Don’t Shame The Villainess

Chapter 15 – Did Something Just Happen Earlier?

Leticia was having a panic attack from her past trauma.

“My Lady! My Lady, please get a hold of yourself! Breathe…Breathe in!”

But no matter how much Zed yelled, Leticia could not register his words at all. Her ragged breathing only kept getting faster.

He was sure that this symptom was called hyperventilation. At this rate, there was a strong possibility that she would end up fainting. He frantically recalled a home remedy where one covered one’s nose and mouth with something.

Zed quickly cast his eyes around the room, but no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find an object that would be useful in this situation.

“Damn it!” he swore. Then, a memory of something Leticia told him in the past went through his mind.

“If my emotions reach a point where I am about to go crazy and I am not listening to anyone’s suggestions at all…”

Back then, Leticia spoke to him with a calm yet slightly bitter tone as she stared into Zed’s eyes. It wasn’t like her to hesitate, but she turned and hid her face away from him before finishing her sentence.

“Then call my name. I will permit you to do such an inappropriate thing in a situation like that.”

There was no time to think about right or wrong social behaviors. As soon as he remembered it, he yelled as loud as he could,

“Leticia!”

At that, her trembling suddenly stopped. It was as if a puppet had been moving erratically, and an important cog had fallen out.

Zed kept his eyes focused on Leticia’s, grateful that she had stopped hyperventilating.

“Please breathe in deeply,” he instructed calmly.

Like a good child who listened to their parents, Leticia sucked in a deep breath just as he asked. Zed was relieved that she was listening to him now, and continued speaking.

“And let it out slowly. Breathe in deep again… Then let it out. One more time now.”

He reassured her with words like ‘You’re doing good’, and ‘You’re a good girl’ as he brought her back to a normal breathing pattern. Her gasping slowly returned to normal as time went on.

Zed continued repeating his instructions several times. Leticia’s trembling eyes slowly drew back into focus as she came to her senses. Even though thunder and lightning continued to explode outside the window, this time she only flinched and didn’t seem to show signs of falling back into a panic attack again.

Zed stroked her head lightly as if he were proud of her. “Good job.”

“I did…I did good?” she stammered.

He gave a nod. “Yes, you did a good job.”

Zed wrestled with a complicated emotion in his mind. It felt like things had been calm for a while, when suddenly he was thrust into a disaster.

When Zed became Leticia’s bodyguard knight, she was fourteen years old. Her personality had fully formed already, and she was exactly the same as before she lost her memory. Even during violent storms, she spent her time through it with a calm demeanor, like someone that never had any traumatic experience with it at all.

Overcoming trauma was certainly not an easy thing to do. Of course, someone’s personality changing from one extreme to another didn’t happen overnight either.

And yet…Leticia had achieved both of these things.

Which was why Zed was slightly curious. Perhaps…there was a special reason why these two things coincidently happened around the same time. Could that even be considered as something good?

Just who was Leticia, from before she was fourteen years old?

Zed was shaken from his deep thoughts when he felt a touch of skin landing on his shoulder. He looked down, and soon saw that Leticia’s eyes were half-lidded, and she was nodding off.

Her tense body had loosened. It was as if the exhaustion that had been building up overwhelmed her body all at once, and her eyelids drooped heavily downwards and concealed her yellow eyes.

Her blinks also began to slow. She closed and opened her eyes for a moment, then the second time was a little longer, and then the third much longer. After she blinked for the fourth time, her eyelids no longer opened again.

As Zed heard the gentle sounds of her sleeping breath, he let out a short sigh of relief.

“Come in now,” he said into the empty air.

The bedroom door slowly opened with a creak as if acknowledging his words. Anna peeked inside with an awkward smile on her face while she was holding a tea on a saucer.

“How did you already know I was here?” she asked.

“Any idiot would notice when a maid who left to get some tea didn’t come back.”

Anna set down the saucer next to the heap of documents on the table. She handled the teacup with practiced motions of her hands as she spoke.

“It was not my intention to overhear. Usually, I would have immediately gone and called for the doctor, but I heard your voice suddenly calling out ‘Leticia!’. Perhaps I was too frozen in the spot. It was the first time I’ve heard an employee of the Lady call her name out like that so inappropriately. I thought I was going to faint at that moment.”

She shuffled the documents around the table to organize them, but then stopped and stared at Zed with a slightly mischievous smile.

“But thanks to that, it seems that the Lady’s convulsions have calmed down. I suppose I should say that you are her best employee, since you’ve made such a brave and correct decision right away.”

Her chuckles rang in the air and dissipated. Zed scratched his cheek in embarrassment.

“I definitely would have lost my neck for speaking her name so rudely like that. This was…a special exception.”

That’s right. These were extenuating circumstances after all.

Zed wasn’t someone who wished for his death, but he didn’t even imagine speaking his mistress’ name like that. If he had done this to the Leticia who hadn’t lost her memory, he wouldn’t have remained on this earth for long. He would be crushed under her heel if he did. A cold shiver rippled down Zed’s spine as he imagined that scenario.

Click.

Anna had finished organizing the desk faster than he expected, and was about to walk through the door. Zed calmly stared at her back, before calling out her name to stop her.

“Anna,” he said in a quiet but serious tone. “We heard nothing at all.”

The secret about the death of the Marquis’s wife was something that even he didn’t know about during the full seven years he had worked inside the mansion. That meant that Marquis Laimia personally made sure that the secret didn’t get out at all.

‘He must have made doubly sure that the witnesses at the scene wouldn’t be able to talk about it as well.’

Zed looked down at Leticia with a bitter smile. He then remembered the middle-aged man who had the same hair color and eyes as she did.

Joshua Laimia.

While Joshua wore a pleasantly smiling mask while outside, he was someone who had a cold and serious expression when he was together with his family. It made one wonder if Joshua had any feelings towards his family at all.

There had to be a reason as to why he was concealing everything the way he did. As if there was knowledge simply too dangerous to know. Like a weakness of the Marquis that should not be spread outside at all.

The fact that the Marquis’ wife had taken her own life was the problem in the first place. Why did he not reveal the reason for her suicide? Would it really put a dent in the Marquis’ reputation? Since he hung everything on the family’s image, he must have made sure personally that this secret would not spread.

Zed tossed a question towards Anna. “Do you need me to explain it in detail?”

A silence that could cut through steel stretched out between the two. At this moment, just uttering even a single word could mean life or death.

Anna slowly turned back to face him and smiled widely. “Explain what? Did something happen just earlier?”

Although the atmosphere was heavy, seeing Anna turn around and give him such a wide smile made Zed feel at ease. Just as he was about to speak his thoughts, he decided to simply close his mouth and shake his head. Anna was good at noticing things, so she must already know how to deal with this as well.

“No…Nothing, it’s fine,” he said.

“Then keep up the great work.”

Anna bowed and looked as if she truly believed that nothing happened a moment before, then calmly stepped out of the room.

Zed sat there frozen for a while, and then let out a long sigh.

The tea that was supposed to keep him awake was here. Leticia had now completely fallen asleep and was no longer holding on to him . Now then…

“It’s time to go to work.”

The endless tower of documents waited for him.

Zed carefully embraced and lifted Leticia’s sleeping form. He then carefully moved towards the bed and laid her down on it with utmost care.