An Unpolished Gem
While everyone else was enjoying the banquet in the party hall, Charlotte had returned to her lodging and fallen deep into thought.
She no longer had the confidence to remain at Ed’s side.
What in the world can I even do?
Ed kept surging further ahead, and everyone around him was exceptional. Would someone like her even register in his eyes?
Charlotte let out a long sigh.
The deep-seated inferiority that had shadowed her for so long was gnawing away at her heart.
Knock. Knock.
That was when someone rapped on her door.
The voice that followed belonged, astonishingly, to Ed.
Charlotte shot upright.
She glanced around frantically. Had she imagined it?
“Charlotte, are you in there?”
It wasn’t a hallucination. It really was Ed’s voice.
Charlotte hurried to the mirror and inspected her reflection. Nothing about it pleased her.
“Y-yes, I-I’m here… C-come in…”
Even so, she had no choice but to let him inside. In her panic she had knocked things over with a clatter; pretending she wasn’t there was impossible now.
The door swung open.
Ed stepped in. No matter how many times she saw it, his face was heartbreakingly handsome—the same face that had stolen her heart at first glance. And here she stood, utterly insignificant by comparison.
“I thought you might be in your room. You weren’t at the party.”
“Ah… I-I just… w-wanted to rest a little…”
Charlotte hid her face behind her green curls as she spoke.
Ed smiled gently. “The party was rather chaotic, wasn’t it? People like us tend to prefer quiet places.”
He settled into an empty chair, but Charlotte was still puzzling over his earlier words.
“P-people… like us…?”
“Yeah. I often want to be alone too. Most of my time is spent researching by myself in the lab. You give off the same vibe.”
He was exactly right.
Timid since childhood, Charlotte had always preferred tending her garden over spending time with others. Using the Verdian family’s inherited natural-creation magic to build her own little ecosystems, she would lose track of time until the sun set and dinner arrived.
“Charlotte?”
Ed’s voice pulled her from her reverie. He was smiling at her, warm and natural.
In a playful tone he asked, “You were thinking about something else, weren’t you?”
“…!!”
Was he reading her mind? Charlotte’s shoulders jumped.
When she hung her head and mumbled, “S-sorry for spacing out…”, Ed shook his head.
“Actually, I do the same thing all the time. When a brilliant idea strikes, I lose the thread of conversation. I go off on tangents and say strange things more often than I’d like.”
Ed smiled with the fondness of memory. Back on Earth during his university days, he used to blurt out non-sequiturs whenever a technical keyword pulled his thoughts away from everyday talk.
“Oh… I-I do that too… hehe…”
Understanding him, Charlotte gave a shy little smile. Realizing they shared the same quirk filled her with a sense of kinship.
“Charlotte, you’re not hungry, are you?”
Ed rubbed his stomach. It gave an audible growl.
Charlotte startled. “Ah! D-did you really not eat anything?”
“No. Nerves kill my appetite. I was tense the whole time discussing diplomacy with His Majesty the Dwarf King.”
Ed had been under immense pressure to mend relations between humans and dwarves by any means necessary. As a result, he had gone without food all day.
Charlotte sprang to her feet. “Th-then let’s eat! J-just wait!”
With an eager smile she pulled a special seasoning jar from her pack. The otherworldly shabu-shabu she had never found an opportunity to serve was finally going to make its debut before Ed.
Bubble bubble bubble.
In no time at all Charlotte had the meal ready. Fresh vegetables simmered in a clean, refreshing broth.
“Thanks for the meal.”
Ed tasted the vegetables and broth, then lifted his thumb in approval. Charlotte beamed with happiness.
“By the way, Charlotte.”
His tone shifted. She could tell he had something important to say.
“Tomorrow there will be a meeting concerning the Emerald Mana Stone. I’d like you to attend.”
“……”
Charlotte’s smile turned bitter. She stared blankly at the vegetables drifting across the hot broth.
“E-even if I go… I-I won’t be… of a-any help…”
All she was good for was boiling vegetable soup like this. While everyone else moved forward with confidence, she alone had achieved nothing.
“…Why would you think that? Preserving the Emerald Mana Stone is something only you can do—only someone who can use natural-creation techniques.”
