Chapter 11

“Maid, I’m hungry, so cook for me again today.”

‘Shit.’

A curse word spontaneously erupted in my head as soon as I walked into the kitchen and saw Ethan’s face, not to mention how he was shamelessly treating me like a maid.

Why the hell is this asshole still here in the first place?

The most likely explanation is obvious. It had to be because the piglet was again hungry and crawled in, but there must be another reason….

…maybe, like in the original game, he likes the way Lilith looks and wants her attention.

‘If that were the reason, he would have summoned me during the day instead of using this cumbersome method.’

With the power Ethan had at his disposal, moving a junior maid or two around was as easy as blowing his nose.

Right now, if this asshole even muttered the slightest hint that he wanted me to be his maid, Harold wouldn’t hesitate for a second to make it happen.

If it did, I would be halfway down the path of his exclusive fucking maid.

That’s exactly why I purposely treated him like a nuisance in my conversation with him yesterday. That’s also why I made the meal he asked for, because he was hungry, as insincere as possible.

I also shouldn’t have added honey at the end. I should have just given him some chopped-up turnips to eat.

I made it look a little bit more edible than I wanted to because I was afraid that if I served it too casually, it would be dangerous for my job. Unfortunately for me, I made it somewhat edible, and now, he’s showing his face again today.

‘I really want to just kill him.’

I barely suppressed the evil self that rose within me for a moment.

If I made even the slightest scratch on this abomination’s body, Lilith’s life would be worth less than that of a fly.

As I’ve said before, the punishment would be such that she would be better off dead.

At worst, she’d be dismembered and sent to be used as a slave to fulfill the lusts of the soldiers at the vanguard, or worse, tortured to death by professional torturers.

Plus, I hadn’t thought of it the other day, but if I made a mistake, the consequences could also be directed to Isabel in the name of guilt by association.

That would lead to some nonsense about how she knew I was going to kill Ethan but she didn’t stop me.

If it were just me, I might have taken the gamble of killing him and escaping, but the loss of his son would most likely cause Harold to lose his shit.

Most of my recent associates, not to mention Isabel, who joined at the same time as me, were likely to be subject to punishment.

That would include the senior maids who gave me this job for today.

…Come to think of it, that doesn’t seem so bad.

Anyway, other than the senior maids, I didn’t want to cause as much trouble as possible for Isabel. What could possibly be wrong with the nice girl?

To have her suffer such a cruel fate just because her motivation for joining was Lilith… How pitiful would that be?

I’d rather get screwed over alone in the future than get others involved.

In truth, it was easy enough to avoid the whole situation altogether, leaving out the possibility of future involvement with Ethan.

I could just feed him the same meal I’d made yesterday and send him back upstairs to his bedroom.

Still, I didn’t want to have to think about the future now when I wasn’t facing it yet, so I compromised with reality.

For now, I decided to cater to Ethan’s needs, right here and now.

“I see you woke up hungry again today, Master.”

“Yes!”

“Very well, then I’ll prepare you the same meal as I did yesterday. If you could please wait in the dining room for a few minutes….”

“I don’t want what I had yesterday, make me something else!”

“Master Ethan… I don’t think I have the skills to make another dish, but….”

For a moment, the words “you fucking asshole” almost came out of my mouth, but I was proud of myself for somehow keeping my cool.

This is also, in a way, a survival instinct to escape the crisis.

Sensing that I wouldn’t be able to survive in this mansion for long if I uttered a single curse word to that asshole, my brain naturally covered up my mistake.

Luckily, the little brat hadn’t realized that my words were profanity.

It’s hard to suppress my urges when he chooses to use words that piss me off.

“If you want to make it, make it! I’m hungry!”

“…….”

The old saying goes, if you can endure something three times, you can avoid murder.

With the kid already taking the first two strikes, my rational mind barely restrained the urge to snap in front of the cheeky kid.

I even managed to come up with an answer that somehow deflected the situation.

“…Okay, in that case, I’ll try to make something other than a tomato and turnip salad.”

“Yay!”

“But just like last time, I can’t guarantee that the dish will taste as good. You might not like it as much as the salad I made before.”

“Awww!”

“I’ll start cooking now, so please wait in the dining room for a few minutes, master.”

Patience. Patience.

I’m just going to feed this kid something random and get to work quickly…

“I want to watch you make it!”

“…Please sit quietly in the dining room and wait.”

“No! I’m going to watch you cook!”

“…The kitchen is a dangerous place, Master Ethan, and I ask that you please wait in the dining room and behave yourself….”

“No!”

…Three strikes.

My body, no longer able to suppress it with reason, reflexively lunged at Ethan.

Next thing I know, he’s on the floor, and I’m strangling him.

Barely 13 years old, his body was no match for the strength of a full-grown woman raised on a farm.

I pinned his overweight body to the kitchen floor with all my might, and wrapped both hands around his throat, choking the life out of him…….

……just for a moment, that scene popped into my head.

