I Became a Tyrant’s Maid - Chapter 46

“Cough, gasp!”

I flailed about wildly.

“Your Highness, consciousness, pfah!”

Fortunately, there was an underground lake beneath the ground that the cylindrical monster had destroyed, so we avoided instant death.

However, the problem was…

The male lead’s condition was strange.

Looking up to where we had fallen from, the height was considerable.

It was a miracle that I was unharmed.

“Your Highness?”

The male lead was tightly hugging me and had lost consciousness.

I managed to grab a nearby rock and dragged him to the shore.

Although the water was deep, thankfully it was a pond, so we weren’t swept away by currents.

“Your Highness, wake up. Your Highness!”

I put down the luggage and laid the male lead on the ground.

However, I was too flustered to think straight.

That’s when I saw it. In my dazed vision, the bag was glowing brightly.

To be precise, the diary inside the bag was glowing.

It seemed impossible.

Despite the impossibility, the bag was completely dry as if it were waterproof.

Moreover, apart from being a bit wet, I was miraculously unharmed.

No matter how I thought about it, it didn’t make sense to be completely fine after falling from such a height.

I put my hand near the male lead’s nose. My already slow thoughts came to a complete halt.

“Damn it, hey. Wake up. Hey!”

He’s not breathing.

My own breath caught in my throat.

This can’t be. He’s the protagonist.

But he’s not breathing?

“Hey, protagonist. Wake up. I said wake up!”

I shook the male lead frantically to wake him, but he didn’t move at all, as if he had really died.

I placed both hands on the male lead’s chest.

His heart isn’t beating.

The male lead can’t die yet. He really can’t die when the original story hasn’t even started.

“Wake, up!”

I climbed on top of the male lead and pumped his chest vigorously.

CPR is taught in elementary school, and hotels also make it mandatory for employees to learn it for safety training.

So, even though I’ve never used it in a real situation, I could do it.

I could do it, right?

Please.

***

Calix had no choice but to regain consciousness, if only because of his stinging cheeks.

It was definitely a Death Worm that had attacked him. A high-risk monster ranked just below the dragon race.

Fortunately, he wasn’t eaten, but as a result, the ground they were standing on collapsed and they fell.

“Hey, Calix Posman, you crazy bastard. If I’ve done this much, you should wake up already!”

Suddenly, a soft hand grabbed his collar and yanked him up.

Thanks to that, Calix had no choice but to open his eyes wide.

“Your Highness! Are you conscious?”

Through his blurry vision, he saw the now-familiar pink hair.

“I’m sure… I heard someone call me crazy.”

“It was an auditory hallucination, Your Highness.”

Calix rubbed his eyes and quietly watched Rose, who was busily checking if he was alright.

She was feeling his body with teary eyes, and Calix flinched at the sudden contact.

“Your Highness, are you not dizzy?”

But regardless, Rose grabbed both his cheeks and came very close.

“And your breathing? Take a deep breath, Your Highness.”

Rose’s hands settled on his chest.

Calix unconsciously did as she said, and suddenly felt an emptiness in his chest.

“Your Highness, we need to warm you up first, so I’ll look for something to make a fire.”

Calix felt his own body. There was nothing.

The rags he should have been wearing seemed to have been hastily thrown on the ground, piled up messily beside him.

Calix hurriedly covered his body. Then he saw Rose tearing off dried plant branches from the corner of the cave with a dagger.

‘Wait, isn’t that the knife I gave her?’

Calix was so surprised he could only gape.

It was definitely the knife he had given her to protect herself.

No, even if it wasn’t, it was the knife he had given her as a token of becoming his person, and she was using it to tear off insignificant bushes! It was a knife he had personally commissioned from a renowned craftsman in the empire.

“Your Highness, please wait a moment even if you’re cold.”

Rose spoke as if to reassure him, and somehow, in this situation, she opened the well-packed luggage bag and took out a quite familiar red book.

It was a book Calix knew as well.

The diary she always carried around.

He had definitely seen it at the birthday celebration too.

“Thank goodness. It’s not wet.”

Rose muttered as if talking to herself. She then tore a few pages of the diary, crumpled it, and threw it into the dried bushes she had arranged like a nest.

Watching her quietly made him feel somewhat uncomfortable.

Calix reached out to Rose, who was moving busily.

“I’ll do it.”

He could see Rose’s face freeze for a moment.

Her eyebrows seemed to twitch briefly, and then the forced smile he always saw appeared on her lips.

“I’ll do it, Your Highness.”

He ended up withdrawing his hand awkwardly and curling up. He had to just watch Rose do it.

Although she was just a maid who dared to do something to him, the Crown Prince, he felt that something terrible would happen if he didn’t listen to her.

‘How did we survive?’

Calix shifted his gaze towards the lake.

As far as he knew, the sand desert near the Desart Empire was a paradise for monsters.

