Thank You For The Confinement, Grand Duke! - Chapter 54.2
“Did you hurt yourself?”
“No?”
“….”
He stared intently into my eyes, and I instinctively tried to hide my arm behind my back. It wasn’t on purpose, really. It was just a reflex.
Unfortunately, he didn’t miss that movement.
“Is your arm hurting?”
“It’s not hurting, but… I think I strained it a bit because it was heavier than I expected.”
Such things usually heal on their own. If I were still living my old life, I’d have to keep doing housework, so I might have applied a pain relief patch, but now, I could just rest quietly.
“Please let me see it.”
“It’s really okay.”
“If the inflammation gets worse later, it will be troublesome.”
“Eh, it’s fine.”
“Chaperil.”
Uh.
When he called my name in a low voice while staring fixedly, it was impossible for me to continue joking about the situation. What was this? Some kind of debuff?
It was like being hit with a stun.
“Which arm hurts?”
“The right one…”
Enfrise carefully moved my arm, supporting it from below. Perhaps because of the way he supported it, it felt sore but not painfully so.
“Could you stretch your arm out a bit?”
“Like this?”
As I exerted some force, I felt a slight pain in my elbow. Enfrise sighed deeply when he saw me wincing.
“Is it all right if I roll up your sleeve for a moment?”
The sleeve of my summer dress was wide and ended midway down my forearm, so rolling it up wasn’t difficult.
When I nodded, he carefully rolled up the fabric without touching my bare skin. Then, he gently held my arm again, and after a careful examination, he let out a sigh that was hard to tell if it was relief or frustration.
“It seems you might have exerted too much force in surprise, given that you’re right-handed. Fortunately, it doesn’t look like it’s dislocated. You should be fine.”
“Can you actually see that?”
Well, it wasn’t like my elbow would dislocate from just that, but… was that something you could actually see with the naked eye?
“Yes. If the elbow had really come out, it would be visible. Let’s rest it for a while and keep an eye on it. We’ll have to check again before we go back.”
Hmm, there was no need to be so overprotective.
It wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to me. My family… well, my grandmother and siblings, didn’t really care much about my health. If I was sick, it was my own responsibility, by their standard.
But my friends were different.
When I showed up with a cast on my broken arm, they acted as if the world was ending. One of my overly dramatic friends screamed, and others gathered around, forming a crowd.
As they saw my cast, they bombarded me with questions about how it happened and worried comments about how I wouldn’t be able to rest at home, suggesting I should have been hospitalized instead…
Everyone threw their advice at me all at once based on their own experiences, mixing it up so much that it became a bit confusing. It was touching and amusing, and I liked the feeling of being so full of warmth.
It was a type of warmth I’d never received before.
But Enfrise’s overprotectiveness… felt different. Compared to my friends’ noisy concerns, he was quiet and composed. Yet his face turned somber whenever I winced as if the world was ending, and his voice trembled subtly even as he spoke calmly. His hands shake more than mine, even as he assures me it’d be okay.
All these seemed to express just how much he cared. It brought a strange unfamiliarity.
“It’s okay, Grand Duke. It doesn’t hurt that much. It’s just a bit sore.”
“Yes, but please let me handle such things in the future. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt…”
Oh dear, this was almost bringing me to tears. Did he think of me as some fragile child? No matter what, I was surely not that delicate. Did he act this way towards others as well?
That might feel a bit offensive.
No, maybe not. Both Tambor and Enfrise himself mentioned that they didn’t really connect with others much, so maybe it was just because it was towards Chaperil that he was like this.
…Well, that was something I’d just have to accept.
A slight chuckle escaped me without realizing it. Perhaps taking that as a sign of reassurance, Enfrise’s expression lightened a bit.
“I’m not a child. You don’t need to worry so much. A bit of massage later on should fix it.”
“I certainly don’t think of you as a child. If I did, that would be…”
Enfrise started to say something, then suddenly paused, his eyes wavering suspiciously.
“…No, it’s nothing.”
What was that about?
That… what?
“What’s that about?”
“…If it’s about the massage, it might be better if I do it for you than if you try to do it yourself.”
While It was clearly a diversion, his anxious expression as he said it was too cute, and I missed my chance to press him further.
Meanwhile, Enfrise…
“If it’s all right with you… shall I do it?”
He asked with a red face.
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