“Hey.”

Thud thud, something hit my foot.

It definitely wasn’t a slime. It wasn’t a squishy feeling, but something hard. Besides, the slime had sulked off and disappeared.

Theodore, who had fainted. The slime that disappeared.

Alone in the silent underground dungeon, I began to doze off.

Eventually, my last memory was of lying down on the hard dungeon floor and falling asleep.

When I didn’t get up quickly, a louder voice called me. No, it yelled at me.

Gosh, he’s impatient!

It’s not that I’m deliberately dawdling right now, but my body is stiff from sleeping on the cold floor!

Barely opening my eyes and barely lifting my body, I saw a man staring at me with a scary expression through an open door.

Looking at the sword beside him, he seemed to be a knight rather than a servant.

When I didn’t answer right away, he asked me again with a more furrowed expression.

I was annoyed by his tone of suspicion as soon as he saw me, but my anger subsided instantly when I confirmed that he had red hair and blue eyes.

Moreover, his fairly handsome features screamed that he was not a mere extra.

He was undoubtedly ‘Inst Glaus’, Theodore’s escort knight who falls in love with my sister at first sight and tragically gets killed while trying to help her escape!

Naturally, I had a very good impression of Inst who tried to save my sister. So despite his rude reaction, I smiled sweetly at him.

“Why are you freaking out?”

As if my smile was unpleasant, Inst frowned even more. His personality seemed worse than I thought.

“If you’ve done something to harm him…….”

Harm? That was unfair.

I was the one bitten!

In Inst’s eyes, only Theodore’s fainting was visible, it seemed he couldn’t see the wound on my arm where he bit me and the dried blood.

“I just did what Lord Ordi asked me to do.”

I managed to maintain my smile on the verge of fading as I answered Inst’s question.

The task of calming him down.

Even though I spoke calmly, Inst was still looking at me with suspicious eyes.

Well, to begin with, Inst didn’t believe that a witch could calm madness even in the novel.

Instead, he thought that Theodore was going even more insane because of my sister.

His words were not necessarily wrong.

The cursed madness of the Caro family could be calmed by my sister Astella’s body fluids, but Theodore’s madness and obsession towards my sister only increased.

“He’s sleeping now. He’s calmed down quite a bit.”

He still wore a suspicious expression towards me, but he didn’t say anything more.

Even if he didn’t know, the first thing he did when he came here was not to wake me up, but to check on Theodore’s safety.

If he wasn’t okay, I would have been dragged away somewhere already.

“Take him away.”

At his gesture, a servant who seemed to have been waiting came running with a stretcher and placed Theodore on it.

When they left the room, Inst turned around without hesitation and followed them out of this underground dungeon.

As I hurriedly got up to follow them, Inst turned around swiftly and looked at me. His eyes were still full of suspicion.

“You wait here.”

“Here?”

I asked, glancing at the dark, cold, and even damp underground dungeon.

“I think I’ve been here long enough!”

“No, wait! Eek!”

I hurriedly chased after Inst who was leaving the dungeon door, but cruelly, the door closed right in front of my nose.

I was trapped again in the dark.

“Sigh~ I’m hungry.”

Rubbing my grumbling stomach, I returned to where I was lying a while ago.

“Ugh……”

As I sat down on the floor, I shivered unknowingly from the cold air seeping through my clothes. It felt colder than before.

“……”

It wasn’t just a feeling. It was colder than before.

It was because Theodore’s body heat, which had been against me, had disappeared.

The sudden realization that I was left alone was overwhelmingly lonely.

I blankly stared at the space where Theodore had been lying until a while ago, now just left with nothing but darkness.

“Will he be okay?”

Now, I was the one left in the underground dungeon. Therefore, it was right to worry about myself, not Theodore.

Yet, Theodore’s eyes from last night, like a lost child, kept coming back to my mind.

It was Theodore’s red eyes, like a small light fading in the darkness, making even the observer worry that it might go out, like a firefly.

It was such a small and fragile light that I unknowingly wanted to breathe life into it.

* * *

The door of the underground dungeon opened again.

This time, I was determined to get out. I sprang up from my spot.

I was fed up with the darkness. I hated the cold, hard floor.

