0&1 Ch 22.8

Grey had been working hard.

To find the answer, you have to ask the right questions. Grey, an excellent student, always asked Duke Pie good questions. That was why Duke Pie encouraged him to study more.

Grey asked himself questions.

Why did things turn out this way?

Where did this whole mess start?

The Queen?

Of course, the Queen is a problem. She was an urgent, huge, and powerful problem.

But what is the most troubling thing for Grey?

It’s Joffrey.

Is he in a relationship with Alex Baumkuchen? What about his relationship with Idella Eclair?

Even if you ask him, he won’t answer.

Why is Joffrey acting so suspiciously?

Why does he act like he’s going to tell Grey something, but then only gives meaningless answers?

Why is he hiding his actions and doing all sorts of things?

He tried to think it through again, leaning his forehead against the cold railing, but his mind was blank. Gray had never felt so stupid in his entire life.

Damn it! Who cares! Does he want to be King or something!

Then why did Edward do that to Joffrey?

No, when he thought about it carefully, it was a reasonable plan.

But why did Grey get so upset when he heard it?

That was the question he really needed to ask.

Instead of asking Joffrey, Grey should have asked himself.

Why was he so obsessed with Prince Joffrey?

His heart was beating like crazy. His head was cold from the railing, but inside, he was burning up.

He couldn’t think straight.

These feelings weren’t normal. Did people really feel this way? Fall in love, engage in romance, and produce tragedies?

Could these feelings be enjoyable?

Even royalty suffered because of the King’s foolish love.

Grey had never wanted these feelings. Didn’t people call forcing someone to do something they didn’t want to do coercion?

Grey felt like he’d been scammed.

Grey felt like he had been coerced. He had never begged anyone for feelings, yet he had received useless feelings in return.

The world is not fair.

Born as the only son of the Duke Cracker, Grey Cracker had lived a life of envy with his abilities, status, and appearance, but now he lamented the absurdity of the world.

Is Prince Joffrey asleep?

He was so drunk that he acted so damn sweet, so he must be dreaming by now.

I bet he’s comfortable.

Grey pressed his eyebrows together. Actually, he wanted to stab himself somewhere inside his skull, but his skull was too hard to dig into with his hands.

Grey shook his head and stood up. As he climbed the stairs, his heart began to race again at the thought of returning to the Prince’s room.

You idiot.

Grey pounded his chest with his fists. He despised people who resorted to violence instead of talking things out, but now he thought he understood how they felt.

Of course, hitting himself didn’t make his heart listen, and all it did was hurt his chest.

Grey stood in front of his dorm room door for a long time.

When his heart calmed down, he went into his room, but he couldn’t stand it and came out again after five minutes.

He repeated this several times and realized that he felt better when Joffrey wasn’t in front of him.

Grey spent the night wide awake.

And the next day, he left the dormitory at dawn.

I woke up earlier than usual. My head was throbbing, and the word hangover came to mind.

My whole body felt like it was emitting a foul odor. My mouth felt even more unpleasant.

Why did I drink alcohol? It didn’t make me feel better, it only made me feel worse.

I didn’t have short-term memory loss, so I could clearly remember what happened at the restaurant yesterday and how I got back to the dormitory and fell asleep.

If I made a mistake because of alcohol… Grey. I should have sat him down and questioned him.

Grey was nowhere to be seen since early morning. There will be another chance.

The headache continued into the afternoon. Students who came to greet me looked at my face with concern and backed away, and I wondered if I would drive everyone away if I walked around with a frown all day.

That thought disappeared after morning classes ended. The students brought me various drinks that were supposed to be good for my health and tried to make me drink them.

As is often the case with nourishing foods, they were strange things that looked like frog slime. It was difficult to refuse.

Even when Joffrey frowned, people were drawn to him. Being a Prince seemed to increase one’s sociability by 100 just by virtue of being one.

Perhaps it wasn’t Joffrey’s intention to have so many people around him.

