漫画大王

Chapter 79

“Uh...”

Ellen didn’t talk to anyone except me. Harriet was openly disdainful of commoners, but Ellen, despite being a commoner, had a somewhat different aura to her.

At first glance, she seemed like the sort that one could not treat lightly. In fact, if one had seen the physical abilities rank chart posted on the class bulletin board, they would know that Ellen’s physical abilities were incomparable to those of her classmates.

Everyone must have recognized that she was an unusual kid.

That was why Harriet seemed to be at a loss as to how to respond to Ellen, but in a different way than she would be if confronted by Vertus.

Harriet presented herself as strong when faced with those who were weaker, and showed weakness in the face of the strong. She despised those who were contemptible, but she was intimidated by those who weren’t easy targets.

I despised that kind of character in my novels, but thanks to my incessant bullying, that aspect of her hadn’t been very noticeable.

In any case, it was just about time for Ellen’s late-night snack. When I thought about it, I was used to eating around this time as well, so even without training, I was hungry as well.

“Hey, do you want to eat something?”

“You... you want to eat something?”

“Come on, you’re hungry, aren’t you?”

Harriet did not understand the situation and was confused by my sudden suggestion to eat. Ellen, who was standing there blankly, sat down next to me when I gestured with my hand.

For the first time, instead of it being just the two of us, the three of us were about to eat something together.

“Wait a moment.”

Ellen had grown quite accustomed to eating what I made for her. She cooked occasionally, but I was the one who cooked eighty percent of the time. I cooked four times for every one time she cooked.

I glanced at Harriet and Ellen, sitting across from each other.

Ellen seemed to have no particular thoughts and was simply resting her chin on her palm and staring blankly, while Harriet’s face had gone red, possibly due to the extreme awkwardness of the situation.

It was an incredibly hilarious sight.

***

I prepared a simple chopped steak. I always kept it simple when making a late-night snack. I was usually drained of energy, and wouldn’t have the strength to make anything elaborate.

The quality of the meat was so good that I could often get away with making a very simple dish with it.

However, I hadn’t trained that day, so I had some leftover energy and decided to do something that involved a bit more work. Of course, it still wasn’t anything difficult.

“Hey, isn’t it common courtesy to at least set the table when someone is making food for you?”

“H-huh?”

Harriet looked bewildered by my grumbling, while Ellen, as if she was used to it, rose to get the cutlery, setting one set in front of each of us. Harriet, seeing Ellen following my words so obediently, had an even stranger expression on her face.

She seemed utterly unable to comprehend the scene before her, from Ellen’s sudden appearance to me getting up and preparing something so casually as if it were a routine.

And then, there was another surprise.

Harriet’s mouth fell open in astonishment as she regarded the massive-sized pan filled with chopped steak.

“What...? Why is there so much?”

“You’ll see why.”

Watching Ellen serve herself, I found myself growing curious about what kind of expression Harriet would make.

Nom, nom, nom.

Ellen started eating at an alarmingly fast pace. Harriet wore a hesitant expression as she served herself some chopped steak. She speared some with her fork and tried it, and her expression became incredulous.

“... You know how to cook?”

“It’s not so much knowing how to cook as just being able to make something edible. Don’t underestimate life on the streets.”

“Oh.”

Her face didn’t exactly scream that she was eating something incredibly delicious, but it also didn’t look as though she was forcing down something inedible. Given the professional chefs she must have encountered in her life, my level of skill was probably a lot lower.

Even taking that into consideration, she seemed to be surprised that I had managed to make something that was at least worth eating.

“Don’t force yourself to eat it,” I said as I started on my portion of the chopped steak. There was no need for her to force herself to eat; there was another who would gladly finish it all off if she couldn’t.

Harriet quietly moved her fork around, slowly eating her food.

To be honest, I had imagined a scenario where she would just spit it out after taking a bite, exclaim about how awful it was, and scold me. After all, she must have only ever eaten the finest food in her mansion.

But she continued to eat, nibbling away.

***

“Wow.”

