Time Healer Ceres
Chapter 29
‘Why is eating a meal so important…?’
‘What? You won’t eat? Do you want to shove pills down your throat until you’re full, or are you going to behave and eat your food? Take your pick.’
“…….”
Grace had been exceptionally fastidious about making sure he ate his meals.
Whenever he picked at his food, she would pull out a literal mountain of medicine with a look of absolute sincerity. As if to say that if he didn’t eat, she would force-feed him the pills instead.
Recalling that distant memory, Kainel rose from his seat.
Come to think of it, whenever he lost his appetite, Grace would always make him a certain stew….
“…This is.”
Was it a coincidence?
Kainel, finally taking a closer look at the food Dell had left behind, wore a peculiar expression.
“Wouldn’t it be better to prepare a fresh meal for him?”
“I wonder.”
“Serving outside food to His Highness the Grand Duke… If His Majesty finds out, my head will be on the chopping block.”
The chef was still disgruntled. It was because Dell had ultimately brought back takeout from outside.
No matter how popular the food was, to serve such a thing to the Grand Duke!
“The reviews were quite good.”
“But still….”
Click.
The chef and the aide, Dell, who had been pacing outside Kainel’s office, rushed toward the maid as she opened the door and stepped out.
“Ah…!”
The expressions of the two men were painted with shock as they checked the plate she was carrying.
Soon, a smile spread across Dell’s face. A perfectly empty plate sat there.
“I’ll have to go stand in line again tomorrow.”
Whether it took one hour or two, he felt he could wait for anything now.
Bang!
“……!”
At that moment, the office door swung open and Kainel stepped out.
He held his coat in his hand as if he were about to head out.
“Where is that place?”
“Pardon?”
“That food. Where did you buy it?”
“Unnie! A letter came from Dave!”
“A letter?”
Yulia came running over, holding a small envelope.
Somehow he had managed to get in touch; it was a letter from Dave.
However, despite it being the news she had been waiting for, Yulia’s expression wasn’t particularly bright. In fact, she looked quite gloomy.
Ceres knelt down to meet the child’s eyes and patted her back soothingly.
“Is something wrong?”
“It’s just… it sounds like the ahjussi he lives with is hitting him.”
“What?”
“Look at this.”
Ceres took the letter Yulia handed her, and as she read through it, her brow furrowed slightly.
The letters were pressed down hard, written with somewhat clumsy penmanship. But the content, as Yulia said, seemed very problematic.
The main gist was that his mother had an affair and the man she lived with was being violent, making life difficult—it even said he felt like he might die at this rate.
“It says Dave’s mom got hit too. That ahjussi must be a really bad person.”
Yulia’s speech grew faster and faster, clearly worried about Dave.
“Unnie, shouldn’t we tell Dave’s dad? He asked us to let him know if we heard anything last time.”
“…We should.”
Ceres nodded and folded the letter back up carefully.
“I’ll go deliver it for him.”
“I want to go too.”
“No. You stay here with Colin.”
“…….”
Seeing Ceres’s face, Yulia didn’t throw a tantrum as she usually would and kept her mouth shut tight.
The butler, Colin, watched worriedly as Ceres set down her apron as if tossing it aside. Her expression was very grim.
“My Lady, will you be alright going alone? Perhaps I should accompany you….”
“No. I think I need to look into something.”
“Look into something? What do you mean?”
“I was going to just let it slide, you know? Investigating something based on mere suspicion felt like overstepping. But….”
Her grip tightened on the letter.
“How dare he try to use my sister?”
“Pardon?”
Use her?
Colin couldn’t understand what she meant at all, but he quietly took a step back, pulling Yulia with him.
One corner of Ceres’s mouth curled up in a way that suggested it was best not to be near her right now.
“Unnie, are you mad?”
Yulia’s eyes went wide as well.
She had seen that face before.
That was exactly how Ceres had looked when she came to the sanatorium to get her.
“I’ll be back.”
Leaving behind the two who instinctively felt that something was about to explode, Ceres immediately left the shop.
