IF Side Story. Cyril (2)

“Ah! What is this!”

After transferring the acorns to a basket, Seraphina went to the bathroom to wash her hands and shouted when she looked in the mirror. It was clear who the shout was directed at.

“Cyril Xavier! Really!”

She approached with an indignant face, huffing.

Cyril, who was leisurely preparing to wash the acorns in the kitchen, raised his head with a composed expression.

Soon a smile spread across his face. The smile of a culprit.

Seraphina exclaimed.

“When did you put this on?”

“What is that?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know!”

In her hand was the flower that Cyril had secretly placed while tidying her hair earlier. The problem was that the wildflower had been pulled out with its roots, accompanied by soil.

Because of this, Seraphina, with dirt on her hair, narrowed her eyes and questioned him.

“Is there anyone else here who could be the culprit besides you, Cyril?”

“It looks pretty, so why did you take it out?”

Now that he was caught, Cyril stopped feigning innocence. Instead, he decided to be brazen. Despite having placed it as a prank, he pretended as if he had given her a splendid gift.

“I chose it carefully. Just like how our dear Sera meticulously picked acorns, I selected a flawless, pretty flower.”

“……”

Though he just said whatever came to mind, Seraphina seemed to believe it as it was. While her innocence was cute, Cyril felt a fingernail’s worth of guilt.

“There’s dirt here.”

While dusting off the soil from her light brown hair, Cyril gave a slight smile.

“Hmm.”

Meanwhile, Seraphina had an expression of being lost in deep thought.

After examining the white flower carefully, she soon approached the table. She filled a small glass jar, previously used for jam, with water and placed the white wildflower in it.

“The jar seems a bit big.”

“Isn’t it fine since the flower floats anyway?”

Seraphina was serious about this trivial matter.

Finding it cute, Cyril nodded roughly in agreement. The flower would wither anyway. He didn’t want to make her worry.

“This is me. This is Sera.”

Instead, Cyril pulled over the large flower that she had picked a week ago to decorate the table.

A large pink flower and a small white wildflower.

Seeing the two flowers side by side, they looked just like the two of them. The big one was Cyril. The small one was Seraphina.

As if agreeing, she grinned.

“They look good together.”

Don’t they?

I think so too.

Cyril responded to her words inwardly as he tied on an apron.

Now it was time to wash the acorns.

* * *

The grinder in question arrived three days later.

During those three days, Seraphina contemplated all sorts of dishes she could make with acorns. She loved food as a child, and that hadn’t changed as she grew up.

“With all this work involved, do you like acorns that much?”

Cyril asked as if he couldn’t understand. But going one step deeper, far from not understanding, he empathized with her almost to the point of seeing through her.

A time when food was scarce.

There was a time when they often survived on thin barley porridge.

Young Seraphina had once collected acorns commonly found on the road and held out her small hand to Cyril, saying she wanted to eat even these.

How could one make hard acorns taste good enough to be talked about?

Back then, Cyril didn’t know how to prepare acorns properly either. So he crudely cracked the hard shells with a stone and put the raw acorn in his mouth.

It tasted awful.

Even young Seraphina, whose eyes had sparkled with anticipation, grimaced terribly.

But now things were different.

The information guild mainly dealt with profitable information, but that didn’t mean they lacked unprofitable knowledge.

Among the world’s vast array of miscellaneous information, there was even trivial knowledge about acorns.

“How did they discover this in foreign countries?”

While meticulously peeling the shells of sun-dried acorns, Cyril expressed genuine curiosity. Sitting across from him at the table, separating kernels from shells, Seraphina tilted her head wonderingly.

“I know. Maybe they had nothing else to eat?”

“I’d rather eat tree bark than go through all this trouble.”

“Maybe someone who really loved acorns discovered it through experimentation. They look cute, after all.”

“Hmm.”

Cyril raised one eyebrow as he crushed an acorn in his hand with a ‘crack.’

“They do look cute. And among them, the prettier ones are destined to be crushed like this.”

“……Pretty ones taste better.”

Seraphina, who had emphasized her diligence in carefully collecting them, mumbled embarrassedly. Even as she spoke, she mercilessly crushed a handsome acorn.

After separating the shells, they needed to grind the kernels. With the grinder that Jacques had gone all the way down the mountain to procure.

