Saved Him, Now I'm Obsessed - Chapter 32

“I’m crazy. I’m crazy. What was I thinking? What should I do? I’m ruined.”

As I acted like I was about to sit down and cry while hitting the ground, Ileana, who had been interrogating me, changed her attitude and started comforting me.

“Don’t worry too much. If you stay quiet, people will forget.”

“But…”

“It’s okay. I’ll try to handle public opinion, so just trust me. If it doesn’t work out, we can bring up something else.”

“Something else?”

“There are always people who have relationships that shouldn’t be known.”

She meant that if my scandal didn’t die down, she would expose someone else’s scandal.

“That’s a bit…”

“I’ll take care of it, so Claire, don’t worry too much.”

It was unsettling, but I had no choice. I decided to trust Ileana, the queen of social circles.

Right, if we can’t suppress the rumors, I’ll just have to be a bit shameless. Since when did I care about others’ opinions! Let’s be brazen. What they’re saying isn’t even true anyway.

And even if this hadn’t happened, there would always be people who would gossip about me as they pleased.

Didn’t I meet people at yesterday’s banquet who were making up stories about me and Ian? There were also those who made assumptions about Claire saving Daniel.

“Alright. I’ll only trust Ileana.”

“Good. Just trust me.”

Ileana left my room with those words.

Although it hadn’t been long since I got up from bed, dizziness came over me.

“By the way, I keep forgetting that this body is less efficient than before.”

I still hadn’t fully adapted to Claire’s body. Although I had become younger, I was smaller and more fragile.

I often got indigestion from eating freely like before, and if I overexerted myself even a little, I would get body aches and feel sore all over.

I needed so much sleep that if I didn’t get 8 hours a day, I would feel drowsy and nod off during the day.

Shuri McCain has excessively good physical abilities, but I wonder who Claire takes after to be this weak… I had heard before that it was because she was born prematurely, but isn’t this too much?

“Should I take some medicine? Even though it won’t completely change my constitution…”

Since my constitution itself is weaker than others, taking medicine won’t noticeably improve things. It’s just how I was born. But if I stay like this, I felt like I wouldn’t be able to do anything and would spend most of my life in bed.

If I had lived like that from the beginning, it might have been different, but I was someone who worked and found satisfaction from it.

I didn’t dislike the days of wearing pretty clothes, eating delicious food, and living comfortably in the mansion, but on the other hand, it was frustrating and unsatisfying.

“Then I need to go to the pharmacy… No, the pharmacy must have burned down.”

Since waking up in Claire’s body, I hadn’t gone to the pharmacy even once. I had made excuses that I needed time to adapt to the new body, but in reality, it was escapism.

I didn’t have the courage to see the burned-down pharmacy with my own eyes.

The pharmacy was everything to me. It was my entire childhood, the history that my grandfather and I had built together. Such a place disappeared overnight in a fire, so I couldn’t face that devastation.

But I couldn’t keep pretending not to know forever. Whether I could set up the pharmacy again or not, I had to return quickly, if only to hand over medicine to Ian.

“Come to think of it, was the pharmacy only possible for commoners… Since I have a noble title now, should I get a healer’s license? This feels strange. Grandfather would have been happy if he were alive.”

I wasn’t worried at all about passing or failing the exam. Although I was a pharmacist, I was also skilled at treating people.

In the Kalovanian Empire, the roles of healers and pharmacists were not very different. Originally, healers were responsible for treating others, while pharmacists were responsible for preparing appropriate medicines for illnesses.

However, since only nobles could become healers, noble-born healers rarely treated commoners.

As a result, commoners would seek out pharmacists when they were sick, and pharmacists often took on the role of healers. I too often stepped in to treat people because of this.

Now, the perception was so ingrained that healers treated nobles, while pharmacists treated commoners.

“I should go to the pharmacy today and also stop by the castle to find out when the healer’s exam is. Surely it hasn’t already passed?”

