A Misunderstanding (1)
"...Ah."
A vivid sense of reality spread along his fingertips like paint bleeding through cloth.
Only then did Kallen realize that he had been gently caressing Lucia's cheek.
"..."
Under her steady stare, he belatedly pulled his hand away, an awkward expression settling over his face.
Then, as if to brush off the embarrassment, he spoke up a bit too curtly.
"What are you doing here?"
"Wh-what does it look like? I was cooking."
"Cooking?"
Despite the incredulous look Kallen gave her, Lucia simply shrugged with perfect composure.
"Come on. It'd feel wrong to just clean and leave, you know? It's nearly dinnertime already."
"...Cleaning?"
At Kallen's doubtful question, Lucia wore a proud expression and gestured toward the inside of the house.
"What do you think? I got it really spotless, didn't I?"
"Huh...?"
As Kallen looked around, surprise flickered across his eyes for a moment.
The house that had once been as old and filthy as a warehouse was now neatly tidied, practically gleaming with polish.
"Good grief... how does a house end up with this much garbage in it? You have no idea how much trouble I went through cleaning all this up."
Lucia patted her own shoulder, muttering to herself as if patting herself on the back.
Even now, smudges of soot clung here and there to her lovely face.
"..."
Lost for words, Kallen frowned uncomfortably.
He had only said it to mess with her in the first place.
He'd never imagined she would actually go and finish cleaning the place this thoroughly.
"Have a seat and wait just a little. It's almost done."
Ignoring him either way, Lucia simply reached out and steered him toward the table.
"I'm really quite a good cook, you know? I don't do this for just anyone—but you're my benefactor, so you're getting the special treatment."
As if the place were her own home, she strode naturally to the hearth, took down a low cast-iron pot with its lid fastened, and set it before Kallen, who had seated himself at the table.
"Hehe, feel free to look forward to it."
With a confident look on her face, she murmured the words and lifted the lid with her thick-gloved hands.
"Ta-da! Lucia's special pumpkin pie!"
"..."
And Kallen found himself unable to say a single word.
-I'll make you pumpkin pie later. I'll put in lots and lots of sugar and butter, just for you. So cheer up, okay?
-Wh-what's the rush? It doesn't matter anymore... I'm... I'm yours, after all...
The sweet, rich scent of the pie was somehow dredging that phantom voice back up from the past.
Someone's voice, dripping with affection, felt instead like a sharp thorn carving into his heart.
He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, struggling to dispel the memory—but beside him, oblivious to it all, Lucia kept pressing him to eat.
"Try it while it's still warm. Oh, should I cut it for you?"
A crookedly cut slice of pie was placed in front of him, impossible to accept and equally impossible to refuse.
Lucia just beamed at him with a good-natured smile, her face full of expectation.
"..."
Left with no choice, Kallen picked up his fork, and his hand slowly stabbed into the pie and brought it toward his mouth.
Each bite, each chew, each swallow was painfully slow and labored.
And as she watched him force it down his throat, Lucia was just about to cry out with delight.
"So, so? Do you like—"
"...It tastes bad."
Clatter— The sound of the fork being set down rang out with unusual loudness.
Kallen, his face twisted as though he'd chewed on tree bark, simply pushed the plate away.
"Wh-what...? What did you just say...?"
"I said it tastes bad."
Staring blankly at Kallen as he repeated himself, Lucia snapped back to her senses and opened her mouth haltingly.
"Wh-why all of a sudden? Is it too hot? Ah, then after it cools down a little—"
"Hey."
"Y-yes?"
"That's enough. Get out."
Rising from his seat, Kallen quietly— inexplicably— herded Lucia toward the door.
"Huh? W-wait a second! Why all of a sudden—!"
Flustered by the sudden turn of events, Lucia cried out and scrambled, but Kallen remained stubbornly committed to shooing her out.
"Take the pie with you."
"Hold on...! F-fine, okay, I get it... I'm sorry. You must be tired—I really overstayed my welcome, didn't I? I'll come visit again tomorrow, okay? Okay? So, see you later...!"
Click.
And with the sound of the closing door, a familiar stillness finally settled over the old house.
Kallen stood in the doorway, gazing blankly at the scene with hollow eyes.
The sweet afterglow still hanging thick in the air only choked him all the more bitterly.
"Of all things... it had to be pumpkin pie..."
He murmured the words and let out a long sigh.
"Forget falling asleep early tonight."
"What the hell!!"
Lucia stomped down the street, her face twisted in a sulk.
"That was clearly going well, wasn't it? So why all of a sudden—"
In her arms, she still carried the pumpkin pie on its plate, holding the last of its warmth.
Lucia looked down at it and pouted.
"...Bastard. Trash of a man. An absolute lowlife if there ever was one."
Mixed into her grumbling, an unmistakable thread of hurt feeling had begun to seep out before she even realized it.
"I worked so hard on it... Would it have killed him to eat even one whole slice..."
This had been a flawless, meticulously executed plan.
She had been tracking Kallen's movements this entire time.
Lodgings at the Dusk Moon Inn, work at Elysion, his post-work routine of drinking and gambling and the like.
By now she had every one of his daily habits memorized, but with no natural way to make contact, she'd been racking her brain over the problem.
And then, out of nowhere, Kallen moved out of the inn he'd always stayed at and found himself a new house.
To Lucia, who had even been toying with the idea of infiltrating the inn as a live-in worker, it was nothing short of a godsend.
She had immediately paid over the asking price and snapped up a house right next door to Kallen's new residence.
