Chapter 12
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After the veterinarian left the mansion, a deep silence settled over the room, as if one great storm had swept through it.
At last, only after confirming once more that Raven Barietsch was here, I sank onto the sofa with a sigh, as if collapsing.
“Haa.”
The soft backrest warmly wrapped around my back. The fatigue I had forgotten for a while came rushing in like a tide, and my eyes naturally closed.
‘With this, the first button has been fastened. The first button…’
I couldn’t know whether Raven Barietsch had fallen in love at first sight as he had in the original, but I had still saved him in a fairly convincing way.
‘Since I saved his life, I must have earned at least a few brownie points. At the very least, he probably doesn’t hate me.’
In any case, since I had succeeded in saving Raven Barietsch for now, it was time to make him thoroughly fall in love with me while his body recovered.
So much so that he would want to reach me, so much so that he would want to have me. I needed to keep increasing the size of that desire.
Raven Barietsch was a man who had lived his whole life in loneliness. He had never received anything that could be called affection from another person.
Rather, because he elicited discomfort in others, he had been persecuted, and because he could use magic, he had been regarded as the child of a devil, the incarnation of a devil who had sold his soul to a devil.
There was no way anyone like that would have someone who wanted to touch him. If anything, they would avoid him for fear of being cursed.
What I intended to aim for was precisely that opening.
The loneliness and solitude Raven Barietsch possessed, and the warm affection and touch he must be endlessly lacking.
I had to make my existence seep into the cracks of that broken and fractured heart.
‘To do that, I need to love him with a very generous amount of affection…’
But there was one problem.
If it were a dog or a cat, they were familiar animals, so it would be easy to figure out how to tame them.
On the other hand, I had never been close to birds even before my transmigration. I had never even encountered parrots, which many people kept.
At most, all I had seen were sparrows sitting on power lines or pigeons wandering the streets.
As for crows, although I had heard their cries very occasionally, this was my first time seeing one in person. Naturally, I had never thought of raising one.
I had no idea how I was supposed to tame Raven Barietsch in the form of a crow. It wasn’t as though I could treat him like an ordinary bird.
‘First, I need information about crows. I think it would be best to look through books first… And since the veterinarian said he would visit again tomorrow, let’s ask him all sorts of things I’m curious about then!’
Once my thoughts were roughly sorted out, I slowly opened my eyes.
Before I knew it, the room was soaked entirely in orange beneath the scenery of a red sunset. It seemed I must have dozed off without realizing it.
I slowly raised myself from my seat. Then a soft blanket, which someone seemed to have placed over me, slipped down soundlessly. One of the maids had probably covered me with it.
After roughly draping the blanket over the sofa, I quieted my footsteps and walked toward the table by the window where Raven Barietsch slept.
“……”
He was still asleep with a face that somehow looked exhausted.
When I had first found him, his feathers had been matted with blood, but perhaps because they had been washed again and again with clean water, they were now revealing their true color.
‘I thought they were simply black, but when the light touches them, they give off a slightly blue glow.’
I inwardly admired the mysterious sheen of the light.
Suddenly, I felt the urge to stroke his feathers once, but I stopped myself because it seemed he might wake up, and because the leg wrapped in a pure white bandage bothered me.
Instead, I quietly looked at him as he slept.
‘At first, I was scared because his body was larger and heavier than I expected, but now that I look at him, I think he’s a little cute.’
However, the cushion he was currently lying on as a bed seemed to need replacing.
It was too small compared to his body, and it didn’t seem very soft.
‘I should make a cushion much softer than this one by putting plenty of cotton inside. If I use soft fabric too, he should be able to sleep comfortably.’
“Let’s get along well for the next few weeks, little one.”
Just as I whispered quietly with a slight smile so Raven Barietsch wouldn’t wake up, someone entered the room without permission.
“…Miss?”
It was none other than Anna, my personal maid.
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