that time.

The youngest to ever manifest the sword aura ability. Yet even he would have struggled against multiple elite knights.

“I was bound and blindfolded before losing consciousness. When I awoke, I had lost my memories and was wandering this forest. That’s where Layola found me and brought me to the orphanage.”

“I see. But why this particular forest with the Troy Orphanage, I wonder? It may be related to the Duke Kablos’s household.”

I couldn’t directly inform him that Duke Kablos was behind his kidnapping, so I nudged the conversation that way instead.

That wasn’t information found even in Layola’s newspaper, so I had no choice.

“Duke Kablos, you say…”

Luka nodded, indicating he would look into confirming it.

In the original story, Luka learned Duke Kablos was behind his kidnapping a bit later.

Right, it was likely during the scene on the battlefield where, overwhelmed by guilt, Senia revealed everything she knew to him.

Witnessing Luka’s torment from the puppetting spell cast by his own father, she could no longer bear hiding the truth.

Despite her own innocence, Luka forgave Senia’s guilt-ridden anguish.

As the novel was written from Senia’s perspective, the true villain was Laveria rather than Duke Kablos.

By the ending, Duke Kablos merely became the cantankerous father-in-law constantly bickering with Luka.

‘Come to think of it, what Duke Kablos did to Luka was far worse than Laveria’s torment of Senia.’

Continuing our conversation, we passed through a small village and eventually reached a larger town.

The bustling streets filled with people other than just the orphans made me truly feel I had escaped that place.

I gasped in awe, eyes sparkling as I took in the lively thoroughfares lined with clothing boutiques and fruit stands.

Some people gave us odd looks – two children dressed in tatters, holding hands while barefoot.

Finally arriving in the prosperous capital, we began spotting rows of waiting carriages.

We climbed aboard one, and though the coachman initially waved us off with a look of ‘how do I get rid of these nuisances’ upon seeing our appearances, he obligingly opened the door after we stated our destination.

I settled onto the somewhat firm, likely straw-stuffed seat and said:

“Take us to Duke Rayes’s estate as requested, please. I’ll pay the fare upon arrival. My parents work there.”

“Yes, yes, little miss.”

Nodding agreeably, the friendly coachman closed the door and set the carriage in motion.

Our bodies lurched upwards as the horses started trotting, the impact making us sink back down.

Though not a luxurious carriage, the interior space was decently roomy for two children.

Feeling the numbness in my legs from all the walking, I propped them up on the seat.

Luka sat across from me, gazing out the window at the rapidly passing scenery.

Seeing him now, I understood what ‘ultimate main character visuals’ truly meant.

Despite his ragged attire, an effervescent glow still radiated from him – from his tousled soft brown locks swaying in the breeze, to those brilliant crimson eyes like a single droplet of inky tranquility rippling a scarlet lake, to his vibrant rosy lips. Not a single feature was anything less than exquisite.

His appearance matched the novel’s descriptions to an almost surreal degree.

If the female lead, Senia, was said to be beautiful enough to attract every man in the Empire, then next to Luka she would pale into a withered flower.

Could a nation truly be saved by looks rather than warfare?

It was an entirely reasonable doubt to have.

Noting the hints of worry marring such a priceless, national treasure-level face, I spoke up lightly:

“Luka, what’s wrong? You don’t look too good.”

“It’s just… I’ll be parting ways with Ria soon.”

“We’ll reunite shortly, won’t we?”

I lied to prevent those pretty eyes from drooping further, though the regained memories likely allowed Luka to roughly foresee his imminent fate upon returning to the Imperial Palace.

While the original plot had been disrupted, the facts remained unchanged: Luka would complete his imperial tutoring before taking to the battlefields, with the original female lead Senia joining as the field healing mage to support him.

I had no need to dwell on it deeply. Fate would inevitably follow the natural course of the world.

‘Isn’t that simply how such places operate?’

Turning my gaze outwards like Luka, I watched the swaying reed fields through the window until the passing wind stung my eyes, making me squint slightly.

Our carriage relentlessly pressed westward.