The heavy wooden door slamd against the wall with a bang. Leaving the trembling door behind, Esperanza walked with large strides to stand at the bedside where Cider was.
Fortunately, he didn't appear to be injured. He was simply sitting on the bed in light clothing, looking at Esperanza with wide eyes.
"You ca quickly! Welco. The Count is safe."
"My lady, it was truly heaven's fortune. He has no injuries."
Mrs. Lux and Butler Howard spoke soothingly to Esperanza. Esperanza belatedly caught her breath.
"But they said he collapsed?"
"Yes. I don't know what happened, but he got up right away. The examination just finished and they say there's nothing wrong..."
"Excuse , but which lady might you be?"
Esperanza, who had been quietly listening to Howard's explanation, whipped her head around. So did everyone else. Just now, had they heard wrong?
Everyone had the sa expression. Surprisingly, they hadn't heard wrong. The person who said it continued to ask as if delivering a final blow:
"Didn't you hear ?"
What was going on?
"Co-Countess, I'll examine him again right away! It seems a thorough examination is needed, please wait a mont. Surely the machine... Count, I'll draw so blood."
The doctor who drew lots of blood with a huge syringe took out a machine from his house call bag. When he pressed a switch and poured in the blood, steam shot out from the machine's head. And while the machine spat out diagnostic results, the doctor began examining from the beginning again. No one thought to stop him. No, the doctor's judgnt was correct.
The current Cider Claiborne needed a thorough examination.
Esperanza just watched like an outsider while all these things happened. Her palms were damp. Even while blood was being drawn, even while the crude examination machine swept over his injured head, Cider's eyes remained fixed on Esperanza with an unprecedentedly cold wariness. As if he hadn't forgotten the task of interrogating her identity.
There wasn't a trace of affection there.
"It's retrograde amnesia."
After a long while, the doctor declared. Of course, it was the conclusion everyone had guessed. Esperanza vaguely thought 'Isn't retrograde amnesia not like this?' but it wasn't a situation to say such things.
"It seems there was so accident before you collapsed. Part of your mory appears to be damaged from physical trauma to the head, but it's probably a temporary phenonon."
Of course, the doctor wasn't a psychiatrist either, and with the dical standards of this era, amnesia couldn't be properly explained or treated.
'Part of the mory appears to be damaged...'
"Count, do you know what day today is? Including the year precisely."
Cider frowned as if it were a stupid question, but answered obediently. And the mansion was turned upside down once again.
Cider Claiborne's mory had stopped in 1837. Exactly two days before Esperanza arrived in this world. A full three years of mory had vanished completely.
"He-he'll regain his mory soon!"
The doctor frantically made excuses lest the bla fall on him. Esperanza stared blankly at the doctor's waving palm, then turned and ran to the study. What she brought from the study was a glass bottle containing an ominously purple liquid.
"This... I don't think applying it will work, it probably needs to be drunk. I don't know if it'll be effective though..."
Cider smiled with a face slightly tired from being tornted by the doctor.
"Why should I trust you?"
The surroundings beca noisy again. Mrs. Lux and Butler Howard, noticing the chilled atmosphere, dragged the doctor out of the room. Millen, who failed to escape in ti, looked anxiously back and forth between the two.
Esperanza said nothing. Right, he couldn't trust her. It was natural not to trust. While thinking that on one hand, there was a part she absolutely couldn't accept.
'He forgot only
like a ghost?'
Strictly speaking, he had forgotten three whole years, but it was very strange that his mory stopped exactly two days before Esperanza ca here. Moreover, that there were no problems with other parts. There might be issues that couldn't be discovered with this era's dical technology, but even to Esperanza's eyes, Cider looked perfectly fine.
'He's this fine but forgot only
specifically.'
She certainly didn't wish for him to be hurt, but if he had been injured, she wouldn't feel this way.
"So, which Countess did you say you were? I don't think I heard the answer."
