Richel regained consciousness amid overwhelming pain.

Her body trembled violently and she coughed. With each cough, a sharp pain shot through the lower part of her ribs.

She tried desperately to suppress it, but it was impossible.

In an attempt to expel the freezing cold buried deep within her bones, she coughed repeatedly.

“Hngh… what… ngh…”

Thick steam filled the air.

She sat n*ked in a hot, steamy tub.

The unfamiliar room around her looked shabby and worn.

Reflexively, she tried to get up.

At that moment, the door opened and a familiar face hurried in.

It was Ena, the head maid.

The moment she saw that Richel was awake, she quickly approached her.

“Please stay still. Your body was far too cold—you need to warm up first.”

“Where… is this?”

The moment she finished speaking, a groan slipped from her lips.

Pain throbbed through her ribs and spread sharply through her side.

Ena hurriedly spoke.

“Do you remember falling into the river? Please don’t talk. The doctor said that you have a cracked rib, so talking will make it hurt more. Just breathe and stay still. Please, just stay still. This is a nearby village.”

A nearby village.

Richel instantly thought of the embankment.

She remembered the river overflowing during the torrential rain, and how the embankment had nearly burst.

“Hngh… the embankment… what happened?”

She forced herself to ask anyway, only to let out another painful groan.

Ena sighed softly.

The Isle family had a terrible tendency to treat their bodies far too carelessly.

It was an awful habit that had worsened considerably over the past three years.

“The emergency reinforcement of the embankment is finished. Everyone’s scattered throughout the village resting now.”

“…Haah. Thank goodness. Then it’s safe now?”

“For the moment, yes. Hans went back one more time to inspect things just in case, but the rain’s starting to lessen, so it doesn’t seem like there’ll be any further problems.”

Ena explained everything as thoroughly as possible.

If her explanations were too brief, Richel would undoubtedly keep asking questions.

It was better to tell her as much as she could from the beginning.

“We’ve already done everything we possibly could. So please stop worrying now and get some rest.”

Richel let out a relieved sigh, but her expression twisted immediately afterwards.

Even taking a deep breath caused pain and pressure to spread through her ribs.

‘She said my rib was cracked.’

Richel was shocked to discover that her bone had merely cracked rather than broken completely when she recalled the agonizing pain she had experienced in the river.

Just a crack hurt this much.

She lowered her gaze, then looked back at Ena, startling violently.

A huge black bruise stretched across her abdomen.

“They said it was caused by the rope pressing into you. There was too much force on it while you were being dragged. Do you have any idea how shocked I was when I undressed you?”

Only then did Richel remember Edwin.

And the fact that the last thing she had seen before losing consciousness was him holding onto her.

“Ed— ngh!”

“I told you not to talk! The Count is warming himself up in another room right now. I don’t know whether he’s woken up yet, but outwardly, at least, he seemed unharmed.”

At those words, relief washed through Richel.

A brief, instinctive relief.

Then she remembered the way Edwin had acted.

The way he had behaved as though he were prepared to die after letting go of her.

‘What on earth was he thinking? If a lord died in a situation like that, do you realize what kind of chaos that would cause…?’

Ever since he returned, Edwin had been extremely emotional and obsessive.

The same was true when he tried to let himself be swept away in the river.

Although falling in was certainly dangerous and terrifying, it wasn’t so hopeless that one of them absolutely had to throw away their life.

“What in the world did he go through during those three years to come back like this?”

For the first time, she found herself questioning the past three years Edwin had spent away.

Until now, there had simply been too many other problems to deal with, and because she had been thinking they might as well divorce anyway, she had never cared enough to ask about his past.

‘I’ll ask him later. If I’m going to figure out how to deal with this insane behavior of his, then I need to understand it first.’

Having come to this realization, she finally relaxed.

Everything hurt.

Her ribs throbbed, her body ached, and she was exhausted.

Tilting her head back slightly, she exhaled slowly.

Ena returned, carrying a basin of water.

“I’ll wash your hair for you.”

Ena dipped one lock of Richel’s hair at a time into the basin.

It was a complete mess, tangled with wet dirt and bits of bark.

Ena carefully began to untangle it, strand by strand.

Her hands moved with skill and familiarity.

“It’s admirable that you work so hard, but please take better care of yourself. Do you know how terrified the butler and I were when we heard both of you had been injured and rushed all the way here?”

Just as Richel tried to answer, Ena stopped her immediately.

“You don’t need to respond. No matter what I say, don’t answer me. Try to breathe as slowly as possible too.”

She truly worried that Richel treated her own body far too recklessly.

