How Can You Pay Back The Kindness I Raised With Obsession?

As his colleagues looked at him in amazement, he glanced over her shoulder. Turning around, Sir Daniel had a sandwich in his hand. After confirming with their own eyes that the Grand Duke’s closest aide was eating without a doubt, everyone reached out and accepted the lunch she had brought.

“Th-thank you, I will eat well.”

“Ah yes.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s so delicious that I’m already worried about what if I can’t forget it, haha.”

It’s a bit embarrassing, but not everyone seems to be a bad person. Wicked witches were so infamous that they just didn’t readily trust her. Still, the people of the Grand Duke’s residence were polite, unlike the villagers who were on the rude side.

‘The misunderstanding will be resolved someday.’

She greeted politely the gardeners who took off their straw hats and returned to the children. 

The warm autumn sunlight poured over the small table. The children sat quietly and ate their lunch.

She had no choice but to sit still and eat, or they wouldn’t let her make sandwiches again.

A small mouth biting the corner of a sandwich. Chubby cheeks like a hamster full of seeds… So cute.

While she was watching the children while eating hers, Sir Daniel asked in a suspicious voice next to her.

“What’s in it?”

He could see everything just by looking at the cross section of the sandwich, so why ask?

“Ham, cheese and eggs. Things that were in the kitchen.”

Sir Daniel stared at the half-eaten sandwich for a long time and put it in his mouth, as if her answer didn’t clear his question.

Behind the gardeners gathered, whispers of deliciousness could be heard. She started to feel proud.

“Let’s plant our mushrooms too.”

Luna, who was looking around the vegetable garden while messing around with sandwiches, called out to her.

“Mushrooms can’t be planted in the field.”

“What about Yogurt?”

Luca held up a sandwich with tiny teeth on it.

“That needs to be made in the kitchen.”

“Have a drink.”

“Thanks.”

“Then what about chestnuts?”

She turned my head to Luna’s question.

“Hey, is there a chestnut tree in the mansion?”

The gardener with a sandwich in his mouth shook his head.

The land was so wide, but there were no chestnut trees?

“Let’s ask my brother to plant a chestnut tree.”

“Great.”

“Do you have this left over?”

Sir Daniel, who had finished his sandwich in the meantime, pointed to the basket and asked.

“Yes, you can have it.”

She stared blankly at Sir Daniel eating his second sandwich. Originally, she heard that someone else was the physical training and swordsmanship teacher, but why was Sir Daniel there? Besides, even after class was over, he still stuck around?

She knew that having a crush on her was not the reason for the scattering of cherry blossoms. In other words, for being where he wasn’t supposed to be. So, there was only one possible reason… Because he didn’t want to work with the Grand Duke, right?

Well, she didn’t like working with the Grand Duke either.

“It’s not polite to stare at someone like that.”

Sir Daniel frowned in displeasure.

“I’m curious.”

“What are you curious about?”

“You must be busy, can you follow us around like this?”

The face of displeasure turned into a face of disapproval. Did he hear the call to go? That’s couldn’t be.

“Thanks to whom, I wonder.”

“Hey, it would be nice if Sir Daniel could look after the children with me, but I’ll scolded by His Highness if… Eh? Your Highness the Grand Duke?”

If that person would have been born in the Joseon Dynasty, he would not have become a nobleman. As soon as she called him, he appeared.

* * *

“Your Highness, have you eaten? If you haven’t, would you like to eat together?”

The witch took something out of her basket and she held it out towards Elliot.

‘If he had a meal? He did.’

He had just returned from a luncheon at the Vatican as the last outside schedule before leaving for tomorrow.

‘Yeah, I made sure to eat… ’

He didn’t know what was in that witch’s hand, but he had a strong urge to get it right away. She probably had made it herself but he wanted to receive it. But the problem was that he had already eaten.

No, the witch didn’t know that.

But it was also ridiculous to snatch it away. Then he could pretend to accept it reluctantly…

“Isn’t His Highness on the way back from an outside luncheon?”

When Daniel intervened, Elliot flinched at the hand he was about to lift and had to lower it again.

“Then I want to eat!”

In the end, Luna took the only one left.

‘It must have been a sandwich.’

Why does that ordinary-looking sandwich seem to shine? It wasn’t like this even when he saw the high-end cuisine ambitiously prepared by the Holy Father.

Elliott’s eyebrows crinkled as he looked at Luna eating the sandwich deliciously with empty eyes.

“Why are the children of the grand duchess pretending to be farmers?”