Her plan was to pose as a neighbor, approach him by coincidence, and build an easy familiarity with him.
Even looking back on it now, there was no plan more perfect.
At least, that had been true up until this morning.
"...Son of a bitch."
Lucia glanced back over her shoulder and muttered under her breath.
"Ordering me to do cleaning and chores? If people knew who I was, a bottom-feeder like him wouldn't even be able to meet my eyes..."
What was most astonishing of all, though, was that such a bottom-feeder really was working as a professor at Elysion.
"Elysion must really be on its way out. No matter how you look at it—how on earth did a guy like that become a professor..."
As the corner of her mouth twisted, Lucia's gaze drifted back to the cooling pumpkin pie.
There had been an unexpected hiccup, but this was meant to be the trump card she'd ambitiously prepared.
Lucia narrowed her eyes and murmured in bewilderment.
"...Don't tell me Elise fed me some bizarre recipe to screw me over? Because otherwise, how could he not eat a single bite..."
Considering her less-than-friendly relationship with Elise, the possibility wasn't entirely out of the question.
Not that Lucia had much in the way of alternatives, of course.
Pointy-eared Caldis and gloomy Celine had even less interest in cooking than she did— which was to say, none at all.
"No... it tastes fine..."
But after stealing a bite for herself, Lucia quickly shook her head.
It was a pie made with seasonal pumpkin, plus lavish helpings of expensive sugar and butter, sparing no expense.
Even a novice like herself, with zero culinary talent, could tell it was absolutely brimming with affection made for a beloved.
If anything, the sheer audacity of a man who took a perfunctory single bite of such a pie and then kicked her out declaring it tasted bad—it was an off-the-charts kind of character she'd never encountered before.
"Or maybe he hates pumpkin...? Hah, seriously..."
As she clutched her head alone in her troubles, Lucia's shoulders suddenly drooped.
"Now I've botched it right out of the gate... huh?"
She raised a hand to her face without quite meaning to.
Because the lingering warmth of the someone who had touched that very spot still clung to it, thick and unmistakable.
Recalling the way Kallen had, out of nowhere, brushed his fingers down her cheek, Lucia let out a dry, humorless little laugh.
"...I guess his habit is reaching for a woman's body first thing. Like a dog in heat..."
The earlier situation had been rather flustering for her as well, truth be told.
It was only because nothing beyond that had happened that she had barely managed to restrain herself.
If he'd tried anything more outrageous after that, she would have taken his head right then and there.
"Laying hands on someone else's body without a shred of permission..."
Gritting her teeth at the memory, she hissed in a venomous voice.
"And yet he won't even pretend to eat my cooking... What exactly is he playing at... huh?"
Then something occurred to Lucia, and she sank into deep thought.
"Wait... if he tried to lay hands on my body... doesn't that mean, either way, that he's interested?"
It was a thought with considerable merit.
In fact, that inference felt almost self-evident.
Before her beauty, the willpower of even the most steadfast man was little more than a candle flickering in a typhoon.
And a degenerate who lived his life wallowing in women, booze, and gambling? Needless to say.
"...Has he already fallen for me? Then that display earlier was... him trying to play hard to get, the nerve of him?"
Before she knew it, she was arriving at a conclusion as smoothly as water flowing downhill.
No matter how she looked at it, there was no other explanation.
Otherwise, devouring not a single bite of that wholehearted cooking and then throwing her out made no sense at all.
"That must be it."
Her self-esteem restored, Lucia smirked and curled the corner of her mouth.
"Little nobody like him can play coy all he wants, huh?"
Her gaze drifted naturally to the crude little ring on her pinky finger.
And sure enough, the flame there was burning brilliantly bright again today.
"...Mmm, this might actually go even smoother than I thought?"
Watching her strength steadily regenerate, Lucia let out a pleased little hum through her nose.
"Good. Let's keep this up."
Her sodden, dragging footsteps soon turned light and springy as she strode forward.
"What should I make him next time? Some kind of nourishing health food? No, wait—what if he likes it so much he suddenly pounces on me... I should keep a proper distance too..."
Lost in such pleasant deliberations, Lucia finally disappeared around the corner of the alley.
The night scenery there held nothing but quiet stillness.
The lights in the shabby house she'd left behind did not go out, even as dawn came and passed.
"...Something's wrong with me."
The great bathhouse of Elysion.
Garnet, fresh from her training and scrubbing off the dust, was staring into a mirror, sunk deep in thought.
Lately, she had been living a very happy life.
The persistent harassment had ceased, and her family's honor had been restored.
With her confiscated assets returned along with reparations, she no longer needed to worry about making ends meet day to day.
In her resumed classes, she was achieving faster results than anyone else.
Thanks to that, swordsmanship lessons with Kallen were even scheduled for next week.
Every last one of these were things her past self couldn't have dreamed of.
And yet her worries lay somewhere else entirely.
"Something... something's wrong with me."
Garnet, her fair bare skin laid bare before the mirror, narrowed her eyes fiercely and glared at her own reflection.
"...Why can't I look that man properly in the eye? It's not as if I did anything wrong..."
No matter how she wracked her brain, no answer came.
Running a hand along her cheek, she murmured quietly.
"My face goes red... and being around him puts me in a good mood for no reason... It's not like I'm cursed or anything..."
This was an utterly unfamiliar sensation, one she had never felt in her life.
Having spent her whole existence consumed by nothing but survival, Garnet had no way whatsoever of understanding its source.
Continuing her staring contest with herself in the mirror, she frowned in ever deeper confusion and whispered.
"And my lower belly... why on earth does it feel all warm and achy...?"