No Regression for the Victor - Chapter 55

“Mmm…”

With a low, groaning sound, the Duke slowly opened his eyes fully and gazed up at the ceiling. Mikhail, forgetting entirely that he had sneaked into the bedchamber, cried out without thinking.

“Y-You’re really awake? Do you know who I am?!”

The Duke, his gaze still clouded as if his mind hadn’t fully returned, blinked a few times. Then his eyes cleared, and the moment he recognized Mikhail, he started in shock and tried to sit up.

But after lying stiff and unconscious for days, his body refused to move as he wished. At last his strength gave out and he sank back down, and Mikhail caught his weak body and supported him.

“Please don’t push yourself, stay lying down! I’ll go bring the caretakers!”

Overwhelmed with relief and joy, close to tears at the fact that the Duke had woken safely, Mikhail immediately moved to fetch someone to tend to him. Or tried to, but was stopped almost at once.

“……?”

Perplexed, Mikhail looked down at the feeble hand that had suddenly caught his wrist. In a rushed, hoarse voice, Hyun asked,

“You… You’re not hurt anywhere, are you…?! Nothing’s wrong…?!”

For a moment, Mikhail tilted his head to the side, not understanding what the Duke meant. Then he realized that it was concern, the first thing spoken after waking. Worry that he might be hurt.

Mikhail jumped in place, blurting out an answer.

“What? Ah— No, I’m fine! See? Nothing happened to me at all! I was just worried something terrible might have happened to you…”

Mikhail’s words cut off abruptly. Because the Duke, who had just barely managed to sit up, suddenly leaned forward and wrapped his arms around him.

The body pressed against him was still icy cold, yet the heart beating against his chest was far from still. It pounded faster and faster, and Mikhail’s face grew hot.

“Thank goodness… I was afraid… afraid that maybe, just maybe…”

As he spoke, the Duke’s trembling hands moved over Misha’s back, waist, shoulders, and arms, carefully confirming there were no wounds. And in that moment, something strange surged up from deep within Mikhail’s chest. An unfamiliar, powerful feeling he’d never known.

“You… were worried about me?”

When Misha asked in a small, almost whispered voice, instead of answering aloud, Hyun pressed his face into Misha’s shoulder and only tightened his embrace. And then Mikhail understood what this foreign feeling flooding his chest was. Joy.

It was strange. Ordinarily, when someone worried about you, you might feel sorry and grateful. But knowing that he had been so shaken, so anxious and frantic for his sake… That realization felt indescribably sweet.

“I’m not hurt anywhere. So please don’t worry.”

At that instant, an unbidden, forbidden thought flashed across Mikhail’s mind. What if I had been injured, maybe an arm lost, or left limping? Would that have driven him to such agony, to guilt as though failing to protect the one who had come all the way to this place of exile just to see him?

He pushed away the treacherous thought almost at once. And then he felt the comforting touch of the Duke’s hand gently patting his back, steadying him. Without thinking, Mikhail tightened his hold, embracing the Duke with his whole body.

Only after the Duke finally calmed and released him did he speak words Mikhail never expected to hear.

“It may be difficult… but there’s something I wish to ask of you…”

The request the Duke struggled to voice was one Mikhail, in his heart, desperately wanted to accept, but in reality could not possibly agree to.

“If you would be willing, I want to petition the Imperial Family to appoint you as the caretaker of this estate,” the Duke said.

If Marcel, waiting anxiously downstairs for the prince, had overheard, he would have fainted in shock. There was no such person as ‘Misha’ in the Imperial records at all. At most, the palace might assign a low-level clerk to assist an investigator, but they had never sent him with an attendant. Misha’s identity was a fabrication improvised on the spot.

If the Duke formally submitted such a request to the Imperial Palace, it would be discovered instantly that no such person existed. Whatever lightning bolt had struck the Duke to make him think of this, at least he hadn’t sent the request first and was kind enough to ask for Misha’s will before acting. For that alone, it was a small mercy.