After finishing lunch, Richel headed toward Edwin’s room.

If she wanted to hide the fact that Edwin had gone insane, they needed to get their stories straight before Edwin’s uncle, James Isle, arrived.

From where Edwin had spent the past three years to how he had lived until now, they needed prepared answers for everything in advance.

‘Even if we go with memory loss for now, the story at least has to make sense from beginning to end…’

A thick stack of documents rested in her hands.

It was a makeshift script she had put together through various investigations.

Carrying the rolled papers she had spent the entire morning preparing, she stepped into Edwin’s room.

The bedroom was completely silent.

She walked toward the bed.

“Don’t tell me… he’s sleeping?”

After confirming Edwin lying facedown on the bed, Richel frowned.

She had even informed him beforehand about when she would come, yet he was still lying in bed. The sheer absurdity of it irritated her.

Richel placed a hand on his shoulder.

She intended to wake him.

The moment her hand touched him, his body flinched.

“What? You were awake? Get up for a moment. We need to talk.”

“……”

“What are you doing? I said get up.”

She shook his shoulder.

But Edwin remained sprawled facedown, burying his face deep into the pillow.

‘What kind of protest is this now?’

Richel furrowed her brows.

“I said get up. We need to get our stories straight before your uncle arrives.”

“……”

“Are you seriously not going to get up?”

Edwin still refused to answer.

A surge of anger rose in her chest.

She had allowed herself a little hope after seeing him force himself to eat all those health foods, but as expected, nothing had changed.

She threw the papers she had brought onto the bed.

“Fine, forget it! I was the idiot for thinking you’d actually listen!”

Just as she turned to leave, a loud thud echoed behind her, and the hem of her clothes was suddenly yanked backward.

“What now…?”

Frowning, she turned around.

Edwin had fallen off the bed and was clutching desperately at the edge of her skirt.

Lowering his head deeply, he hurriedly tried to explain himself.

“No. It’s not that I didn’t want to listen to you…”

Richel barely heard the excuse.

Something about Edwin’s face looked strange.

The little she could see of his eyelids looked terribly swollen.

She immediately crouched down and grabbed his face.

His head was lifted halfway.

His face looked utterly ruined, swollen like overproofed dough.

“…What happened to your face?”

Edwin hurriedly lowered his head again.

Richel grabbed his arm and tugged, signaling for him to stand.

Still keeping his face lowered, Edwin hesitated and resisted weakly.

“Get up. Your face is… I said get up.”

Irritation seeped into her voice, and Edwin finally sat awkwardly on the edge of the bed with his head bowed.

In a shrunken voice, he muttered an excuse.

“It’s just… a little swollen. The doctor said it should go down naturally with time…”

At that moment, Richel grabbed his chin and forcibly lifted his face.

The instant their eyes met, his gaze dropped downward in panic, but his face had already been fully exposed.

Even the whites of his eyes were bloodshot red, and his double eyelids had disappeared entirely from the swelling. His skin had lost all vitality and looked rough and dry.

“This is what you call a little swollen?”

His uncle was arriving in only two days, yet he looked like this.

The absurdity of it left her speechless.

“You said you’d been taking care of yourself this whole time. What on earth happened to you? Was there some kind of problem?”

Even recently, the doctor had proudly boasted about the effects of the chicken feet pudding.

That was why Richel had let her guard down.

Edwin looked completely at a loss.

Even if he wanted to lower his head and hide his face, Richel’s grip on him was too firm to allow it.

“…Could you let go of me first?”

“Answer me first. Why does your face look like this?”

“…Yesterday, my stomach felt bad, so I threw up.”

“You threw up, and your face ended up like this?”

“After that, I just… cried a little. And then…”

“You cried? To the point you ended up looking like this?”

“……Sorry.”

It was a completely deflated apology.

The moment Richel let go of him, Edwin quickly lowered his head again.

“You do know your uncle is arriving here the morning after tomorrow, right?”

“I know. I do, but yesterday I really couldn’t control my emotions…”

While making excuses, Edwin hesitantly raised his head for a moment, only to lower it again after thinking about how awful his face must look.

“I didn’t do it on purpose.”

‘He didn’t do it on purpose?’

“You’re not a five-year-old child, so do you seriously think that counts as an excuse right now?”

She had thought things were finally beginning to improve, but now everything had returned to the beginning again.

Trying to suppress the anger surging inside her, she paced around the room for a long while.

Edwin cautiously watched her before apologizing once again.

Richel finally snapped, unable to hold back her emotions any longer.

“Do you even realize how many times you’ve apologized already? Do you think saying sorry can fix everything after the damage has already been done? What if you had killed someone? Would you just apologize then too—say you never meant for it to happen and expect that to make it okay?”

At those words, Edwin’s expression twisted.

Her words had reminded him of the time Richel died.

The moment the memory surged up inside him, tears spilled out before he could stop them.

Richel was dumbfounded.

The one who wanted to cry right now was her, not him.

“Why are you crying again?!”

“I-I did wrong… hic—hng… I was wrong. I’ll make the swelling go down quickly. I’ll make sure I look fine in front of Uncle…”

Even as he spoke, the tears refused to stop.

His already bloodshot eyes grew redder and redder, and his swollen eyelids looked even worse than before.

Just as Richel was reaching her breaking point, the doctor entered carrying an ice bucket and a kettle.

“My lord. Something good for the swelling—”

Richel whipped around to look at him.

The doctor froze mid-step, still clutching the ice bucket and kettle.

The Countess looked moments away from exploding, while on the other side of the room, the Count had started crying again.

‘It somehow got even worse.’

A furious scolding immediately came crashing down on him.

“What exactly is going on here? How in the world did you handle things for it to end up like this?!”

The doctor glanced at her nervously and stammered out an excuse.

Honestly, part of him felt this situation was rather unfair.

He had done his best.

It wasn’t as though he could stand guard all night watching whether Edwin cried alone or not.

“I-I don’t know if you heard already, but the Count cried a little, so…”

Richel’s expression still resembled a volcano on the verge of erupting.

The doctor quickly swallowed down his complaints and lifted the kettle and ice bucket instead.

“The swelling won’t last long. I also brought a special juice I prepared myself, and the ice as well—”

“And you think that’s the issue right now?!”

Richel exploded.

At this point, the situation had gone beyond infuriating and become utterly absurd.

“You’ve been coming in and out of this place every single day, so what exactly have you been doing all this time? Wasn’t the entire reason we sent you here to make sure something like this would never happen? And now you’re standing there telling me it was just ‘a little problem’? Is that really all you have to say?”

“……I apologize, my lady. This was my failure.”

The doctor lowered his head.

Richel felt like her insides were about to burst from frustration.

Edwin’s uncle was arriving in only two days.

They were supposed to be discussing how to deal with him, yet the atmosphere in the room had already become a complete disaster.

The doctor was too busy watching her mood to even set down what he was carrying, Edwin kept hiccuping as he forced himself to suppress his sobs, and the papers she had thrown earlier were scattered all over the bed.

First, she needed to calm herself down.

Right now, she was the biggest problem.

“Edwin, read through the documents I brought and come to my room afterward. We can’t have this conversation while things are like this.”

Sniffling through his tears, he nodded.

“And stop crying already.”

At this point, wouldn’t it be fair to say she was practically raising a child?

Letting out a deep sigh, Richel turned and walked out of the room.