Usually, if one fell into a deep desert cave lake like this, becoming prey for a Leviathan was the natural course.

There were widespread rumors that Leviathans lived in the caves of the Desart desert.

Dozens of adventurers from Posnia had already died at the hands of that monster.

But contrary to such worries, there was nothing in the lake.

Even now, it’s very quiet.

‘Click, click.’

Sparks rose from Rose’s hands holding the flint.

Actually, he was fine. As for the body temperature she was worried about, he could quickly raise it by circulating his mana.

Rather, the bigger problem was her, moving busily with blue lips, not knowing her place.

Even for someone like him, who had little emotional exchange with people, he could tell that she was worried about him now.

It was a genuine, unadorned emotion that he hadn’t experienced in a very long time.

‘Even that strange threat must have been out of concern.’

Calix couldn’t help but smile.

Of course, his laughter made Rose’s expression even more rigid.

“Your Highness, this is no time to laugh. I’ve made a fire, so please come closer.”

At first, she had addressed him with all sorts of honorifics, but now she seemed to be getting more comfortable with him, starting to speak more casually.

Although it was unfair, Calix rather liked her attitude. Despite it being nothing special.

“Your Highness, just a moment.”

Suddenly, as Rose grabbed his hand, he felt her cold body temperature.

“Your hands are cold, Your Highness.”

Calix swallowed.

Her hands were colder than his, and it was Rose, not him, whose lips had turned blue.

“…”

“Your Highness? Is there something on my face?”

She looked up at him as if embarrassed. Calix only then realized that he had been staring intently at Rose.

“Your Highness, if you feel any difficulty breathing or if you feel feverish, please be sure to tell me.”

Rose’s wet hair tickled his body.

Calix pushed her away, trying to shake off the strange feeling of his stomach churning unpleasantly.

“I understand, so stop moving and sit comfortably.”

“No, Your Highness. I need to first—”

“Sit.”

Calix caught Rose as she tried to stand up again and made her sit back down next to him.

In fact, Calix himself wasn’t sure what he was doing.

This was already the fourth time.

He had nearly died, and each time, Rose had saved him.

Could it be a mere coincidence?

Rose’s face, forced to sit next to him by his order, was full of fatigue.

Calix slowly examined her.

Her luggage, which should have been soaked after falling into the lake, looked relatively fine.

And the diary she seemed to carry around unnecessarily all the time.

“Your Highness, are you not thirsty?”

It became complicated.

Apart from the worsened situation, he became suspicious of his maid.

‘What exactly is her identity?’

They had fallen from a position where they should have certainly died, yet she survived unscathed and saved him.

Probably Rose was in a similar situation to him, so if she hadn’t done something, they both would have died.

Moreover, his heart, clearly.

It had stopped once.

The mana that had briefly pooled in his heart proved it.

Restarting a stopped heart? Something even the Pope couldn’t do, done by a mere maid?

His head was telling him he should interrogate her.

Ruel was right. She was suspicious.

“It’s fine, so why don’t you take care of yourself first?”

But Calix couldn’t say anything to her.

“I’m glad you’re alright, Your Highness. Really…”

Rose bit her blue lips and started trembling slightly.

It was foolish.

Not even knowing what kind of thoughts he was having, she was just shivering with a face that said she was glad he was safe.

She even managed to find a tin can from somewhere and was boiling water.

“Damn it, I don’t know who’s worrying about whom.”

It was an inevitable choice.

At this rate, the damn pink-haired maid who kept bothering him seemed like she might freeze to death.

Having fallen into a deep desert cave, known as the Cave of Death, dying was just a matter of time anyway.

‘A living maid would be better than a frozen corpse as a companion on the journey to the afterlife.’

Calix pulled Rose onto his lap and embraced her.

“Y-Your Highness! What is this suddenly!”

Rose squirmed in his arms as if flustered, and Calix held her tightly.

“Stay still, will you? Unless you want to freeze to death.”

“But Your Highness! There’s a clear distinction between men and women, and the difference in our status…”

“Shut up.”

Calix covered Rose’s mouth as she started babbling incomprehensibly again and forcefully drew up his mana.

Warmth quickly spread through his body.

Rose must have felt it too, as her struggles gradually lessened.

Somehow, the situation had become strange.

Because he was embracing her from behind, Rose’s pink hair tickled his lips.

Moreover, because Rose’s clothes were wet and clinging to her bare skin, her body temperature felt even closer.

The feeling was very… strange.

“Your Highness, I’m really fine.”

He could feel Rose’s breathing in his arms.

Thump, thump.

A strange sensation seemed to climb from the tips of his toes to the top of his head.

“Your Highness?”

At the gentle voice that suddenly cut through the silence, Calix felt his heart ache dully.

“If you say one more word, I’ll take it as disobedience to my order.”

Something seemed wrong.

“…Yes, Your Highness.”

Very wrong indeed.