Resetting Lady - Chapter 167

Carynne was regretting it.

At the very least, nobody saw them doing it furiously in the hallway. The entire mansion was like their bedroom, after all.

It started on the stairs in the hallway.

And then, by the window.

She had begged him to go to the bedroom several times, but it was a long time before he even heard her. She couldn’t even calculate how much time had passed.

“Ugh…”

It felt as if her entire body had been bruised. The reality wasn’t any different.

How much time passed?

She stared blankly out the window. The sun was up, but she couldn’t tell if it was twilight or daybreak.

Her whole body felt sore and sticky. There were even some bruised areas.

“Sir Raymond.”

Carynne called out to him softly.

“……”

He didn’t get up. She looked at him. His eyes seemed swollen, and he was covering his eyes with one hand. His breathing seemed steady, and it seemed like he was still asleep.

Raymond’s body wasn’t entirely unscathed either, but due to the significant difference in their physiques, the only marks left on his skin were a few nail scratches.

His skin was so resilient that there were hardly any marks even when she bit his shoulder. She was amazed by his unblemished shoulders. Even though she was in so much pain herself. At most, he had a few nail marks on his back.

Carynne looked at Raymond, who was sleeping heavily next to her, and wanted to take a shower. She wished he’d let her go. His behavior was so extreme that it was hard to keep up with him. She didn’t think he used to be like this.

“It’s heavy…”

His arm on top of her felt heavy.

“Raymond, please move your arm.”

“Mm… Okay…”

She pushed his arm away, finding it too heavy to lift, but he still didn’t open his eyes. He must have been exhausted as well.

At least two days had passed, and during that time, they both couldn’t leave the room, not even for meals. Apart from briefly tending to their bodily needs, they had been in bed for the entire time.

“Ugh…”

She couldn’t tell if she had fallen asleep or simply passed out from exhaustion. During this time, she couldn’t eat properly. She had thought Raymond was busy with his work, which was why he spent so little time with her, but as the days passed, she desperately wished he would do something else.

For a person to move, they needed to consume something for energy, but he had far more stamina than her, which meant he moved at different intervals.

She began to fear that she might die of a heart attack at this rate. She had heard that if a man were to die while having sex, it was called ‘dying on top’, but could a woman die too? ‘Dying underneath’?

Carynne contemplated such thoughts and blinked. She had wanted to get out of bed for so long because of her stiff body. She was parched and wanted a sip of water from the canister someone had put just out of reach.

Realizing this, she finally noticed how dry her throat was. She reached out for the water canister, but she couldn’t reach it. She needed to get up.

“…Don’t go.”

Carynne almost got startled by Raymond’s voice. She turned back to look at him, but he was just sleeptalking. He, too, had fallen asleep, exhausted.

Finally.

She felt the emptiness of the place, realizing that a space devoid of people could be scary in this sense as well. She heaved a sigh.

“Just… let me go…”

She managed to pry his hand away from her ankle with a kick and left the bed. Unlike the sturdy Raymond, she had an ordinary person’s body. Merely standing up was too much exertion for her now.

Stepping onto the floor for the first time in a long while, she stumbled.

“……”

Her vision spun.

Carynne stood up and took a drink from the water canister beside the bed. The cold water flowed down her dry throat. She coughed, her hand touched her throat, and her face contorted in pain. Her throat hurt, but it wasn’t just her throat.

Her whole body ached terribly from the strain.

Why did she engage in such activities for no reason when she could have just enjoyed languid idleness? Why did she demand such a thing in the first place?

Now that she thought about it, this was the first time that she initiated intimacy with him. In the past, she always died before she could get used to being with him, so Raymond always saw her as a shy and inexperienced virgin.

But maybe that made things more comfortable. Carynne might be onto something regarding why he had been holding back until now.

He meant it when he said that he wasn’t confident in controlling himself because they were alone together in this place.

She could also see how much he had been considerate towards her during their many honeymoons. Raymond, who could move around on his own, wasn’t the kind of man Carynne could handle.

He hadn’t even allowed her to fall asleep in peace. This level of torture was unbearable.

“……”

Making sure he was asleep, she snuck out of bed. She wanted to go downstairs, eat something, and soak up some sunlight.

“Haaa…”

Carynne sighed as she looked at the appetizing dishes in the kitchen. She had no idea how many days she had spent lying in bed. Most of the food was smoked meat, so it wasn’t a big problem, but the fowls that Raymond caught had started to rot.

“…Do I have to clean this up?”

She felt nauseous. But she didn’t want to wake him up since he had just finally fallen asleep. She craved to do things together, and it seemed that human desires were the real issue. So, she piled up the spoiled food in one place and started to clean up. However, she had no idea where to dispose of the carcasses.

This was something she had never done before. Cooking was for chefs, and cleaning was the job of the servants. She tried to rationalize it that way, but she eventually gave up and plucked a ripe tomato from the corner and bit into it.

“…I’m hungry…”

Carynne felt the need to eat the monotonous meat again. As expected, fruits and vegetables alone wouldn’t be able to provide the energy she needed. She took some tomatoes and placed them in a small basket before leaving the kitchen.

She headed back to their bedroom. It was time to stop this and get up to resume their daily lives.

They really needed a chef, and they should hire at least five housekeepers. Living with just the two of them was exhausting, and there was no restraint. She also longed to converse with other people.

“Just two people is too few.”

At first, she thought having just one person around would be fine, but it wasn’t. Two people weren’t enough. She needed more people around her.

She craved social interaction. She had initially thought their lack of intimacy was due to not having enough physical closeness before they built their relationship, but after enduring nights that nearly broke her, she realized the importance of companionship.

“…We need people here.”

Carynne needed people. One person wasn’t enough. She needed someone to talk to, laugh with, and even argue with.

She had always considered the individuals in this world to be mere characters in a novel, and so she kept her distance from them.

But those meaningless connections she had thought of them as were what made up her life.

She realized that she had always been surrounded by people. From the moment she woke up in the morning, through meals, work, and until she fell asleep, maids and servants were always by her side.

No matter how much Raymond loved her and took on all the tasks himself, there was only so much one person could do. This was inevitable because Raymond was just one person.

“…Just one year.”

All she had to do was endure for one year.