I’d sent Ethan out to the dining room with the promise of making him something simple, but sadly, I’m not a culinary genius.

This isn’t a web novel where the protagonist was reincarnated into an otherworldly place and had to cook all sorts of dishes to impress the locals. My culinary skills were based on my life as an ordinary man in Korea, and my only relevant work experience was cooking at home.

Even so, most of the dishes I knew how to cook were not available here.

How could I cook in a place without ramen noodles, canned goods, or microwaves?

Cooking any dish that uses fire is bound to leave traces, so the best I could do in this situation was serve a dish that didn’t need to be cooked.

The most plausible solution was to chop up a few of the dirty fruits and vegetables that could be eaten raw.

The flavor may not be that special, but it’s none of my business.

To be honest, I really didn’t want to make it taste good.

It’s not for some nasty reason like I didn’t want to see Ethan’s happy face. In reality, it’s because I knew that if I made it too tasty, the little guy might want more from me in the future.

I reiterate that I am intent on getting away from Ethan and ultimately escaping House Blackwood.

As Lilith Rosewood, Ethan’s exclusive maid, I never harbored any ambition to educate this boy and raise him to be a proper man. If anything, I’ve been trying to figure out how to stay away from him as much as possible.

Right now, I’m just dealing with him because I have to get him out of the kitchen.

 

‘Hmmm… which among these could be eaten raw…. Oh! The tomatoes and turnips.’

 

Well, that’s not so bad. If he’s really hungry, he’ll eat whatever I serve him. However, if he isn’t, he’d say that he’s full, and I could send him back upstairs.

I placed half a turnip, peeled flawlessly with Clean, and a single tomato, sliced into even slices, on a salad plate.

I drizzled a little something on top, some honey.

Honey was an expensive condiment in this world, but it wasn’t like I was going to eat it anyway.

If anyone criticized me for using honey later, I could just say I fed it to Ethan. Harold wouldn’t criticize me if I fed it to his kid.

I then plated up a tomato and turnip salad, which I’d made from whatever ingredients I had on hand, and took it to the dining room.

I set it down with a fork in front of the kid who was waiting for me at the table.

 

“Tomato and turnip salad, sir.”

“Tomato and turnip…? That’s it…?”

“I told you, I can’t do fancy cooking. If you want a proper meal, please come back at nine in the morning.”

“…….”

“If you don’t have any appetite, I’ll just put it away.”

“Oh, no! I want it, leave it!”

 

I hesitated for a moment at the kid in front of me, but hunger seemed to have won over being a picky eater.

He blocked my hand as I tried to take the plate and hurriedly grabbed his fork.

 

Fwip.

“Haaa, haaa.”

“…….”

 

…Seriously, if I couldn’t see it, I wouldn’t have.

Where the hell did he sell his aristocratic manners?

Watching Ethan gobble it down was akin to watching a pig eat.

I sighed as I watched him eat, almost smothering the food around his mouth as if he were trying to force it down, and constantly spilling it all over the table.

Even though Harold’s wife is dead and he’s raising Ethan alone, shouldn’t a 13-year-old noble be taught basic manners?

My anger at Ethan and his father, Harold, was growing in my head.

Ethan finished his plate and held his empty salad plate toward me.

 

“I’m done!”

“…Just leave it there and I’ll clean it up later.”

“Yeah!”

*Bang!*

“…….”

 

I said leave it where it is, not slam it on the table.

The impact caused the remaining liquid in the plate to splash all over the tablecloth, making the already messy table even messier.

In other words, after Ethan left, I had to clean up the mess.

Thank goodness I just needed one Clean to tidy things up, or else I might have let an expletive slip out of my mouth.

 

“Did it suit your tastes?”

“No!”

‘This asshole…’

“But I’m still full, so it’s okay!”

“I see.”

Damn, Ethan… even if you’re just saying that you enjoyed the food, you’ll still want to get a bit of a kick out of it, huh?

Of course, the problem is that I’m expecting manners and sophistication from this kid with lots of stuff smeared around his mouth.

The good news is that he’s full, so I can finally send him back to his room.

 

“Master, turn your face this way.”

“Huh? ….”

“If you go around with this kind of stuff around your mouth, your sophistication will be questioned.”

‘…and if they find out what you’ve been eating all night, I’ll be in trouble too.’

“Uh, ugh….”

“There you go.”

 

I wiped the mess around his chin with my maid’s apron and felt a little better.

With his growling stomach somehow satisfied, it was time to kick him out of the kitchen.

 

“I think it’s time for you to go up to your bedroom and get some sleep. Do you need me to accompany you?”

“No!”

“You are a brave man and can face the darkness of the night alone, so please be safe, Master.”

“Yes!”

“I will keep what happened today between us. I will not gossip about you to my master or any of the other maids, and I ask that you keep the same secret for me.”

