“What’s wrong, master!”
Hubert came running in a hurry, thinking something bad had happened.
“Look at this. Elaine made it. Isn’t it amazing?”
“Yes…? Oh, yes, that’s right. It’s very pretty.”
“Did you hear that, Elaine? Hubert thinks this is prettier too. I have an eye for aesthetics too.”
Elaine and Hubert both looked dumbfounded because of Sergey, who was acting as if to prove that what he was saying was true.
And then Hubert, who had discovered the giant wreath lying on the floor, laughed and picked it up one by one.
“I’m sorry, butler.”
“You have nothing to apologize for, Miss Elaine.”
Hubert gave Sergey a sidelong glance, but Serge was too busy looking at the wreath Elaine had made to notice Hubert’s reprimand.
* * *
The day before St. Nicholas Day, Rabes was lying sideways on Elaine’s bed, munching on a cookie and saying,
[I heard you’re having a Nicholas Day party at this house tomorrow?]
“Yes, that’s right.”
Rabes had said ‘St. Nicholas Day’ wrong again, but it was better than before, so Elaine just laughed it off. In fact, she had given up on correcting him one by one.
More than that, she was concerned about the cookie crumbs falling on the bed.
“Do you eat human food?”
[It’s not that I can’t eat it. I just don’t think it’s particularly tasty. Anyway, when should I give you my present?]
“Are you giving me a gift this year too?”
[Of course, I thought it was a gift-giving day.]
“I can’t give you anything, Rabes.”
[I already got it.]
“Yes…?”
Rabes smiled as he recalled the small wreath that still hung on his office door.
He’d been in and out of the office repeatedly since he’d gotten the wreath, and every time he looked at it, he laughed when he thought about how hard Elaine must have worked to weave it while thinking of him.
If you made a dragon that lived for over five hundred years laugh like that, you deserved a gift.
[What time will the party be over, ten o’clock?]
“I don’t know. This is my first time doing something like this.”
[Oh, I see. Anyway, when the party’s over and you’re back in your room, I’ll give you a gift then. Think about what you want to get.]
Rabes thought it was a win-win because he could give her a gift as Sergey and another as Rabes.
Giving a gift to Elaine was a very pleasant experience for the giver as well.
The next day is St. Nicholas Day.
Elaine opened her eyes to the chilling smell of winter tickling her nostrils.
It was always warm from the wood burning, but the chilly winter morning air squeaked through the cracks in the burnt logs, shaking the sleepiness from Elaine’s eyelids.
And Elaine, fully awake, doubted her eyes.
“What, what is all this…?”
In the middle of Elaine’s room was a pile of gift boxes of various types.
The size, type of packaging, and packaging method were all different, but the feeling of sincerity was the same.
Elaine ran to the pile of presents, feeling like a little child.
“Wow!”
The gift box was marked ‘Miss Elaine’ or ‘To Miss Elaine’, in case she got confused.
Elaine opened the small gift box on top.
“So pretty!”
What came out of the box was a glass rabbit sculpture. The rabbit’s form, which looked as if it would jump up onto Elaine’s shoulder at any moment, was amazing, but what was even more amazing was the tiny glass dice inside the glass ball the rabbit was holding in its front paws.
“This…How on earth did you make it?”
It seemed like something that would be impossible with Elaine’s common sense knowledge of glass crafting techniques.
“It looks like it was made by a great craftsman.”
Elaine carefully placed the glass rabbit on the bedside table and excitedly opened the next gift box.
Every gift box she opened contained a wonderful gift.
Soft and warm shawls, stretchy and lightly clinging leather gloves, quill pens in brilliant colors, fur-lined winter boots, wax candles, and music boxes.
Things she had never dreamed of in her past life were waiting for Elaine, neatly wrapped in wrapping paper and boxes.
And each one made her wonder about the materials.
The yarn that the shawl was made of was a mysterious color and was thin but incredibly warm. The leather that the gloves were made of was thin but tough, like the leather of some animal. The feathers on the quill pen and the fluffy fur on the winter boots were things she had never seen before.
But what Elaine picked up most preciously from among the gifts was a rather large box with the words “To Elaine” written on it.
There was only one person in that house who called Elaine by her first name.
“I guess Sergey gave it to me….”
Strangely enough, her heart started pounding.
