Holding the meowing white cat in her arms, the maid didn’t leave right away.
Instead, she stood there with a conflicted look on her face, glancing at Roman from time to time.
The kitten licked its paw in her arms, looking utterly unconcerned.
“Is there something else?”
Roman asked gently.
“Young master, could you keep this a secret for me?” the maid asked shyly, her cheeks flushed.
Young master?
Roman was briefly puzzled, then couldn’t help but let out a soft laugh.
Setting aside the fact that his status didn’t deserve such a title, the word secret struck him as a little strange.
Elise definitely knew, she just didn’t find it worth making a fuss over.
She was turning a blind eye, that’s all.
So Roman simply said, “There’s no need to keep it a secret. You can say it’s mine from now on. Elder sister Luo Xiya won’t mind.”
The maid’s eyes lit up with joy, and she bowed deeply in gratitude.
The kitten suddenly wriggled free from her arms, landed on the ground, and with its tail swaying side to side, returned to Roman’s feet, rubbing against him with its head tilted and eyes half-closed.
“Looks like it really likes you…” the maid said with surprise, and then felt it was only natural.
With someone as graceful as the young master, who wouldn’t?
After the ballroom event that night, many noblewomen had been unable to get Roman out of their minds.
There was no way the maids in the estate had no thoughts of their own.
Now standing barely a meter apart, she could clearly sense the fresh, pleasant scent coming from Roman’s body.
She thought of how the other maids always mentioned that you could smell a sweet fragrance just by getting close to Roman.
It seemed that wasn’t a rumor after all.
Roman gazed at the kitten, growing increasingly fond of it.
Suddenly, he frowned slightly and bent down to examine it without even lifting his skirt.
Lifting the kitten into his arms, it meowed and squirmed, but Roman ignored its flailing paws and focused intently on its hind leg.
Yet as he looked at it, his thoughts inexplicably drifted to Luo Xiya.
Is this how she sees me too?
He didn’t mind, but the little maid was clearly panicking.
The kitten was flailing and baring its claws, if it scratched Roman’s face, she’d be done for.
“What’s wrong with its hind leg?”
Roman asked.
He stroked the obviously lame back leg and frowned.
“Ah?”
The maid froze for a moment, then quickly responded, “When I found her, her hind leg was already like this. I even took her to see a doctor. They said it was too late, there was nothing they could do.”
“I see…”
Roman continued inspecting the kitten’s leg, then suddenly paused and, blushing, adjusted the kitten’s position.
It was a little female cat.
Roman suddenly grew a bit melancholy.
He had once kept a cat, too.
He’d met it on his way home from work, a ginger cat, if he remembered right.
It had been filthy, curled up alone in the corner of a street.
It had once belonged to someone, Roman found a pet tag on its neck.
He figured it had been abandoned because of its clearly crippled back leg.
Maybe it was a shared sense of brokenness, but the two had connected instantly.
The cat didn’t even bother to move when Roman pet it.
Maybe it couldn’t, because of the injury.
Roman had bought a cheap bag of cat food and made a habit of feeding it after work each day.
Then one day, he found he no longer needed the food.
It was dead, lying stiff in a narrow street, almost unrecognizable.
It had been hit by a car. Its legs had been too weak to let it escape.
Roman rarely pitied himself, and never cried for his own sake.
But he remembered crying for a long time that day.
Looking back now, it wasn’t just the heartbreak of watching something he loved shatter before his eyes, it was the way he had seen his own hopeless future reflected in that cat.
As expected…
Roman gently stroked the kitten’s head, a swirl of emotions rising in his chest.
“I want to try and see if I can heal her,” he said, meeting the young maid’s confused gaze.
“Huh?”
She didn’t understand.
Even if she truly liked and trusted Roman, the kitten’s leg had been declared hopeless by professional doctors, how could someone so young possibly manage it?
Roman didn’t bother explaining.
He simply closed his eyes and began.
He followed the method Lady Catherine had taught him the night before, as if activating the magical circuits within his body.
Platinum-colored patterns slowly emerged across his skin, stopping just at his neck.
He placed his hand on the kitten’s leg.
Magic flowed from his palm into her hind leg.
A glowing green light appeared.
Roman kept his eyes closed, silently attuning himself to the process.
It was hard to say how much time passed, but when Roman finally opened his eyes again, the first thing he saw was the maid’s face, overwhelmed with joy, and he immediately understood.
Looking down, he saw the white kitten’s previously crippled hind leg had miraculously returned to normal.
It leapt and bounced across the grass, tail waving happily. It was clearly just as excited as they were.
Noticing Roman watching, the kitten jumped up from the ground and into his arms.
Holding the little cat, Roman nuzzled it gently, eyes squinting in contentment.
“What’s her name?” he asked the maid.
“She… she’s called Cake,” the maid stammered awkwardly.
“Cake?” Roman chuckled softly, finding the name amusing.
“Because I really like eating cake… I just called her that when I picked her up.”
She tapped her fingers together and spoke in a low voice, clearly feeling embarrassed.
“Why be embarrassed?”
Roman asked, puzzled.
“Cake is a great name, soft and sweet, just like a real ‘cake.’”
Hearing that, the maid finally stopped cringing in shame.
“Where do you usually keep her?”
Roman asked next.
“In the back garden of the estate. Almost no one ever goes there,” she replied honestly.
Roman was speechless.
That meant not only Elise but probably Luo Xiya had known about it all along.
Most likely, they found the kitten cute and just turned a blind eye when they had time to pet her.
“Then let her stay there,” he said at last.
The maid nodded obediently, but in her heart, she thought: the young master doesn’t seem to care about status, but from the way he said that, he clearly already sees himself as the man of the estate.
She couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed.
When she thought of Luo Xiya, the true mistress of the house, she immediately sobered up.
She wouldn’t dare do something so bold again.
After saying goodbye to the maid, Roman opened his right hand.
With a single thought, that same green glow shimmered to life again.
This was probably the most basic form of healing.
He suddenly wanted to visit Luo Xiya’s study.
There should be a lot of useful knowledge there.
And beyond that, Lady Catherine was clearly a far more powerful transcendent than even Luo Xiya or Elise.
When he had time, he definitely wanted to ask her for guidance.
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