I'll Abandon the Fake Savior (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 9

At Yuricien’s abrupt question, the man parted his lips slightly.

“…Huh.”

A faint, hollow laugh escaped him.

“Didn’t you just interrogate me about my identity? You even said you couldn’t trust a word I said. Yet now you’re asking me for a solution?”

“I still doubt your identity. But that unbelievable claim of yours—that Father has amnesia… it seems to be true after all.”

Yuricien bit down again on her lower lip. Her gaze, dropping slightly downward, trembled. She closed her eyes once, then opened them, letting the tears pooled there fall before looking back at the man.

The deep, still color of a marsh. Strangely, it wasn’t unsettling at all.

The man asked quietly,

“…So?”

“I only asked because I thought you weren’t lying about this particular matter. Though it seems you have no intention of giving me any information.”

Sighing regretfully, Yuricien turned her head back toward Jorgen. He was still tightly squeezing his eyes shut, clearly suffering from an unrelenting headache. With trembling hands, Yuricien gently stroked Jorgen from his shoulder down to his forearm.

Just as Jorgen had once soothed her when she was frightened by thunder as a child.

“Ah…”

Was it working? Or was it stirring memories? Perhaps it was simply a habit ingrained in his body.

Jorgen’s pained trembling gradually subsided. His face, previously twisted in agony, slowly relaxed, suggesting the headache was fading too. Yuricien wiped the cold sweat from Jorgen’s brow and pulled her father into a tighter embrace.

‘He’s so… so big.’

Yet strangely, her father felt small to her. Her heart ached with tangled emotions.

After a long while nestled in Yuricien’s arms, Jorgen slowly pulled away. Though Yuricien missed the warmth of her father—whom she hadn’t held in so long—she didn’t force him to stay. Jorgen examined Yuricien’s face carefully, his expression confused.

‘Familiar.’

She was clearly someone he’d never seen before—her face absent from his blank, newborn-like memory—but she felt overwhelmingly familiar. No, more than familiar: deeply missed. So missed that even while looking at her, he longed to see her again, his heart tender with yearning.

“Young lady… truly…”

Jorgen reached out without realizing it. Suddenly glancing at his own hand, he found it unfamiliar. His thick fingers and broken nails seemed oddly mismatched.

It had always been neat and clean, he thought—not for any other reason than to touch that small, precious face of the young woman who looked at him with such mingled pain and joy.

“Are you truly… my daughter?”

His voice cracked. A daughter he couldn’t remember—but somehow, just looking at her made him happy. If this feeling, guilty even for reaching out with these dirty hands, wasn’t a father’s love, then what could it possibly be?

Ignoring the hand extended toward her, Yuricien gently rubbed her soft cheek.

“Yes, Father. I am your daughter. Your only… your Yuri.”

Her tears, hot against the split tip of his thumb, seeped through the cracks and traveled up his veins into his mind. Something hovered just beyond recall, frustratingly elusive. He hadn’t even known what he’d forgotten all this time—but the very fact that he’d forgotten something now felt unbearably painful.

Jorgen frowned.

‘I want to remember. I need to remember.’

Everything else didn’t matter—he only wished to recall this young woman who clung to him and wept. He longed to hold her trembling shoulders and comfort her, once he’d fully regained his memories. And when that moment came, he wanted clean hands—not these filthy ones.

As Jorgen gripped the blanket resolutely, the man wearing twin masks, who had silently observed the scene, finally spoke.

“I heard your father has forgotten even the most basic knowledge needed for daily life.”

Yuricien wiped her fresh tears and turned to look at the man, who nodded toward an old woman standing by the door. She bowed quietly toward both the man and Yuricien—her posture impeccably dignified, even upon second glance.

“They say he can still speak, but doesn’t know how to hold a spoon, how to drink soup, or even how to read letters. Let alone do arithmetic.”

His low voice, resonating from a deep chest, was refreshingly blunt. Yuricien was almost grateful—he, this mysterious man, hadn’t offered her pity too readily.

“You’ll likely find it difficult to care for him alone.”

“So?”

“I’ll assign someone to you.”

“…What?”

Yuricien’s eyes widened in utter bewilderment. Her tear-dampened eyes truly resembled a rabbit’s.

“There’s a saying—if you don’t know the current state of House Windsor, you must be one of two things.”

Seeing Yuricien remain silent, the man raised his fingers and continued.

