Chapter 30: Miss Ryuu and the Urge to Use Him as a Spinning Top.
....
Ryuu hadn't known the customer Chloe wanted her to handle was Kihara. The moment their eyes met, her composure went on high alert.
She'd been wearing a mask over most of her face during their dungeon encounter, but that wasn't a guarantee. If he looked at her too carefully, if something clicked—
If he suddenly raised a finger and said "Why is the Gale Wind working here?" — that would be the end of a warm place to stay.
The Guild's approach to her situation was passive non-enforcement, but they couldn't maintain that position with her identity publicly confirmed in front of witnesses.
Fortunately, he didn't recognise her. He simply looked at the person who wasn't Chloe, and she caught, with her elf's hearing, the faint murmur:
"...Why isn't it Chloe?"
She almost threw the serving tray at his face.
I have better proportions than Chloe and I'm an elf — the single most romanticised species in every human adventure novel ever written. How am I losing to someone whose primary trait is talking too much?
She reminded herself that the job ended the moment she delivered them to their table, compressed the urge to commit tray-related violence into a small hard ball somewhere in her sternum, and walked.
"Miss Elf — don't rush off, we haven't ordered yet."
She stopped. Breathed. Turned around.
"My apologies. What would you like?"
"Large flame-seared beef, vegetable potage, grape juice, and the forest rainbow berry tart. Hestia, Lili — what do you want?"
"A large Dwarven Zammit, the moonlight silver trout with roasted mushroom, and the deep-sea squid ink risotto—"
"Lili would like the cream cheese gratin and a glass of green fruit wine."
"Understood. Please wait — it won't be long."
She had almost made it to the kitchen when Hestia's voice drifted after her, not quite lowered enough.
"That elf is so cold. She doesn't seem to want to be here at all. Chloe is much nicer."
"Different personalities. She is a bit intense, though."
The word intense joined the word cold in the growing catalogue of grievances Ryuu was maintaining. She reported the order to the kitchen, then crossed to where her colleagues were gathered.
"One of you take that table when the food's ready."
This was interpreted, unanimously and incorrectly, as the behaviour of someone too flustered to deliver on her own feelings.
Chloe pulled a sympathetic face.
"I would love to, meow~ But I have three regulars in right now and I'm completely stretched. I'm sorry, Ryuu~"
The other three — Anya, Syr, and Lunova — delivered variations of the same message. Every other member of the staff at the Hostess of Fertility had cultivated regulars over years of service. Ryuu had not. The architectural reality was that she was the only person available.
She felt the trap close around her with the gentle inevitability of something that had been carefully constructed by people who thought they were helping.
"Fine," she said, to no one in particular. "Intelligence-gathering."
Mia tapped the edge of her pot with the ladle and surveyed the room. "Stop chatting and get moving."
"That's the situation, Ryuu~ Please take good care of Lord Kihara~"
"I will."
She delivered this without inflection.
When she brought the drinks over, Hestia had migrated from her own chair to Kihara's lap, settling against his chest with the comfortable familiarity of someone returning to a designated spot. Her black hair brushed his shirt as she shifted.
Ryuu added l*licon to the mental file she was building on him and set the tray down.
"Your drinks. Please enjoy."
"Thank you."
He took a sip of the grape juice and resumed the story he'd apparently been telling — something about a battle in the dungeon against a mysterious opponent. Lili was hanging on every word with full investment.
"Was she really that large, Lord Kihara?"
"Enormous. When she stepped out of the shadows, the whole cavern shook — I genuinely thought a Minotaur had broken through the wall."
"A-and after that? How did you defeat her?"
"I furrowed my brow, drew my blade, and drove it into her midsection — solid as armour plating, I should note—"
What followed was a narrated account of Ryuu's dungeon ambush, which bore the following relationship to actual events: Kihara had pinned her in approximately two exchanges. In his telling, this had become a three-hundred-round war of attrition against a foe of legendary resilience, concluded only when he chose, at the final moment, to show mercy.
"But why spare her? She attacked you."
"I was ready to finish it — but she broke down. Confessed she'd acted out of unrequited feelings. A moment of madness, she said. And in the end, my blade helped her find her way back. She decided to turn her life around."
"Lord Kihara is incredible—!"
Ryuu's hand had tightened on the edge of the tray. The description of her appearance as something between a lovesick assailant and a structural load-bearing column was not something she could allow to pass unremarked in a civilised world.
But he had concealed her identity.
Deliberately. Which meant he was still afraid of retaliation — afraid enough to distort the story rather than expose who she actually was. That was leverage. She filed it away and let the anger convert to something colder and more useful.
Next time you enter that dungeon, I'm using you as a spinning top.
Lili, who had been watching the staff member standing behind Kihara for the past several minutes, was forming her own assessments. The woman wasn't working — she was listening. No warmth, no attentiveness, none of the basic hospitality that the Hostess of Fertility was famous for. No wonder she was the only one with no regulars.
I am recommending we request Chloe next time. Even Chloe, who has suspicious intentions regarding Lord Kihara, provides a better service experience than this.
Hestia looked down at her empty glass and then at the entirely bare table around it.
"Excuse me — Miss Elf — where is our food?"
Ryuu snapped back into the present. "My sincerest apologies — I'll bring it immediately—"
She was already moving.
"Completely unprofessional," Lili said, watching her go. "Standing there listening to stories during service hours. Lady Hestia, we should request Chloe going forward."
"But Chloe has designs on Kihara-kun!"
"...Does she? Truly?"
This was the first Kihara had heard of it.
Lili cast a careful glance toward Chloe across the room, then leaned in and lowered her voice to the register of someone sharing classified information.
"Lord Kihara. I have it on reliable authority that Chloe has a very specific preference for pretty young men. And an equally specific interest in a particular aspect of their anatomy."
"Do I look like a pretty young man to you?"
"You are objectively a beautiful young man!"
Hestia, who had consumed her Dwarven Zammit faster than medically advisable and appeared to be feeling it, executed a full rotation in his lap until she was facing him directly. She locked her legs around his waist, straightened up to her full sitting height, and directed her voice across the restaurant with remarkable carrying power.
"CHLOE! KIHARA'S POSTERIOR IS UNDER MY PERSONAL PROTECTION! DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT—!"
...
Thank you for reading.