Knock, knock.
“Who is it?”
Unlike before, the door opened immediately at the sound of the knock, and Dave’s father appeared.
“Oh? You’re the….”
Recognizing Ceres, he cast a puzzled look as if wondering what brought her there.
“A letter came. From Dave.”
“What? From Dave?”
“Can I come in for a moment?”
“Of course! Please, come in!”
The man hurriedly opened the door and ushered Ceres inside.
“Did you really hear from Dave?”
“Could you give me a cup of tea first? My throat is a bit dry.”
“Ah… ju-just a moment.”
The man rushed to the kitchen to prepare a drink.
Only then did Ceres hand him the letter she had brought.
As he scanned the letter quickly, tears welled up in his eyes.
“Dave, my Dave….”
“The child seems to be in danger, doesn’t he?”
“Ugh… sob!”
“Shouldn’t we report this first? We have to find the boy.”
“Yes, I must.”
“Unfortunately, there was no address on the letter. It would have been great if he’d written the address since it’s such a dangerous situation.”
“I’ll file a missing persons report! I have to find him!”
The man hurriedly wiped his tears and shouted with determination.
“Did you know? I heard that if a missing persons report is filed and their whereabouts aren’t confirmed for a certain period of time, they are declared dead. One year for those missing in Black Forest regions, and five years elsewhere.”
“…Pardon?”
“Ah, I guess you didn’t know.”
The man’s eyes widened at Ceres’s offhand murmur. It was as if he were hearing it for the first time.
“Go report it to the guards first. You should hurry.”
“Yes, yes.”
“I’ll just finish this tea and head out. You can go ahead. It’s not like I’m going to steal anything from here, right?”
After a moment’s hesitation, the man nodded vigorously, deciding the report was the priority, and rushed outside to show the letter to the guards.
Clack.
A moment later, Ceres set her teacup down harshly and whispered coldly.
“I’m not stealing.”
I’m just peeking into the past.
Ceres looked around the house for a moment and then placed her hand on the floor.
At first, there was no particular reaction. Only the difference in the layers of accumulated dust was visible.
“…….”
But as more time passed, the situation changed. Faint, unidentifiable stains began to appear here and there.
Ceres didn’t stop there and continued to turn back time.
As she did, the blurred traces grew darker and darker in color.
And when she reached a certain point in time, the state of the house was….
“Ha….”
Ceres let out a hollow laugh.
She had expected it to some extent.
A bloodbath.
There was no other way to describe it.
Ceres couldn’t say anything for a long while as she looked at the red blood seeping out everywhere, regardless of whether it was the floor or the walls.
“It really was the smell of blood-removing chemicals.”
There is a chemical used to remove bloodstains from clothes while treating a patient’s wounds.
When she first came to this house, that smell had been vibrating throughout the entire place.
The scent was sweet, so someone who didn’t know would have passed it off as nothing.
Of course, someone could have had a nosebleed, or they could have accidentally injured themselves and used the chemical to clean the stain.
‘But what about the insurance?’
Checking the insurance under the names of his runaway wife and son now?
And asking exactly how much time must pass after a missing persons report for them to be legally recognized as dead?
‘Are those the actions of a normal person?’
She couldn’t help but have reasonable suspicions.
However, taking action based on mere suspicion when she had no authority felt a bit unsettling.
‘It’s not like I had definitive evidence.’
That was why she had just watched for a while.
“How dare you try to use Yulia?”
Ceres had been appalled when she saw the letter from Dave.
He seemed to have tried his best to imitate a child’s handwriting by pressing the pen down hard to make it look awkward.
“For someone who doesn’t even know his own son’s handwriting, he put quite a bit of thought into it.”
She had seen a note Dave wrote through Yulia once before. It was because he had sent a letter along with a small hairbrush as a gift for Yulia.
She remembered it clearly because the handwriting was exceptionally mature and pretty for a child.
But the letter from Dave that arrived today was not in that handwriting.
The letters were slanted slightly to one side, and it looked as though it had been written with a left hand.
