Someone was knocking on the door of the log cabin with their fist.
‘Could it be…?’
Her heart pounded nervously from the morning.
Sharti hurriedly went outside the room. She made eye contact with the man standing outside.
“It’s the soldiers.”
His sharp eyes tinged with fatigue pointed towards the door. Fortunately, all the windows had curtains drawn. It seemed he had drawn them in advance.
Sharti swallowed dryly.
“They’ll find you anyway if they search the house.”
Not only was there nowhere to hide in this old log cabin, but if found hiding, no excuse would work.
The man chose his words carefully with a grave expression.
“If they threaten you…”
Sharti cut off the man’s words by waving her hands frantically and brought him to the bedroom.
There was no time to argue with him. The knocking on the door outside was getting faster and more intense.
‘We don’t even know if it’s a search or not! Just hide in my bedroom for now!’
The man looked flustered, but Sharti didn’t listen further and firmly held up her index finger.
‘Don’t make a sound!’
Sharti closed the bedroom door just like that.
Whew. Sharti moved with a tense expression.
‘Why are they here so early in the morning?’
Is it the end of the search? Or the beginning of today’s search?
Bang bang bang!! Before they could break down the door, Sharti opened it.
“Ah, Sha! Thankfully you’re home!”
It wasn’t just soldiers who came to the log cabin. Patricia, the innkeeper from the village, was also with them.
But that didn’t mean she felt relieved.
Patricia, a villager, was known for liking gossip and having a loose tongue.
At times like this, writing was convenient. It could hide her frightened voice and all her uneasiness and anxiety at seeing the soldiers.
“Well, you see. These soldier gentlemen are looking for a doctor. Apparently they encountered the dangerous criminal they were searching for last night while climbing the mountain for the search? They say there are many injured. They want you to take a look. I told them you’re the most skilled doctor in our village.”
“…?”
They encountered the dangerous criminal they were searching for?
‘Did they meet a dangerous criminal besides the bear yesterday?’
Thankfully she was wearing a hood. Otherwise, her expression full of doubt and suspicion would have been clearly visible.
“How long do we have to wait?”
Just then, a tall soldier who had come with Patricia urged from behind.
He was a soldier in his early 30s.
“Yes, yes. Come on, Sha. Let’s go. They barely finished the search at dawn and came to the village.”
There was a reason why the soldiers’ condition looked very messy.
Sharti, who had barely pulled her arm away from Patricia’s urging hand, hurriedly wrote a note.
Sharti asked for understanding and closed the door for a moment.
‘I just need to pack my travel bag.’
There was no need to pack separately. Instead, Sharti left a note under the bedroom door.
With anxiety in her heart, Sharti left the log cabin surrounded by soldiers along with Patricia.
Her hands trembled under her robe the entire way down the mountain.
‘Stay calm. They haven’t laid hands on you. These aren’t the Imperial soldiers you saw 5 years ago. They’re soldiers from the frontier. They won’t, know me.’
Though they came looking for her just like 5 years ago, the purpose was different. The Imperial soldiers came looking for the princess of Krianet, while the frontier soldiers came looking for a doctor.
They came looking for her not to kill, but to seek help.
“Sha, it’s okay. I already told them about your special circumstances.”
Patricia, who had been looking at the frozen Sharti with pity, whispered.
“I told them you have a big scar on your face and were born unable to speak, so they won’t harm you.”
Sharti nodded slightly.
Of course, there was no big scar on her face. Nor was she born unable to speak.
It was a lie that Bireta and Sharti had agreed on long ago.
“But can’t the doctor fix the scar on her own face?”
One soldier looked Sharti up and down with suspicious eyes. Patricia laughed and waved her hands.
“They say it’s been there since birth so it’s difficult. You soldiers know too, right? If she could fix something like that, would she be hiding in a mountain village like this? She’d be living it up in the capital.”
“Well, that’s true, but…”
Though Patricia stepped in, the soldier’s gaze was not very kind. The atmosphere was one of doubting her skills.
It wasn’t an incomprehensible attitude, given that their comrades were injured.
“Oh my, our Sha is so skilled. Hohoho, she’s a doctor that other villages envy too.”
Sharti squirmed and tried to stop Patricia’s excessive boasting. She was grateful for the high praise of her abilities, but she didn’t want the soldiers to know even the slightest thing about her.
The soldiers hid their dubious expressions at Patricia’s boasting.
‘Are they going to wait and see for now?’
Sharti glanced at the looks the soldiers exchanged and tightly gripped her bag strap. She wanted to quickly finish the treatment and return home.
“Let’s hurry up a bit.”
Urged on by the soldiers, Sharti arrived at the village after quite some time.
“The owner stays here. Only the doctor comes with us.”
As soon as she entered Patricia’s inn, Sharti wrinkled her nose.
There was a strong scent.
‘Sleeping fragrance… No, this is sleeping poison.’
It was understandable why they left Patricia, the inn owner, outside.
There were many sleeping medicines in the village that Sharti had made and sold. Yet the soldiers deliberately used the sleeping poison they had brought. It was a strong poison that would make a normal person’s vision blur and stagger.
“Hmm. Seems she’s a real doctor after all. She’s walking straight.”
Sure enough, the soldier guiding Sharti smiled bitterly. The soldiers’ expressions had been gloomy since entering the inn.
After some deliberation, Sharti held out a note.
“You’ll see for yourself.”
At the tall soldier’s signal, the soldiers following behind simultaneously opened all the inn rooms.
“…!”
Sharti’s body stiffened at the scene in the rooms.
All the soldiers except for the few who had come to get Sharti were lying on beds, groaning in pain.
Sharti quickly checked the condition of the injured.