As if thinking he had waited enough, Cider asked again. Esperanza lifted her chin slightly.
"I'm the Countess of Avondale."
She hadn't expected the obedient answer 'Ah, I see' to co back. It was sothing she threw out to see him surprised. The answer that ca back was no less formidable.
"My dead father wouldn't have had a marriage of theft."
"Your imagination is really sothing."
Was he originally this kind of person? It seed like he was. No, until yesterday he would have been this kind of person. Losing mory doesn't change personality.
Whatever Esperanza was thinking inside, Cider turned his head toward Millen. He had woken up to find three years had passed and he was even married. Naturally, an outsider's claims couldn't be trusted.
"Millen, is it true?"
"It is, sir."
Millen, reluctantly answering with a face that wanted to run away imdiately, stealthily dragged his feet toward the door. Fortunately, instead of pointing out that behavior, Cider turned his eyes to Esperanza.
Eyes where the confused light had sowhat subsided and only wariness remained. It had been ages since Cider looked at Esperanza with such eyes. Even knowing it couldn't be helped since he lost his mory, it was disappointing enough to feel newly hurt.
"Just from your walk, I can tell you're no lady. So what would I have trusted about you to marry?"
Really, listening to this over and over...
"How would I know that? You're the one who proposed marriage. Ask your dead brain cells."
"There must be a marriage contract. If I look at that, I'll quickly..."
"There's no such thing."
For the first ti, cracks appeared on the face that had remained calm even at the diagnosis of amnesia.
"There isn't? I made such a losing marriage?"
Unable to accept it at all, he asked Millen, who had almost succeeded in secretly escaping:
"Millen, I wasn't insane for three years and just now returned to my senses, was I?"
"You looked the sa to , sir. As always... you were a bit less than fine."
"If I was that fine, I must have had my reasons. Then forget about the marriage talk."
Cider gave silent reproach by staring at Millen and got up from the bed. He walked past Esperanza and Millen toward the door, looking as if he truly had no injuries.
"Where are you going?"
"To the study. You're not thinking of following, are you?"
His lips moved as if he had sothing to say. But the woman soon turned around without saying anything. He felt sowhat uneasy. Cider blinked slowly. However, he still didn't know much about his current self to determine what this uneasiness was about. He gestured for Millen to follow and headed to the study.
The mont he threw open the familiar door, his steps ca to an abrupt halt. The familiar space behind the familiar door had changed to sothing completely different from what he knew.
"Why has my study beco like this?"
"It was ordered by the Count when he was... unwell."
Millen, who was much brighter now that he didn't have to be caught between the Count and Countess, answered.
"Then that desk..."
"The Countess used it."
What was I really thinking? Cider increasingly couldn't understand himself in the lost mories.
But what could he do? If his mory wouldn't return, he would have to adapt to the world three years later with the mories of twenty-five-year-old Cider Claiborne.
"The future."
How much had the world three years later changed? Walking quickly to stand before the bookshelf, he found academic journals organized by year in their familiar position. The world's most authoritative academic journal that published research on magic in general, and a couple of authoritative journals in the field of magical engineering. Since he couldn't read three years' worth monthly, he leaned against the bookshelf and skimd only the abstracts.
Read journals began piling up on the empty bookshelf. Sunlight hidden by clouds erged. Black ink glead white in the sunlight that seed to urge him by poking at the paper, asking if he had forgotten anything. Cider, squinting and closing the book, sighed.
Nothing had changed in several years. Though he searched to the end without giving up hope, no innovation could be found. Was this acceptable?
His gaze now turned to his own research materials. Though he hadn't published externally, it seed he hadn't stopped researching for three years. Having pulled out several from the vast materials, he sighed in relief. At least Cider Claiborne alone seed to have researched properly.
Cider moved to the next room without hesitation. Millen, left alone in the empty study, activated a librarian automaton to organize the randomly pulled academic journals and left the room.
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