Side Story 27. Anemone Smiled Brightly (3)
Side Story 27. Anemone Smiled Brightly (3)
When food was placed on the table, Doomstone began to eat as if he were in battle. I poured water into his cup so that he wouldn't get indigestion after starving for a few days.
“Thwaanks."
Doomstone, who said thank you with food in his mouth like a hamster, drank the water I gave him.
"Kuaaaa!”
Doomstone let out a sound from drinking the refreshing water then began to dig in again. The food on the table disappeared in a blink of an eye, and I called over the server to order food continuously.
"You must have starved a few days?” I asked.
Doomstone nodded, stuffing into his mouth. "Mm mm! That's why it tastes better."
I was convinced when I saw him handing over the platinum coin casually, but he really seemed to have hardly eaten after leaving Olympus Forest. But no matter how many days he’d starved for, how could this much food go in?
Do the Crows' stomachs double as a pocket space?
Still, the storm-like meal session began to slow down as Doomstone began to feel full.
"Khmm! Yo-you eat too. It's tasty."
As he began to get full, he remembered how he ate like crazy and blushed as he wiped his mouth with a napkin.
How cute!
"I'm eating a lot, too. Don't you think so, ahjussi?"
"Yes. It tastes good considering it's a restaurant in a remote area. Ohohoho." Glont ahjussi also nodded, raised his pinkies with both hands, and cut a steak.
Doomstone saw me eating and looked at me unexpectedly.
"Anemone, I thought you'd have a higher taste in food, but you eat surprisingly well."
"What?" I was taken aback.
Doomstone answered casually, biting a chicken leg, "You're a member of a high-ranking family, right?”
My eyes opened wide with surprise at those words. Of course, the fact that I grew up in luxury could be inferred through clothes or words and actions. However, seeing that he didn't even know the value of platinum coins, he would have grown up only in Olympus Forest, so I didn't think he could infer that.
"Why do you think so?"
Doomstone responded casually. "Instinct."
Instinct? Like the sixth sense?
It's not the persimmon, so it must be instincts right? [1]
"You don't believe me, do you?" he asked.
I smiled and shrugged. "No. How could I not?"
How did he know?
I'm sure my facial expression control was perfect. Did he know by looking at my eyes? Perhaps it wouldn’t be impossible for super humans like Crows.
"What no. It seems like you don’t believe me."
"Is that instinct, too?” I asked.
Doomstone nodded.
Oho, then shall we do a light test?
"Okay. Then guess where I'm staying today. What I'm thinking of is the place that runs this restaurant, the inn near the Adventurers' Guild, and the inn to the right a little further from here. Those are the three choices.”
Doomstone thought hard about my test and said, "Hmm, I don't think any of those is right."
"Not any of them? Then where do you think I’ll stay?”
"I wouldn’t know. It hasn't been a day since I came to this city, so how can I know?"
Doomstone patted his stomach satisfactorily after finishing eating.
After eating like that, his stomach should have been bulging, but it didn't look much different from before the meal, perhaps because of his viciously solid muscles.
Hmm, that's a nice six-pack.
"Then shall we check?” I called the server over with a gesture and asked. "I'm thinking about staying at this inn today. Do you have a room?"
The server bowed his head awkwardly. "I'm sorry, Customer-nim. The rooms are all full today."
"Really? Then there's nothing I can do."
When I gave up easily, the server carefully spoke to me.
"Excuse me... I think it's going to be hard to get an inn room today.
"What? Why?"
"Recently, many mercenaries and adventurers flocked to Asterium to subdue the demons in the Demons’ Territory. I don't think there will be any vacancies until the day after tomorrow when they move on to Warrant."
I looked at Doomstone in surprise.
Doomstone smiled as if to say, “See?”
Did he know that in advance? Or did he really figure everything out with his instinct? If it was the latter, I thought I could do something very interesting.
"What are you going to do, Miss?" Glont ahjussi looked at me worriedly.
I drank dessert tea, telling him not to worry. "I’ll have to stay at the nun-nim's house today. Doomstone, you probably need a place to sleep anyway. Do you want to go with me?"
Doomstone scratched the back of his head and hesitated. "Haha, I'm thankful for just the food, but even a place to stay? I’d feel too sorry..."
"You don't have to be sorry. It's not me, but the nun-nim who will provide a place to stay." Speaking so, I added a little more. "Well, if you feel sorry and indebted, there's nothing you can't pay back."
Doomstone patted his chest with a bright face. "As long as it doesn’t use my brain, say anything!"
As expected, he had great pecs. I can't believe the muscle shape was visible and looked like it was about to burst through the thick leather clothes.
"Even if I look like this, I was the best hunter in my hometown. I caught a dragon by myself when I was 15 years old!"
At Doomstone's bragging, Glont ahjussi laughed cheerfully, perhaps thinking it was a bluff. From what I heard from my father, the Crows did not feel the need to lie about things like that. Then that must mean it’s true, so I clapped.
