CHAPTER 25…………………………….
Fragmented pieces of memory surfaced, then quickly faded.
Memories from my previous life.
And even the memories after I transmigrated.
All sorts of things were mixed together, leaving me dizzy.
‘Am I dead?’
Is this what the unconscious state after death feels like?
Since I died, maybe Mary Ann returned to her original body.
“Ugh…”
Suddenly, a sharp pain stabbed through my abdomen.
As I exhaled with a gasp, the pain spread, wrapping my whole body.
“Miss… Ann.”
A voice echoed faintly in my ears.
I lifted my eyelids, which were heavy as lead, and light poured in, forcing me to close them again.
“She’s awake! She woke up!”
Hearing the excited voice, I opened my eyes once more.
And I finally saw it—
Not the world of the dead, but reality.
No—the world of the original novel.
“Ugh… where am I…?”
“We’re at a hotel, miss. Are you conscious?”
“Agh… how long… was I asleep?”
“You slept for two whole days.”
My maid, Britta, let out a worried sigh.
Then a doctor who looked fairly elderly rushed in to examine me.
I had no strength, so I answered his questions with just yes or no.
He told me not to move too much, breathed a sigh of relief, and left.
Britta then explained in detail what had happened two days ago.
“I slept for two days?”
“We were so scared because you wouldn’t wake up.”
Though it was something I had gone through, it felt like someone else’s memory as I forced myself to recall it.
The woman with the choker.
Shevert’s distorted expression.
The burning pain in my stomach.
“What happened to the assassin?”
“She killed herself the moment she was caught.”
“Oh…”
Britta told me the place had become chaotic when I collapsed, bleeding, and the slave market ended in disorder.
“Everyone was terrified. We thought you’d never wake up.”
“That’s right, miss. You kept lying there so still… it scared us.”
“It’s such a relief you’ve awakened.”
Then I realized—
the maids’ attitudes had changed.
They seemed to be genuinely worried about me.
Britta was always kind, but the others were not.
Some changed slightly after the Krymu incident, but only some.
Yet now, all the maids coming in and out of the hotel room were treating me differently.
Was it just my imagination?
“Please rest well and recover soon, miss.”
One even said that.
What on earth was going on?
A moment later, I learned why.
“When you threw yourself to save Young Master Shevert… I truly fell for you, miss.”
“…Huh?”
I frowned in surprise, but the maids didn’t notice, gazing at me with sparkling, adoring eyes like I was some kind of hero.
“You were just like a warrior maiden!”
“A warrior maiden? Me?”
“Yes, miss! You even protected Young Master Krymu before!”
What in the world…
Suddenly I was some heroic warrior who saved both sons of the Kereis family.
Embarrassed, I turned away from the maids’ shining gazes.
Then dizziness hit me, sharp and sudden.
For a moment, the image of a boy with his head bowed appeared before me—and faded.
‘…Ron!’
But before I could gather myself, my eyelids grew heavy again.
The maids’ voices blurred.
“You lost too much blood… you should sleep more, miss…”
Before I could hear the rest, I slipped into deep sleep again.
***
A thin branch swayed in the wind.
Shevert didn’t know how long he had been staring blankly out of the hotel window.
It was unlike him.
Seated on a soft sofa, he tore his gaze away and lifted a teacup.
Then, seeing the bandages wrapped around his thigh, he once again thought of that girl.
Mary Ann.
At first she looked like a small, fragile herbivore.
Like she would flatten with a single step.
He assumed ignoring her would make her disappear.
“…She’s a strange girl.”
The memory was still vivid.
At the peak of the chaos in the slave market, a dagger flew out of nowhere and stabbed his thigh.
As he was being carried away, bleeding—
‘It’s dangerous!’
Mary Ann’s desperate cry rang out, and she collapsed.
Her dress soaked in bright red blood.
His heart had pounded so fast he thought it would burst, and once his mind cleared, he was shocked.
His savior—
was that small girl.
It was humiliating.
Unbelievable.
And he didn’t want to believe it.
