Max wanted to pretend to be calm, but she couldn’t help her stiff facial muscles. Ruth hurriedly turned away his face and coughed as if he saw nothing.
“The story was leaked to the point of no use. What I want to say is… There’s a reason why Lord Ricardo is being hostile to you. The knight blindly believed and followed Lord Calypse, who rejected the lady that was given to him and chose the daughter of the man he despised the most, so it’s impossible to not be upset and get angry.”
“I-I see.”
Max nodded her head gloomily. She had been depressed before, thinking that marrying Princess Agnes would have been more beneficial to Riftan, and now Ruth’s words confirmed that fact again and her heart sank infinitely. Because of his marriage with her, he created a feud with the royal family and even antagonized the knights.
While staring at the edge of the desk, Max barely spat out her trembling voice.
“J-just in case… b-because of me, division w-within the knights will…”
“You don’t have to worry about that. The solidarity of the Knights of Remdragon is much stronger than what you believe. I don’t think any of the knights, except Lord Ricardo, are particularly hostile to you.”
Max was a little relieved hearing his words, she was sure he was right since Ruth was the kind of person who says out loud what’s on his mind.
“But if it’s possible… I want you to be comfortable… I don’t like the gloomy atmosphere that there’s right now.”
“Alright… I-I’ll do it.”
Max replied in an unconfident tone. Ruth also sighed hearing it, as if he had not high expectations.
Glancing at his tired face, Max recalled the things that had happened earlier. Her mouth was dry, so she swallowed and managed to open her lips, which felt as if they were glued.
“W-Well…”
Ruth gave her a curious look. Max pretended to look away and opened a book. Her heart was thumping unsteadily.
“J-just in case… I-I’m asking because I want to know….”
“What is it?”
Now, when asked, she frowned as if she was hesitating. Max drew courage and spoke.
“W-With Ruth’s magic… C-Can you… uh… f-fix me?”
“What do you mean with fix you?”
Max’s face flushed as she blinked back. Ruth, who seemed to get what she was saying only after seeing this scene, said “Oh!” and gave a short sigh.
“Healing magic has no effect on disorders.”
That was a fact she already knew: if magic could have solved it, her father would have used it before. However, she recently learned that there are many magicians in the world who create new kind of magic. Max has never been able to ask because she was afraid of being disappointed, but she had an expectation that Ruth could create a magic for her. She blushed and talked as if she was clinging to him.
“W-Well I-I know, b-but… Ru-Ruth can develop new m-magic right? … Y-You just need to do a re-research.”
“If I do the research as you say, one day I could find a solution. In fact, many people study magic tricks to fix disorders such as dwarfism, deafness and lameness. However, no magic has been found so far to permanently repair defects in the body. Even if I work hard on my research, it will take decades to come.”
“I-I see…”
Max tried not to show disappointment, but her shoulders dropped. She pretended to be calm, smoothing her messy hair.
“Th-that’s what I thought… I, I just wanted to ask.”
“…”
An uncomfortable silence fell again. Feeling restless, Max stood up.
“W-well then, I’m going back. Ri-Riftan said he’d be back soon.”
“Come on now, wait a minute….”
Ruth hurriedly caught her trying to turn around before she could go outside. Max opened her eyes wide at the embarrassment. He let out a low groan and uttered in a discouraged tone.
“If you go like this, I’ll feel like I’ve done something bad, My Lady.”
“I-I’m fine…”
“Don’t say that. Sit down for a second, let’s think about it.”
After rolling her eyes around, Max faltered and sat back on the chair. Ruth sat with his arms folded as if he didn’t know what to say, looking up at the ceiling for a long time.
“Have you ever tried to fix your own stuttering?”
It was a very insensitive question to ask. Max blushed and looked at him.
“Jesus, I’m… I’m not doing this on purpose. Do you think I like to ask this?”
Max was beaten to the point where her skin was swollen and then healed, but as the days went by, the symptoms of stuttering only got worse. Ruth saw that Max’s face was distorted with embarrassment and raised both hands defensively.
“I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m asking you if your pronunciation and speech habits can be corrected to a certain extent by training.”
“C-Correction training… Uh, w-when I was a kid… I-I trained! B-but I didn’t feel any better…”
“What kind of training did you take?”
Max trembled slightly, recalling the terrible memory of reading a book in front of her father. Whenever she stuttered, her father would slap her on the back with a riding whip. She tried hard to erase the frightening memory from her head, shedding only a fraction of the truth.
“Po-Poetry, or… re-read the Bible… Ro-Roem’s literature….”
“Oh, my God, what’s the point of practicing a conversation when you practice reciting old words?”
Max’s face got almost purple with discomfort. She had always covered it up and ignored it, but whenever the topic of conversation was mentioned, she just wanted to immediately run away from the spot. Max thought she had brought up a useless issue and looked anxiously at the door with regret, but Ruth was not ready to free her.
“Wouldn’t it be better to practice a routine conversation over and over again?”
“Th-that’s… I-I already d-did practice! Bu-but… My tongue is stiff, i-it doesn’t m-move.”
“You seem to have improved a lot lately.”
Max blinked her big eyes with surprise and Ruth smiled bitterly at her puzzled expression.
“Didn’t you realize that? You speak more comfortably these days, except when you’re very embarrassed or nervous. If you practice speaking slowly and clearly in a comfortable atmosphere, wouldn’t it be easy to fix it perfectly? I think it’ll be much faster doing that, than solving it by magic…”
“D-Don’t say it’s e-easy! I t-tried so h-hard b-but it didn’t work out so far!”
Ruth frowned at her rough tone. Max shrugged her shoulders, she was embarrassed that she overreacted to what he said: he was only giving her some advice.
“W-Well, whatever happens… t-thank you for your advice. I-I’ll think about i-it.”
Ruth parted his lips as if he was about to say something more, but then just closed his mouth. Max got up from her seat and left the library as if she was running away.
However, while she was running out like that, Max had a faint doubt in her mind: there really wasn’t any hope of fixing it? Didn’t she think, talking to herself from time to time, that it seemed to be better than before? Max, who was moving quickly across the hall, stopped in front of the stairs.
Her father hated her opening her mouth in public: because of this, Max was confined to her room with a tutor. Even after her liberation from such a harsh education, she did not open her mouth unless it was necessary. It was because of the embarrassing look in people’s eyes, she was uncomfortable with their look of frustration.
Max even thought of wanting to die if someone asked her to repeat what she said, since it was hard to understand. Getting older, she did not say a single word for months. Recalling it, Max suddenly realized that speaking recently didn’t feel so terrible. Sometimes it was fun to have a conversation. It was an unbelievable change.
“Maybe the symptoms get worse when I am silent.”
She didn’t know. Her memory was so distorted that she couldn’t even tell if she was the same woman who acted as the hostess of Calypse Castle. Max bit her lips. Perhaps while she was with her father, she had crushed all her possibilities. Max told Ruth that she tried, but she wasn’t sure if she really did. In fact, she’s had given up for a long time.
“But… I can’t believe I-I can fix it on my own n-now.”
She hesitated because she was afraid of fretting over useless hopes. Then suddenly Riftan’s face came to her mind. When she remembered his fierce anger because of her, Max heart tightened painfully. She couldn’t let Riftan punch people whenever she was insulted. Among the arrogant aristocrats, some may mock him for having a stuttering wife.
Max stared dimly under the railing with a cloudy look and grabbed her skirt.