I immediately prepared to go out. The weather had improved a lot, so it seemed like there would be no problem going out.

“Where on earth are you going, and alone at that!”

Ileana tried to stop me when she heard that Claire was going out on an errand, but I insisted. Claire’s weak body was unavoidable. But I didn’t want to stay in bed forever.

It seemed that Claire was actually stubborn, just shy. As if unable to overcome Claire’s stubbornness, Ileana reluctantly proposed a compromise.

“Then how about this? I have some business in town today anyway. I’m planning to host a tea party for guests in a few days, but I don’t have any tableware or tea sets I like, so I was thinking of stopping by the merchant guild. How about you wait at the pharmacy while I take care of my business?”

“Let’s do that then.”

In the end, we decided to do as she said. The merchant guild she mentioned was under the Ferbe duchy.

‘I guess it would be better to ask Ileana about the healer’s exam rather than looking into it myself.’

For the healer’s license, the exam qualification requirement was ‘must be a person from a noble family!’ As I was of commoner status, I couldn’t become a healer regardless of my skills.

I had prided myself on being more competent than most healers, but now I would be able to confirm it clearly.

As far as I remembered, the healer’s exam was held once a year, in summer.

I’m not sure exactly when, but if the period hasn’t passed, I was thinking of taking the exam.

“But why are you suddenly going to the pharmacy when you’re not even sick?”

“It’s that pharmacy that had the fire before. I want to go see it once.”

“You mean the place run by that pharmacist related to His Highness the Crown Prince? The one His Highness loved!”

“Umm… Yes. That place.”

Ileana seemed to quickly recall the story from the banquet. I nodded with a sour expression.

‘It’s far from the truth… but it seems Ileana thinks the same as that Baroness Monica. Sigh.’

“But why would Claire go there…?”

“Ah… well…”

I racked my brain hard to come up with a suitable excuse.

If I said, ‘Actually, I’m Jane. I want to see what has become of my pharmacy!’, Ileana would worry that Claire had hit her head and lost her mind.

“Baroness Monica’s story made me curious, and the story of that pharmacist Jane kept lingering in my mind. I wondered if she might be related to me somehow.”

Only after saying it did I realize that my name hadn’t been mentioned yesterday, and I inwardly kicked myself.

Ileana tilted her head as if she didn’t understand my words. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to care much about how I knew that name.

“Was the pharmacist’s name mentioned then? As far as I know, there shouldn’t be any connection between you and that pharmacist, how strange.”

“Is that so?”

In reality, there was no connection at all. I had never directly faced Claire in my life.

We had no points of contact, strangely enough. Well, what occasions would there be for an introverted noble young lady and a commoner pharmacist like me to meet?

“But for some reason, I feel like I might remember something if I go there.”

“Really?”

Ileana seemed pleased by the talk of memories.

She always comforted me saying that memories would slowly return, and not to worry too much even if they didn’t, but it seemed she too hoped for Claire’s memories to return quickly.

Ileana must have had many memories shared with Claire, and it must be disappointing and sad that she can no longer share those memories with Claire.

“You never know. Maybe I actually had a connection with that pharmacist.”

“Well, Claire does talk to me a lot, but there are times when she doesn’t mention things she considers trivial or unimportant.”

She nodded with a serious face as she spoke.

“Since it’s a pharmacy, maybe you visited thinking it was a perfume… a shop selling perfumes, or maybe you went in there once to avoid sudden rain.”

“Oh…”

I let out an exclamation.

Quite an imaginative scenario.

I thought only Baroness Monica had such ability, but it seemed Ileana had quite a talent for it too.

Still, Ileana probably wouldn’t create groundless rumors that would be harmful to me.

“That’s a very plausible story.”

“It would be amazing if you really had a connection with that pharmacist. Anyway, we can’t go empty-handed. Shall we pick some flowers from the garden? The irises are in full bloom right now.”

I remained silent at her suggestion to make an iris bouquet. As she said, it would be strange to go empty-handed.