There was still a deep interest and faint mockery lingering in the way he looked at me.
Ignoring my reaction completely, he slowly walked over and sat down beside me.
As the mattress dipped beneath his weight, I became painfully aware of how close he suddenly was and hurriedly scooted back toward the headboard.
“Wait!”
I had a really bad feeling about this.
For some reason, it felt like I absolutely shouldn’t fall for this skinship attack…!
A familiar scenario began playing in my head.
The moment you let your guard down and open your heart because a character who’s normally rude and mean pretends to be easygoing and kind.
“What a boring woman. I’ve already lost interest. What should I do now?”
And then he walks away after saying some infuriating line like that.
Characters who get physically close too easily and casually are dangerous. At least, that’s what I’d learned.
‘Just like this guy!’
He silently stared at me as I shrank against the headboard like a frightened guinea pig.
Then, suddenly, the corner of his lips curled crookedly.
Seeing that openly condescending expression, I flared up and raised my voice.
“W-Well, I should at least hear what you mean by taking responsibility!”
“Ah, is that it? Is that the problem…?”
Edwin stroked his chin and asked lazily,
“Then how about we start over? Like none of this ever happened.”
He said it as if something had happened in the first place.
The shameless intruder who had barged into my room less than ten minutes ago and already claimed half of my bed was unbelievably confident.
I narrowed my eyes and waited for him to continue.
“So then, my fiancée. Tell me. What’s your name?”
Edwin slowly lifted his lowered gaze and looked at me.
And his face…
Yeah.
It was breathtakingly sexy—enough to make me forgive every red flag in the way he spoke.
*****
He—more specifically, the “bad” version of Edwin—kept me up all night bombarding me with questions.
There was absolutely none of the thrilling tension or sweet romantic atmosphere one might expect.
Most of his questions were informational: my name, who I was, where I came from, and what I’d been doing around the castle.
To be more precise, it felt less like a conversation and more like a Q&A session.
Actually, scratch that.
It was an interrogation.
Of course, Edwin wasn’t completely silent during all of this either.
From the occasional fragments of stories he shared, I got the impression that he’d been trapped inside the castle for a very long time, unable to leave.
Maybe that was why he seemed genuinely entertained even by trivial stories like the basement-cleaning incident or the vegetable garden fiasco.
“You cleaned that place out? That’s going to make storage rather inconvenient from now on.”
Some of the rules changed midway through the night, and he also said a few things that sounded oddly meaningful.
But I was so exhausted and half asleep that I honestly couldn’t trust my memory.
Anyway, before sunrise, he simply told me we’d meet again and left without the slightest hesitation.
As a result, I—who somehow ended up serving as his late-night conversation partner—didn’t get a single moment of sleep.
“Yaaawn…”
Barely forcing my heavy eyelids open, I rubbed my sleep-deprived face.
If it were up to me, I’d spend the entire day sleeping.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option.
‘…What am I supposed to do about all those things I sold?’
The worry came belatedly after I learned that the axe I’d casually sold had apparently been Bad Edwin’s precious friend(?).
Maybe I should’ve only sold tomatoes, potatoes, or cheap junk worth less than fifty diamonds.
What if all those expensive items had owners?
Or were actually important?
Once the worrying started, it just kept snowballing.
‘At this point, I can’t even remember exactly what I sold.’
The only thing that remained vividly in my memory was Edwin’s mocking smile as he told me I’d sold something important.
Thud!
Having made up my mind, I jumped out of bed and started changing clothes.
There was someone I needed to see.
“Chef!”
I headed straight for the kitchen.
Why?
Because even the most awkward relationship can improve over a good meal.
I’d somehow managed to deal with the bad guy version, so my plan was to smooth things over with the good guy version too—even if I had to bribe him with food.
When I arrived, the kitchen looked so perfect that it was hard to believe it had once been a filthy disaster before I’d used the Blessing of Purification.
The bubbling sounds of soups and sauces simmering.
The rhythmic chop-chop-chop of knives against cutting boards.
And thanks to my repeated insistence on proper hygiene, even the floor gleamed.
“…Miss Windsor?!”
The moment I called out, the chef hurried over, wiping his wet hands on his apron.
He’d rushed so quickly that he only noticed afterward that his chef’s hat was crooked and hurriedly adjusted it.
“What brings you here so early? Breakfast hasn’t even been served yet… Would you like me to prepare something?”
Since I was already hungry, I nodded immediately.
“Yes! But you don’t need to make anything fancy. Just a piece of bread is fine.”
“As it happens, we’ve just baked some fresh bread!”
The chef hurried off enthusiastically and soon returned with a loaf of freshly baked bread.
It had clearly just come out of the oven.
Steam drifted from it, carrying an aroma so wonderful it was hard to describe.
“Oh… this tastes even better now?”
That was my honest reaction after taking a careful bite.
We’d had bread yesterday evening too, but today’s felt different.
“Haha, I knew you’d notice. This batch contains butter. We’ve finally been getting dairy products from the farm recently…”
Although I couldn’t see his face, the chef looked incredibly happy as he clenched both fists.
“And I’d like to thank you once again, Miss Windsor. Thanks to you, cooking has become enjoyable lately.”
“Haha, really? I’m glad…”
“With a steady supply of dairy products now, we’ll be able to make all kinds of bread!”
As I listened to him, a thought suddenly crossed my mind.
‘I want salted butter rolls.’
Once the test period was over—in other words, about six and a half days in real-world time—I could buy as many as I wanted.
But in my subjective time, it would still be another five months before I got to eat one.
“Um, could you perhaps make something specific if I requested it?”
“Oh? Is there something you’d like?”
“Yes. It’s called a salted butter roll… Ah, just a second.”
I quickly opened the cash shop and searched the recipe section.
‘There it is!’
As expected, the shop really had everything.
The recipe only cost fifty diamonds.
Considering that a single salted butter roll sold for 150 diamonds, it was an absolute bargain.
I discreetly turned away, purchased the recipe, and slowly explained the instructions to the chef.
“Ah.”
The chef had been taking notes as I spoke, but suddenly he looked troubled.
“Actually… there is one problem.”
“What problem?”
“We’re… running out of salt.”
The unexpected answer left me speechless for a moment.
Then again, there was no way the castle could produce its own salt…
The chef’s voice grew even gloomier.
“In fact, Belmont Castle used to have a merchant company that regularly supplied us with ingredients.”
“It did? Then what happened?”
“At some point, the deliveries simply stopped. Ingredients we can’t produce ourselves have to be brought in from outside, so it’s become quite troublesome.”
Listening to the concern in his voice, a thought suddenly struck me.
‘This…’
Could this be setup for an outside-world quest?
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