Chapter 8
She was far from trustworthy, but Max followed her into the house for the moment. The entrance was so low that he had to bend deeply at the waist to pass through the doorway.
“N-Now, now, this is a shabby house, but please make yourself…! P-Please sit h-here!”
The witch, who had turned into a terrible stutterer, was clearly not normal. For some unknown reason, she was extremely worked up and restlessly rummaged through the kitchen, insisting that she had to serve her guest. It was enough to make even the person watching her feel anxious.
Because of that, Max could not sit comfortably in the crude dining chair she had offered him and had to keep a close eye on her. She wasn’t going to suddenly pop like a balloon, was she?
He was focusing all his attention on the small woman when it happened.
The woman, who wore a gray shawl of a design that seemed to have gone out of fashion ages ago, suddenly stomped her feet in a panic. Max sprang to his feet.
“I-I need to serve you tea. But I’ve run out of firewood for the stove…!”
“Hey, calm down. I saw a pile of firewood in the yard. I’ll go split some.”
“Whaat? You’re going to help me with those delicate arms? Absolutely not!”
“De…licate?”
“Stay here. I’ll be right back!”
What did this woman just call me?
Did she mean sturdy and say the wrong word?
Max stood frozen at the expression he had never once heard directed at him in his life. At that moment, her voluminous hair swept past him like the wind.
Max reflexively followed the trail of hair that looked as though strands of silver and gold thread had been mixed through it, and he ended up following her back outside. As soon as he did, he witnessed an unbelievable sight. His mouth fell open before he realized it.
When he saw the pile of logs, he had assumed she employed a laborer to handle the chores.
He had been completely mistaken. The witch herself darted toward the woodpile and effortlessly hoisted a piece of timber as large as her own body onto her shoulder. Then she trotted lightly across the yard. After dropping the log onto the chopping block with ease, she immediately raised the axe, and its blade flashed. A series of crisp splitting sounds followed, and in an instant, a large mound of firewood had piled up.
What did I just see…?
Are all witches like that? She certainly knows how to use her strength. She certainly could be enlisted in the army right now, couldn’t she…? Whenever Max saw someone talented, his first thought was how to turn them into a soldier. In his mind, the prejudice that people who practiced mysterious arts were invariably frail shattered in an instant.
“U-Um. Is black tea alright? That’s the only kind of tea leaves I have.”
A short while later, the witch, who looked capable of winning a wood-splitting competition, returned just as quickly as she had promised. She hurriedly placed a kettle over the stove, then asked without being able to meet Max’s eyes.
He had assumed a witch would drink some bizarre tea brewed from salamander tails, but that had also been a prejudice. Max nodded, and the witch asked again.
“Would you like caramel in it…?”
“I’ll pass.”
“Oh. Y-Yes.”
But it’s good…
After muttering quietly, the witch carried over a chipped teacup and sat awkwardly on the opposite side of the table. With trembling hands, she pushed the translucent black tea toward her guest.
Then she lowered her head deeply.
Her face disappeared again, leaving only the tousled crown of her head visible.
An awkward silence hovered between them. Unlike himself, Maximilian felt a duty to break the uncomfortable silence. Normally, one of his subordinates would handle this kind of role, but unfortunately, there was no bastard here today to do the talking for him.
Max was honestly astonished. He had never met anyone with even worse conversational skills or social instincts than himself (although his own case was slightly different, since he was arrogant by choice).
In the end, he spoke first.
“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Maximilian Romundale.”
“Y-Yes…”
Then silence fell again.
Did this witch not even understand the concept of exchanging introductions? When Max frowned, the woman, who had been stealing glances at him, seemed to realize her mistake and hurriedly stammered.
“I-I’m Elizia. You can call me Lizzy. Or ‘hey,’ ‘you there,’ ‘you,’ anything you want is all fine…!”
Could a person’s face really turn this red?
Did she suffer from severe facial flushing? As Max tilted his head to the side, the woman who had barely managed to reveal her name shrank back again. Like someone emotionally unstable, she tapped her fingers together and even bounced her knees.
Where had she sold off her customer service skills? At the very least, shouldn’t she ask why he had come or what kind of commission he wanted to make? She truly was a baffling woman.
In any case, control of the conversation returned to Max against his will.
At that, he impulsively found himself wanting to ask.
Why were you crying?
But it was an unnecessary question. He was not normally this interested in another person’s private affairs. Yet strangely, from the moment he first met this woman, his composure had somehow been disturbed. That was not good. The man’s patience, already strained by his compulsive need for control, wore thin as irritation pricked at him.
Max cut the preliminaries and brought up the main subject.
“Do you know who I am?”
Nod.
“Y-You’re the W-Warden Duke…”
The witch looked particularly and suspiciously shy as she answered.
“Then you must have heard the rumors about my curse too, right?”
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