Chapter 86: That Was Far Too Big to Be Called a Customer (6) Charlotte volunteered to play the evil dragon from the picture book, and the swordsman over two meters tall ended up becoming the hero who set out to slay the evil dragon.
That swordsman was none other than Craid.
A few days ago, he returned to Falstead Castle with Hayward after completing Duke Layton's request.
After hearing that a dragon had appeared while he was gone, he desperately longed for the dragon to show up again.
The strongest being among living creatures: a dragon.
Craid wanted to hear, from a being far stronger than himself, just how strong he truly was.
And today, the moment he heard the news that the dragon had appeared, he ran straight to the food truck.
And just as Craid worked up the courage to speak to Charlotte—
{"You're big, aren't you? Take the lead role."}
He got cast as the hero, and was now acting his heart out in front of orphanage children he'd never met.
He held a longsword and a makeshift shield carved from wood in his right and left hands, instead of his usual greatsword.
He complained that wielding a sword with one hand felt lacking, but there was no choice if they wanted to match the picture book's setting.
"...The hero's companions also did not retreat before the dragon."
"S-s-sinister dragon! We w-we will not r-retreat!"
Unlike Jinseo's narration, Hayward's hand—clutching a dagger—was twitching badly.
The reason he was stammering, unlike his usual self, was simple.
Even if it was acting...
Even if it was breath far weaker than the real thing...
When you saw a dragon's breath up close, there was no way you wouldn't end up like that.
"His protection shall shine even more brilliantly within wicked darkness..."
Fedora, playing the priest who supported the hero, knelt on one knee and recited a prayer.
With her eyes closed, she could naturally escape the facial acting she didn't want.
"My magic will protect everyone! Hero! Please trust us!"
When Charlotte said there was no one to play the mage, Julien was suddenly called over.
Since he was truly a mage, and also a bard, he didn't fumble his lines.
He seriously wondered why he had to do this role in a place like this, but he didn't show it outwardly.
If the dragon told him to do it, he had no choice but to comply.
"Hero, let's gather our strength!"
He wasn't a character in the picture book, but Jason joined at his own request and cried out his line with desperate emotion.
Jason once dreamed of becoming a swordsman, but now he walked the path of a chef at the food truck.
Still, even if only in a play like this, he wanted to stand as a companion to Craid, who had reached the pinnacle of swordsmanship—and that yearning turned into intense acting.
"With our strength, we can do it!"
"...Understood."
At Jason's plea, Craid raised his sword high.
Paaaat.
When the sword wrapped in aura released a brilliant light, the children—and even the other customers—stared at it, spellbound.
They had been relocated to the orphanage entrance by Charlotte's large-scale teleportation magic, but they didn't complain at all, quietly eating bunsik as they enjoyed the play.
{"I'm paying for everything today, so eat as much as you want. I'll send you back to where you were later, so you don't need to worry about getting home."}
Since the one saying it was a "dragon," no one could refuse.
"Haaah!"
The moment Craid shouted and swung his sword into Charlotte's outstretched claw, flames flared up.
Charlotte held back just enough, staging the exchanges to make them thrilling.
Naturally, she was overflowing with ease, but even if it was a play, Craid couldn't help becoming drenched in sweat from tension as he swung his sword in front of a dragon.
"This is… quite worth watching."
"Come to think of it, isn't this truly a rare sight? A duel between a dragon and a solitary swordsman..."
"Wow, amazing. Now I finally understand how he earned the title of Girgante's Hero."
The adults were captivated by Craid's heavy yet bold swordsmanship and couldn't take their eyes off him for even a moment.
The children were so absorbed in the flashy attacks and magic Charlotte staged that they even forgot the sweetness of the lollipops in their mouths.
"Aaaah!"
"...And so the evil dragon fell, and the hero of light restored peace to the world."
Jinseo finished the short yet long reading and closed the picture book.
There had been an epilogue where the hero and the priest fell in love, but it was omitted due to Fedora's strong protest.
As soon as the play ended, Jinseo quickly began preparing to serve food.
"Good work, everyone! You too! You too!"
Charlotte, who had been pretending to collapse, sprang up and returned to her human form.
Her acting—more earnest than anyone's—was impressive in many ways.
The only blemish was that the final scream was in a human voice, not a dragon's, but no one pointed it out.
"Phew, that was really nerve-wracking."
Hayward left with a refreshed expression, as if freed from suffering.
"Ah… finally..."
Unlike him, Jason stayed where he was, soaked in emotion.
He had been able to ease, even a little, the resentment of never becoming a swordsman through the short play that had just ended.
"Jason, help with serving."
"Yes!"
But at Jinseo's call, he returned to being a chef, quickly changed clothes, and went back into the kitchen.
"Now, you eat the soup that that human man gives you first, okay? You mustn't leave any, but if you're full, forcing it down is even worse, got it?"
"Yes!"
The children sitting side by side at the counter answered in unison and lifted their spoons.
Worrying over what would be easiest on starving children, Jinseo chose OXgi soup.
It was easy to eat on its own, but he added plenty of extra ingredients like potatoes and onions to boost both flavor and nutrition, and served sliced bread for dipping.
"It's delicious!"
"Mister! Thank you so much!"
The children started gulping down the warm OXgi soup, blowing on it with their mouths.
