An Unexpected Windfall
An unexpected windfall, it was.
The pride of having finished a three-star dish, and the joy of the level-up notice, lasted only a moment.
What seized my eyes was none other than a man's name.
Adrian El Ignas.
The crown prince of the empire who appeared in the game I used to love, Chronicles of Lodoros.
I had always felt a visceral revulsion at the idea of building affection with the male characters in that game…
And yet, there had been a few times when I tried to dig into his past.
The trigger had been the ending of my first playthrough.
When I first played Chronicles of Lodoros, I had been completely drunk on self-indulgence.
I put only female characters in the party.
I skipped every affection event that could occur with a male character.
I ranked recruits by looks rather than performance and prioritized accordingly.
With my personal harem party fully assembled, I walked into the ending and—
As if it were only natural, I got the bad ending.
It was the ending in which Adrian ascended as emperor of the empire, revealed his ambition to swallow the entire Lodoros continent whole, and I, as his teacher, joined forces with the students I had raised to raise a banner of rebellion against the empire.
It felt a little abrupt, but I told myself it made sense.
It almost felt like a teaser for a sequel, and besides, I had played so thoroughly female-focused that I had never seen any of Adrian's backstory at all.
The problem was the next playthrough.
Reflecting on the previous run, I decided this time to faithfully raise Adrian's affection and listen to his story.
Living as his teacher and a friend he could rely on, I learned a little more of the deeper tale.
News of the academy, stories of the imperial family, and personal circumstances he seemed reluctant to reveal.
I still never learned the full details, but I could tell there was something.
And then I got the bad ending again.
I tried many more times after that. The result never changed.
Adrian became a tyrant, and the Lodoros continent was swallowed by the flames of war.
In the end, I never found a way to change this guy's future.
But the name I see now… feels different somehow.
Target: ‘Adrian Kraus’ is extremely satisfied with your cooking!
The name that appeared on the status window was quite different from the one I knew.
The full name I remembered was Adrian El Ignas.
I wondered for a moment whether I had simply misremembered…
But my memory was intact.
Besides, according to Roen, he had introduced himself by that name even on the day of the entrance ceremony.
So the fellow who was so thoroughly satisfied with my cooking that he was lavishing praise without restraint—
was unmistakably the future tyrant.
In other words, the crown prince who had given me endless headaches: Adrian.
Even so, the surname “Kraus” he now carried felt thoroughly unfamiliar.
And the status window does not lie.
Putting those two facts together, a memory from the past rose intuitively to the surface.
This was not the first time I had used the status window to learn someone’s true name.
It feels exactly the same as with Roxanna…
Roxanna El Ignas.
At first I had simply accepted that she was Adrian’s bodyguard, because that was the role she played…
But by chance I had seen her true name through the status window, and it was that of imperial blood.
That single fact alone did not yield many conclusions.
The most plausible inference was that she was concealing her identity for some reason, but I could never know what that reason was.
And now, back to Adrian Kraus.
It was a rather ordinary surname for a crown prince to bear.
It was not a name I remembered, but the core point was that he was currently living as the crown prince.
Once that fact settled in my mind, a natural question surfaced.
Could the two of them have switched roles?
Suppose, for instance, that Roxanna, who had been the imperial princess, and Adrian, who had been her bodyguard…
had, for some reason, exchanged identities and were living in disguise?
It was a fairly persuasive hypothesis.
If that were true, it would also explain Roxanna’s clumsy impression as a bodyguard at our first meeting.
A woman who had lived her entire life as an imperial princess would naturally find it awkward to suddenly live under a different station.
But if this were true…
the facts I already knew would start to flow in a rather strange direction.
If one compared which of the two was the legitimate heir to the throne, Roxanna, who carried the imperial surname, would be the closer candidate.
And yet the future I knew was a world in which Adrian reigned as a tyrant.
But why?
I simply cannot understand the reason.
I lacked information.
What was certain was that, for reasons unknown, Adrian had become emperor in Roxanna’s place.
And that Roxanna had not even been a romanceable student in the original game, so her presence had been faint.
Weaving those facts together, a plausible scenario took shape.
