This Novel is not my Novel

"You’ll need to take off the shoes you wore outside and change into house slippers in my room."

As I spoke, I opened the door and went inside, quickly changed into my slippers, then pointed to the spare pair.

Valtraus frowned as if the whole thing were a nuisance.

But when he saw the gleaming, spotless floor, he obediently changed into the slippers.

"Meow, myaaow!"

Meanwhile, Yor held out a paw toward Raskatl, gesturing for him to wait a moment.

Then she darted into the bathroom and returned with a damp towel, which she dropped in the hallway directly in front of the door.

"Myaaow...?"

For the record, that sound did not come from Yor.

Raskatl, the cheetah-shaped spirit beast, had made it as he tilted his head in puzzlement.

Seeing and hearing this, Yor took a handkerchief from her wish-granting orb and earnestly tried to explain something by miming wiping her own paws.

"Meow meow, myaaow, meow, myaaow."

"Mrrp?"

"Myaaow, nya nya nyat, nya nya, meow!"

"Mreowrr...?"

Raskatl rubbed his paws back and forth over the damp towel, then looked at Yor as if asking whether that was right.

My baby dragon repeated her motions even faster, conveying that he should stop doing such a halfhearted job and scrub them properly.

Only after Valtraus personally wiped Raskatl’s paws clean was the cheetah-shaped spirit beast granted permission to enter.

"Tsk. So this is why you wanted to go to a café."

Clicking his tongue in displeasure, Valtraus dropped into a chair at the table without even asking my permission.

Raskatl lay down with his rump pressed against Valtraus’s leg.

There was nothing particularly objectionable about a spirit beast lying flat on the floor, but I was far from pleased by Valtraus planting his backside in someone else’s chair without permission.

Still, he had not tracked dirty footprints across the floor, so I decided to give him credit for that and let it slide.

"So, what did you want to say to me?"

"You have a guest in your room, yet you do not even serve tea?"

"You certainly expect a great deal from me, considering our relationship."

"I went through that bothersome entry procedure. You can endure at least this much inconvenience in return."

He was not wrong, but I had no desire to put any real effort into serving someone like Valtraus, so I carelessly made him a capsule coffee.

I had originally planned to buy an Ether espresso machine, but then I discovered that Ether capsule coffee machines existed too.

Since the main purpose was caffeine delivery anyway, I decided convenience was better and chose the latter.

I had used the former back home before my possession, and it had been a nuisance in several ways.

"To think you would use a contraption focused solely on convenience...."

Judging by Valtraus’s reaction, nobles did not seem particularly fond of Ether capsule coffee machines.

Well, of course not. They could simply order a servant to make coffee for them.

Whenever I visited the possessed body’s family home, I asked Yon for coffee, and he always brewed it by hand right in front of me.

Ironically, Ether machines like this were absurdly expensive, far beyond anything comparable in the modern world I had lived in.

Unless someone was wealthy enough to pay others to serve them, they could not even dream of buying one.

"Stop finding fault with pointless things and say what you came to say."

After making coffee for myself as well, I sat down and made no effort to hide how bothersome I found this.

Valtraus knitted his brows in displeasure. He parted his lips, hesitated, then released a deep sigh.

"Haa.... Yes, that would be best. I have no desire to prolong a conversation with you either."

It was closer to something he muttered to himself, so I felt no particular need to respond.

I merely gave a slight nod and took a sip of coffee.

Only then did the man before me finally get to the point.

"What you did today was nothing more or less than asking for trouble."

He was probably referring to how I had provoked the acid villain into attacking me.

As far as I was concerned, that villain was bound to cause an incident sooner or later, so I had merely acted to resolve the matter while I could still control the situation.

Without knowing that, however, it would be easy to assume that I had caused the incident by needlessly provoking him.

But....

"You can still say that after hearing that Count Ofraushi’s second son had a highly acidic solution and intended to throw it in Helga’s face?"

"I am saying that you knowingly put yourself in danger."

"And I am talking about the incident that would have occurred if I had not intervened."

"......"

"......"

Valtraus stared silently at my face, so I widened my eyes and glared right back at him, refusing to yield.

About ten seconds into our not-quite-staring contest, he closed his eyes, opened them again, and let out a disbelieving chuckle.

"Huh.... So you realized those wretches intended to harm Lady Bitnir and acted deliberately?"

"Would you believe me if I said I hadn’t?"

"No."

What an impressively decisive answer.

"According to the material I read at the beginning of this year, the young lady from the baron’s family whom you saved on the day of the closing ceremony was named Bitnir, was she not?"

"Surely you are not also about to spout nonsense about me being in love with her."

"Lady Styrkr told me that you were extremely close to that young lady’s childhood friend."

The "Lady Styrkr" he referred to was Lissy.

Apparently, since the two of them could hardly stand around in awkward silence while we fought the Boss Monster, they had made small talk....

"No, why are you suddenly bringing up Reisir now?!"

"I heard that you even made him promise to protect you no matter what happened."

