My Sister Took My Fiance And I Was Married To An Ugly Prince

16 - Your Real Face

Ramilio was too engulfed by Lucrezia's sincere attitude to say no.

--If I show her, it's over. I'm sure she'll run away, too.

"--!"

"Are your glasses...?"

He took off his colored glasses.

With the glasses out of the way, he could now stare at Lucrezia with his naked eyes.

Lucrezia wasn't looking at him through cloudy brown glass.

She was many times more beautiful and fantastic than when she had been looking through coloured glasses.

Lucrezia's shoulders suddenly began to tremble.

"Hmm, this is the ugly...! Hahahahaha...!"

Lucrezia laughed with her stomach.

"I beg your pardon. Oh, what a surprise! I think you're a very good looking man, Ramilio-sama!　Who said anything about an ugly lord?"

Ramilio touched his eyelids in confusion.

The whites of his eyes and eyelids were innately covered with numerous black spots.

These spots, which looked like the compound eyes of an insect, were said to look very weird to people.

When I was a baby, I was told that this was a prelude to the formation of a tumour in my eyes, and that I would not live long... but I had lived to this age in good health without incident.

"Are you not disgusted by this?"

"No? Not at all. Master Ramilio must be more prone to pigmentation than others. His hair and irises are all black."

Lucrezia smiled.

"I'm the opposite," she said. "I was born with a lack of pigmentation and my eyes were completely white."

Lucrezia's eyes were a beautiful golden colour.

"When your eyes are white, your eyes don't seem to function properly. My grandmother said that because I couldn't see people's faces when I was a baby, I missed the opportunity to learn.

That's why I seem to have fewer facial expressions than other people."

It was a surprising confession, for somehow I had thought that the beautiful girl lived in a different world from mine.

"Thanks to my grandmother's treatment of me, my world has become more colorful."

"Your grandmother...?"

Wasn't she a duchess of royal lineage? It is hard to imagine that her grandmother was a medicine woman.

"I was left in the care of the apothecary's grandmother until I was eight years old."

Lucrezia looked up at the starry sky as if reminiscing about the past. Before she knew it, she was able to observe the beautiful stars in the sky.

"I was told that it was because of my eyes that I was sent to my grandmother in secret, and that I must never speak of it even if I returned to the duchy. They said that if people knew that I had an eye disease, it would be an ugly story for the nobility."

It was true that an apothecary is usually an eccentric old woman who lived alone in the mountains selling herbs.

Her social status was also low.

The aristocracy would not want to be probed about their relationship.

"It's been a joyful life. There were all kinds of people who came to see my grandmother... Some of them seemed to have the same disease as Master Ramilio. As soon as she saw the spots on his eyes, she told him he had 'insect eyes'..."

Lucrezia leaned forward and put her hands on both of Ramilio's cheeks.

"I can heal your eyes."

Ramilio stared at Lucrezia as if he were dumbfounded.

I couldn't believe what she said right away.

But Lucrezia's silver hair, seen without the filter of the frosted glass, was a complex mixture of the brilliant indigo of the night and the color of a bonfire, as beautiful as a goddess giving an oracle.

Feeling deceived, Ramilio opened his mouth.

"I'm not sure if it's... really...? These eyes, the eyes that... every doctor has spurned, are now a healthy, human color."

"You will be cured. You can trust me."

Ramilio thought he had really been visited by a goddess.

"You will have to stay in a dark room for a month after you start the treatment, because the direct sunlight will be too much for you. You will need to be heavily bandaged and blinded so that you cannot see anything. Are you able to keep your schedule open for a month, Master Ramilio?"

Ramilio thought of his schedule and nodded.

"If I can fit it in with my summer vacation, I can have a holiday for a month or two."

"Then we can start the treatment in the summer. I'm looking forward to it! I'll be ready by then, too."

Lucrezia cheerfully ended the conversation and went back to boiling the jam.

Ramilio watched her work for a long time, feeling as if he was in a dream and nothing felt real.

***