Harriet couldn’t close her mouth as she stared at the now-empty pan. Ellen finished eating and calmly took a sip of water as if nothing had happened.

Even though it was a common scene to me, I was sometimes still surprised by it. Sometimes, she would be so shameless that she would eat almost everything by herself and act like she hadn’t touched a thing.

She would basically devour everything like a pig and then act all innocent afterward.

After finishing the meal, Ellen started to clean up by gathering all the used cutlery in the pan. When I cooked, she cleaned up, and when she cooked, I cleaned up.

Harriet was staring blankly at how familiar Ellen seemed with this situation.

“... You seem to be close to her,” she said to me in a low voice. “Do you guys always eat together like this at night?”

“Yeah. It’s usually around this time, after a good beating, when we’d eat something together.”

“What? You get beaten up?”

Harriet looked horrified at the mention of being beaten up. It made sense; she didn’t frequent the training grounds, so she had no idea what happened there every day.

She must have thought it impossible that I was the one getting beaten up. Her expression clearly reflected her disbelief when she entertained the thought of me being beaten up by Ellen every day.

Well, there was no way she had seen the state of my body while I’d been in the changing room either.

I lifted my shirt slightly to show her my abdomen and side, which were covered in bruises.

“What, what are you doing...! You, what’s with you? Why is your body like this?”

She gasped when I suddenly lifted my shirt, then went pale when she saw my bruises.

“My pseudo-swordsmanship skills are pretty terrible, so she gives me some pointers.”

“Pseudo-swordsmanship?”

‘That damn pseudo-swordsmanship skill. I still haven’t evolved it yet!’

“And one more thing, kiddo,” I said sharply to Harriet, who seemed dazed by looking at my wounds.

“K-kiddo?”

“Yeah, kiddo. If I cook the food, and she does the cleaning up, shouldn’t you help out as well?”

‘If you’re going to be at the dining hall at this time, you’re going to need to follow the rules too.’

“Come on, are you just going to stand there? Aren’t you going to make coffee or tea at least?”

“What, what did you say?”

The Duke’s daughter could only respond in shock when she was suddenly asked to prepare coffee.

***

“W-why... Why should I have to do this...?”

Harriet brought a tea set over to the table, her face red with wounded pride. She didn’t know why she had to do it, but since she had enjoyed the meal I’d prepared, there was no way she could rebut my argument and refuse to do her part.

‘Right. I guess you have servants to do all this in your world. But we’re in the Temple now. Although the Temple has serving staff as well, unfortunately, there are none in the dining hall at this time.’

“What am I doing, seriously...”

Harriet’s expression twisted with a twinge of humiliation as she poured tea into mine and Ellen’s cups. It was perfect.

I enjoyed this side of her too much. She would always scream, “Me? Why on earth would I do that? That makes no sense!” but she would end up doing it anyway.

‘Very charming. You’re truly something, Thick-Skull.’

“For your information, I’ve also tried Vertus’s hand-dripped tea as well.”

Vertus had actually served me tea earlier that day, during our talk on the tea-time terrace.

Of course, it was probably not out of respect, but because he knew that I was a complete novice when it came to tea.

Honestly, if I were to make tea and serve it to him, he wouldn’t even touch it.

“Vertus served you tea...? You?”

Harriet seemed stunned that Vertus would personally make tea for someone like me.

“So, compared to that, you serving me tea isn’t as great an honor, or something I feel as moved by.”

“H-ha! Heh! Ha, ha! W-what... what did you say...?”

My offhand comment about the prince making his own tea made Harriet’s face turn red once again.

Ellen and I didn’t usually have tea after a meal, but I made an exception this time just to find something that Harriet could do for us.

‘Caffeine before bed isn’t great, but oh well.’

Ellen began to nibble on the cookies that had been brought out together with the tea.

“It seems like you’re drinking tea just to pair it with cookies.”

“Correct.”

Ellen continued to munch on the cookies nonstop, not bothering to deny the fact. Harriet looked at her in stunned disbelief. Her gaze seemed to question if such behavior was normal, and I quietly nodded my head in confirmation.

