Chapter 11

I could see hope.

Even if you lost your voice, it felt as though I had found a way for you to navigate through the world if you were ever suddenly thrown into human society.

“If you learn how to read and write, all our problems will be solved.”

“If you learn how to read and write, all our problems will be solved.”

I looked at Mel as if expecting praise, like someone who had made a grand discovery.

Even then, Mel remained pressed against the glass of the water tank, quietly looking down at me.

Though he was the one truly in a pitiable state, he looked at me with an expression full of sorrow, as if he were the one feeling sorry for me.

“……You don’t want to?”

I stared up at Mel like a dog rejected by its master after offering affection.

At that moment, no other phrase could describe how I felt.

Mel slowly shook his head and mouthed a response. His expression was subtle.

‘I’ll do it.’

Though I had proposed this for his sake, the look on his face made it seem as if he felt deeply sorry for me.

I felt guilty toward Mel, but the days I spent teaching him to read and write were pure happiness.

At first, I certainly didn’t intend to satisfy my own self-interest, but in the end, it became the greatest blessing for me.

If someone were to ask me to pick the most enjoyable moment of my entire life, I would choose this time without a single moment of hesitation.

“Ugh…….”

I ignored the occasional numbness in my body, my blurry vision, and the fever burning inside me.

I didn’t want Mel to see me in pain.

“Mel. I’ll stick today’s lesson right here.”

I taped the paper to the outside of the water tank so Mel could see what I wrote from inside.

If I put the paper inside the tank, the ink would bleed, so this was the best way.

“It’ll be fun to review when you’re bored. I’ll also put up what I’m going to teach you tomorrow in advance. Just in case you want to study ahead.”

For a moment, it felt as if Mel gave me an absurd look, but I decided it was just my imagination and let it slide.

Even though the lesson was over, I felt a little reluctant to leave, so I lingered near the tank for no reason.

“Should we do a little more class—”

Just as I opened my mouth and Mel hurriedly shook his head, a knock sounded at the door.

Knock, knock.

“Young Lady. It is time.”

A maid’s voice came from outside the door.

The maid spoke in vague terms, which was an instruction I had given her.

My face almost hardened in an instant, but since I was in front of Mel, I kept my expression under control.

“It’s time for my lesson now. I wanted to do a bit more, but I’ll have to teach you the next part tomorrow.”

At my words, the tip of Mel’s tail swished gently, making his fins flutter gracefully.

It seemed Mel was secretly happy about it.

No way…… It couldn’t be…….

Mel gestured to cheer me on, silently telling me to study hard.

Mel gestured to cheer me on, silently telling me to study hard.

I let out a soft laugh and closed the curtain. While it was partly to hide Mel from those who would soon enter the room, the real purpose was to keep Mel from seeing my condition.

“Come in.”

Click.

At my command, the door opened and a grey-haired female doctor entered.

In truth, her visits were familiar to me. She had always come to check on me while I repeatedly lost and regained consciousness.

However, I used to dislike this doctor in the past. After all, she was the one who had advised me to raise a pet.

When I thought about how my father had brought all kinds of animals to me after that, I still felt my blood boil. ……Of course, if she hadn’t given that advice, I would never have met Mel.

Anyway, the past me desperately wanted to die as soon as possible, so I hated even looking at the doctor who tried to prolong my life. But after meeting Mel, I listened to her obediently.

“Let’s begin the lesson.”

However, out of fear that Mel might hear us, I instructed the servants and doctors to choose all their words very carefully.

Previously, the doctor had accidentally run into Mel. At that time, I had introduced her to Mel as my teacher.

Fortunately, just as her face always looked dull and indifferent, the doctor had no interest in the merman’s existence.

It seemed that not every ‘female’ was captivated by a merman.

The doctor checked my pulse and temperature, and even completed taking a blood sample.

After checking my reactions to various medications, she asked me with her usual unconcerned face.

“Are you truly alright?”

“Yes. I feel completely fine now.”

“Your numbers are worse than before, so that is an unreliable statement.”

“Your numbers are worse than before, so that is an unreliable statement.”

It was a cold conclusion.

I pretended not to hear and turned my gaze away, but the maid standing nearby spoke up on my behalf to dispute her words.

“Doctor, couldn’t you have misread it? The Young Lady has been doing very well lately.”

The servants of the Duchy had been full of energy ever since I woke up.

Before I collapsed, I was clearly a patient who looked like she could die any day.

