The One Who Won't Be Abandoned - Chapter 17

My eyes snapped open suddenly. It was early dawn—the hour when nocturnal creatures retreated to their shelters, and diligent birds began hunting for insects. The darkness of the night still lingered, but a low, pained moan pulled me from sleep as though on cue.

The sound came from Andre. He lay there, his face twisted in discomfort, beads of cold sweat glistening on his forehead. He was groaning softly, his breath uneven.

“Young master?”

Concern gripped me. Was he sick? I immediately thought back to his ice-cold hands from the day before. It seemed inevitable that he’d caught a cold.

Worried, I pressed the back of my hand to his forehead to check for fever.

“Jeanne…”

“Yes, I’m here,” I responded, thinking he had woken up. Though his forehead didn’t feel feverish, the sight of him sweating like this made me think he should at least drink some water.

I started to rise from the bed, intending to fetch him water, but Andre clutched at the fabric of my clothes, as if silently asking me not to leave.

“I’ll just get some water,” I whispered softly, so as not to startle him. Carefully, I tried to peel his hand away from my clothing, but the moment I loosened his grip, his hand seized my clothes again, firmer than before.

“Young master…”

I turned back to Andre, but the sight of him froze me in place. He was gripping my clothes tightly, panting heavily like someone who had just run a marathon.

Panic welled up inside me. Something was definitely wrong. I yanked the blanket off him and began shaking his shoulders.

“Andre. Andre! Wake up!”

“Ugh… Jeanne…”

Andre’s body shuddered as he whispered my name, and then, as if a storm had passed, his breathing gradually steadied. The flushed redness of his face began to fade, and he looked peaceful again, as though nothing had happened.

But the sense of unease in me only deepened.

I instinctively felt that something significant had just happened. The kind of instinctive, gut-wrenching realization that came with the sudden, faint, and oddly metallic scent now lingering in the air.

Lowering my gaze from Andre’s face, I scanned his body. My eyes traveled past his thin shirt, which clung slightly to his sweat-slick skin, and settled a bit further down.

The source of the scent was unmistakable. The center of his brown cotton pants, the ones I’d bought for him in the village, was darkened, damp with an unmistakable stain.

An unusual, musky smell wafted faintly toward me.

Could it be urine?

I briefly clung to that possibility, trying to retreat into denial, but it was clear this was no ordinary accident. The quantity was too much, and the scent carried none of the acrid sharpness of urine.

No… this was something else entirely.

The hushed, lewd conversations I had once overheard from the maids at the Kaiman estate resurfaced in my mind. Oblivious to my presence nearby, they had candidly discussed their sons’ nocturnal emissions.

“Can you believe it? Last night, he snuck out to wash his underwear in the middle of the night, and then again at dawn. He must’ve inherited his father’s virility. I wonder who’ll be unlucky enough to marry that boy…”

“At least your son cleans up after himself! Mine… ugh. If he soils his underwear, shouldn’t he at least wash it? But no, he stuffs it into a corner and leaves it there to reek until someone else deals with it. Filthy little brat.”

The sons they were talking about were all my age, and one of them worked at the estate alongside his parents. A shy, awkward boy I occasionally crossed paths with, whose face would always flush red when he saw me. I used to think his nervous stares were innocent, but now I couldn’t ignore the strange, sticky undertone in his gaze.

Learning he was the “tidy” one who took care of his own mess had secretly pleased me back then.

Nocturnal emissions were something every healthy adolescent boy experienced, a natural part of growing up. Yet, for some reason, seeing Andre like this made him feel unfamiliar to me. I had always thought of him as a child, but it was clear now that even under these harsh conditions, he was maturing. It left me with a strange, complicated feeling.

Then, it struck me—yesterday, I had dreamed something no less intimate than Andre’s nocturnal emission. And the subject of my dream… was Andre.

Andre’s dream counterpart had been me.

The realization hit like a bolt of lightning, and my trembling hands flew to my mouth, trying to stifle a gasp.

I carefully pulled the blanket back over Andre, ensuring he was covered. Then, with as light and silent a step as I could manage, I left the cabin. The door closed with a soft creak, but thankfully, it wasn’t enough to wake him.

Once outside, I headed toward the stream to calm my racing thoughts. Splashing cold water on my face felt like the only way to regain clarity. And it worked—when the icy water hit my skin, my mind snapped into focus.

Until now, I had vaguely thought, Someday, I’ll leave the cabin and return to the village. But seeing the situation for what it was, I realized waiting indefinitely was foolish. I should’ve returned to the village long ago. Sharing a cabin, even a bed, with an adolescent boy—how had I convinced myself nothing would happen? It was sheer irresponsibility.

Even if my own thoughts were foolish and undisciplined, Andre… Andre, with his noble blood, would never see me in that way. Surely, he wouldn’t—couldn’t.

Shaking my head furiously to dispel the unwelcome thoughts, I wiped the water from my face with my sleeve and stood. That was when something odd caught my eye—a strange object wedged in the crevice of a nearby rock.

“What’s that?”

Across the stream, nestled in a crack between the rocks, was what had caught my eye: a piece of white fabric. Curious, I crossed the shallowest part of the stream to get a closer look.

What I found was a pair of underwear, neatly laid out as if deliberately hidden in the crevice. It was small, the size suitable for someone Andre’s age, and it was spotlessly clean. Positioned where sunlight could reach but not easily visible from the other side of the stream, it seemed to have been placed there intentionally. If it hadn’t swayed slightly in the breeze, I might never have noticed it.

“Andre’s, probably,” I murmured.

I recognized it immediately as one of the pairs we’d bought during our first trip to the village.

Since we’d started living in the mountains, we’d silently agreed to handle our own laundry, including undergarments. There was nothing wrong with Andre hanging his clothes here—after all, I chose discreet spots for my own as well. Shrugging off any deeper meaning, I turned and crossed back to the cabin.

But as I walked, an image of Andre’s icy-red hands from the previous day flashed in my mind, and I stopped mid-step.

For his hands to have been that cold, he must have been scrubbing for a long time. And his flustered, embarrassed reaction afterward…

“Could it be that yesterday, too…”

The implication struck me like a thunderclap, and my face burned.

The thought of Andre soiling his underwear with his release and then nervously washing it left me at a loss for words.

This was turning into a serious problem. In this isolated mountain cabin, it was inevitable that if Andre had someone in mind during his nocturnal moments, that someone could only be me. That explained why he’d been groaning my name the previous night.

A chill ran down my spine, and I instinctively rubbed my arms.

The realization was horrifying. We were both dreaming about each other in this way. It was a nightmare of its own kind—one I’d never imagined possible.

How had I allowed this to happen? How had I thought it would be fine for the two of us to live alone, indefinitely, in this isolated cabin? I should have left Andre—or, rather, we should have parted ways—long ago.

“…Ah.”

At that moment, a memory surfaced: the orphanage in the village.

I’d visited the orphanage a couple of times before with my mother and the lady of the Kaiman estate. It was one of the establishments the family regularly supported. From what I’d seen, it wasn’t a bad place. The children there were clean and decently clothed, and the director had seemed kind.

Perhaps I could entrust Andre to them.

But then, there were the imperial soldiers searching for Andre. They had killed the mistress of Kaiman in cold blood—there was no chance they’d show mercy to her heir.

Still, I hadn’t seen any wanted posters or proclamations about Andre in the village. If the empire was looking for him, they didn’t seem to be doing so openly.

“Could they think Andre is already dead?”

The soldiers might have assumed he had perished in the flames that consumed the Kaiman estate. A charred body roughly matching his age could have been enough for them to draw that conclusion.

“If that’s the case… maybe no one is looking for him after all.”

If Andre wasn’t being actively hunted, then we could go down to the village. Perhaps now was the perfect opportunity to leave the mountains. After all, we couldn’t stay hidden forever.

Still, to be cautious, I thought about disguising him as a girl again, like before, when he wore my dress. It wouldn’t be a bad idea if we wanted to get him safely into the orphanage.

Lost in these thoughts, I strolled back toward the cabin. A rustling sound—like a twig snapping—broke my reverie. I looked up to see Andre standing in front of me, startled and awkward.

“J-Jeanne…”

He hastily hid both hands behind his back, his flustered expression betraying his guilt. I didn’t need to guess what he was holding—it was likely a pair of damp underwear. His pants were different from earlier, so he must have changed after washing them.

“Good morning,” I said casually.

“Morning. You went to the stream?”

“Yes, the water’s nice and cool. Are you heading there to wash up?”

“Huh? Oh… yeah,” he replied hesitantly.

“Alright, I’ll head back to the cabin first.”

As I walked past him, Andre subtly shifted to ensure his back remained hidden from my view. The gesture was so awkwardly endearing that I couldn’t help but smile.

But as the distance between us grew, my smile faded, replaced by a heavy seriousness.