My Former Disciple Wants Me as His Bride

It wouldn’t do the boy any good to walk around openly carrying a pouch stamped with the mark of ‘Ves.’ Of all the pouches he could have stolen, he just had to pick the one containing her emergency funds. Eris furrowed her brow deeply as she looked at Sarod.

“Put this money toward his treatment too. He stole it from me, so it doesn’t belong to him.”

“He must be quite skilled with his hands, then. To think he actually managed to pick Miss Eris’s pocket.”

“There were circumstances. Anyway… Sarod, I’m counting on you.”

Now that things had come this far, there was little else she could do. At Eris’s request, Sarod shrugged and flashed her a bright smile.

“Since it’s a request from Miss Eris, I’ll do everything I can to treat him.”

Why had he gotten so greasy while she hadn’t been looking…?

Eris made no attempt to hide her distaste. After telling Sarod to contact her if he needed anything, she left the clinic with Ciel.

The sun was still blazing high overhead, yet so much had happened already that her entire body felt weary.

“You seem rather close to that doctor.”

“…I’ve known him for a long time. I used to stop by whenever I got injured on a job.”

Sarod was a member of ‘Ves,’ the information guild Eris secretly operated. But only the informants closest to her knew that, which meant it was something she had to keep carefully hidden from Ciel as well.

“If we see each other every day, do you think we could become that close too?”

After a brief silence, Ciel tossed out the question as casually as though it had only just occurred to him.

“Probably not. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten particularly close to someone I was hired to protect.”

Eris answered indifferently as she glanced at him. Perhaps he really had asked without much thought, because he merely nodded and said nothing more.

“But Lord Ciel, why did you go that far? For the boy, I mean.”

Perhaps because he had carried the boy here in such a hurry, his bright silver hair—usually dazzling as remnants of fresh snow—was now tousled in every direction, unlike when they had first left the house.

When he had simply stood by and watched the boy being beaten, Eris had thought there was a cold, merciless side to him. So what had made him change his mind?

She remembered the emptiness in Ciel’s eyes, still and hollow like a sea with its waves silenced. That look would not be easy to forget.

“I suppose… he reminded me of the past.”

His voice was bitter, like dry leaves crumbling underfoot.

At his words, Eris found herself remembering Ciel as the frail young boy he had once been.

‘Master, to be honest, I don’t want to take lessons.’

‘Why not?’

‘Whenever I have swordsmanship lessons, my brothers come and bother me for a spar. They’re going to beat me either way, so do you know how ridiculous it is to watch them pretend they have a legitimate reason for it?’

On days when he had swordsmanship lessons, Ciel would often hide in some secluded corner of the estate gardens.

And it had always been Eris’s job to find him.

The memory remained painfully vivid, leaving Eris unable to say anything. Whenever he complained about not wanting his lessons, the skin visible beneath his clothes would be mottled with bruises.

It seemed the trauma of growing up tormented by his brothers had been stirred by the sight of that boy.

Without realizing it, Eris looked at Ciel with tenderness in her eyes.

Back then, she had pitied the boy who seemed to possess everything yet was always running and hiding. Part of her kindness had admittedly come from the fact that she had been undercover, but even so, she had genuinely cared for him and done her best to treat him well.

“Miss Eris, why are you looking at me like that?”

Though so much about him had changed now that she could hardly reconcile the man before her with the boy she remembered.

“What? What kind of look was I—”

“You look as though you pity me.”

Ciel’s blue eyes pierced sharply into Eris’s green ones.

He had struck straight at the truth. Eris felt as though her heart had dropped heavily into the pit of her stomach, and she hurriedly schooled her expression.

“You said the boy reminded you of your childhood… so I wondered if perhaps you had a similarly unhappy past.”

“If I did, would you feel a little sorry for me?”

“Do you want my pity?”

“…I’d be happy to receive anything from you.”

Ciel answered as though it were nothing and broke into a grin.

Did he even understand what pity meant?

His baffling response left Eris at a loss for words, and her gaze drifted downward.

Once again, memories from long ago had caught hold of her ankles and refused to let go.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Eris had always wondered whether the reason Ciel had changed so much might, in fact, have something to do with her. It was much the same reason she had never managed to forget him after returning to the Kingdom of Celis, nor had she ever truly put House Silverion out of her mind.

There had been urgent circumstances that forced her to stop tutoring Ciel. She had needed to return to the kingdom as quickly as possible, leaving her no time even to say a proper goodbye before she fled as though running away.

Until the day she left House Silverion, Eris had always been the one who protected Ciel from his cruel, vicious relatives.

So whenever she imagined him left behind all alone, forced to endure whatever retaliation came after she disappeared, she could never feel entirely at ease.