Roxana
Chapter 17
Chapter 17
How to Protect the
Female Lead’s Older Brother
Chapter 17
“Madam!”
The men holding Cassis cried out in surprise at once.
It was because she had suddenly reached out toward Cassis.
Cassis, too, was startled by the soft touch brushing against his face, nearly flinching on instinct.
The woman took hold of Cassis’s lowered head and gently lifted it.
Immediately after, her movements came to a sudden halt.
“Asil……”
A soft murmur, no different from talking to herself, drifted into the empty air.
Naturally, Cassis had no idea what her words meant.
With her gaze fixed on him from such close range, Cassis felt uncomfortable in a slightly different sense than before.
“Madam, your hands will get dirty.”
The men beside him dissuaded the woman, looking far more uncomfortable than Cassis himself.
Only then did the woman seem to snap back to her senses.
“Ah…… Yes. I was talking nonsense for a moment.”
At last, the hand supporting Cassis’s face pulled away.
“What about his treatment? Surely you are not leaving him like this?”
“Lady Roxana specifically ordered us to call a physician.”
“Then it would be best to take him inside quickly and let him rest.”
Afterward, the woman looked down intently at Cassis once more before departing.
Though she had claimed she came to see the one who had become Roxana’s plaything, she seemed satisfied with just a brief look at his face.
Subsequently, the place the men dragged Cassis to was the room right next to where they had been standing.
Not having expected the destination to be right next door, Cassis could not help but knit his brows subtly.
Evidently, the woman had been lingering near the room where Roxana’s plaything was slated to be placed just to see Cassis.
In the end, Cassis decided to postpone his chance of escape for next time.
Instead, he slightly opened his eyes and meticulously surveyed his surroundings. Even so, his vision remained blurred.
However, it was enough to check the room’s location and the door’s lock.
“Ugh, my shoulders feel like they’re going to dislocate.”
The men tossed Cassis haphazardly onto the floor.
“Agh, what is this? You brought back a complete corpse!”
“He’s still breathing, so hurry up and treat him.”
After that, a physician truly arrived.
While the physician examined and treated Cassis’s condition, the men who had brought him chattered about what had happened moments ago.
“About the Fourth Madam. She mentioned young master Asil’s name earlier, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, that’s what I heard too.”
“Does this guy look like young master Asil? He doesn’t look similar to me in the slightest.”
“Right? I wondered why Lady Roxana and the Madam were taking an interest in something like this. Do they look alike to their eyes?”
Hearing their conversation, Cassis also thought back to what had occurred in the hallway.
The woman presumed to be Roxana’s mother had seemed to instantly recall someone upon seeing his face.
Was ‘Asil’, the name she had muttered to herself right after, the name of that person?
Yet, ‘young master’. Was this person named Asil the son of the woman he had just met?
“Looking at him now, he is somewhat pale like him. Aside from that, I don’t really know.”
“Isn’t he around the same age young master Asil was when he died? Maybe seeing him in this state made her think of young master Asil even more.”
“True. That could be it.”
Unexpectedly, this person named Asil was said to be already dead.
The two men let their voices trail off, leaving a bitter aftertaste.
After roughly wrapping up the treatment, they attached iron chains to Cassis’s restraints. Following that, their footsteps receded into the distance.
Clank, rattle.
“…….”
When he was left entirely alone, Cassis quietly opened his eyes.
The sound of footsteps outside the door gradually grew distant before disappearing completely.
Still lying on the floor, Cassis examined his surroundings.
It was an incomparably cleaner and more spacious room than the underground dungeon where he had stayed until now.
However, the only conspicuous piece of furniture was a bed pushed against one wall, and the room did not even have a window.
Though the sight filling his vision was bleak, aside from that, it appeared to be an ordinary room.
After a moment, Cassis slowly pushed himself up.
As he did, a metallic clink sounded from the chains connected to his wrists and ankles.
The iron chains were fastened to a pillar in a corner of the room.
Still, the chains were long, so his movements would likely be less restricted than when he was in the dungeon.
Of course, even so, they did not reach the door.
For now, Cassis decided to quietly assess the situation.
Attempting a clumsy escape right now and drawing attention would bring him no advantage.
