My Nerdy Neighbor Is the Master of the Magic Tower
Chapter 36
The diary did not continue for long after that. Then one day, after many months and even a new year had passed, ‘Cecilia’ left a very brief entry.
God has shown me.
I will die in this life as well.>
Cecilia traced her fingertips over the final sentence, where the paper was warped and bumpy as if stained by tears. Was it just her imagination that the messy, blurred handwriting looked like a sob?
With a heavy heart, she turned to the next page, but the diary ended there.
Cecilia closed the diary and furrowed her brow.
Cecilia’s strange dreams, the fact that she had woken up in Cecilia’s body, and the contents of that last entry.
Was ‘Cecilia’ truly murdered? Was it because she had already died that Cecilia was able to take over the empty body?
If so, there was a high probability that the killer and the person currently targeting her life were one and the same. It was possible that, upon seeing ‘Cecilia’ wandering about perfectly fine, they believed their crime had failed and were attempting it again.
If her guess was correct, only one question remained.
“Who was the person who killed Cecilia?”
Stroking Charles—no, Lesty—who had hopped onto her lap, she murmured the question to which no answer would return.
She hid the shocking diary, which had been concealed for a reason, back in its original spot.
She had thought this was a romance fantasy where she just had to pick a male lead and fall in love, but it turned out to be a hard-mode survival story where she could be murdered at any moment.
It was a horrific reality, but for now, she focused on recovering her strength. She had to be healthy to catch the culprit or come up with a plan.
According to Melanie, she had remained unconscious and ill for two full days.
Cecilia forced herself to eat bland soup and endured the bitter medicine Knox brought her. Most of all, after being drenched in the Divine Power of the healing priests as if taking a bath, she managed to recover reasonably well in less than four days.
“You should be able to take light walks now.”
And today, the seventh day after the accident.
The primary physician, whose face had brightened considerably, finished his final check-up.
Despite the welcome news, Cecilia simply nodded calmly. Normally, she would have bolted into the garden like a puppy out of the house for the first time. Instead, she shut herself in the study.
An isolated space.
Sitting before a blank sheet of paper, Cecilia tapped the desk with the tip of her pen.
The priorities she had set before nearly drowning had all been flipped.
First, she had to find the person behind the accidents. Then, she would seek a way to return to her original world as soon as possible.
For a moment, she recalled a pair of eyes like violets gazing only at her beneath a spreading tree, and white fingertips clinging desperately during a brief confession, but she shook her head.
‘Romance is out of the question in a situation like this.’
As long as she was in a situation where she could be brutally murdered at any time, escaping this world was the priority.
‘Anyway, the person behind the accidents…’
Judging by the diary and the events she had experienced firsthand, it was clear someone was targeting ‘Cecilia’s’ life.
Then, who could the culprit be?
‘Cecilia’s family? Or the servants of the Weberdin Mansion?’
But they had no motive to kill ‘Cecilia.’
It was visible to the eye how much they sincerely worried for her.
‘Then, the people of the Temple?’
Perhaps because of their upright image, clerics in many novels often appeared as hidden masterminds to provide a plot twist, but they likewise lacked a motive. As long as she held the title of ‘Saintess,’ there was no reason for them to harm Cecilia.
That left only one group of candidates.
Someone who would find ‘Saintess’ Cecilia, the very face of the Temple, an eyesore. The only group that would benefit from her disappearance.
‘Is it the Imperial Family after all?’
Just as the Marquis suspected, it might be the work of ‘Delanche,’ the hands and feet of the Imperial Family. Perhaps the Imperial Family had sent someone down directly.
Either way, there must be a ‘someone’ who received the order and carried it out.
That ‘someone’ would likely be a person who already knew Cecilia had visited the Temple on the day of the window accident, and at the same time, someone who knew about her secret outings.
…Wasn’t there only one such person?
‘Lien.’
Ridiculously, the beautiful face she had tried so hard to shake off clouded her mind once more.
「Please, once more… tell me just once more.」
The image of him pleading with his ears flushed red was still so vivid.
Cecilia forced herself to push away the man’s expression and voice. She retraced his actions from the most objective perspective possible.
Looking back, coincidentally, Lien had been in the same place whenever an accident occurred. When her head was nearly crushed by the window, when a madman with an axe appeared before her as if on cue, and even when she fell into the water.
