A Pebble to Carry With You

No matter how many times you watch a person die, it never becomes something you get used to.

Lionel sat on a garden bench beneath the beating sunlight, blankly tracing her memories of days gone by. The farewell to her gentle mother. She had watched patients breathe their last again and again, in both her past life and this one—yet even now, Lionel could never quite make peace with the word death.

"Dr. Frencia!"

Just then, someone called to her from the far end of the garden. It was Ailie, along with Kaylen, the aide who had gotten out of his sickbed just days ago.

"Aide Kaylen. How are you feeling?"

"My chest is still a bit uncomfortable, but I'm perfectly fine. And thank you for taking such good care of William as well."

"I only did what was my job. ...Ailie. Is it time for you to go?"

Ailie nodded, her eyes red and swollen from crying.

"I wanted to say goodbye before I leave for boarding school."

"I'm so glad you came. I wanted to say goodbye to you too."

"I—I'll study really hard. I'll study hard and... become a wonderful doctor just like you someday. And then, will you take me on as your assistant?"

"That's a magnificent dream. I'll be rooting for your future."

With that, Lionel drew something out of her coat: a small pocket watch, its delicate craftsmanship gleaming.

"Ailie, do you know something?" she said, her voice soft as she continued. "When someone precious to you dies, they say your grief becomes a rock that presses down hard on your chest. At first, it's so heavy you can barely even breathe—but little by little, as time passes, the stone grows smaller, until one day it's just a tiny pebble."

Sorrow clouded Ailie's face. "So eventually, does the pebble just disappear?"

"No. It never disappears. Instead, people carry that small pebble in their pocket for the rest of their lives."

Lionel held the watch out to her. "Look. I've already turned your grief into a little stone. So don't grieve for too long. You have to eat well and laugh loudly—that's what would make your papa in heaven happiest of all."

May the road ahead of this small child be a peaceful one. May she not hurt for too long over a death that was never Lionel's fault, no matter how much it might feel that way.

Lionel prayed with everything she had.

Ailie gazed at the watch in her hands, then threw her arms around Lionel with all her might. The strength bursting from such a tiny frame was astonishing.

"Thank you so much, Doctor. I love you."

"I love you too."

The two of them clung to each other for a long while, neither willing to let go, until Kaylen gently called the girl away. "Ailie. The carriage is waiting."

Hand in hand with Kaylen, Ailie walked off with the light, skipping steps of a child, growing smaller and smaller in the distance. Lionel stood watching her back long after she was gone.

"You can come out now, Your Grace."

Blasion emerged from beneath the shade of the trees, following the path Ailie had taken with his eyes as he approached. "Why didn't you say goodbye to her yourself, Your Grace?"

"I make it a policy not to waste my emotions."

"You can say that all you like, but I know you've decided to cover Ailie's tuition and living expenses in full."

"...Kaylen, was it. I don't recall giving anyone permission to blab about such pointless things."

With that clipped remark, Blasion strode ahead, and Lionel fell in behind him. And so their walk began without either of them announcing it.

She was admiring the strange flowers and grasses dotting the grounds when Blasion spoke first.

"When did you prepare the watch? It looked rather expensive."

Lionel answered as if it were nothing. "Oh, that? It was a keepsake from my late mother."

"You gave away your mother's memento? Why on earth?"

"Because... I'm going to die today, remember? Consider it settling my prized possessions in advance."

Blasion stopped dead in his tracks.

Lionel stopped too. For a long moment, the two of them simply stared at each other.

"Have you forgotten? Your condition was that you'd keep me alive only until William passed. You were going to cremate the body, and—well, I wasn't thrilled about it, but I even asked you to send a letter to the Frencia Barony..." She'd meant to rattle off the whole list, but something about the air between them made Lionel swallow the rest.

Blasion's violet eyes bore into her as if they could drill straight through. "Exactly how old are you?"

"Me? Twenty."

"A child barely out of girlhood... why are you so serene about your own death? What in the world are you?"

Lionel gave a casual shrug. "What do you mean, what? I'm just a doctor."

Albeit one with a few extra memories of a past life thrown in.

Blasion's brow furrowed. "...No. You're nothing like the physicians I've known. They were too busy making excuses to admit their own shortcomings—whenever treatment failed, they blamed it on divine punishment. Some even demanded outrageous sums of money while claiming they'd save the patient."