‘The Count looked perfectly fine, and yet it’s the Countess who ended up like this…’

Richel had cracked a rib and bruised her abdomen black and blue.

Meanwhile, Edwin had suffered nothing more than a few minor scrapes.

Half upset and half angry, Ena continued scolding her.

“They said it’ll take several weeks for the rib to heal. Apparently even speaking will be difficult at first, so please take this opportunity to rest properly.”

“What? Then the work— ngh!”

Richel groaned, unable to finish her sentence, as a stabbing pain shot through her ribs.

She had only spoken for a few moments, yet the pain was intense.

Still—several weeks of rest?

Considering the endless pile of work waiting for her every day, that sounded like a disaster.

‘If things pile up too much, everything’s going to stop functioning…’

The butler and Hans would likely handle matters temporarily, but the work would inevitably accumulate, and in the end, finishing it would still fall to her.

Ena spoke firmly.

“Please, my lady. The Count has returned now, so hand all the work over to him. This time, your health has to come first.”

The moment she heard those words, a sudden and bewildering realization struck Richel.

Her role as acting Count was now over.

After Edwin’s disappearance, she had naturally taken over management of the estate without any formal procedure.

There had never been any need for official approval or documentation for her to assume the position.

Which meant the same was true for losing it.

The moment the Count returned, her place as his substitute had quietly vanished on its own.

‘Right… I don’t need to agonize over all of this anymore.’

She was no longer responsible for managing the estate.

She no longer needed to work herself to exhaustion or bear the weight of that immense responsibility.

That burden now belonged to Edwin.

This realization struck her so suddenly that she was left momentarily dazed.

Ena dumped out the basin of water she had used to wash Richel’s hair.

The water had turned murky with dirt and grime.

“What Countess would push herself this far? You’ve already done far more than enough.”

Richel gave a small nod.

***

Upon returning to the estate, Edwin fell ill with a high fever.

This was accompanied by relentless coughing, which worsened with each passing day.

The only thing he could swallow was a few spoonfuls of porridge.

Day after day blurred into one miserable cycle of suffering: collapsing into exhausted sleep, only to wake and suffer again.

The doctor visited frequently to monitor Edwin’s condition.

Compared to Edwin, Richel was in much better condition.

For the first three or four days, she could only drink medicine and sleep. However, once that period had passed, her strength slowly began to return.

‘This is suffocating.’

However, regaining her strength did not mean that she was allowed to move around freely.

Her cracked rib needed at least two weeks of complete rest to heal properly.

Ena made sure that she did not do any work at all.

Richel felt as though she were trapped inside the bed itself.

“My lady, you need to eat.”

Ena arrived carrying all sorts of dishes supposedly good for healing bones.

Healthy meals were usually strange to look at and even stranger to taste.

Looking down at the translucent, wobbling mound on her plate, Richel asked flatly,

“What is this?”

A thin layer of oil had been brushed over the dish and pepper had been sprinkled across the surface.

“What exactly is this?”

“They said it’s meat taken from a pig’s knee.”

“…Pig’s knee. Then what about this?”

“That’s a soup made by grinding up an entire fish. What was it called again…?”

“No, never mind. Don’t tell me.”

Thinking it was probably better not to know, Richel picked up her spoon.

The so-called health foods were always so bland that they failed to mask the raw, unpleasant taste of the ingredients underneath.

Miserably, Richel muttered.

“It tastes awful.”

“People don’t eat health food because it tastes good. They eat it to recover faster. Hurry and finish it.”

Richel swallowed another spoonful.

The faster she recovered, the sooner she could escape her suffocating life in bed, complete with horribly tasteless meals.

Once she had finished eating, Ena handed her a cup of medicinal tonic.

The liquid was black with a murky green hue.

Holding her breath, Richel forced it down in one gulp.

It tasted so awful that it nearly made her gag.

Ena quickly handed her a sweet afterwards.

“You worked hard.”

“Ugh… ngh… this is truly, truly the worst.”

“They say it’s very effective medicine.”

“It had better be. If they’re going to make people swallow something that tastes like this, it should at least work.”

At that, Ena laughed softly.

“Still, the Isle family’s physician is quite skilled. Do you know how many incompetent doctors there are?”

“Even so, this is excessive. What on earth do they put in this to make it taste this terrible?”

She had just finished grumbling when loud commotion suddenly rose from outside.

Then the door burst open.

“My lady!”

With someone shouting frantically in the background, Edwin suddenly appeared in the doorway.

His clothes were a complete mess, and his face was flushed deep red from fever.

“Richel.”

He spoke her name weakly.

His murmuring lips were dry and cracked from the heat burning through him.