The Doctor Arrives at the Duke's Estate

Lionel Frencia sat on the sofa in the Carseido Dukedom's drawing room, struggling to steady her nerves.

After a while, she heard the click of a lock, and someone entered—a young man with brown hair and green eyes who had a friendly, approachable air about him.

"Lady Lionel Frencia?"

"Yes, that's me."

"Thank you for coming such a long way. I am Kaylen Brexter, aide to His Grace the Duke of Carseido."

Kaylen set a tray down in front of Lionel and took the seat across from her. Lionel, grateful for the refreshment, reached out—then froze mid-motion.

...Dried jerky? Orange juice with a straw?

Weren't you supposed to serve tea and pastries on occasions like this?

While Lionel was still puzzling over it, the interview began. Kaylen looked over the documents she had prepared and let out a sound of genuine admiration.

"You graduated at the very top of your class from the Imperial Medical Academy—and the youngest ever, no less! What a prodigy. It is an honor to meet you."

"You flatter me. Speaking of which, won't the Duke be conducting the interview himself? Or does hiring fall entirely to you, sir?"

"Ah, well, about that..."

Kaylen's brows drew downward. Lowering his voice almost to a whisper, he spoke.

"I am terribly sorry after you've come all this way, but the truth is, His Grace has ordered us to stop recruiting personal physicians altogether."

"I'm sorry—why?"

"Dozens of physicians have come and gone over the years, and every last one caused some manner of trouble... I imagine His Grace has simply grown sick of it."

Thirty-two of them running off? At some point, shouldn't someone be asking for the runaways' side of the story?

By this point, Lionel was starting to wonder if that rumor about the family drinking blood might actually be true.

As Lionel sat there with a grim expression, Kaylen repeated his apologies again and again.

"I truly am sorry. Instead, allow me to recommend you for a position elsewhere. Once they see your credentials, they're certain to welcome you with open arms."

Judging by how far he was going to smooth things over, a job at the dukedom was well and truly off the table. Lionel reluctantly accepted this, and Kaylen rose from his seat.

"It's already late in the day, so please stay the night. I'll have a room prepared."

Spending the night in a mansion thirty-two physicians had fled from. It left her a little uneasy, but Lionel nodded all the same.

Lionel was shown to a guest room.

It was a splendid chamber befitting the lavish mansion—yet astonishingly, the meal provided consisted of two slices of tough bread and some jerky. She at least had apple juice to wash it down, so her throat didn't quite seize up.

"Do the people of this household not possess the concept of taste?"

Sipping her juice through the straw, Lionel thought of the freeloading relatives she'd left behind.

One could almost pity her stepmother and her perpetual grimacing over rye bread—but Lionel felt no such thing.

Pity, my foot. That woman's a schemer who'd sell me off the moment it profited her.

Fortunately, the aide had promised to recommend her for a new position, so she would simply go there instead. It would all work out somehow, she told herself, pulling the covers over her head and surrendering to sleep.

That quiet peace lasted, or so it seemed, straight through until morning—until someone flung the door wide open just as she was drifting off.

"Doctor Frencia!! Are you unharmed?!"

"Ye—yes?"

"Come quickly!"

Kaylen, who had come running in his nightclothes, seized Lionel's hand and hauled her along. Dragged out in a daze, she asked as they raced down the corridor,

"Wh-what's going on?"

"I'll explain later. First, somewhere safe—!"

Kaylen never finished the sentence. He clutched at his chest and crumpled to the floor with a heavy thud. Lionel stopped dead in shock.

An intruder stood in the darkened hallway. Huge frame, vicious face. The dagger in his hand was dripping with vivid red blood—the blood of the Kaylen who had collapsed moments before.

"Fool. If you'd stayed hidden like a good little mouse, I'd have passed you by without a glance."

The intruder gave a nasty chuckle. Lionel stood frozen on the spot. The man spun his dagger in lazy, menacing circles.

"Where's the Duke?"

"I—I don't k-know..."

"Is that so? Then die too."

The intruder raised his arm high. Lionel glanced wildly around the corridor, then snatched up a clay jar lying there.

"You mean to fight me with that? How pathetic. Why not beg for your life instead?"

"Like hell I'd beg a pig like you!!"

"You dare—you dare run your mouth at me?!"

Stung by the word pig, the intruder lunged. Lionel hurled the jar with all her might.

