The state of Anne-Marie’s house was like a funeral home. This was because of Hestia.
“Hestia, are you really not going to eat anything?”
“I…I’m not eating.”
“You barely even ate anything for lunch. Come on, just take one bite at least. Hm? I only made what you like today.”
Anne-Marie went into the room to comfort Hestia. However, Hestia still remained under the blanket and refused to move.
“Leo…”
A sniffling and faltering voice came from under the blanket.
“Leo is probably crying and scared right now because he’s all by himself so how can I go and eat comfortably by myself?”
“Hestia…”
Anne-Marie found it hard to continue speaking after hearing what Hestia said.
She felt sorry for her little sister who was having trouble sleeping and stubbornly refusing to eat but she also felt frustrated and upset that Hestia didn’t know how worried she was about her.
I watched all this from behind and clicked my tongue under my breath.
Sure enough, guardians have it hard. Not everyone can be a big sister.
“Ms. Anne-Marie, please give me a moment.”
I went into her younger sister’s room.
Anne-Marie hesitated for a bit then she stepped away like I asked.
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“Hestia.”
I walked up to where Hestia had wrapped herself in a ball, then I sat down on the bed.
Anyways, Anne-Marie had done all the consoling and coaxing…and unsurprisingly, I wasn’t good at comforting people. It was especially more difficult when it came to children.
So I swiftly dived into it.
“From now on, everything Unni says is a secret.”
I lowered my voice and said to Hestia.
“Your friend, Leo, is actually Unni’s friend too.”
The sniffling in the blanket stopped for a moment. The small mountain on the bed wriggled a little.
“And you know Odin Oppa who stayed in your house for some time, right? He is also Leo’s friend.”
The blanket that had been on complete lockdown lifted slightly. And a small voice flowed out from beneath.
“…Really?”
It caught her attention. Thank goodness.
“Mhm, you’re Leo’s friend too so you already know but our existence is a secret to other people. So I couldn’t tell you before.”
I glanced at Hestia’s face which was peeking out of the gap in the blanket.
“So Hestia, you don’t have to worry about Leo. Leo’s friends are all very strong and powerful.”
Then I said to her in a tone full of confidence:
“So no matter what happens, we will save Leo.”
Honestly, saying ‘no matter what happens’ was a bit of an exaggeration. Other variables might arise when the time comes, and we decided that we would prioritize our respective well-being if the situation turned dangerous.
It might sound cold, but it was realistically impossible to expect everyone to die together to save Leo in the event of an emergency. Even if it was the other way around, I didn’t want my companions to sacrifice themselves for me if I was in a dangerous situation.
“Do…Do you mean it?”
“Mn.”
After hearing what I said, Hestia was on the verge of tears. As she raised her head a little more, the blanket slipped down her body. She had already cried for a while, so her eyes were already swollen but new tears were forming in those eyes.
“Then can you promise me? That you will bring Leo back…”
Mm…
But I couldn’t help but hesitate when she said this.
In the same vein as what I said before, I didn’t want to rashly make promises about a future I wasn’t certain about.
But seeing Hestia’s tearful face, I eventually nodded my head.
“I promise.”
Nothing else can I do when the child is crying like this. Well, for a Carnot person, this kind of lie wasn’t a lie, per so.
“Also, Unni knows this because she is Leo’s friend, but Leo must be worried about you too, Hestia.”
I continued on, to say what I really wanted to tell Hestia in the first place.
“So you should eat and get some sleep so Leo can feel at ease too. Don’t you think Leo will be very sad if he comes back and sees you like this?”
Sorry to Leo but since he was gone, I sold his name a little. But since this was for his friend, Hestia’s sake, I believed he would definitely understand.
“And, Ms. Anne-Marie is also very worried about you, Hestia. Think about this the other around. If Anne-Marie Unni was crying under the blanket and not eating, you would be worried too, won’t you, Hestia?”
When I added that, Hestia shifted under the blanket and nodded her head while mumbling.
“I…I’ll eat.”
“Okay. Good girl.”
I patted Hestia on the head.
Then I stepped out of the room first, leaving Hestia who seemed to have regained some of her energy.
“Ms. Anne-Marie, Hestia said she’ll have a little of what offered earlier.”
“Really?”
Anne-Marie, who was standing outside anxiously, brightened with relief when she heard what I said. She quickly went into the room with a tray as if she was worried that Hestia would change her mind.
By the way, Anne-Marie…
She was supposed to be the heroine of a romance-fantasy novel but maybe it’s because all these unexpected incidents kept happening, but the romance was missing.
