Chapter 6
Uncle Baron had been feeding me nothing but egg sandwiches three times a day for an entire week.
And there it was again, that very same egg sandwich, sitting proudly on the dining table.
My face crumpled.
‘Maybe being a picky eater once in a while isn’t such a bad thing.’
At the orphanage, we were served different food at every meal, but here, I’d been eating egg sandwiches for an entire week.
Even for a good little girl like me, eating another egg sandwich was simply too much.
With those feelings in mind, I reached out and poked the chicken with my finger.
” Tsk!”
The mister widened his eyes at me, and I quickly pulled my finger back.
Slurp.
I licked my finger and tasted the sauce.
“Hwaaah!”
I’d only had a tiny taste, but it was so spicy that my entire mouth felt like it was on fire.
“Hah! Hah!”
Spicy!
I stuck out my tongue and frantically fanned it with my hand, but the burning sensation only grew worse.
“(Waaah— Misterrr! It’s too spicyyyy!)”
With tears welling up in my eyes, I grabbed the mister’s pant leg and shook it.
“Good grief. I even bought you a sandwich, and you still manage to get yourself into trouble. Well done.”
Unable to watch any longer, the mister filled a cup with water and handed it to me.
I gulped down the water before finally sticking my tongue straight into the cup.
Since he’d already crouched down to give me the water, the mister settled onto the kitchen floor and watched me.
When I started sniffling and struggling from the spiciness, he burst into laughter.
I’m suffering so much, and he’s laughing…!
I huffed angrily through my nose.
“(Dun’ laff!)”
I widened my eyes at him just as he’d done to me earlier, but it was no use.
Resting his arms on his knees and propping his chin on his hand, the mister only laughed harder the more I glared at him.
Huff! Huff!
Heat rushed all the way to the top of my head.
“Hey, squirt. What am I going to do with you? You’re just too ugly.”
“Eee…”
A good child must never be rude to adults.
A good child must never fight with adults, either.
And a good child must know how to forgive someone who says mean things, at least once.
I tried desperately to hold back my anger, breathing heavily through my nose.
The mister chuckled and rubbed my forehead with his hand.
Wondering what he was doing, I stared intently at his hand.
He was wiping away the little beads of sweat that had formed on my forehead from eating the spicy food.
‘Huh?’
He was a little bit like my younger maternal uncle.
Just a little. A teeny, tiny bit.
Whenever I finished running around and playing with my cousins, my younger uncle would always wipe the sweat off my face like this.
As I stared at him with wide eyes, the mister suddenly lifted me up and plopped me into a chair at the dining table.
“Let’s eat.”
The mister immediately started eating, but I’d already eaten egg sandwiches at least five hundred times, so I didn’t want another bite.
Peek. Peek.
I kept sneaking glances at the mister’s spicy chicken.
But that was way too spicy…
“(Misterrr, you know what? I’ll let you have this.)”
Plop.
I placed my sandwich on his plate.
That way, I’d be a good child for sharing, and the mister would get to taste the sandwich, too.
“(I dun’ think I have much of an appetite.)”
“Why? Aren’t you hungry?”
“(Mm. No. Yes.)”
Even after I answered, the mister only tilted his head in confusion, so I nodded.
Only then did he seem to understand.
“If you don’t eat now, there won’t be any food later. Even if you say you’re hungry, I won’t give you anything. So think carefully.”
I shook my head again to show that I didn’t want it.
The mister picked up the sandwich and opened his mouth wide.
And at that very moment—
Grrrrrrumble!
A thunderous noise erupted from my stomach.
Eek!
I hurriedly clutched my belly, but it was already too late.
The mister froze with the sandwich halfway to his mouth before clicking his tongue.
“Look at you being picky. You’re barely out of diapers, and you’re already pulling this nonsense.”
P-picky eating?
But I can’t be a good child if I’m a picky eater…!
My eyes trembled violently.
I had to prove that I was a good child who ate everything except carrots!
But there wasn’t anything on the table that I could eat.
‘At this rate, I’ll end up at the cave orphanage.’
My nose began to sting, and tears gathered at the corners of my eyes.
Scrape.
The mister pushed back his chair and stood up.
Is he going to kick me out because bad children aren’t allowed to eat with him?
Will I be able to live happily in that dark, desolate cave orphanage?
According to my friend Luana from Sunshine Orphanage, other orphanages weren’t nearly as happy as ours.
The tears hanging precariously from my eyes threatened to spill over.
‘Hiiing…’
How could I possibly eat another boring egg sandwich when that delicious-smelling chicken was right in front of me?
The mister returned with a bowl of water and began separating the meat from the chicken bones.
“I’ve got places to be, and here I am waiting on a kid hand and foot. What a life.”
He grumbled about how bothersome it was, but he didn’t seem to hate doing it that much.
Maybe he only hated it a lot?
