I Start with a Bad Hand!

Though elegantly plated, it contrasted sharply with the ever-present potatoes and mushrooms on the foster parents of Dietrich’s plates.

‘Ah, it bothers me.’

The original novel mentioned several times that the Degoph family struggled financially. I knew that their situation worsened after entering the academy, yet even in seemingly okay circumstances, they appeared far from prosperous.

Even though it’s just a temporary home…

“Um… Mother. I like potatoes too.”

“Oh?”

The Baroness seemed puzzled by my hesitant comment.

“When I was in the orphanage, it was the only dish I could eat warm, and I liked it because it seemed to warm my heart as well.”

That’s why it’s still my favorite food. Perhaps because those happy memories linger. Embarrassed by the Baroness’s moist eyes, I awkwardly touched the back of my neck.

“At the duke’s… it was considered beneath our dignity, so we rarely had it. Now that I don’t have to worry about such things, I want to eat as much as I can.”

Tugging at heartstrings with memories of Dietrich, I laid the groundwork for saving on food expenses. And then, for the next week, a tearful potato festival ensued: steamed potatoes, roasted potatoes, sautéed potatoes, potato pie, potato salad, potato soup, potato bread…

Eventually, even after brushing, I could still feel the starchiness of potatoes in my mouth. Realizing something needed to be done, I went to the kitchen to negotiate a truce in the war against potatoes, where Chef Sara was cooking potato pancakes. As I entered making noise, Sara greeted me warmly.

“Oh, Miss! What brings you here?”

Seeing Sara’s cheerful face made it hard to broach the main topic of stopping the potato dishes.

“I… the potato dishes are so delicious… I came to say thank you.”

Using informal speech with an elder felt prickly to my conscience, but I rationalized that Dietrich would have spoken this way, finishing my thought. Sara, seemingly unfazed by the informal language, smiled shyly at my compliment and quickly, fussing over whether my leg was okay, pulled up a chair for me.

“When I first saw you, you were so thin it seemed like you could die at any moment… You’ve become quite the young lady now.”

“Really? I was like that?”

Sara continued smoothly, “Yes.”

“When the Baron brought you, named Dietrich, I thought he had brought a boy from somewhere…”

The night Dietrich was brought to the castle, her condition was so dire that hrt foster parents knocked on Sara’s door at dawn seeking help. Sara recalled that the first time she saw Dietrich, she was so gaunt and dark it seemed she might stop breathing at any moment.

“There’s an old legend in Heylem. Long ago, the lord incurred the wrath of the plague god, who then started taking away only young girls from the village to curse the land’s seed?”

“…The plague god, right?”

“Yes?”

“Never mind. Please, continue.”

If the lord was at fault, it should only be the lord who is punished. It seems that even in different realms, tormenting the vulnerable remains the same. I couldn’t quite accept it but nodded anyway.

“But no matter the sins committed, it’s tragic for the children… So, the goddess Danica pitied them and shared her wisdom with the villagers to name their newborn girls after boys.”

See. I’m not the only one who finds it hard to accept.

“To prevent the plague god from realizing they were girls. To dodge misfortune and ensure long-lasting health.”

It’s a story now seldom known, but Dietrich’s foster parents were apparently desperate enough to cling to such a legendary tale, Sara added, and seeing how healthy you are now, it doesn’t seem entirely unbelievable.

***

I was enjoying a leisure I’d never experienced in life.

Opening the window to a view that seemed a mix of ‘Walking into the World’ and ‘Country Diary’, spending my days in idle pleasure, I sometimes wondered if the world I had entered wasn’t the one from a romance fantasy novel but rather a healing tale set in a rural village where another Dietrich lived. Yet, this peaceful agricultural vista brought me other concerns.

The key to navigating this possessed novel world was astuteness and money.

I was confident in my perceptiveness. Years of part-time jobs had honed my ability to detect ‘troublesome situations’, like a radar for nuisance, and acted as a deicer that prevented unwanted meddling from snowballing.

If I could avoid entangling myself with the Elexion ducal house, the heroine Roxanne, and the male protagonists enamored with her during my academy days, and keep out of their sight, maybe it would be alright. To get involved in Roxanne’s love affairs—considering the male protagonists in this novel were all somewhat unhinged in one way or another—was not for me.

“Healthy minds lead to healthy relationships,” was my motto. Observing Roxanne, I had no intention of getting involved with individuals who harbored dark desires like ‘wanting to break her’ or ‘wanting to clip her wings’ once per episode.

Setting aside such trivial matters, the real problem in this world was money.