“Your Highness, this is a drink that is good for a hangover. Drink it quickly before class starts.” Pavel stood in front of my desk and winked as he handed me a thermos. He left the classroom before I could even answer.

How did everyone know where to find me? They weren’t even in the same class today.

I handed the thermos to Alex. He put it in a paper bag.

With that, Joffrey had collected fourteen healthy drinks. The other students were faster than Pavel and had already visited the classroom.

Five minutes before class started, the classroom was bustling with activity.

Even if they didn’t give gifts, the nobles were good at giving compliments. Many people wished for Joffrey’s long life.

If they really wanted Joffrey to live long, they shouldn’t have come here.

When the students left for their classes, the classroom was empty. Only three students remained in the cooking class.

Naturally, one of them was Edward.

He had insisted on joining the basic cooking class, watching the students ask Joffrey, “Are you sick, Your Highness?” and “You need to take care of yourself.”

When their eyes met, Edward asked, “Are you sitting over here? You’d be in a better spot to hear the lecture.”

Edward’s seat was close to the podium.

I mustn’t make a fool of myself like last time. Edward seemed determined to be friendly toward Joffrey.

The third class overlapped. Edward was deliberately following Joffrey around. I couldn’t avoid him even if I tried.

It wasn’t difficult to fit in. It might be better to deal with Edward and find out what he was thinking.

“It’s okay,” I said calmly.

“That seat is too far back. Can you see the podium?”
“Thanks for thinking of me. I can see it well. I can even see the teacher coming in.”

“You have good eyesight,” Edward complimented me.

“I meant you should be looking forward.”
“…”

Anyway, I didn’t have to deal with Edward right now.

“Are all my students here? Are you all seated? Very good.”

The classroom door opened and a kind-looking instructor entered. He was surprised to see only three people, including Alex and me, and covered his mouth.

“Three students participating in a cooking class?”

Was he shocked because there were so few of us?

“My name is Baker. Please call me Mr. Baker. All of you who understand the importance of cooking will have a blessed year. I am so happy to meet talented people like you in this uncivilized… I mean, in this country where cooking techniques are underdeveloped. Let’s embark on a journey into the world of cooking together.” Mr. Baker said emotionally.

These words didn’t resonate with Joffrey, who had grown up eating delicious food and sleeping well in the royal palace, but it seemed that this country was set in a time when cooking techniques were underdeveloped.

Even the King’s chef was a foreigner who had studied abroad, and Joffrey’s chef was from Sherbet, the Queen’s homeland.

Still, it didn’t seem like something to say in front of a Prince. Did he not know that Edward was a Prince?

Joffrey was a Prince known to the nobles who attended charity events, but Edward’s face was known throughout the country after his victory. Poorly drawn portraits of him were sold on the streets, and nobles even had copies of his portraits hung in their art galleries.

Edward was considered the most handsome man of the century, so paintings of him were considered works of art in their own right, beyond mere portraits of a Prince.

On top of that, he had taken the freshman oath. It would be difficult to forget a face like that.

The cooking teacher seemed to be someone who judged people fairly, without discriminating based on appearance. He didn’t know Edward and me equally.

I didn’t know anything about the cooking teacher either.

At the beginning of the game, I had the heroine take all the classes once. It was to see which classes increased which abilities.

The cooking class increased character and morality. After confirming that, I never took that class again.

Those two abilities were useless in any test. If the goal was to improve the heroine’s visible stats, it was the first class I had to drop. My female protagonist was kind even without taking cooking class, so it was fine.

Even so, I didn’t know that the class would be so unpopular at the academy.

The cooking room, which served as a lecture hall, was filled with shiny cooking utensils. They looked like well-maintained, modern tools, but perhaps the reason they were so shiny was simply because no one had ever used them.

The cooking teacher wiped his tears with his apron and took his glasses out of his front pocket and put them on his nose.

He was startled when he saw Edward.

“Your Highness, the First Prince Edward?”