‘Especially since I pointed a knife at you in the storeroom.’

“Okay!”

 

That wasn’t the most reliable solution, but there wasn’t much more I could do about it now.

I could only hope that that pig, Ethan, would honor his promise to me.

You wouldn’t want to tell the whole neighborhood that you left your bedroom in the middle of the night because you were hungry, after all…

…that is, if you have the slightest bit of shame.

 

“Good night!”

“…Good night, master.”

 

In the end, he sounded a little more human. He then shut the kitchen door behind him and returned to his bedroom.

I used Clean to clean up the mess of the dining room and Ethan’s dish and utensils.

In a way, it was good that I didn’t have to chew a clove of garlic between each spell; yesterday, I would have had to chew a clove or two while clearing the dishes.

In terms of growth, it’s much less efficient, but in other words, it meant that I had grown a lot with my magic training yesterday.

Even so, that didn’t mean I could afford to be impressed with my increased mana.

I was in a hurry to get to work on today’s batch, having wasted so much time with Ethan, and after quickly clearing the dishes, I began to peel the garlic for today’s batch flawlessly.

I had to do it for my own growth and to keep my coworkers from getting suspicious.

Ethan Richard Blackwood’s childhood was not all sunshine and rainbows.

It may seem odd to label him unhappy when he was raised in the great Duke of Blackwood’s family, evidently, with no shortage of advantages. However, Ethan himself did not consider his life to be very pleasant.

That thought arose thanks to his father, who had accomplished so much, and his mother, who had left him as a child.

Born to the heir to House Blackwood and an archmage who was the treasure of the empire, Ethan Richard Blackwood was born into the world with the expectations of the whole kingdom.

As the child of two of the most precious bloodlines under the heavens, it was expected that the child would surely be born with a brilliant talent for magic.

His father split the walls of the empire in half with a magical sword at the age of 10. His mother was a prodigy, reading the Academy’s most advanced textbooks from the age of eight.

Naturally, as a child, Ethan grew up with high expectations.

 

<You are the son of Harold and Thanasia, so perhaps you will distinguish yourself even earlier than they did.>

 

The expectations of those around him, even before he could walk, weighed heavily on the young Ethan’s mind.

As he grew older and older, the expectations grew more and more unreasonable.

 

 

<He’s the son of two very bright people, so maybe he’ll show us something from the age of six.>

<If you were born with both of their talents, you would have distinguished yourself by the age of seven.>

<Thanasia began reading advanced magical texts at the age of eight, so perhaps Ethan could….>

<If you’ve been gifted the talents of the two of them, perhaps this year you’ll be able to do something….>

<Harold was ten years old when he gained an impressive mastery of the sword, so perhaps Ethan will be able to….>

<I think it’s time for you to start utilizing your talents….>

<Why is it that you’re the child of Thanasia and Harold, but you can’t do anything yet?>

 

 

Several unreasonable expectations for a child barely 10 years old.

Though no one had ever told Ethan directly to do anything, he was not so young as to be unable to read the room.

Ethan would always agonize over his talent whenever he heard the blind expectations placed on him.

He hadn’t been born with his father’s aptitude for enchanted swordsmanship, nor had he been blessed with his mother’s mind to understand specialized magical knowledge.

The first thing the 10-year-old realized about his talent was not his ability to manipulate magic or his knowledge of magic, but rather that his talent was vastly inferior to his parents’.

Despite this, Ethan somehow managed to reach the age of ten without any issues, thanks to his mother, Thanasia.

No matter how inadequate he was and how he had failed to live up to expectations, his mother was always there to comfort and embrace him.

She was the only one who loved him for who he was instead of expecting him to be like everyone else.

From the moment his mother fell ill and passed away when he was 10, Ethan’s spirit was broken.

It was a moment that took away the last person who understood his already fragile state.

Of course, his father, Harold, cared for Ethan in no way less than Thanasia.

Ethan was simply too young to read the blunt emotions that were rarely expressed.

His mother, his only source of support, is dead, and his blunt father does not care for him.

Even so, there are countless eyes still watching him, waiting to see when his talent would blossom.

Ethan often wandered around the mansion in a daze, feeling as if he were alone; an alien in the vast mansion.

…It was the slightest trigger that changed the child’s personality.

 

 

*thud*

 

*Thud*

 

*THUD*

 

“Aaaaaaah!”

 

“No, master!”

 

“Master Ethan fell down the stairs! Hurry and get a doctor!”

 

At that moment, in a world turned upside-down, the maids gathered around him.

For some reason, Ethan felt unprecedentedly comfortable in the atmosphere.

It’s the only time he’s ever felt no expectation of himself, even though there are far more eyes on him than usual.

Even though there were more eyes on him than usual, it was the only moment where he didn’t feel any expectations towards him.