It was a task that took all day.

They could have just gone to the market and bought acorn powder, but neither of them suggested it.

Efficiency wasn’t what mattered.

But doing something together.

This time of sitting across from each other was what felt good.

Now that they had a grinder, Cyril could clearly see Seraphina embarking on serious acorn harvesting expeditions in the future, but even that pleased him. Even the acorn dishes they would eat until they were sick of them.

From grinding into powder, kneading it in water multiple times, drying it in the sun until it hardened, then crushing the hardened lumps to obtain true acorn powder—Cyril approached this long process with a joyful heart. He even hummed a tune several times.

Acorn bread, acorn pancakes, acorn soup.

For the next week, Seraphina began adding acorn powder to all sorts of dishes. It tasted incomparably better than when they had eaten them raw as children.

“You’ve got quite the skill!”

Taking a bite of bread, Cyril praised her sincerely.

Seraphina smiled broadly.

“Cooking is fun.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Because I like delicious things.”

Cyril looked at her with a fond smile.

When they were young, her stomach would often growl. Each time, he wanted to give the young Seraphina a little more to eat. She ate so heartily that Cyril learned early on what it meant to feel full just by watching someone else eat.

It was love.

Wanting to give her everything, wanting to sacrifice anything for this child—he couldn’t explain this feeling any other way.

So this is love.

“Tell me if you need anything else.”

When they were young, he lacked the power to provide. But now he could give her anything. He had that ability.

She seemed as happy as if she owned the world just because he got her a grinder.

“Hmm, then could you get me a newspaper?”

“……?”

Cyril, who was just dipping bread in soup, raised puzzled eyes to look at Seraphina. She seemed slightly tense, like she’s making a difficult request.

Newspaper?

Suddenly a newspaper?

Ah…….

Cyril felt his mood suddenly sink into an abyss.

The reason they could stay together in this fairy-tale mountain village was because they had escaped from the three heroes…….

As soon as he realized this forgotten fact, his head spun. Meanwhile, Cyril swallowed dryly as he recalled the existence of newspapers he had been receiving through Jacques.

“……Is that not possible?”

Seraphina asked cautiously.

After looking at her for a moment, Cyril opened his mouth with difficulty. The most recent newspaper, which had arrived with the grinder, reported that all three heroes had gathered in the Grodes Mountains.

The bone dragon subjugation.

It was a critical mission where failure might plunge the entire continent into hellfire.

“Of course it’s possible.”

Barely managing to speak, Cyril brought out the stack of newspapers he had hidden. Seraphina’s eyes shook violently.

This was no time to be peeling acorns.

The reason he had deliberately turned a blind eye despite knowing…….

Was because he knew it was just his imagination.

* * *

Whoosh…….

Cyril exhaled a long stream of smoke and stubbed out the cigar he had burned almost to his fingers.

D*mn it.

I can’t even control my imagination.

His unnecessarily realistic personality had shattered his sweet fantasy.

Cyril, deeply reclined in his chair, moved only his eyes to look at the stack of newspapers on the desk.

The newspaper on top featured prominent news about Prince Erhi. It reported that a grand party had been held at the imperial palace for the prince’s first birthday.

An illustration showed him smiling brightly between his parents, and he appeared to be growing up healthy.

Seraphina looked happy too.

Cyril stared impassively at Seraphina in the picture. Elegant dress. A hand raised as if waving in response to cheers. An appropriately dignified smile.

She seemed somewhat distant from the innocent Seraphina of his imagination.

If…….

If Seraphina had hidden herself in a refuge as he had hoped, what would have happened to this world?

It might have been devastated by the bone dragon.

“Seraphina Xavier.”

Recalling the signpost in front of the fairy-tale house, Cyril softly pronounced her name.

“Seraphina Marseus.”

This time, looking at the newspaper, he placed a different name on his tongue.

After comparing which sounded better, Cyril let out a small laugh.

“D*mn it.”

Neither is good.

But anything becomes familiar with frequent use. In that respect, Marseus could be considered more advantageous.

“Seraphina Marseus……”

It seems to be rolling off the tongue already.

In the midst of a mysterious sensation where his heart felt both painful and warm, Cyril lit another cigar.