“Hah? Say that shit again, I dare you.”

The girl bristled on the spot.

She’d been obsessed with Lady Alessia for years. Back at that military parade, she’d tried to squeeze closer to the front so she could admire the Sovereign and the Sovereign’s daughter up close. In the crush of the crowd, someone knocked her over and disrupted the marching formation.

Interrupting a parade was basically the same as obstructing it. Normally, that meant being held accountable.

She’d been terrified. She could still see the displeased looks from the people around her, and those smug, gloating expressions.

Her knee had hurt badly. She’d injured it in the fall, and it had been hard even to stand up.

“Are you alright?”

Alessia, the Sovereign’s daughter, had witnessed the whole thing from her carriage. She hadn’t blamed her.

At the time, she wasn’t the Sovereign yet. She was only the Sovereign’s daughter, the future heir. Every day, she helped her father handle matters big and small, attended all kinds of important events with him, and prepared to inherit the family head’s position one day.

“Don’t worry. Someone else knocked you down. I know you didn’t mean to interrupt the ceremony. So don’t cry anymore. If you want to watch, come ride with me. My carriage is the closest place to the procession.”

After that, the girl had the good fortune to accompany Alessia for a while. It became one of the most precious memories of her life.

And now someone actually dared to insult the girl of her dreams. Of course she was pissed. She strode forward at once, grabbed Kanata by the clothes, and drove a punch straight into her stomach.

“Ah—”

It was a hard punch. It landed near the wound on her abdomen and jolted it.

Only then did Kanata fully get her sense of pain back. She curled up into herself, clutching the injury and baring her teeth in agony.

She felt like she was about to suffocate.

The pain was like an invisible hand around her throat, choking off her breath.

Under normal circumstances, that punch wouldn’t have done much to her.

But now...

“Wait, you’re hurt?”

Miss Wang noticed blood starting to seep through Kanata’s clothes. A single punch shouldn’t have made her bleed that easily. The girl who hit her wasn’t that strong.

“An old... old injury... It just won’t heal... so damn annoying...”

She was already out of painkillers. The wound had soaked in rainwater for so long that Kanata was sure she’d come down with a fever tonight.

And wasn’t this miserable, pathetic state all thanks to Alessia? So gratitude was impossible. Falling for her was even more impossible.

To put it harshly, if every woman in the world died and only Alessia and Gen were left, she’d rather take care of herself and let those two become a ship.

They were both the same. Cold-blooded to the core. A match made in heaven.

“Um... are you really okay? Should we call a doctor from a nearby clinic to come take a look?”

Miss Wang was worried. The bloodstain spreading across Kanata’s abdomen was getting bigger and bigger. The pain on her face was obvious to the naked eye, and she was so pale she could compete with wall paint.

Seeing a doctor definitely meant spending money. And Kanata was also afraid that the fact she’d been scratched by a werewolf would be exposed and cause panic here.

Absolutely no one could be allowed to find out.

“No... don’t... no doctor... I can handle it myself... I used to study medicine...”

With her half-baked medical skills, she could barely manage something like this. She just had no idea when it would finally heal. Ever since the werewolf scratched her, the wound had been giving off constant heat and a burning pain without pause, tormenting her so badly she wished she were dead.

Miss Wang had wanted to argue, but when she saw the despair in Kanata’s eyes, and that intense plea in them, she gave up.

After all, who doesn’t have a secret they can’t tell anyone?