“Either a long-term expatriate who’s lived abroad, or a spy.”

The man wiggled the fingers he’d raised—the index and middle, like rabbit ears. Though it seemed teasing, his words weren’t wrong, leaving Yuricien momentarily at a loss for how to respond.

“So take the person I’ve assigned. They’ll help you greatly.”

“Why should I? What about you—an unknown—should I trust?”

“You believed my words enough to ask me for a solution, didn’t you?”

“The fact that Father has amnesia doesn’t serve as your guarantee.”

Shaking her head, Yuricien spoke—and the man quickly replied.

“There’s one more thing, isn’t there?”

Yuricien, about to check on Jorgen again, looked at the man in confusion. In the hand that had just held up two fingers, he now held a crumpled sheet of paper. Yuricien’s mouth fell open instantly.

“That’s…! That’s what I commissioned from the guild… How did it end up in your hands…?”

Yuricien rapidly glanced between the man and the paper he held. Written on it was: Coperador—the name of the guild that had investigated and confirmed Jorgen’s whereabouts today.

‘That means…’

A hypothesis flashed through Yuricien’s mind. Meanwhile, the man folded her commission letter and tucked it back into his coat.

“You entrusted me with your request. So you must trust me to the end.”

“You’re… the guildmaster of Coperador?”

Yuricien asked in a voice filled with disbelief and exasperation. In response, the man simply traced a graceful curve with his well-shaped lips.

Four people boarded the carriage prepared by the Coperador guildmaster.

Yuricien and Jorgen, Andersen, and Carly—the caregiving specialist dispatched by the Coperador guild.

Yuricien stared blankly out the carriage window as the scenery rushed past, pulled by two horses.

‘So he was the guildmaster…’

Watching the dawn break in the distance, she recalled her recent conversation with the man.

[Carly will assist you greatly, beyond just attending to Duke Windsor.] [I don’t understand. Why should I accept her help? I’m not that incompetent.] [Don’t take it so sharply. Does it matter whose help it is? What matters is that you can receive help.] [That’s…] [By the way, what are your plans moving forward? Will it truly be safe to take the Duke? The false Windsors won’t stay idle.] [You speak as if you know everything about my situation.] [I am the guildmaster of Coperador—the very guild you carefully chose to commission despite your circumstances. Aren’t you underestimating your own judgment too much?]

The man’s eloquence was truly exceptional. She couldn’t win against him. Yet strangely, it didn’t bother her much. Unconsciously, Yuricien let out a light chuckle.

[You’re right—I shouldn’t underestimate myself. It doesn’t matter. I won’t let Father stay even a moment longer outside the Windsors. That is his rightful place—just as it is mine.] [Have you not considered the danger?] [I have. At first, I even considered looking elsewhere—but you’ve already resolved it for me.] [Hm?] [Carly. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice? What ordinary caregiver carries a sword hidden beneath her skirt?] [Ah, so that’s what you meant by “not incompetent.”]

Momentary fluster flickered in the man’s green eyes. Having stepped out of the dark hut and now seen under faint light, his eyes resembled not the color of a marsh, but the fresh green of early summer. Feeling she’d landed a clever blow against him, Yuricien couldn’t help but feel elated.

[You said Carly would attend to Father—meaning she’ll also protect him, right? Am I wrong?] [As sharp as ever.]

The man muttered something unintelligible. Yuricien looked puzzled, but he offered no further explanation.

Just before boarding the carriage, Yuricien suddenly turned curious and asked the man standing behind her.

[But how do you know about amnesia? Is it because you’re the guildmaster?]

The man, who had been silently watching Yuricien’s back, hadn’t expected her to turn and ask—so he hesitated. Then, with a soft chuckle, he replied.

[No. I simply wished for it desperately.] [Huh?] [That someone wouldn’t remember me—not because they’d forgotten me willingly, but because they’d fallen ill and momentarily lost my memory.]

His voice carried a lonely tone as he spoke.

‘What a strange thing to say, truly.’

Yuricien shook her head lightly to dispel the thought. In the distance, the Duke of Windsor’s manor came into view. The village they passed through was still quiet, its people not yet awake—but as a village, it still carried faint, everyday sounds.

In that moment, Yuricien realized the unease she’d felt the entire time in the hut.

‘That hut was far too quiet.’

No coughing—common among gathered elders—nor the creaking of furniture from restless turning in bed.

As if no one else existed there but Jorgen.