What I hated the most was that they had locked me up here and still hadn’t fed me!

Starving a person was really the worst.

“This isn’t the contract conditions! When I came here, they said they would provide food and lodging, but making me sleep on this stone floor and feeding me only air, what kind of provision is that? Even the air is bad, smelling musty!”

After I had vented all my complaints in one breath, I realized who the person standing in front of me was.

“……”

Theodore’s gaze clearly spoke.

‘What is this?’

I regretted it. I thought that since Theodore had already been taken away, surely a servant would come to get me, or Ordi would come.

But I didn’t expect Theodore to show up himself.

The backlighting was also a big reason why I couldn’t see his face well.

“You seem to have a lot of complaints.”

Theodore said in a sly tone that slightly included a snort.

After he left, the small and tender Theodore I had been thinking of was gone.

The Theodore in front of me now was the noble successor of the Caro family, known as the real power of the empire, and the perfect nobleman with a handsome demeanor and good looks.

In other words, he was ‘Theodore de Caro’, the male protagonist I had seen in the novel.

‘I have to present myself well.’

I clenched my fist and remembered what I had vowed before coming here.

Just because I wasn’t his type didn’t mean I was safe. It would be troublesome if he thought of me as a vessel for the fluids he needed.

At least while I was staying in this mansion, I had to present myself well to him for my peace of mind.

According to what I read in the book, and adding the explanation I heard from Ordi in the carriage, the Caro family’s madness usually manifested during adolescence.

Theodore, who showed symptoms in his twenties, was quite late.

Externally, sharp fangs and nails grew, strength increased, and no matter what the original eye color was, it turned red.

And internally, he literally went mad.

However, this madness did not continue forever. Depending on the person, the symptoms generally subsided after about 3 to 5 years.

The reason why Theodore’s father, Grand Duke Caro, was doing well was because he was already middle-aged.

In other words, I had to stay in this mansion and provide fluids until Theodore’s madness disappeared.

The labor contract I made with Ordi was also based on that.

For a maid without a single letter of introduction from the countryside, Ordi guaranteed a very generous salary and even a more generous severance pay after Theodore’s madness safely disappeared.

“Why are you frozen?”

Seeing me firming up my resolve, Theodore chuckled.

“Was I that scary? Well, it must have been the first time you saw such a monster.”

His smile was self-deprecating. At the same time, he was mocking me.

I don’t know how it was possible at the same time, but that was the look of Theodore, who was pulling up one corner of his mouth and smiling.

That look was like… a rebellious teenager.

It was a smile that would suit creepy and cringeworthy lines like, ‘Heh heh heh. The black flame dragon sealed in my arm wants blood.’ or ‘I envy that flying bird. At least it’s free.’

Perfectly suited to the worn-out male lead.

No, male lead! Don’t go that way! That’s the abyss!

“No.”

At my answer, Theodore’s brows narrowed.

“I wasn’t really scared.”

I nailed it once more, looking straight at him.

I couldn’t bear to see Theodore go to the river of tragedy he should not cross.

Even though I won’t end up like the female lead, Astella, because I’m not Theodore’s type, I didn’t want to keep living in this underground dungeon, being drained of blood because he hates me.

“You weren’t scared of me?”

Theodore asked again, his eyes wide open.

“Yes.”

I nodded, trying my best to maintain a positive expression.

“You weren’t scared even though a person’s eyes were red?”

“It was like a rabbit’s and cute.”

I mentioned the name of the creature that seemed to be the most harmless among creatures with red eyes.

“What?”

“Yes?”

“What did you say?”

“Eh?”

Is this… not it?

Theodore, hearing the answer ‘rabbit’, scowled as if he had definitely misheard something and asked me again.

Could there be a symptom of madness that includes hearing abnormalities? I don’t think there was.

“Did you call me a rabbit?”

“No, it’s not that… It’s not that you, Theodore, are a rabbit, but rabbits also have red eyes, and rabbits aren’t scary, so red eyes aren’t that bad, and rabbits are cute, so you, Theodore, are also cute…”

“Did you call me cute?”

Theodore asked me with an even more scrunched up face. It seems like this isn’t it.