Now that she thought about it, there were more than one or two strange points. The accidents had started happening to her only after she met him.
Moreover, rather than a Magic Tower Master who visited the Marquis’s residence because he was curious about Divine Power, wasn’t a Magic Tower Master who visited to dispose of a prospective Saintess more plausible?
Cecilia set down her pen and picked up a necklace lying in a corner of the table. The amber pendant was snapped, with only half of it barely hanging on.
It was the necklace Lien had given her.
‘The trace of magic that someone of Archbishop-rank or higher felt might be related to this pendant.’
Since the situation had been so urgent, her memory wasn’t perfectly clear, but it felt as if her feet had found purchase and her Divine Power had returned the moment this pendant broke.
To think that ‘that’ Lien was the culprit who threatened her life.
There were still questionable parts left to conclude that.
Lien had even used Time Magic to try and save her. When she was threatened by thugs, he had come running desperately.
And to say Lien had approached her intentionally, she was the one who had burst into his house first and approached him to suggest they become friends.
Furthermore, Lien had come down to the Weberdin fief several months after she had possessed this body.
So, the timing didn’t match up with when the real Cecilia began receiving death threats.
Most of all…
「Cecilia-nim.」
The voice that was always laced with fluttering excitement.
「You’ve hurt your hand!」
The warm body heat that had met her so worriedly.
「This time, I will make sure to protect you.」
That blind gaze.
「You don’t have to worry about anything, not a single thing.」
The curving lips and the two cheeks that would flush red surely weren’t a lie. There was no way they were a lie.
No, she wanted to believe they weren’t a lie.
It was just as she exhaled a breath of agonizing conflict.
Knock, knock.
A knock broke the silence. It was Melanie.
“Um, My Lady. That person has come to visit… what should I do?”
“That person?”
“Your etiquette teacher.”
Cecilia stiffened instantly. Of all times, to visit now. She wasn’t confident she could face him yet.
She was about to voice a refusal, but Melanie’s words were faster.
“Actually, he’s been coming every day since the day you collapsed. The Marquis didn’t give him permission, so he had to leave every time.”
‘Was he trying to check if I was alive, to check my condition?’
The thought made her bite her lip hard.
Even at the news that he had kept coming to visit, such suspicions flared up; was it really okay to meet Lien?
After a long moment of deliberation, Cecilia nodded reluctantly.
“Will you show him to the drawing room? I’ll head down immediately.”
A brief avoidance couldn’t be the answer. It would be better to observe him with her own eyes.
Having made up her mind, Cecilia stood up.
She arrived in front of the drawing room.
In the middle of the room where the summer sunlight filtered in, the man in the familiar robe stood tall.
“Cecilia-nim!”
Discovering Cecilia at the doorway, Lien strode toward her.
He lightly took her fingertips and poured out questions in a rush.
“A-Are you alright? Is there anywhere you’re hurting? Your body temperature seems a bit lower than before; could there be lingering side effects?”
Belatedly facing him directly, she saw that Lien’s face was excessively pale. As if he were the one who had been suffering in a sickbed all this time, not her.
At that sight, Cecilia found herself slightly stunned.
These trembling hands, those eyes that looked ready to cry at any moment.
‘You’re saying all of this might be a lie?’
She couldn’t distinguish whether the emotion swirling within her at that moment was a sense of betrayal, anger, or perhaps sadness.
But what remained in a distinct shape was discomfort.
Cecilia gently pulled her hand out of his grasp. Then, trying not to show her agitation, she forced the corners of her mouth up.
“The Temple sent many healing priests, so I’m almost all better now. I heard you kept coming to visit; you must have been very worried.”
“I was so anxious that you might not wake up like this, even though I knew that wouldn’t happen… I ended up visiting selfishly, even though I knew you still needed rest. I am sorry.”
Lien apologized, his empty hands clenched into fists.
Anxiety and insecurity were laid bare in his low, sunken voice.
To the point where she couldn’t possibly think it was a lie.
‘Is he sincere?’
Had she misunderstood an innocent person? In truth, the basis for him being someone related to the Imperial Family or the culprit trying to harm her was purely circumstantial, wasn’t it?
However…
Lien was still the prime suspect she had narrowed down from an objective perspective.
Just as the confusion deepened, Lien pulled something out from inside his robe.