He must have simply had poor eyesight.

“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. My eyesight has been getting worse lately…”

“Yes. Be careful. It would be a shame if your neck got cut because of your poor eyesight.”

The cooking teacher froze. “I’m sorry.”

“Why, Joffrey? Do you have something to say?” Edward asked me.

“No.”

I turned my head away. Edward’s gaze remained fixed on me.

Was Edward always like this?

I thought he spoke like a nobleman. But Edward was a Prince.

The cooking teacher began the lesson in a flustered manner. But with the mood already dampened, the lesson couldn’t go well.

Edward listened attentively, but every time his gaze met the cooking teacher’s, he seemed to forget what he was going to say. The lesson was interrupted every five minutes.

Unpopular classes are scary.

Because of the atmosphere created by one person, the class itself did not proceed. The air felt prickly.

The fact that there were only three students was a big disadvantage.

There were also only three students in the Duke Pie’s class.

At that time, Edward was a child who played with bookshelves, not a Prince who played with his teacher.

The Edward who grew up and was recognized as a Prince was different from the Edward I knew. Maybe this was Edward’s true personality.

I must transfer out of this class.

Alex was peeling onions as instructed by the teacher. His hands were large and strong, so the skins came off easily.

After discarding the peels and slicing the onion, Alex sniffed. His eyes must have been stinging.

In any case, he is working diligently.

Does Alex really need to cultivate his character? He works hard at everything.

I wasn’t sure if the academy classes really affected ability scores. I wasn’t even sure if ability scores existed for characters in the game.

After becoming Joffrey, I studied almost every day for seven years. As Dot said, Joffrey wasn’t an academy student, so he didn’t have vacations.

The heroine’s intelligence score rose to 700 or 800 just by attending classes consistently for a year.

If the same standard applied, Joffrey should have grown as well. Shouldn’t he have reached the maximum intelligence level by the age of twelve?

However, as time passed, my memory didn’t seem to improve much, and I couldn’t come up with any brilliant strategies.

There was no change in Joffrey’s stats.

So I threw out my first hypothesis: that capture targets had stats that could grow. My second hypothesis was that only academy classes could raise stats.

If this hypothesis is correct, then Joffrey also has the potential to grow.

For example, Alex.

Right now, I’m taking classes to prove this hypothesis.

My third hypothesis was that stats only increased starting in second year, when the game began. 

Fourth: capture targets had no stats.

And fifth: even the heroine had no stats, and the academy didn’t raise them at all.

Because…

I don’t really want to think about that.

Before class ended, we made toast with lots of onions.

Toast?

What country is this dish from? Korea?

I wondered, but anyway, the toast was delicious.

“Your Highness, please try mine,” Alex shyly offered.

I took a bite and said it was delicious. Alex’s face lit up.

“I didn’t use sugar, for your health. Would you like the rest?”

No wonder it didn’t taste good.

“Are you telling me to steal your snack?”
“No, Your Highness. I didn’t mean that.”
“Shouldn’t you eat more than me? You have more muscle mass. Let’s go to your room and have a healthy drink together.”

“Oh, are you going to drink them?” Alex was taken aback.

“I thought I’d take one since it looks pretty nice.”

At least enough so that I wouldn’t feel guilty when I replied, ‘I enjoyed it,’ later.

I finished my toast and was about to leave the room. I was slightly delayed because there was a teacher who wanted to leave the room before the students.

“See you all next class.”

The teacher disappeared as if running away.

Silence returned to the kitchen.

“Joffrey, do you like this kind of thing?” Edward asked.

I didn’t know what ‘this kind of thing’ meant.

Scaring the teacher?

“Then do you want my toast?”

Oh, that.

“No, it’s okay.”

Edward thought for a moment and said, “It’s a gift.”

“I don’t like gifts.”
“……”

Edward looked at the paper bag Alex was holding. It contained health drinks that the nobles had left behind.

Yeah. That’s a gift, too.

I don’t like them either.