"Ohh! How reliable! So cool!" I complimented.
Doomstone blushed and smiled as if he had never boasted. I was worried about how to seduce him verbally, but it didn't seem necessary.
"Then shall we go?” I said with a refreshing smile.
"Please take care of the bill, ahjussi."
-o-
Knock! Knock!
When I knocked on a small temple that served as an orphanage, the door soon opened.
"Miss Anemone!"
It was Sister Armand, the nun of this temple and my information source, that opened the door.
"It's raining and chilly outside. Please come inside."
"Thank you. Do you not need to receive donations?" I went inside and asked for politeness.
Sister Armand smiled gracefully and nodded. "Yes. I'm sorry, but it's because it’s like my creed."
Sister Armand refused to receive large amounts of support. The reason was that if a large amount of money came into hand at once, one would easily fall into corruption.
If there was a saintess, I thought this kind of person would be one. Of course, I don't want to disparage the saintess who defeated the Demon King with the warrior in the past, but I thought religion should put something else before divine power. Thanks to this, the support was divided through several families and was only enough to get by.
"Who is this person?" Sister Armand looked at Doomstone, who followed Glont ahjussi.
"He is my guest. You know what I asked you about a few days ago."
"Oh! Then this person!" Sister Armand clapped. She had been asked to track Doomstone's whereabouts since he was featured in the newspaper. "A precious guest has arrived. Have you eaten?”
Doomstone nodded awkwardly. "Oh, yes. With Anemone... Come to think of it, I haven’t had a chance to be introduced with hyung-ssi."
Glont ahjussi briefly introduced himself. "I am called Glont." Usually, he liked fluttering clothes, but he was also unnecessarily taciturn when he was serious.
"Thanks to Glont hyung-ssi, I ate until I was full."
"I see. I am Armand, the nun here. The weather has gotten chilly, so let's head to the fireplace.”
Under the guidance of Sister Armand, we headed to the living room with a fireplace. As he entered the living room, Doomstone looked at the fireplace and his eyes sparkled curiously.
"Wow! Is this the fireplace that my grandfather talked about?"
It was even more amazing to see a reaction of being amazed by nothing.
"Is this your first time seeing a fireplace?"
"Yeah. In my hometown, we usually warm the entire floor by lighting the furnace."
What did he mean furnace? Did he mean like a kitchen furnace?
If it was a structure that kept the entire floor warm, it seemed that the chimney was not directly connected to the roof, but flowed to the floor.
"Then you can't heat up from the 2nd floor, can you?” I asked.
Doomstone nodded. "That's why houses are usually a single-story. Well, it's not that there's no two or more story houses, but for those, I heard that the heat from the furnace is pulled up with magic. Probably."
"Probably?"
"Yes. The magician ahjumma next door said so while casting magic on my house during its renovation, so I think it's right."
A magician lady. It couldn’t be Mirpa Ainsmall, the famous great madosa and alchemist, could it?
No matter if it was the Crow Tribe’s chief's house, there's no way a great madosa would do such chores, right? Considering her age, she should be a grandma, not an ahjumma.Although for some reason, I wasn’t certain.
"But it's not that warm, as my grandfather said. Even though it looks very warm."
Disappointed, Doomstone went closer to the fireplace.
But if it's his grandfather, it must be the legendary Galak Blade, right? Because he kept talking about characters from a children’s story so intimately, I felt like I had entered a children’s story as well. A fair and righteous warrior who defeated the Demon King 100 years ago. If he were still alive, I would have wanted to meet him at least once.
"Miss, I have something to tell you briefly." Sister Armand whispered and beckoned me to go to the office.
"Where are you going?"
"We have to talk about something briefly. Just hang out with ahjussi for now.”
I followed Sister Armand into the office leaving the two openly awkward people.
"What's going on?” I asked.
Sister Armand spoke with a rather serious face. "By chance, did that civil servant dispatched to the Asteria Duchy die?”
I knew what Sister Armand was trying to say. "I guess the Blood Emperor is already starting to move. Then again, there's no way that that monster didn't send people to monitor the civil servant that he was using as bait to test us.”
What the surveillance sent by the Blood Emperor knew by now was probably only that there was something wrong with the dispatched civil servant. Presumably, the reason he noticed so early was that the civil servant was supposed to report the activities of our family at least once a day. Still, there was probably no confirmation that the dispatched civil servant was dead.
Dispatching civil servants as spies meant, on the contrary, that information could not be obtained unless it was such an obvious method. Of course, it may have been a clever strategy to distract us, but my father was not that easy. It was almost impossible to plant a spy because my father was not a person who chose people around him that easily.
"Is it related to Miss leaving the castle?" Sister Armand asked, her voice uneasy.
I smiled at the question. "Yes. I killed him. That civil servant."
At my lively answer, Sister Armand frowned.
1. The word for persimmon and instinct is the same in Korean. ?