Just as he had heard outside a moment ago, it seemed Agriche had no intention of killing him immediately.
Seeing that they had personally summoned a physician to treat him like this, they also seemed to have no desire to torture him in the same manner as before.
Was it because he had become Roxana Agriche’s plaything?
Cassis brushed his hand over the restraints tightening around his wrists and shifted his gaze toward the door.
Though Agriche did not seem to know yet, the Anti-Monster Restraints currently binding him were actually of little use.
It was something he had verified not long ago when the girl named Charlotte had stormed into the dungeon and attacked him.
The Anti-Monster Restraints restricted movement from Stage 1 to Stage 5 depending on the wearer’s level of agitation and aggression.
To put it conversely, that meant so long as he maintained his composure under any circumstances, it was possible to minimize the activation of the restraints.
One could say the timing had been fortunate.
If not for that incident, he would not have been able to test the restraints’ strength so naturally.
The girl named Charlotte seemed to have quite a simple personality, believing that her failure to subdue Cassis was merely due to her own inexperience.
She appeared to believe without a shadow of a doubt that the destruction of the restraints was not because Cassis had baited her into it, but because she had made a mistake after losing her reason to rage.
Cassis’s eyes darkened slightly.
Until the day he escaped from Agriche, he had to hide the fact that his martial power had not been sealed.
Only then would everyone let their guard down.
Just as he was thinking that, he suddenly sensed a presence outside the door.
After casting a sharp glance at the door, Cassis lay back down on the floor just as he had been when he first entered the room.
The lock clicked open. Following that, someone stepped into the room.
The light footsteps and the fragrance stimulating his sense of smell were familiar. Thus, he knew the person who entered was Roxana.
She approached Cassis and looked down at him in silence.
The one who would decide Cassis’s treatment from now on was Roxana, and they were the only two here right now.
Moreover, Cassis was currently pretending to be unconscious.
So perhaps she would finally reveal her true colors this time.
Feeling Roxana draw closer to him, Cassis heightened all the senses in his body.
If she attempted any funny business, Cassis could not just stay still either.
When she got a little closer, if he reached out his arms and wrapped the chains around her neck, he would probably be able to knock her unconscious in a single blow.
Of course, if he put his mind to it, he could even kill her on the spot instead of stopping at knocking her out, but he hesitated to go that far.
Above all else…….
Would responding to a threat with a threat in such a manner right here and now truly be the right choice?
Cassis closed his eyes and measured the distance between them.
Unaware of his agony, Roxana drew even closer to his side. Now, the two of them were completely within each other’s reach.
“They really only did the bare minimum of treatment.”
However, what tickled Cassis’s ears next was a small whisper escaping along with a low breath.
Next, a gentle touch brushed against his wrist.
Clatter.
When Roxana lifted his hand, an unpleasant metallic clink inevitably rang out from the chain connected to the pillar.
A gaze that seemed to inspect his condition swept across Cassis’s body once.
After that, the gag blocking his mouth was untied.
Wondering what she was doing as rustling sounds came from beside him, a moment later, warmth seeped into his wrist once more.
Cassis held his breath, overtaken by an indescribable feeling.
Roxana applied medicine and wrapped bandages around the wounds the physician had treated so carelessly.
A cautious touch also grazed the wrists and ankles where the flesh had been gouged by the restraints.
To make matters more intense, Roxana stripped off his already shredded upper garment and laid her hands on his bare skin beneath.
At the warmth spreading straight across his skin, Cassis nearly leaped up from his spot, unable to bear it.
A stinging sensation spread with every wound her touch grazed. Yet, it was not only pain that seeped along his skin.
Cassis barely managed to endure the ticklish touch.
Even after meticulously finishing the treatment, Roxana did not leave.
In the end, she even settled down and took a seat right beside Cassis.
No matter how clean the room was, Cassis had not expected her to just sit down on the bare floor like this, leaving him slightly surprised.
Even Cassis’s younger sister Sylvia, who had a rather lively personality, did not act so unhesitatingly in this manner.
Yet Roxana’s subsequent action was even more astonishing.
Realizing where that same gentle touch had lifted his head and placed it, Cassis was silently aghast.