"AAAAH! GET AWAY FROM ME!!"

CRASH—!!

Against the backdrop of shards scattering in every direction, the intruder's body was launched clean into the air.

For one instant, Lionel thought she must have thrown some kind of artillery round. She was mistaken.

-THUD!

A tall, slender man who had just kicked the intruder's head completed a single, graceful somersault midair. Amid the glittering porcelain fragments, his snow-white hair swirled like falling snow.

Touching down on both feet, the man straightened to his full height. He was clad entirely in black, with a face of almost unbearable beauty.

"Who are you? Why are you here?"

The probing violet eyes were fierce. Lionel scrambled to her feet and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

"I-I came for a job interview."

"..."

The man narrowed his eyes and stared at her for a long moment. Lionel, flustered, looked away—and that was when she saw it. The supposedly dead intruder, sprawled flat on the floor.

The hand she'd written off as dead gave a twitch, and in the next heartbeat, the man was hauling himself upright.

"Wait—behind you!!"

Lionel screamed, but the intruder was already charging forward.

"Duke! Today, your blood is MINE!!"

The exact angle at which the man pivoted and the exact spot where the intruder's dagger plunged aligned perfectly. A moment later came the sound of steel piercing flesh.

THUNK!!

The dagger had driven straight through the man's heart. At the staggering sight before her, Lionel's higher brain functions abandoned her entirely. She grabbed the other clay jar in the corridor.

"AAAAAAAARGH!"

CRASH!! This time, at last, the jar connected squarely with the back of the intruder's skull. Taking two blows to the head in quick succession, he staggered backward several steps and crumpled to the floor once more.

Lionel flung aside the shards she was still holding and ran to the man. He had his hand clamped tight around the dagger buried in his chest.

"Wha—whoa, no, don't pull that out! Do NOT pull that out—!"

SHLICK!

The instant the dagger came free, blood geysered up from the wound. Lionel couldn't help herself—she exploded.

"I TOLD you not to pull it out, you lunatic!! Do you actually WANT to die that badly?!"

"...If I could die, I'd happily oblige."

"What?"

Mid-sentence, Lionel caught something odd and stopped short.

...Wait. This man was stabbed through the heart—why is he standing there perfectly fine? That's a significant volume of blood loss??

And before any of that—shouldn't he be down and immobile from the pain by now?

"Tch. This has gotten complicated."

The man yanked roughly at his shirt. Buttons went flying one after another, baring his firm, sculpted torso.

She barely had a moment to admire the meticulously chiseled muscle before her eyes went wide at the sight unfolding before her.

As if someone had hit a sixteen-times-speed playback button, the man's wound was knitting itself shut at a furious pace.

"Ah..."

At last, Lionel understood.

She had remembered her past life as a physician—but for years, she'd had no idea which novel she'd been dropped into. Now, everything fell into place.

This was the world of The Unfading Flower, the angsty romance-fantasy web novel she'd devoured with such passion before she died—and...

The man standing before her was Duke Blasion Carseido.

The novel's male lead—and, at the same time, an immortal who had lived for more than 720 years.

"...You truly are an unlucky woman."

The Duke's lips curved into a knowing smile. He leaned down toward the petrified Lionel, and a chill rolled off his flawless, beautiful face.

"As you can see, a blade through the heart doesn't kill me. Neither does bleeding out by the gallon."

"..."

"And you have now learned that secret. So—shall we take our time discussing what to do with you?"

Right. This was how the Duke in the novel had always protected his secret—by killing anyone who learned it. Which meant Lionel, too, now stood in mortal danger of being murdered... which should have been the correct conclusion.

Her brain veered somewhere else entirely.

"Hold on, WAIT!! If you're immortal, then you don't need treatment, do you? You heal on your own?"

"...Excuse me?"

A patient who recovers from a stab through the heart all by himself!

From a physician's standpoint, this was an impossibly grateful, impossibly ideal patient—no, person. And once she registered that fact, there was nothing left to hesitate over.

"Honestly, handling two emergency patients alone would be pushing it, and you're telling me you don't even need treating? Then move. NOW!"

Lionel shoved the Duke bodily out of her way and ran. Even as she went, she was shouting over her shoulder while checking on Kaylen, still sprawled where he'd fallen.

"Bring my bag from the guest room—NOW!"