Having finished the battle with Black Wolf, Rei and Elena returned straight to the Duke Kerebel Mansion.
The men standing guard at the gate saw that Elena, who had looked so happy when she left, now wore a serious expression. They figured that Rei must have done something to ruin their date.
Even so, they said nothing about it—likely because they had no desire to be reprimanded by their superiors for making inappropriate remarks.
Elena Kerebel commanded tremendous popularity within Duke Kerebel's House.
That being the case, anyone careless enough to tease her ran the very real risk of earning the wrath of her admirers.
...Indeed, they had seen it happen before. Someone who had made that mistake had been subjected to passive-aggressive remarks from their superiors, gossip behind their back from the maids, and the cold shoulder altogether. It was not a situation anyone wanted to repeat.
With that in mind, the gatekeepers kept their silence and simply went on with their work.
Meanwhile, completely unaware of the speculation he had stirred up among the gatekeepers, Rei sat in his room at the Duke Kerebel Mansion.
He was not with Elena because she had gone to meet with the Intelligence Operatives to gather information about the Black Wolf incident.
Though Rei was in a close relationship with Elena, there was no way he would be privy to matters considered top secret within Duke Kerebel's House. And so, he waited in his room until she returned.
Normally, killing time while waiting for someone would be no trouble at all. Right now, however, he simply could not settle into that kind of mood.
Naturally, Rei understood exactly why he felt this way.
(It's definitely the aftermath of the Black Wolf incident that's still lingering.)
Black Wolf was not someone Rei had hated enough to want to kill.
He wanted to believe that he wasn't the only one who had felt they were growing close, as if he had been taming and feeding him.
Even so, the man had attacked him with genuine intent to kill, and as far as Rei was concerned, quietly letting himself be killed was never an option.
...But truthfully, if that had been all there was to it, the matter wouldn't have lingered this heavily on his mind.
The real issue was, as expected, that Black Wolf was likely from the same Japan as himself.
At the very least, he had uttered the words "Yokohama Chinatown"—a term Rei probably hadn't spoken even once since arriving in Elgin.
And he had spoken of wanting to eat the pork kakuni-man he used to share with his mother, one more time.
Hearing that much, it seemed to Rei an undeniable fact that Black Wolf had come from Japan.
As Rei was reminiscing about Black Wolf, he suddenly heard a knock at the door.
For a moment, he thought Elena had returned, but the presence he sensed outside was not hers.
Even so, it was the presence of someone he knew.
"Come in, Miranda."
"...You knew it was me. I'm impressed."
Miranda, who had been assigned as Rei's attendant, opened the door and spoke in a somewhat surprised voice.
She likely never expected to be identified before she even announced herself.
"Your presence was Miranda's. ...Did you bring me some tea?"
Seeing the tea, dried fruit, and bite-sized sandwiches arranged on the tray Miranda carried, Rei smiled with genuine pleasure.
"I envy that kind of ability."
"You do? Well, if you become an adventurer and fight enough life-or-death battles, it's a skill you pick up naturally."
"...I wouldn't want to learn it that badly."
She thought it would be a convenient ability to have, but if it meant risking her life in battle to acquire it, Miranda would turn it down without a second thought.
It simply wasn't an ability she wanted badly enough to go that far.
Rei understood that, so without taking any offense, he simply muttered, "I suppose not."
For soldiers and knights, perhaps. But there was no question that a simple maid had no need for such a skill.
Sure, it would be nice to have, but it was only natural not to want to obtain it at the risk of one's life.
"So, Miranda—does the fact that you're here mean you've brought a message from Elena?"
"Yes. She said it might take a little while."
"I see."
Miranda's message was, in a way, exactly what Rei had expected.
Setting aside the fact that he had defeated Black Wolf, information that likely only Duke Kerebel's House possessed was not something that could simply be handed over.
Whether the Intelligence Operatives were unwilling to readily share what they knew, or whether it was a procedural issue... or perhaps something else entirely—there were several possibilities.
Rei had never expected to obtain information quickly in the first place, so hearing Miranda's message didn't particularly irritate him.
Besides, Miranda was the one who had gone out of her way to deliver Elena's message. Taking his frustrations out on her would have been shameful, and Rei knew it.
"She said to eat these while you wait."
"Ah, that's fine by me. ...Though it does feel like a rather small portion."
What Miranda had brought was a reasonable amount for an ordinary person, but for Rei and his hearty appetite, it was little more than a light snack.
Given that, even if he ate everything she had brought, he certainly wouldn't end up full.
(Well, she brought it along with tea, so she clearly meant it as a snack. That's fine.)
As he thought this, Miranda set the tea and food down on the table in his room.
"Please call for me if you need anything."
With a bow, Miranda took her leave.
Left alone in his room and told to drink tea and eat at his leisure, Rei found himself thinking she could have at least stayed to eat and drink with him.
But he reasoned that Miranda, as his assigned attendant, surely had many other duties to attend to. Setting those thoughts aside, he settled onto the sofa and raised the teacup to his lips.
Only after taking a sip did Rei realize how dry his throat had been.
Normally, this wouldn't have happened. But the Black Wolf incident had clearly taken a toll in ways he hadn't even consciously registered—various thoughts and feelings must have been weighing on him more than he realized.