The mister removed the bones, rinsed the chicken meat in water, and dropped the pieces onto my plate one after another.
Then he spoke in his usual blunt tone.
“Hey, squirt. I’m not your mother. Pick up your fork and eat it yourself.”
I immediately grabbed my fork.
Stab!
I speared a piece of chicken and popped it into my mouth.
Worried that it might still be as spicy as before despite having the sauce washed off, I squeezed my eyes shut and began chewing.
The chicken the mister had given me tasted…
“Gasp!”
I’d prepared myself for my face to explode from the heat, but it wasn’t spicy at all!
There was still a slight tingling sensation, but I could actually taste the chicken now, and it was delicious.
The tears that had been threatening to fall just moments ago completely dried up.
It was so tasty that I flapped my arms and legs excitedly.
The mister let out a disbelieving laugh.
“Is it good?”
“Yeah!”
“Not spicy?”
“(It’s a widdle spicy.)”
“I have no idea what you’re saying. Speak in the Imperial language.”
“(It’s only this teeny bit spicy.)”
I curved my thumb and index finger toward each other.
I narrowed the gap between them until it was barely the width of a strand of hair.
But then my tongue started tingling a little, so I quietly widened the gap.
Even while smoothly cutting the meat away from the bones with his knife, the mister was watching me instead of his plate.
For some reason, his expression looked a little frightening.
Am I not supposed to say it’s spicy?
Worried for no reason, I narrowed the gap between my fingers again.
But then I realized something.
If it was a little spicy, saying it wasn’t spicy at all would be a lie.
And good children shouldn’t lie.
So I widened the gap between my fingers back to where it had been.
Peek.
When I glanced at the mister to check his reaction, our eyes met immediately.
Shake, shake.
The mister shook his head.
I couldn’t tell whether he was annoyed or secretly pleased that I was eating so well.
I wondered whether I should be scared again, but then the mister chuckled.
So I decided there was nothing to worry about.
‘I was a good child just now, so maybe he’ll let me stay here?’
That’s what my friends had said.
Unlike our Sunshine Orphanage, the other facilities outside served terrible food and had scary teachers.
Adults liked good children.
So if I became a good child, maybe I could live here instead of going to another orphanage.
‘Although the mister doesn’t seem to want to raise me.’
Even though I’d become a baby, I could still tell the difference between good adults and bad adults.
The mister washing the chicken for me right now seemed like a good adult who was trying very hard to be bad to me.
After all, if he truly disliked me, there was no way he’d wait until I was full before taking even a single bite of his own food.
‘I think I’m starting to like the mister.’
Just a little.
A very, very little.
About as much as the gap between my fingers right now.
“Haaah!”
The little squirt, who had been eagerly gobbling up the chicken like a baby bird being fed, suddenly began sticking out her tongue and acting as though she were dying.
Apparently, even after washing the chicken thoroughly, there was no getting rid of the sauce that had already soaked into the meat.
When Cassian poured her a glass of milk, she gulped it down with her face flushed bright red.
Since this was supposed to be her last special meal before going to the orphanage, he was being generous for once.
Anyway, whose daughter is she?
Do her parents even know their precious little brat is suffering in someone else’s house?
‘Does she really look like me?’
Cassian carefully examined the little girl’s face.
He had unusually thick, black, slightly wavy hair.
The little squirt had unusually thick, straight black hair.
He had extremely rare golden eyes.
The little squirt also had those rare golden eyes.
However, his niece had yellow eyes as well.
‘Just what part of her looks like me? Do people think anyone with the same coloring must look alike?’
The little squirt had round eyes framed by such thick, dense eyelashes that they cast shadows beneath them.
Cassian, on the other hand, neither had round eyes nor long, abundant eyelashes.
The little squirt had a rounded forehead, while his was flat.
Besides, common sense dictated that someone with a fierce appearance like Cassian could never father such an adorable child.
The little thing was still so young that her facial features were barely developed, yet she was already pretty enough to make countless men cry when she grew up.
There was simply no way a child like that could have come from him.
“Kyaaah!”
The little squirt set down her mug with a bright, innocent smile, completely unaware that she had a white milk mustache above her upper lip.
“You sure drink well.”
What was so wonderful about a little milk that she had to smile like that?
The way she grinned, revealing a faint dimple at one corner of her mouth, made her look just like a baby angel.
‘What the hell?!’
At that very moment, Cassian was so startled by his own thoughts that he slapped himself hard on the forehead.
He must have lost his mind.
How could he possibly find it adorable just watching a little squirt he’d only met a few days ago eat?
This was definitely that thing.
That thing, that…
— St… St… Stock…
After racking his brain for a moment, the word finally came to him a few beats too late.
Stockholm syndrome!
“Hey! You! Squirt! I’m warning you! Cut it out!”
The great Cassian Calypso had nearly fallen victim to that very syndrome where you became inexplicably attached to someone just because you saw their face every day!