“…….”

“Maid?”

“…For the last time, I sincerely request that you wait in the dining room until the food is finished.”

‘Please, while I still have any sense of reason left.’

Even the most clueless kid would have realized something was amiss by this point, but he listened carefully to my last words.

Somehow, the same survival instincts were kicking in his head as mine, and he understood my last words.

“Oh, okay…. I’ll wait for you in the cafeteria….”

“…I’ll have it ready in a minute and bring it to you.”

“Uh, yeah….”

Peace finally came after the kid slipped out of the kitchen.

Only after Ethan disappeared out the door could I finally let out all the intense emotions I’d been holding inside.

“Fuck me. I’m lucky as hell that he’s been bugging me during my free time, but this is the second fucking day in a row that I’ve had to deal with this asshole……….”

Even if that asshole wasn’t the son of the head of the house, I wouldn’t have been able to keep my cool.

If it was one of my senior maids doing the same thing, then they’d be dead and I’d be dead not long after.

However, the person in front of me was not a senior maid or a junior maid, but a commoner and a duke’s only child, a ridiculous disparity in status.

Having played over 2,000 hours of Luminor Academy alone in my previous life, I was perfectly familiar with the game’s death events.

At the very least, I was pretty sure that if I hurt Ethan’s body, it wouldn’t end well.

It wouldn’t be surprising if the protagonist could solve everything with brute force. However, the consequences of a battle between a mere maid’s brute force against Harold’s are obvious.

I may be in a different body than I was in my previous life, but I’m still well aware that my life is precious.

“Haha, what creative dish am I supposed to make again today….”

After entering my favorite game from my past life, all I’m doing is dealing with shitty seniors and bossy brats.

It was a moment that made me want to curse at the man who had made me possess Lilith.

Then, about 10 minutes later…

“…What is this?”

‘Mussam…’ *1

“These are radish wraps.”

“Radish wraps…?”

Ethan looked at me with a confused expression.

It was clear that he was asking for an explanation, so I answered him with my own creative dish.

“It’s thinly sliced radish with shredded carrots, onions, tomatoes, and turnips.”

“Is there such a dish like that…? And turnips again….”

“If it doesn’t suit your tastes, I’ll put it away.”

“Oh, no, I’ll eat it!”

…At least you’re still hungry. You’re willing to eat something that looks so unappetizing.

To be honest, I wouldn’t really want to eat it. There’s no meat or salmon in it, and it tastes like crap.

The sauce was just salt and olive oil at best.

If I’m going to eat that, I might as well just chew on a raw tomato.

You’re probably thinking by now that you’d rather have a tomato and turnip salad, but he was the one who refused to eat it in the first place.

It’s your dish, your choice. You can either get rid of it or you don’t.

Munch munch munch.

Crunch.

Munch.

“…….”

…I gave it to him to eat, but he’s eating it in a really filthy way.

It was one of those moments where I seriously wondered if he was eating that way on purpose to get on people’s nerves.

Otherwise, a 13-year-old noble kid wouldn’t be so uneducated as to eat like that.

I know Harold says he’s a fool for his son, but that seems a little too laissez-faire to me.@@novelbin@@

Well, that’s none of my business.

I don’t particularly care if that hateful son of a bitch is raised right or wrong. All I want is to keep him out of my life as much as possible.

…Though I realize it’s too late to say that when I find myself in the kitchen for two days in a row.

‘I should have fed him something so bad he couldn’t eat it from day one.’

I’ve come too far to turn back, and all I can do is curse my foolishness from yesterday.

While I was thinking this, Ethan had already emptied his plate of its contents.

With a clatter, the fork he was holding fell onto the empty plate.

“Are you finished?”

“Yes!”

“Was it to your taste?”

“No!”

‘I knew it.’

I didn’t expect it to be to his taste to begin with.

There’s no way the same kid who said he didn’t like the tomato turnip salad he ate yesterday is going to say he liked what he ate today.

Not particularly disappointed with the kid’s response, I advised Ethan to return to his bedroom.

“It’s late at night. Please return to your bedroom before anyone sees you.”

“Yeah!”

At least he’s a little easier to deal with, in that he’ll behave once he’s fed.

After watching Ethan’s waddling body disappear down the hallway of the mansion, I cleaned up his plate and the spot on the table where he had eaten with Clean.

…Hopefully, he won’t show up in the kitchen again tomorrow.

I wasn’t sure if my reason would hold out or not, so I prayed and prayed and prayed that he wouldn’t show up again.

That was the best I could do in Lilith’s body right now.

A/N

A Word from the Original Author (Afterword)

Lilith’s momentary delusion is not the scene in the prologue.

The scene from the prologue will come after the conflict between the two has intensified a bit more, so please be patient!

T/N

Mussam comes from the root words mu (radish) and ssam (wrap, usually with leafy vegetables). It’s made by wrapping shredded vegetables in ssammu or paper-thin pickled radish.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading,  and see you in the next one!