"Could it be that Elena anticipated this and arranged for the tea?"
He murmured the thought aloud. Feeling somehow that this was likely the right answer, he took another sip.
"Mm, it's good. ...The sandwiches are better than anything you'd buy at a normal shop, too."
The sandwiches—most likely made by Georgima—contained stewed meat and vegetables between slices of bread, along with something a little more unusual: crumbled dried fish.
The ingredients themselves weren't particularly rare, but they delighted Rei's palate in an almost mysterious way.
He had no idea what specific techniques went into them. He didn't know—but there was no mistaking that they were simply delicious.
And it wasn't just the sandwiches.
The dried fruit, too, was far superior in taste to anything sold at a shop, whether due to some technique used during the drying process or something done afterward.
(Well, with dried fruit, the flavor of the ingredient comes through directly, so it's probably just that the fruit itself is high quality.)
Thinking along those lines, Rei recalled the dried fruit he had made himself back in Japan.
(Wait—do dried persimmons count as dried fruit? They are dried, after all.)
There had been a persimmon tree at Rei's house—but not a sweet variety. It was an astringent one.
To eat them, the astringency had to be removed, and one method for doing so was making dried persimmons.
There was also another approach: dipping the stem of the persimmon in shochu, sealing it in a bag away from the air, and leaving it for a set period until the astringency faded.
Setting aside the latter method, the former—dried persimmons—involved nothing more than drying, so it seemed reasonable enough to call them a type of dried fruit.
Not knowing the formal definition, Rei decided that since they were dried, they qualified... and suddenly, he had an intense craving for the dried persimmons he used to make at home.
Through the drying process, dried persimmons developed a rich, intense sweetness.
Eating them alongside bitter tea was something Rei had always enjoyed.
"Then again, there are no persimmons in this world."
He murmured, and though it was no real substitute for the dried persimmons he had just remembered, he savored the taste of the dried fruit Miranda had brought.
As he enjoyed the snack, it occurred to him that this sudden desire for the dried persimmons from his time in Japan was probably also tied to the Black Wolf incident.
Perhaps encountering someone who knew Japan had left him feeling nostalgic for his homeland.
(Well, it's a bit late for that now... hm?)
His thoughts on Black Wolf and Japan were interrupted as Rei noticed a presence approaching his room.
But it wasn't Elena, nor Miranda—it was someone whose presence here he couldn't quite fathom.
The figure stopped in front of Rei's door and knocked roughly.
"Hey, Rei. You in? You are, right? I heard you were."
"Yeah, I'm here. I'm here, so don't knock so hard. Come in, Bluitt."
At Rei's words, the door swung open carelessly, and a heavily muscled man appeared.
He was one of the nobles Rei had befriended after arriving in Anesis—a rare breed among aristocrats who actually got along with Rei. A genuinely uncommon find.
Of course, he was also the kind of unconventional man who would walk around town without a bodyguard despite being the next heir of the Exolis Count Family.
That was precisely why he and Rei got along so well.
"Hey, knew you'd be here."
"I am here, but how did you know I'd be in my room?"
"I ran into that maid—Miranda, was it? She said you seemed a bit low on energy and asked me to come cheer you up."
"...Miranda, huh."
Miranda was just a maid.
At the very least, she shouldn't have known the details of what had happened.
Naturally, she would have no idea that Rei had killed Black Wolf.
Even so, she had been entrusted as his attendant, and within Duke Kerebel's House, she likely spent more time with Rei than anyone else aside from Elena.
And Miranda had not been given charge of a guest of Duke Kerebel's House by accident. She was far from incompetent.
No—she was entrusted with Rei's care precisely because she was capable.
That was why she had picked up on his low spirits and, wanting to lift his mood, told Bluitt about it when they happened to cross paths.
Though, since Bluitt had already been coming to the Duke Kerebel Mansion to see Rei, the outcome would likely have been the same whether Miranda had intervened or not.
"So? Why are you low on energy, Rei? It's completely unlike you."
"Even if you say that, it's not like anything in particular happened."
Bluitt had been caught up in the incident when Black Wolf used drugs to send people after Rei.
Given that, Rei thought for a moment that it might be fine to at least tell Bluitt a little about Black Wolf—but he simply wasn't in the mood for it.
If this conversation had taken place a few days later, Rei might have shared the details with him.
"Huh. Is that so? From the way you look, it doesn't seem that way at all."
Rei was slightly surprised by Bluitt's words.
It was true that the Black Wolf incident weighed on his mind, but he hadn't intended to let it show.
Miranda had seen through him thanks to her sharp instincts as a maid and the sheer amount of time they had spent together, even if it had only been a short while since Rei arrived in Anesis.
Bluitt, however, hadn't known Rei for very long, and the time they had actually spent together was extremely brief.
Rei's honest feeling was that he never expected Bluitt of all people to read him so easily.
"Well, a lot of things happened. Really, a lot."
At Rei's words, Bluitt showed no sign of pressing the matter further.
He likely judged that Rei's admission—without any attempt to hide it—was enough.
"How about it? Sitting around in a room like this isn't going to serve as a change of pace. Want to have a mock battle with me? I'll show you that my strength isn't anything to sneeze at, either."
With that, Bluitt invited Rei to a mock battle.