‘These aren’t wounds from a bear.’
They weren’t injuries from the sharp claws and teeth of a fierce beast.
Rather, they were from a long, sharp weapon.
‘Wounds from being slashed and stabbed by a sword.’
And it seemed they had been slashed and stabbed all over, not to kill but just to inflict wounds.
“Can you, treat them?”
Tristan, the tall soldier who had guided Sharti, scratched his head vigorously.
What he was asking about were the soldiers in the most serious condition.
“They’re new recruits who just joined our unit. We have to save them. Otherwise, I don’t know what to tell their families…”
Tristan’s expression contorted horribly.
Getting injured after encountering an unavoidable situation during a search wasn’t that unusual of an accident. But all the soldiers’ faces were hardened.
Sharti didn’t want to know the details of the truth she had guessed.
‘But I have some responsibility too.’
There didn’t seem to be any injuries from the bear she had lured, but it surely had an impact on what happened afterwards.
The soldiers’ presence was still frightening, but Sharti couldn’t ignore the injured people before her eyes.
The soldiers’ expressions improved slightly, filled with hope.
For now, Sharti rolled up the cumbersome long and wide sleeves of her robe. The burn scar running from the back of her left hand up her arm was revealed, but she didn’t mind.
The soldiers moved in unison according to Sharti’s unhesitating instructions.
Sharti too moved ceaselessly with her frail physique that even the thick, long robe couldn’t hide.
It was natural that the soldiers, who had only applied ointment and wrapped bandages a few times until now, couldn’t keep up with Sharti’s pace.
[This is the timeline separator]By the time the sleeping poison in the air had thinned, the soldiers’ attitudes had changed.
“Doctor! We’ve given the medicine you provided to all the men in that room.”
“Over here! Please come here too, doctor!”
Naturally, their way of addressing her became more respectful, with honorifics added automatically. The soldiers who had regarded her with suspicious glances were nowhere to be seen.
Seeing the hot sweat dripping from inside her robe, they became solemn.
‘What should I do, I don’t have enough hands.’
Due to the heat inside her robe and her heightened concentration, Sharti’s energy was being rapidly depleted.
By the time she had almost finished suturing the wounds, her left fingers trembled slightly for a moment.
‘The sleeping poison has worn off so Patricia and other villagers are helping too, but…’
The person Sharti needed was someone with knowledge of herbs.
More precisely, she needed a doctor who could prescribe appropriately.
‘Hmm, would it be okay to bring it up?’
There was only one doctor in this village – Sharti. But there was a child who dreamed of becoming a future doctor.
Sharti used a brief moment to find Patricia.
“Hm? What is it, Sha? Do you need something?”
Patricia asked while tapping on a calculator, seemingly calculating the inn fees to charge the soldiers.
Patricia looked at Sharti oddly, wondering why she wanted to meet Tein in this busy situation.
“Nah. Then we should call the herb shop uncle. What good would bringing Bireta’s grandson do.”
Sharti was about to write more on the note but stopped.
In the village, Tein was just a clever child. No one paid attention to the intelligence of a 7-year-old boy.
‘I should move more myself instead of wasting time like this.’
Sharti swallowed a sigh and turned around again.
Just then, Tristan, who had taken off his armor and was busy wiping away blood, approached.
“Who are you looking for?”
His tone was polite. Sharti shook her head with a slightly bewildered expression.
Patricia chimed in from behind.
“Sha must be really tired and wanted to rest. She asked to bring a child, can you believe it?”
At Patricia’s chuckling words, Sharti was about to protest but didn’t.
Seeing Sharti like that, Tristan put down the puddle of water.
“Is there a child we need to bring? Is this child necessary?”
“…”
Sharti hesitated before nodding slightly.
“Understood. Innkeeper, what are you doing? Go bring the child the doctor is looking for.”
“What? Ah, yes, well…”
Patricia nodded reluctantly and left the inn.
Sharti glanced at the soldier. Her expression wasn’t much different from Patricia’s.
Sensing her gaze, Tristan cleared his throat and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“We had no hope there would be a doctor in a village like this. At that time, I truly felt like borrowing even a child’s hands…”
Tristan was the oldest among the soldiers who came to the village.
Sharti understood his attitude when he first came to the log cabin.
The fear and anger of possibly losing all his comrades. And yet having to climb that wretched mountain again, clinging to a shred of hope, feeling powerless. The sharp attitude that burst out, swept up in urgency and anxiety.
At Sharti’s note, Tristan smiled awkwardly.
“Then I can trust him. He’s a future sprout guaranteed by an excellent doctor.”
However, Patricia returned alone shortly after.
“They said he left early in the morning?”
Of course, the places Tein frequented weren’t around his house, the village playground, or the alleys. Was there a child who could climb mountains as well as Tein?
‘…It can’t be. Surely not.’
Didn’t she even give him homework not to climb the mountain for a while?
Tein was a child who, befitting Bireta’s education, was also quick-witted. He wasn’t a child who would create difficult situations for Sharti.
But in the old log cabin in the quiet mountain.
The unwanted meeting Sharti feared had already taken place.
“Mister patient!”
“…”
The man who should be hiding. And the child who shouldn’t be with him.
The man rubbed his brow at the troublesome situation.
__________
Turns Out He’s Been Secretly in Love with Me (Female-dominant)
One-line summary: He acts like he doesn’t like her but is actually playing hard to get.
Synopsis:
Xu Muzhou like her. He has liked her for a very long time, and through repeated schemes, he finally closed the distance with her.
But this is still far from enough.
He wants to be the one who stands out among her many suitors, to fight for her attention, and to make her take the initiative to pursue him.
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