“... Don’t you... get fat if you eat too much?”

“I don’t get fat.”

“...”

Harriet stared at me blankly.

I felt a sense of deja vu.

Just like it had been with Rudina not long ago, Harriet was looking at me with an expression that seemed to question if Ellen was behaving passive-aggressively towards her.

I was too exhausted to explain it all again, so I just kept quiet.

Ellen left enough cookies for Harriet and me before she began to drink her tea quietly. Thanks to my numerous rants about not crossing the line, she no longer hoarded all the snacks for herself.

Harriet seemed fidgety and uncomfortable. It was a little funny since she so easily showed her disdain for me, a commoner, yet she seemed to have a hard time dealing with Ellen, who was also a commoner.

Of course, there was something about Ellen’s aura that made her somewhat difficult to approach. Harriet seemed unused to Ellen’s silence.

But then again, she was not exactly the chatty type while she was me either.

“How did you two... become friends?”

It seemed inexplicable to her how someone like Reinhart, who fell squarely into the troublemaker category, and the indifferent Ellen could ever become friends. Ellen glanced back and forth between Harriet and me, then after taking a few sips of his tea, set down her cup.

Ellen stared at me intently.

It felt like she was contemplating whether to speak or not. What on earth was he planning to say?

‘No... There’s no way she’s going to say that!’

“It started with a letter from—”

“Wait a sec!!”

‘Why on earth are you starting from there?!’

I reacted so abruptly, jumping to my feet almost like a reflex, which made Ellen close her mouth. Harriet just stared at me, dumbfounded.

I thought she had forgotten about that incident since she never mentioned it, but of course, she remembered. But then again, I didn’t think she thought much of it...?

Of course, whether she thought anything about it or not wasn’t the point.

“U-uhh... W-we took swordsmanship classes together and uh... That one time, because of the duel, like, uh... We did some stamina training together, and then she kind of helped out with my training. And then you know, one thing led to another and here we are! Right, Ellen?”

“Yes. Correct.”

Ellen nodded in agreement, acknowledging my intense gaze, confirming my story.

I had been so flustered that I’d stuttered when I delivered my reply. Harriet nodded slightly at my overwrought explanation and seemed a little taken aback by my sudden outburst.

“Anyway, you. M-make sure to talk to your father about it tomorrow. And you have to tell me how it went, got it?”

“...I don’t see why I would need to tell you how it went, but okay.”

With those words hanging in the air, Harriet got up and took her leave, claiming that she was tired. She returned to her room, as it was almost time for lights out.

“Hey, come on... why did you bring that up?” I whined a little as I turned to Ellen, who tilted her head in confusion.

“You said it was love at first sight with me.”

“... I’m sorry for that. Please forget what I wrote.”

Ellen’s expression seemed to question whether she’d said something she shouldn’t have, although what she’d said was true.

“Write a love letter to a classmate and get rejected.”

The price of those 200 points was hitting me hard right now.

‘If I’d known I’d have more than 6000 points by now, I wouldn’t have done it! I’d been too blinded by the sweetness of those 200 points!’

“Was it a lie?”

Ellen’s calm voice prompted me to look at her.

It had absolutely been a lie. I’d done it because I was sure she wouldn’t spread any rumors, and would definitely reject me.

Back then, Ellen had rejected me without saying anything else. But now, while acknowledging that we’d grown close, Ellen was asking me if my words back then had been a lie.

‘If I tell her the truth, is she going to get hurt? But, wouldn’t lying be even worse?’

“... Yeah, it was.”

In the end, I had no choice but to acknowledge that I had lied to Ellen for the sake of those 200 points.

Ellen took another sip of her tea and nodded.

“I thought so.”

“....”

Ellen had realized that I didn’t actually like her and that it hadn’t been love at first sight that prompted me to write that letter.

“I’m sorry.”

There was no excuse, no justification to rationalize my actions.

All I could do was apologize.

“It’s okay,” Ellen replied simply, and quietly continued to drink her tea.

She didn’t ask why I had made up such a lie.