A straw hat and overalls like farmer’s children would wear. Even that was not enough, their boots and overalls were covered in dirt. When he pointed that out, the witch replied without losing face.

“You gave permission to grow a garden.”

“I can let Miss Hazel do the gardening, she has permission. Not my brothers.”

“However, The Grand Prince and Grand Princess…”

Luna laughed at the sudden title of honor.

“I mean, they eat the vegetables they grow themselves very well. Right?”

“That’s right! The carrots I chose after careful consideration are fresh and not bitter.”

They clap their hands together as if the two of them had planned it beforehand. Elliott’s eyes widened.

“And when you touch the soil like this, your immunity is strengthened, so they will catch less colds and become stronger.”

The witch suddenly acted as if she had become a doctor, uttering words Elliot had hear for the first time in his life.

“Well? Would Dr. Morris say the same thing?”

After saying that he would consult the Grand Duke’s doctor to see if that statement was correct, Elliot resolutely turned around.

Swish.

With his nimble hands, he snatched the sandwich from Daniel’s hand.

“Oh, Your Highness! That’s mine…”

However, the sandwich thief had already walked out of the greenhouse.

* * *

These were the kids who hated nap time the most. Both of them fell asleep before nap time came. They doze off after taking a bath, and as soon as they lay down on the bed, they fall asleep peacefully without even having time to read them a storybook.

“Did our cuties have that much fun?”

She brushed Luca’s forehead, who was sleeping soundly, and kissed him. She tried to cover Luca with a blanket, but the stuffed rabbit in Luca’s arms seemed suffocating, so she only covered Luca’s stomach.

Lulu was still dirty. She suggested Luca take a bath together with Lulu, but Luca shook his head in disapproval. It was common for children to insist on not washing their attachment dolls or blankets. Then, when they saw it in the washing machine, they wailed as if they have lost the world.

But Luca’s refusal to wash Lulu was really a reason to lose his world.

“Mom smells bad.”

“Ah…”

After that, she gave up washing the doll. Because that couldn’t be exchanged for anything in the world. She didn’t know if the old doll still smelled like their mom, but that’s not important. To Luca, Lulu meant the last trace of her mother, whom he would never see again.

Suddenly, memories of her childhood came to mind. When she was in second grade, her mom moved out of her house. She couldn’t eat any of the side dishes that her mother had filled the refrigerator with as her last gift. Then the side dishes ended up spoiled, but still, she couldn’t give up.

“That foolish thing, how stupid.”

She cried for the first time when her grandmother, who heard of her belated news and came to visit her, hit her chest and threw away all the moldy side dishes. It was only then that she realized that her mother really left me.

‘How much I miss my mother.’

As an elementary school student, it was difficult for her to overcome her mother’s absence. What a shame for a child who lost her parents forever when she was only in kindergarten. She tried not to hate people, but she couldn’t shake the thought that there were too many people who blindly called the Grand Duke’s little kids ‘devils’ without thinking about the pain of the children.

‘You are angels. They are just angels who lost their wings for a moment.’

How did the children’s parents die? The more she thought about the former Grand Duke and his wife who left their children behind, the more she felt sorry for them. She patted the laughing angel’s belly in his sleep, as if he was having a good dream. It may sound presumptuous, but she wanted to love them as their parents would have wanted now that they couldn’t do it.

* * *

“This is nonsense.”

He sat down at his desk to work, but Elliot couldn’t turn over a single page of his papers and kept thinking the same thing over and over again. The idea of that ham and cheese egg sandwich didn’t disappear.

The bread had a savory smell of butter, but the texture was soft and chewy. How about the pan-fried egg, which was soft and fluffy like an omelet, and the seasoning had a great balance of sweet and salty flavors. The rich flavor of the cheese that melts well between the warm ham and eggs seems to still linger on the tip of the tongue. The thinly sliced pork ham must have been blanched in hot water, so the fat was gone and it was bland. If she hadn’t done that, the buttery taste of the cheese and bread would have made the sandwich greasy… Besides, what was that sweet and sour sauce?

“Unless…”

Elliot laughed. He felt pitiful for thinking about the sandwich he had already eaten without doing any work. He had no appetite, let alone was he craving for food. It was not his creed to eat delicious food, but to eat good food.

Not only Luna and Luca, but the people of the Grand Duchy originally had picky tastes. Elliot, now a grown-up, just didn’t show it off.

Harold was also the chef chosen after careful consideration by his picky parents. Apart from being satisfied, he had never thought about eating Harold’s food to the extent that it interfered with his work.

“Did you use drugs as rumored?”

He mumbled when someone knocked on the door.

—————————————————————

Translator Note: