The Baby Who Regressed Refuses Childcare - Chapter 11
“Where am I?”
I looked around and noticed a small window high above my height.
“Oh, my lab,” I realized.
I got up and stood on the dusty wooden floor.
Checking the clock, it was almost noon.
“…I’m thirsty.”
I turned my gaze to a corner of the desk.
There, on a toothless tray, was a lumpy piece of bread and half-drunk coffee.
“Oh, my God,”
I muttered and hastily took a bite of the bread.
I gulped down the slightly bitter coffee.
Once my thirst was quenched, I noticed other items on the desk.
The desk was a mess, cluttered with medicine bottles, old books, and half-filled scribbled sheets of parchment.
In between, there were a few magical devices I had been developing recently.
As I scanned them, my gaze suddenly halted.
In the top right corner of the magical parchment, not in my handwriting, a cute note was left.
“Unnie, I like this. I’ll make this Hiyana’s thing. Thanks!”
My mouth dropped open.
In the trembling hands picking up the parchment, thud!
Suddenly, my heart pounded loudly.
I stood frozen, blinking my eyes.
Thud!
At the same time, something rose from the base of my tongue.
“Uh,”
I desperately closed my mouth.
However, I couldn’t stop something from falling through my fingers.
Stooping down with my waist, I slowly let go of my mouth.
When I removed my hand, my palm was covered in bright red blood.
“What… is this?”
Only then did I become acutely aware of a nauseating sensation coursing through my body. Pain, unmistakable pain.
“….Ha! Ugh!”
Trying to support myself on the desk, I accidentally tumbled backward.
A few flasks fell, shattering into pieces on the floor.
“Ugh, ugh…!”
Even as I uttered those words, the blood rising up my throat showed no sign of stopping.
Trying to regain my fading consciousness, I absentmindedly stared at the coffee cup I had just drunk from.
“…Poison?”
Perhaps it was due to my diligent research as an alchemist all this time, but I was all too familiar with the symptoms manifesting in my body right now.
‘This is poison.’
It was the venom from the media cactus, known as the most potent.
The symptoms, such as bleeding, intensify immediately upon ingestion, causing severe pain from within.
A few minutes later, loss of consciousness follows, and the final…
“I’m going to die?”
With dismayed eyes, I looked down at the fresh blood staining my clothes.
An unknown emotion surged within me.
‘Who the hell would do such a thing?’
My lips trembled, and my breathing quickened.
I knew the people at the Longton Mansion all hated me, and I had considered the possibility that someone might want to harm me if luck was not on my side.
However, I never expected it to happen in this manner, so suddenly.
“Ha, hahaha…”
My body gradually leaned backward.
It was an absurd end, a fitting end for me.
Thump—my head touched the ground.
The sensation of coldness in my hands and feet.
As my thoughts grew dull, it felt like my body was sinking into deep water.
The ringing in my ears vanished, replaced by a complete silence that settled in.
In that way, even my vision turned white at the moment of death.
Suddenly, a vibration of someone forcefully opening a door was felt against my back.
‘Someone is coming.’
With nothing visible or audible, only the sensation on my skin became keenly aware.
Clearly, someone was coming—not just walking, but swiftly, thump, thump, rapidly approaching.
Soon, warm hands touched my shoulders, arms, and back.
The hand first tightly grasped me and then began to shake me roughly.
Shouts, muffled to the point of being indistinguishable in my dead ears, reached me.
“…Lia, …Ah! …Ni, …no!!”
And then everything ended.