I couldn’t even raise my body from the bed, and moments of consciousness were rare.

So on the day everyone thought I was dead, only for me to open my eyes again, people believed a miracle had happened.

From that day on, I opened my eyes every morning and closed them every night.

To me, that alone was a miracle—and in truth, it really was something worthy of being called a miracle.

However, those things didn’t happen because my body was no longer sick, but because I forced them to happen through sheer willpower.

The doctor merely shrugged at the maid’s words and spoke to me again.

“It wouldn’t be strange if your life ended right now.”

“……Is my lesson over for today?”

I intentionally changed the subject, giving the doctor a subtle hint.

At my words, the doctor seemed to glance toward the curtain, adjusted her glasses, and spoke quietly.

“Young Lady. I will give you a new textbook.”

That meant she was prescribing a new medicine.

“Morning and night, even if drowsiness overwhelms you, you must review it as much as possible.”

It meant that morning and night, even if I felt like losing consciousness, I had to take the medicine.

The doctor knew.

The servants believed I spent my days with a clear mind, but she was the only one who knew that even when my eyes were open, my consciousness faded away from time to time.

As if holding onto a body that should have died that day, my body was actually suffering through the most horrific form of pain it had ever experienced.

“That is all for today’s lesson.”

The doctor began packing up her medical tools.

The maid waiting on one side of the room stepped forward to help her.

“Doctor. The med…… since the lesson is over, shall I call the carriage now?”

“Before that, I must see the Duke today.”

At those words, my eyes snapped toward the doctor.

However, the young doctor with neatly tied grey hair looked at me professionally and said:

“No matter what you say, the Duke needs to know. He is your father, after all.”

I heard this doctor was the daughter of a baron who took up the harsh profession of medicine to earn money for her impoverished family.

Perhaps because of her noble status despite her poverty, she showed no fear or hesitation even when I pressured her.

“……Do as you wish.”

“Thank you.”

Her actions, driven by her own principles, made it impossible for me to force her to stop.

Yet, her principles did have their merits.

While other doctors told me lies like, ‘Your body will recover soon, Young Lady,’ or ‘Your condition is better than before,’ she was the only one who gave me an accurate account of my true state.

So, I decided to let her actions slide.

“Hello, Young Lady. I will examine you now. Please bear with me for a moment.”

“Who are you?”

“I am the doctor who will be examining you starting today.”

The next day, however, the face of the doctor who had examined me for quite a long time had changed.

The maids reported that the previous doctor had resigned on her own, but I knew that wasn’t true. My father had definitely replaced her.

However, that was only the beginning.

“Young Lady, it is a pleasure to meet you. I am your doc—no, the teacher who will be…”

From then on, my attending physician changed roughly every three days.

The servants introduced all of them as famous, renowned doctors, but I couldn’t bring myself to trust them.

“You must endure this. We will hold a short lesson.”

“Young Lady. Even if there are many types, you must review all the materials.”

“This is a newly introduced teaching method—”

It was terrible to suffer through doctors using reckless, unproven treatments left and right, but to pretend I wasn’t in pain, I simply had to endure it.

However, I genuinely doubted whether these treatments were effective at all.

The pain I felt didn’t lessen even a little, and at times, I felt as though I were being salted alive.

Even so, the doctors all said the same thing. You will recover soon. You’ve improved a lot…….

At first, I thought it was a lie and sneered at it. But as the excruciating pain wore my nerves down to nothing, I began to believe those words.

The day will come when this pain ends.

In truth, that was simply what I desperately wished for.

In the middle of such horribly tedious and painful daily routines, my only hope was Mel.

I endured the pain while eagerly waiting for the time to teach him how to read and write.

“Mel, hello.”

Splash, splash.

‘Hello.’

When I greeted him, Mel mouthed back a greeting. As he moved, the water in the tank rippled.

Mel’s burns healed much faster than expected. Because of that, most of the bandages wrapped around his body were now gone.

The large gauze covering his cheek was gone as well. However, his tail still had spots where scales had fallen off and bruises remained.

I didn’t think those bruise marks were there at first.

Were they injuries I had failed to notice earlier?

I fixed my eyes on Mel’s slightly stiff tail before speaking.

“The word we’re going to learn today is”

I opened the children’s vocabulary book. There was only one unit left now.

In truth, it was a section that should have been learned first, but it was a topic I had pushed back and hesitated to teach.

“……It’s about family.”