At the time, Shevert made excuses.
The slave market was too noisy.
The crowd too thick.
Predicting the assassin’s movement had been impossible.
But then his father’s words erased his excuses.
“Do not forget the Kereis family motto, Shevert.”
He had almost died.
By the time he lost consciousness from the blood loss, he was on the verge of death.
But he survived—
because a girl threw her body over him.
Mary Ann was his lifesaver.
“Ha… she saved me.”
Shevert could no longer deny it.
He was alive and breathing only because Mary Ann existed.
And once he accepted that, unfamiliar emotions began flooding in.
***
Kaouts, who had been chasing the slaves, returned late after hearing the news and was shocked at my condition.
“Miss… what in the world…”
“They already made enough fuss about my body. Don’t say anything more.”
Kaouts closed his mouth.
I dismissed the other maids from the room and hurriedly asked him:
“Kaouts, that boy! The boy who was in the lion cage—what happened to him?”
Kaouts stepped closer with a serious face.
“I looked into it, but no one knows where he was originally sold from. It’s common in the slave market, so…”
“…Not even a tiny piece of information?”
“I did find one clue.”
“What is it?!”
“Everyone who saw the boy said the same thing—he never cried. Not even once.”
“…What?”
The image flashed in my mind—
the boy standing motionless in the lion cage.
“Normally, a child would cry in that situation, right?”
“In a lion cage? Of course! They’d scream and pass out from fear.”
“Right… that’s true.”
Even I would’ve fainted from terror.
So then… was that boy truly Ron?
He didn’t seem normal, that much was certain.
“So what happened to the boy?”
“I found out a trading company purchased him.”
“A trading company?”
“Yes. They looked like ordinary merchants buying leather… at first.”
“Wait—did you say a trading company?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Something was wrong.
This didn’t match the original story.
“That boy in the lion cage—are you sure it was him?”
“Yes! I checked two, three times.”
“That… that can’t be…”
Ron, the second of the three villain brothers, lived in the slave market until adulthood.
He wasn’t sold anywhere.
Not in the original.
So was that boy not Ron?
“You’ll faint when you hear the trading company’s name.”
“What is it?”
“They’re called Devl. You’ve probably never heard of them. They operate secretly in the underworld. At first, I thought they were normal merchants, but when I followed them, I saw their emblem.”
Kaouts narrowed his eyes.
“They run gambling halls, deal drugs, and sell information. Filthy scum.”
“Gambling? Drugs?”
“Yes. In fact, they run the very gambling den I used to go to. I recognized everything. They even coax customers into using drugs.”
“…Haah.”
Everything was confusing.
A criminal syndicate?
Gambling dens?
What happened to Ron?
Then someone approached from outside.
A servant announced that Shevert had come.
Of all moments…
Still, since this was the first time seeing him since the incident, I decided to receive him.
“Everyone, leave for now.”
“Yes, young master.”
Kaouts glanced at me worriedly, but left when I nodded.
Shevert’s leg was wrapped in bandages.
The wound was deep—but he’d heal faster than I would.
I told him I couldn’t get up to greet him due to the pain.
Shevert didn’t mind, walked a few steps, and stood by the window.
And without saying a word, he stared outside with a strange, unreadable expression.
‘What’s with him?’
He told everyone to leave, yet said nothing.
Was “thank you” stuck in his throat or something?
Well, knowing him, that wasn’t likely.
I didn’t expect gratitude anyway.
Saving him had practically been an accident.
I was just about to drop the thought when—
“Kereis…”
His voice, heavy and strained, cut through the silence.
Startled, I glanced sideways and met his gaze—
his cold, sharp stare.
Ugh. If he came to visit a patient, couldn’t he soften that expression?
“Kereis?”
At my question, Shevert swallowed hard and finally spoke, his face grave.
“Ann, you know the Kereis family motto, don’t you?”
“Not at all.”
Regardless of my puzzlement, he continued seriously:
“In the Kereis family, the brothers must survive to the end.
That is our family motto.”