"Give me a bowl too."
Charlotte dunked the bread deep into the soup, pulled it out, and took a huge bite.
After finishing three pieces of bread, she silently smiled and nodded.
"One more plate of soup here!"
"I want soup and bread too!"
"This is the bread that goes into toast, isn't it? I've thought it before, but I wish you'd sell just this separately..."
It was a special meal set out for the children, but the adults reacted to it surprisingly well, too.
"Yes, please wait a moment. Kids, more bunsik will come out too, so wait."
For the children who were nearly finished with their soup, Jinseo began piling bunsik onto plates with practiced speed.
He made the tteokbokki less spicy and sweeter, suited to young children's tastes.
For the gimbap, he added more ingredients children would like, such as ham.
He agonized over fried items because of their greasiness and ended up leaving them out, making up for it with other bunsik that was easier to eat.
"Wow! It's spicy, but it's good!"
"Give me more of this!"
"So this is what ham tastes like… It's my first time, and it's really delicious!"
As the children cheered over the new bunsik, Charlotte—who had demolished a whole bag of bread—popped open a can of cola.
"Owner, are you really going to be satisfied with taking only that much money? I'm a dragon, you know? A dragon that's lived thousands of years! If you satisfied someone like me, you should take compensation worthy of that. Humility shouldn't go too far."
"When I need help later, I'll ask you then. For now, it's enough if you just pay for the food you ate."
"Is that so?"
Charlotte put her hand into thin air, opened a subspace, grabbed a handful of jewels, and dropped them onto the counter seat with a clink.
"From now on, feed bunsik to the brats in this orphanage on a regular basis. This should be enough, right?"
Jinseo didn't know the value of jewels, so he called AI and asked it to calculate.
A moment later, when he saw the amount displayed in the status window, Jinseo's head swam.
"This… is too much. At this amount, I'd have to feed them bunsik for quite a long time."
"If there's leftover, give them more clothes. Earlier, I saw how much they loved the clothes you gave them."
Even though he had only given them T-shirts because he felt sorry seeing them in such ragged clothes, the children had jumped around in excitement.
"And if it still remains, use it to fix up the orphanage nicely."
"...Even after doing that, there will still be an enormous amount left."
"It's fine. Unless it's lacking, leftover isn't a problem, is it?"
"But last time, if I remember right, you said you didn't get involved in human affairs."
"More accurately, it's that I don't want to anymore."
Charlotte patted the head of a child eating bunsik enthusiastically right beside her.
"Even I had a time when I actively interacted with humans. Back then, I was probably… just five hundred years old, so I was very young."
It was an age concept hard for Jinseo, a human who could barely live a hundred years, to relate to, but she continued without caring.
"I met human mages a lot in particular. I had quite a number of disciples I raised."
She looked down at the hand that had been stroking the child's head, her gaze turning sorrowful.
"But they all left before me. Humans live, at most, around a hundred years, and I already knew that, but experiencing it directly feels different."
"With respect, I believe no such thing was ever recorded in the history books. The same goes for spellbooks..."
When Julien, standing behind her and eating bunsik, joined the conversation, Charlotte gave a bitter smile, finished the can of cola she was drinking, and picked up a new can.
"Well, that would've been about two thousand years ago? No, probably three thousand. There's no way those stories would be properly passed down to now. And it's also because those kids willingly honored my request not to reveal that I was their master."
She tried to recall the faces of the disciples who had gone ahead of her, but only gray memories surfaced in her mind, as if covered in mist.
"I hated that, so I researched immortality magic. But it ended at extending a fixed lifespan only to a certain extent. I even went as far as researching time-reversal magic, but it ended in failure. After that, my emotions gradually dried up."
"You don't look like that at all."
To Jinseo, Charlotte seemed to have intense emotional swings, not the opposite.
"Ah, by old standards. Three thousand years ago I was like that, then after about a hundred years, I went back to normal. Then my emotions dried up again… that kind of cycle repeated."
Having been sick of the shifts in emotional range for so long, she didn't place much meaning on controlling emotions.
Even if, unintentionally, it affected those around her.
"Seeing these kids reminds me of the past. In the blink of an eye, they'll all become adults, and then they'll end their lives. I've seen it, I know it, to the point of boredom, and yet… tch."
Charlotte lifted the can of cola she had nearly finished and tapped it with her hand.
"But I didn't think this story would still be passed down."
"You mean the hero story from earlier? Thanks to the magic you placed on it, I could read it too—so it must be a pretty old picture book, right?"
"Well, the thing is… that story really happened when I was young."
"What?"
"But it was recorded with some twists, different from what actually happened. Originally… hmm… I don't remember well."
She furrowed her brows, trying to recall the past, but like when she tried to remember her disciples' faces, only hazy memories remained.
Just then, a soldier ran up behind her, panting.
"Hm? This is… hhk!"
After reading the scroll the soldier handed over, Oswald sprang to his feet.
"What is it—did another monster show up?"
As Charlotte stood up too, rubbing her fists until they cracked, Oswald hurriedly stretched out a hand to stop her.
"N-no! Jinseo! Read this!"
"Ah, I can't read the writing here. Just tell me the main point..."
"His Majesty has invited you! To the royal palace!"
"What?"
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