Lionel gave a wry smile. She'd met more than her fill of characters like that in medical school and at the hospital, so it didn't exactly surprise her. "Ah. Yes, well, I'm sure doctors like that exist. But I'd appreciate it if you didn't lump me in with them. Whatever else you can say about me, I don't play games with human lives."

"Have you believed that since the moment you became a doctor?"

"...Hm, well. Doesn't any ordinary human being take human life for granted as something to respect?"

"Why did you become a doctor in the first place?"

Why so many questions? Lionel thought. Did 'killing me' actually mean he was going to murder me by question mark?

She had an answer, of course. She just didn't want to give it.

'An unidentified epidemic wiped out an entire village. I was the only survivor. That's why I became a doctor—I wanted to hunt that disease down.'—that was a story she wasn't ready to lay bare. Her heart wasn't hardened enough for it yet.

"...Let's just say my mother's death was the reason."

"And how did your mother—"

"Your Grace."

Lionel cut the duke off mid-sentence, a clear signal: don't ask any further. "Do I owe the person who's about to kill me answers to everything?"

The question-mark murderer's mouth finally closed. Lionel let out a short sigh and squared her shoulders.

"So. How am I dying, exactly? Stabbed? Strangled? I'd rather it not hurt, so as quick and painless as possible, please."

Blasion raked his hair back with a rough hand. Something was clearly eating at him; a groan of frustration escaped his lips. "...You don't seem the least bit afraid of dying."

"Hardly."

Lionel denied it immediately. "Everyone fears death, and I'm no exception. But I understand something that matters even more—the weight of a promise once it's been spoken aloud."

To claim she had no regrets would be a lie. There were still so many things she wanted to do. But still...

'Even so, I did my best in this life.'

Maybe this was a better death than the one she'd gotten before, when a car had come out of nowhere and ended everything. At least this time, she'd been able to comfort one child's heart.

She could say, without a doubt, that this life had been more meaningful than marrying some perverted old man.

"I never intended to use someone else's life to escape my own crisis."

Lionel fidgeted with the clover ring still sitting in her pocket, and somehow, her feelings settled into a strange calm. "Well then. I'm ready now. Make it painless, if you would. Who knows? Next time..."

After searching for the words for what felt like ages, Lionel finally found her answer and finished her sentence. "Next time—in my next life, if I'm born a doctor again, maybe I'll be the one to solve the secret of your immortality."

Having said everything she had to say, Lionel closed her eyes. Her heart was quieter than she'd expected.

And yet.

A considerable stretch of time passed, and no pain came. As Lionel cautiously opened her eyes, a warm sensation touched her cheek.

"Lionel Frencia."

Blasion, his hand resting against her cheek, called her name. "Tell me what you think. Do you believe this curse of immortality can actually be broken?"

They called him an ominous existence that had strayed beyond the domain of the gods—yet his hand was warm, warm as any ordinary man's.

"Hmm, well. To be honest, I never thought of it as a curse in the first place."

That was a question she'd been chewing on ever since she'd first read the novel. Was the Immortal truly a being created by nothing more than a 'curse'?

In the original story, Blasion had been a knight who served the princess of a fallen nation. He'd taken a mortal wound trying to save her, and the princess had fed him a cursed elixir—thus, Blasion became immortal.

Then, in the latter half of the novel, it was revealed that the heroine was the princess reincarnated, and the two of them shared a passionate night together. And from that point on, the narrative declared, the curse of immortality was broken.

Any ordinary reader would have skimmed past it—aww, poor duke, never knowing the power of love~—but Lionel saw it a little differently.

'He became immortal by ingesting an elixir. So if the curse broke because of something in the heroine's bodily fluids—her enzymes, her proteins—couldn't it be that those enzymes and proteins stimulated the duke's arrested aging cells?'

That miracle, which looked like nothing but the power of love, might actually have a medical explanation this romance-fantasy world simply hadn't discovered yet. That was Lionel's hypothesis.

"I believe what happened to your body is a pathological problem, Your Grace."

"This is... not a curse, but a disease?"

"Yes. I can't say for certain, but... if I'm given time to examine and analyze your body thoroughly, we may well be able to unlock its secret through medicine."

"Then."

The hand on her cheek moved to grip her shoulder. The look in his eyes as he gazed down at her wavered for an instant, then grew unmistakably clear. It was the moment a man who had lived for seven hundred and twenty years found a sliver of hope in a twenty-year-old girl.

"Be my personal physician in this life—not the next—and find that answer."