The male-lead, Kalian Crawford, seemed busy too, and the other second male-leads were also…
“How can this little brat worry her big sister with a hunger strike over that stupid watchdog?”
Right then, Odin walked out from behind me, mumbling with dissatisfaction.
To be fair, he always thought the sight of Hestia and Leo getting along was annoying to his eyes.
“Even with that carefree personality of his, there is no way the watchdog will be scared and whimpering because he got captured somewhere.”
pαпdα`noνɐ1`сoМ Honestly, I was thinking the same thing.
And the next moment, I turned around to look at Odin then I paused. He was coming out of the kitchen and wearing an apron.
“Did you make the food?”
“Huh? No, I just helped out a little by the side. I was doing the dishes just now.”
Odin said calmly while wearing Anne-Marie’s fluttery lace apron like it was nothing.
Odin was doing the dishes?
I was a little surprised. But I suppose he was repaying her for the meal.
I looked at Odin with brand new eyes.
Caw!
At that moment, a crow flew in from the open window. The crow has a shiny gold coin in its beak.
Clatter.
But then, the crow, very naturally, dropped the gold coin on the small shelf in front of the room where Anne-Marie had entered. Another crow entered after it and this time, it spat a silver coin under the table before disappearing.
“…?”
I was really curious about what was going on here.
I glanced at Odin, but he didn’t seem to care much about what his crows had done.
Odin took off the apron and looked at the room where Hestia and Anne-Marie were in with a slight frown on his face.
Right then, Anne-Marie came out.
Thankfully, all the food on the plate was gone.
“Thank you, Ms. Yuri. I was getting worried because she didn’t seem to listen no matter what I said.”
“Not at all. I only conveyed what Ms. Anne-Marie was feeling.”
Anne-Marie looked much more relaxed now that Hestia had eaten some proper food.
“You haven’t eaten anything either, Ms. Anne-Marie. Let’s go to the table.”
Anne-Marie’s face was just as worn-out, so I led her to the kitchen.
Even if she said she wasn’t hungry, I planned on making sure she ate something. The nourishing foods I bought for Anne-Marie some time ago were still here.
Unlike us, who didn’t need separate food intake, Anne-Marie was a normal human and needed to eat food at the right time. As a matter of fact, she might have not fully recovered all the energy she spent on Odin and Lakis, back to back, and if she overworked herself once again, something bad might really happen.
“Arac…I mean, Yuri is right. You have to eat something to get back your energy.”
Odin added his support for me from the side.
And like that, we took Anne-Marie to the kitchen.
I took out the nutritional ingredients I bought previously, intending to make Anne-Marie and nutritious juice.
But then, Anne-Marie pulled out her chair and exclaimed like she had found something.
“Goodness me? There’s money on the floor here?”
It was the coin Odin’s crow had dropped some minutes ago. For now, I acted like I didn’t know anything and kept silent.
“Is it yours, Mr. Odin?”
“It is not mine…Miss.”[1]
Odin shook his head with a straight face as if he knew nothing. But considering it was done by his crows, which were his other self, it was impossible for Odin not to know anything.
Anne-Marie turned to look at me next.
I also shook my head. Seeing that, Odin readily spoke up.
“You must have dropped it then.”(T/N: he says ‘the houseowner must have dropped it; aka Anne-Marie)
“That’s weird. I’ve been finding money all over the time for some time now…have I been so out of it lately that I’m dropping them without realizing it?”
“That might be it.”
Anne-Marie tilted her head in confusion and Odin shamelessly agreed.
After a while, Odin and I were alone, so I asked.
“Aren’t you the one who gathered those shiny things?”
“Huh? N-No, I was going to give them to the house owner, I mean, to pay for the treatment and all…Besides, after staying here for a bit, I realized they’re poor as hell and I don’t know if they’ll even be able to feed themselves when the seasons change so…so I did that.”[2]
Odin mumbled like he was making excuses.
When I saw Odin’s slightly reddened face, I was enlightened. No wonder I felt something was strange. The crow even gave his own shiny coins to someone else.
This was what it means to be blatantly obvious.
Apparently, the hidden romance was here all along.
Translator’s Corner:
[1] Apparently, Odin is still struggling to speak politely. In Korean, adding ‘yo’ at the end of the sentence makes it polite so he does that here. There’s no equivalent for it in English so I used Miss.
[2] Anne-Marie works for Bastian. How is she poor??
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