Ed sounded genuinely puzzled. Tomorrow’s meeting was precisely in her field of expertise.
Charlotte answered with another bitter smile. “I-I’ve… always been like this… I s-stutter when I speak… a-and my face… is u-ugly…”
Her severe complex about her appearance stemmed from a deep wound in her youth. Even now the memory remained painfully vivid.
—So, even a dog would like you?
—Yeah. It’s fucking easy. Ugly bitches are quick.
—Heh. Then are you going to date her?
—We’ll see. It’s a ruined house anyway. Use her and toss her—no one would even care.
Just remembering it made her breathing ragged. The betrayal made her shoulders tremble and brought tears to her eyes. He had been her first love. They had seemed to share so much, and he had always told her she was pretty. Then she had accidentally witnessed his true self, and the switch flipped. That was the day her stuttering began.
“Charlotte.”
Ed’s voice scattered the painful recollection. She hastily wiped her eyes with her sleeve and mumbled in a tiny voice, “S-sorry… for suddenly saying strange things…”
Ed looked at her with pity, then spoke.
“You’re not ugly.”
“……”
“You’ve simply been hiding it. Want to take your glasses off?”
Charlotte glanced at him nervously before removing them. Ed grinned.
“Just as I thought. I wasn’t mistaken. Your eyes are beautiful.”
Gentle double eyelids gracefully framed a pair of bright, deer-like eyes. They sparkled with intelligence and perfectly matched her kind expression. The thick lenses had been concealing her greatest feature all along.
“M-my… eyes?”
The compliment was completely new to her.
“Yeah. The glasses hid them, so no one noticed. You’ve never shown anyone your face without them, have you?”
Charlotte thought back. Indeed, she never had. Convinced she was unattractive, she had always kept her face covered.
“And your facial structure is actually quite striking—beautiful bone structure. The problem is that wild curly hair covering everything and making your face look puffy.”
Charlotte’s hair was a tangled mess, like hundreds of tiny pretzels twisted together. The green curls fanned out like a lion’s mane, creating the illusion of a wider, flatter face. She had been styling herself in the most unflattering way possible.
“This won’t do. Wait here.”
Ed disappeared for a moment. Ten minutes later he returned, holding strange objects.
“Sit down. I’ll style your hair.”
“H-huh?”
Charlotte had no idea what the devices were. Ed simply sat her down and began straightening her curls with the heated tool.
Every time his fingers moved through her hair, her face burned crimson and her heart hammered wildly.
“There. Completely different, right?”
When he finished, Ed set a mirror on the table.
Charlotte stared at her reflection in shock.
“This… this person…”
A beautiful girl looked back at her from the glass. Every movement she made, the girl in the mirror copied exactly—because the girl was herself.
“I told you. You’ve always had a pretty face.”
She could hardly believe it. Simply removing her glasses and changing her hairstyle had transformed her image so dramatically.
“Charlotte, look at this.”
Ed pulled a small stone from his pocket.
“A rock…?”
“Haha. It does look like one, doesn’t it? This is a diamond in the rough.”
“!”
Charlotte examined the stone again. No matter how she turned it, it looked like an ordinary pebble—yet it would become a sparkling diamond.
“Unless you’ve worked with them before, it’s hard to recognize. But this really is a diamond rough. I can tell.”
Ed placed the stone in her hand.
“It reminded me of you. A gift.”
Charlotte gazed at the rough gem. Outwardly it was nothing special, yet with the right polishing it would shine brilliantly. She finally understood what Ed was trying to tell her.
“…Thank you.”
Emotion surged up, but she held it back. Knowing she too could shine, Charlotte chose to smile instead of cry.
“T-tomorrow… I’ll do my best…! I’ll make sure I c-can be useful!”
The road ahead was still long, but she had decided to try. Just as Ed’s gift implied, to become the version of herself that sparkled, she would have to clash with the world and polish herself through the effort.
“Good. Then shall we finish the rest of this? Adding rice and a cracked egg makes it really delicious.”
After that the two of them ate shabu-shabu together, talking about all sorts of things. The more Charlotte conversed with Ed, the more she felt her old wounds beginning to heal.
The night grew deeper still.