Duke, Please Stop Because it Hurts

Hope for the Future 

Urgent footsteps rattled throughout the Marquis’. Feeling infuriated by Molitia’s pallid complexion while being in his arms, Raven began to shout urgently.

“Get a doctor!”

At the sudden bolt of lightning, the doctor sprinted in confusion. Since the Marquis’ couple had initially thought that they would be enjoying themselves at the party, the fully straightened clothes were somehow replaced by their own desperate feelings.

The doctor, who took a deep breath, slowly settled down next to the bed. While lying silently in a room with such little heat, she still looked rather pale.

There was a slight crack in the doctor’s face when she began the examination in various places. She promptly touched her medical kit before she soon had to let it go since it was nothing.

It was Raven who became frustrated by that apparently aesthetic behavior. It wasn’t even enough to rush her for treatment and the doctor who was in the office had just been tilting her head instead. He could no longer help but to raise the wrath that was surging right to his head.

“Why do you keep on tilting your head? You need to prescribe something or better yet, tell me any of the symptoms!”

“We-well, Duke…”

“If you don’t tell me quickly, I will hold you personally responsible for my wife’s ailment right now.”

The Duke was never a man who would speak recklessly. The contemplating doctor immediately bent her head downwards.

“I’m unsure if it would be fine for me to tell you this, but… congratulations.”

“Congratulations?”

Raven’s face immediately became distorted.

“Did you just congratulate me on my wife’s affliction right now?”

“Well, that is not what I’m trying to say.”

The startled doctor’s head was slowly sinking even deeper.

“I think the Duchess is expecting.”

“What…”

Bewildered—Raven couldn’t fathom what he actually looked like for that moment.

‘What is the doctor talking about?’

He felt like his head had just overloaded. He even wondered if there was a new medical term that he wasn’t aware of.

“Who, what?”

“In the beginning, it’s alarmingly easy for a baby to miscarry, but even though she had been bleeding, the child’s pulse is still picking up. I have to say that it’s just like a miracle.”

Raven looked devastated when the doctor was repeatedly reporting to him that he even had forgotten to get angry.

A child.

She was with their child. Raven immediately became emotional. When the tip of his nose eventually tingled, he turned his head without realizing it. He had never even thought about it. He didn’t think of having a child with that frail body of hers. No, he never even meant to. It was already a great miracle for him just to have her around.

Nevertheless, she was with a baby. She went through all these hardships with their child. When he realized that even this small body of hers was strong enough, on top of the fact that his child was growing as well, his irrevocable desperation had fluttered his heart even further.

“What the hell are you…”

He then carefully held Molitia’s hand. A tiny hand slowly met with a comparingly huge hand of his. Her fingertips that were as chilly as her pallid complexion had caused pain in his heart.

“What should I do with the treatment, then?”

“I will prescribe a medicine that won’t burden the baby at all. Since she has been bleeding already, she will become extremely sensitive, so you cannot help but to be careful with each and every part of her. But if you’re going to use this medicine…”

“If?”

Raven raised his eyebrows at the voice of the doctor who was taking another brief pause again. Oh—the weak doctor had no choice but to put everything that she had thought aside before informing it honestly.

“The Duchess is exceptionally frail that it might not be so easy for her.”

Raven’s lips were shut tight. He didn’t say anything for a long time.

Thump—the sound of burning firewood and the doctor’s liver shrivelled at once.

“Trauma. Will there be any problem with the treatment?”

“No. The trauma can be treated rather quickly.”

“For now, I won’t leave you if there were to be any defects in the treatment of the trauma itself.”

“Okay, I will do my absolute best.”

“Other drugs…”

Raven’s eyes fell upon Molitia. It appeared like he couldn’t make any decision just on his own.

“I’ll talk to you later.”

—————-

Molitia felt as if she was floating in the air.

She couldn’t feel anything—where it was, what time it had been. Her body seemed heavy like she was immersed in water but still, light as if she was on a cloud.

“You’re awake?”

When she lifted her eyelids, she could see him under the bright light. His appearance that seemed to have darkened a little somehow, looked rather unfamiliar to her.

“Ra…ven…?”

A hoarse voice flowed out from her small lips. For a moment, she became absent-minded from the cracking sound and a series of terrible incidents began surging into her mind.

As she jumped out of her seat in surprise, Raven quickly helped her out. He embraced her as her chest rushed up and down.

“You don’t have to worry. There’s no one who’d touch you anymore.”

Her breathing gradually stabilized at his tender touch. Her eyes, which had been moving unsteadily before, slowly died down as well.

‘There isn’t anymore.’

This wasn’t that nasty place. It wasn’t the place where not a single ray of light had come in and above all, no filthy person was next to it.