For example, that Adrian had betrayed Roxanna and become emperor.
…If that is truly the case, then this seat is rather dangerous.
But even if he betrayed her, becoming emperor was another matter entirely.
For someone who was not the legitimate heir to become emperor required a solid base of support within the empire.
In the end, without knowing the motive and the forces behind it, it remained nothing more than uncertain speculation.
What I had uncovered was only the tip of the iceberg.
But… there has been some progress of my own, at least.
Simply playing the game, I had never even learned Adrian’s true name.
If I could learn just a little more about this fellow from here…
perhaps something would change.
Perhaps.
Perhaps now I could stop the future in which Adrian became a tyrant.
The moment that thought settled, the uneasy feeling in my chest sorted itself out.
“Carmilla… Carmilla, are you listening?”
Only then could I see what was in front of me.
Adrian was looking up at me with a worried gaze, for some reason.
“I was spacing out for a moment, it was.”
“My apologies. You must have been tired. I called you for quite a while and received no answer.”
I had not realized it, but it seemed I had been lost in thought for a long time.
“I am sorry to ask again, but… what were you trying to say, it was?”
“Ah. About that.”
Adrian began to speak with a somewhat awkward air.
“The truth is, my interest in this restaurant was a lie.”
What on earth was he trying to say?
I was puzzled, but decided to keep listening.
“Lately that fellow has been disappearing somewhere every evening… and whenever she returns, she has sauce or oil on her mouth. And in this neighborhood, the only place that serves cooking of that caliber is, well…”
“Ah, yes. There is nowhere else but here, it was.”
“You can probably guess by now, but the reason I came here was to catch her.”
Even without him saying so, I had more or less expected it.
From the moment he first asked after her whereabouts, I had a feeling something like this would happen…
So that was why he had come here as well.
“Well, that was the original purpose, at least.”
Having said that, Adrian looked down at the table.
He had cleaned every last bite of the dish I had just served him.
“Now… I feel I might be able to understand that fellow a little.”
In other words, this guy had taken quite a liking to my cooking.
I had already known that from the status window, but hearing it from his own mouth was a different flavor entirely.
It felt a bit like being called out of the kitchen by a customer in the dining room only to receive extravagant praise.
“At this rate the original purpose is getting a little blurred, but that hardly matters. I suspect I am about to become a regular here myself.”
“My, you flatter me, it was.”
“It was a meal that truly restored my strength.”
Adrian smiled with satisfaction, then suddenly glanced at the clock.
“Though… it seems that time is nearly upon us…”
At those words whose intent I could not yet read, my gaze followed his to the clock…
and I soon understood what he meant.
Ding-a-ling—
With the clear chime of the bell, the door opened, and the one who stepped inside was…
“Carmilla~ Give me the usual today! Wait, but there’s another customer today…”
the restaurant’s first regular: Roxanna.
“Uh, Adrian…? Your Highness… why are you here?”
“You made it so obvious, it would have been stranger not to know, it was.”
“Huh? That’s impossible. I was sure I slipped out without anyone noticing!”
Well, my original plan had failed as well.
I had intended to send Adrian on his way before Roxanna arrived…
but somehow the two of them had ended up meeting.
Still, well.
This did not seem so bad either.
I had gained another regular, so from my perspective it worked out either way.
“Roxanna… I think we need a proper talk.”
I felt a little sorry for Roxanna, who was about to receive a lengthy scolding, but that was none of my business.
A few days later.
An interesting rumor began to circulate at St. Celestia Academy.
Namely, that Crown Prince Adrian and Master Glenn were going to spar.
No one knew the reason, but the content itself was fascinating.
Both were men of considerable renown with the sword, so heated debates broke out over who would win.
Adrian’s imperial swordsmanship versus Glenn’s practical combat style.
Which of the two would claim victory?
“Obviously Glenn, it was.”
I said it without a shred of doubt.
After all, it was the same event that had occurred in the original work.
Glenn, who had proven his skill through years of mercenary life, would crush Adrian with an overwhelming victory.
It was as good as a fixed fact.
…It was supposed to be.