When Elaine received a gift from Lark, she didn’t feel nervous about opening the box, but when she received a gift from Sergey, she was nervous even about unwrapping the ribbon.
Elaine hesitated for a moment, then gathered her courage untied the ribbon on the gift box, and carefully removed the wrapping paper.
And when Elaine discovered the gift inside the box, her breath was taken away for a moment.
“Oh my god…!”
It was a porcelain doll, like the one Ellie had received a few years ago.
It seemed like an odd gift for an eighteen-year-old Elaine to receive, but Elaine stared blankly at the doll for a while before carefully picking it up.
Curly, black, silky hair, sparkling blue eyes beneath voluminous eyelashes, rosy lips and slightly flushed cheeks, a bonnet with lots of frills, a gray woolen dress with lots of ribbon decorations, lace-up boots that look like miniature versions of real shoes.
The person who was called the first in the empire to make porcelain dolls was Madame Felon, but this doll was much prettier and more elaborate than any of her creations, even though it was not her work.
The porcelain doll that symbolized the happiness she could never have was now smiling at Elaine.
It was clearly a happy situation, but strangely enough, the tip of her nose started to hurt.
“Ah… no…why am I like this…?”
Elaine quickly wiped away the tears that had suddenly welled up in her eyes. She had no idea why she had shed tears.
But the tip of her nose kept getting redder and redder, and tears kept flowing out.
Eventually, Elaine gave up on holding back her tears and cried, hugging the porcelain doll tightly to her chest.
The firm texture in her arms seemed to be the essence of the happiness she was enjoying now.
The despair that seemed to chase her no matter how hard she ran, her origins that held her ankles as shackles, the nickname that trampled her self-esteem, and the loneliness that visited her every night could no longer torment Elaine.
As she thought about how Ellie’s porcelain doll, which she had only been able to catch a glimpse of out of the corner of her eye, must have had that kind of weight and texture, she finally realized how her changed situation had become completely real.
Elaine, who had been stroking the doll for a long time, laughing in between crying, felt that a part of her heart had become much stronger than before, and stroked the doll’s cheek.
But at that moment, a thought suddenly crossed Elaine’s mind and she stopped.
‘Wait…Did I ever tell Sergey about this doll?’
There was nothing to think about. Because Elaine never once told Sergey about her miserable and sad past in Newt.
Rather, it was a past that she wanted to hide, so there’s no way she would have said anything about it.
But it was too strange to be called a coincidence.
Why St. Nicholas’s Day, why a doll for a grown woman, why a ‘top-quality’ ‘porcelain’ doll at that.
Elaine, who had been quietly looking at the doll, shook her head slightly and placed the doll on the bedside table.
‘It could be a coincidence. Yeah, otherwise it wouldn’t make sense.’
Only then did she realize that the doll looked just like Sergey.
‘Did you ask them to make it look like you?’
Elaine smiled as she stroked the doll’s cheek. Usually, blonde dolls were more popular than black or brown-haired ones, but Elaine really liked that black-haired doll.
“Your name is Sarah. Sarah because Sergey gave you to me as a gift.”
Elaine smiled again, kissed the doll’s cheek, and hurriedly called Emily.
She had forgotten the passage of time while unwrapping the gift and hugging the doll Sergey had given her and crying. She still had a lot to do in the morning because she had to wash up and get ready for the party.
* * *
“Whoa!”
Sergey rubbed his left cheek in surprise.
Sergey was trying to get his senses in tune with the porcelain doll, wondering if Elaine would be happy, and then he suddenly got a kiss on the cheek.
‘I had been kissed a few times in my Rabes form, but this was the first time in my Sergey form.’
“Ugh, that’s weird.”
Sergey kept rubbing his left cheek and shivering as he felt Elaine’s soft, smooth lips and warm breath still lingering on his left cheek.
It was a completely different feeling when Elaine kissed the hard upper part of Rabes.
“Didn’t she say that this kind of thing is only done between close friends? Why did she kiss a doll she saw for the first time today?”
Sergey also knew about the behavior of delinquent humans.
Those ‘good-natured’ guys who would mate with a human they had never met before, let alone be intimate with.
But Elaine wasn’t that kind of person, so she would definitely only kiss and hug someone she was close to, even if that was a doll!
“Did she happen to notice that it was me?”
Elaine’s kiss was warm and affectionate enough to make him doubt it, just like Elaine usually did to Rabes.
* * *
AWWWWWW