"...What in the world did you discuss with Lady Styrkr?"

"I asked whether you and Lady Bitnir were close. She said she did not know whether you were close to Lady Bitnir, but that you were extremely close to Lord Daudabiner. So I merely asked how close she meant by ‘extremely.’"

For a moment, resentment flared toward Lissy for telling Valtraus something so unnecessary.

But when I considered it rationally, she had done nothing wrong.

Someone older and of higher status had asked her about his younger brother. She probably could not have refused to answer.

Right. At least she didn’t tell him about the winking incident. ...Wait, she didn’t, did she? Surely she didn’t?

Since Valtraus had not so much as uttered the first syllable of "wink," she probably had not.

It was not as if I could openly ask, "This and that happened—did she tell you about that too?"

So I simply decided to believe whatever I wanted to believe.

"Since when have you taken enough interest in me to do something so pointless?"

"I have no interest in you. But lately, our sister has not only taken an interest in you herself, she also forced me to read material concerning you, saying it would be best if I knew about you as well. As a result, I learned a few things against my will."

Technically, the conversation was continuing.

But it had been subtly veering off course for some time now.

That was because Valtraus refused to answer any of my questions and only said whatever he wanted to say.

So I still had not heard why Reisir had suddenly been brought up.

"What exactly are you trying to say?"

"It seems you tormented that young man early last year."

"So I’ve been told. I don’t remember it myself."

"And I heard that after you helped when Lady Bitnir was abducted, you and Lord Daudabiner rapidly grew close."

"......"

No matter what I said, I was not going to receive a relevant answer anyway, so there seemed little point in responding.

Once I closed my mouth, he finally delivered the crucial sentence.

"You must have been quite pleased that he treated you with such warmth. Pleased enough to put yourself in danger to win his affection?"

I would have been better off not hearing it. His conclusion could not have been more absurd.

"Since we do not love you, did you simply want anyone at all to acknowledge and cherish you? If so, would it not be better to stop rebelling now? You need only get along with our sister. Why take the long way around when the easier path lies before you?"

Valtraus said this with an expression of genuine incomprehension, but I was the one who could not understand him.

Why was someone from a family whose symbolic animal was the cat barking such utter nonsense?

"Allow me to give you one piece of advice."

As if you have any right to.

"If you absolutely must find someone in the special Awakened class to befriend, draw close to the son of Viscount Tremler. A person of that sort will become a loyal dog if properly trained and obey any command you give."

He had spouted so much nonsense that he had finally started talking about actual dogs.

"I don’t know what standard you used to decide Ríolíkin was preferable to Reisir, and I understand even less why you are speaking as though I must choose one of them."

"I am not telling you to choose only one. I am saying it would be better for your well-being to keep your distance from Lord Daudabiner."

For the first time in quite a while, Valtraus gave me something resembling an actual answer.

But the content itself was so ridiculous that my brow furrowed naturally.

It was true that I had once worked hard to distance myself from the original protagonist. Even now, I hesitated to define our relationship clearly and insisted we were not friends.

This is genuinely irritating.

Who was he to interfere? And what was supposedly so wrong with Reisir that he would say something like that?

"Reisir’s family may have fallen, but House Daudabiner is still a count’s family. Their territory is also scheduled to be returned on his birthday, and the imperial family has even promised to help with its reconstruction. Above all, Reisir himself is exceptionally capable, so I do not believe he is inferior to the son of a viscount."

"When did I ever mention his family or his abilities?"

"Are you saying that isn’t the reason?"

"Not entirely. He may attempt to use you for that ‘reconstruction of his territory.’"

If that was what he thought, he had completely missed the mark.

Reisir would not even push the cost of a single meal onto me.

There was no chance someone like him would ask me for help rebuilding his territory, and even if I offered, he would obviously refuse.

More decisively than anything else....

Reisir is the original protagonist. He’ll rebuild his territory splendidly even without my help.

He had done exactly that in the pre-remake original work.

Although Reisir, the lord of the territory, was put through the wringer in every negative sense, his territory itself ran perfectly well.

It grew rapidly even though Reisir did not need to devote much time to administering it, only checking in occasionally while throwing himself into exploring the Demon Realm.

Knowing this, I could not help letting out a hollow laugh.

But I could hardly start talking aloud about protagonists and original novels.

In the end, the only thing I could say was—

"What do you even know about him to say something like that?"

—nothing else.

"I do not know what kind of person he is. But I do know that you tormented him in the past."

"I apologized to him, and Reisir forgave me. And now Reisir thinks I’m... um.... That is, he thinks I’m... a good person."

Stopping halfway would obviously have seemed strange, so I somehow forced myself to finish.

But when I saw the dumbfounded expression on Valtraus’s face, I wondered whether I should simply have shut my mouth the moment the words caught in my throat.

Best of all would have been omitting the final sentence entirely.

But I could not take back something I had already said, so I decided to forget it as quickly as possible.

"A-Anyway! What happened in the past isn’t a problem at all!"

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