The Silver Oven, Kouga’s current lodgings, was an inn-cum-restaurant that you could find anywhere. It was an old establishment, but it was well-kept and the food wasn’t bad. While it was of a lower class compared to the Stardrop Inn, Noel’s current lodgings, the lodging costs were lower because of that, so he had no complaints.
In addition, not just the lodging costs, the prices of their food was also easy on the wallet. Despite that, the portions were big and it tasted good, so it was bustling with many regulars when lunchtime came.
The store was extremely busy today as well.
「Kouga, please serve this dish to the customer!」
「Understood, right away!」
Ursula, the proprietress of the inn, instructed Kouga, who was wearing an apron, to carry the dish that she had just cooked to the customer. Ursula, who was both the owner and cook of the Silver Oven, was a portly middle-aged woman. Standing in the kitchen, she wielded her iron pans with her thick arms, and kept on cooking new dishes without pause.
After Kouga had carried the dish to the customer, Ursula's loud voice, which carried well, rang out.
「Kouga, serve this dish too!」
「O, okay! Understood!」
Dishes were being cooked one after another. Kouga had to serve the freshly-cooked food right away, but that was not all he had to do.
「Bro, take my order. Ummm, first, ale--」
「Hey, check please」
「Hang on, how long are you going to make me wait outside? Hurry up and seat me already!」
「I, I’m coming right away, so please wait!」
He had to take orders, settle the check after the customers had finished their meals, and had to clear the tables. In order to do everything well, he had to constantly use his head while he moved about.
It had been almost a month since Kouga started working at his lodgings in the spare time from his main profession as a Seeker. He had gotten used to this job for the most part, but he still felt like his head was spinning when things got busy. This job might be more difficult than his work as a Seeker.
But working like this as a waiter was fun. It didn’t mean that he hated his work as a Seeker, but for Kouga, who had lived his entire life with a blade beside him, working a job without bloodshed was a fresh experience.
A notepad and pen that took orders instead of a blade, an apron instead of armor. Just being here in this outfit made him feel as if he had been reborn as another person.
「Bro, you’re getting the hang of this, aren’t you?」
A middle-aged regular laughed with a mug of ale in his hand.
「Look at you! You couldn’t even take an order properly in the beginning」
「Is that so? Thank you so much」
It didn’t feel bad to get praised. Kouga smiled, feeling happy. But if Noel heard about this, he would probably blow his top.
「A Seeker shouldn’t be feeling happy about getting praised as a waiter!!! You big idiot!!!」
--He could clearly see himself being yelled at like that.
Noel was scary when he got angry. Despite having cute girl-like features, he would yell at you like a Yakuza in an intimidating voice. Even Kouga, who was accustomed to those kinds of people, would lose control of his bladder if he was careless.
Like when Noel was directing their performance for the subjugation of Garm, his heart felt like it had almost broke under that storm of harsh criticisms. Even Leon, their elder, had hid himself and wept, so Noel’s scariness was the real deal. It was so scary that, just by remembering it, Kouga went pale and his body started trembling.
「……Excuse me, you’re in the way」
「Uwaa, I, I’m sorry!」
Kouga, who had stopped his feet, jumped back at that cold, mechanical-sounding voice. A young girl wearing a waitress outfit--his colleague, Nina, quietly passed through where he had been standing.
Nina was Ursula's daughter. However, they didn’t look alike. In contrast to Ursula, who was large both vertically and horizontally, Nina was petite and slender. Her features were delicate and elegant. She had big almond-shaped eyes, and her white, clear skin lend more charm to her red lips. Her white hair, that stretched to her waist, was tied up with a ribbon, so as to not hinder her work. It swayed like a tail each time Nina moved.
She was a very beautiful and cool girl. However, she was the type to not show much emotions on her face, and wouldn’t smile even when dealing with customers. According to what Ursula said, she seemed to have given up because Nina wouldn’t change even after scolding her. Nina had argued that good service wasn’t their selling point, so there was probably no need to fixate on the quality of their customer service.
But her work itself was quick and accurate. She calculated the change much faster than Kouga, and Nina was also in charge of the store's accounts.
For that reason, Kouga felt that it was a little bit of a waste. She was pretty and she could work well, so it was probably possible for her to flourish in a wider world. However, that wasn’t something that a complete stranger like Kouga should stick his nose into.
As he desperately worked, the peak of the lunchtime rush passed. The number of customers in the store dwindled, and it seemed almost unreal how hectic they had been. They were open for lunch till 2 pm, which meant that his shift was not yet over, but it would be a piece of cake from now on.
「Hey! Don't you have anything to say!?」
Unexpectedly, he heard a threatening voice. When he turned to see what was going on, he found Nina mixed up with a pair of hoodlums.
「There’s a cockroach in this dish, you know!? Isn’t apologizing the reasonable thing to do!? And yet, why aren’t you saying anything!?」
With an annoyed expression, Nina spoke to the enraged man.
「Then let me tell you that in our store, we check the dishes painstakingly before we serve them to our customers. Therefore, it’s impossible for there to be cockroaches in them」
「What did you say!? Are you saying that we’re lying!?」
「Yes, that's right」
「I'll kill you!」
At the same time the man stood up in indignation, Kouga cut in between them.
「Wh, what do you want!?」
「I’m also an employee of this store. ……I overheard what you said, but it seems like there was a cockroach in the dish you ordered, right?」
「Th, that's right! And yet, this woman called us liars! How are you going to take responsibility for that!? It's too late even if you apologize now!」
「Compensation! Pay us compensation!」
His companion joined in and shouted.
Kouga looked at the dish that they said had a cockroach in it. Sure enough, there was a black bug in it. But, as Nina had said, the Silver Oven would never neglect to check the dishes, no matter how busy they were, in order to prevent the food from being contaminated.
Of course, that didn’t mean that they would definitely not make any mistakes. But these guys were clearly lying. Judging from their dishonest-looking appearance, and the way they threatened with the aim of getting money from the beginning, there was no doubt that these men were from a non-Yakuza criminal gang, and blackmailed others for a living. They had probably prepared the cockroach, and put it in the food themselves.
The area that the Silver Oven was located in wasn’t one with good public safety, so ill-natured hoodlums like these came in from time to time. The gutsy Ursula was undaunted, but such customers were definitely troublesome. All of her previous employees had apparently quit because of this kind of customer. So Ursula went to Kouga with a request.
I want you to be the bouncer for the Silver Oven, she said
「Dear customers, was the cockroach really inside the dish from the beginning?」
「Like I said, it--」
「Was, the cockroach, really, inside the dish, from the beginning?」
Kouga interrupted the man and asked the same question again. Then, he glared at the man. Overwhelmed by Kouga's spirit, the man fell back in his chair.
「Dear customers, we’re in the service industry, so we want to take good care of our customers. But if you want to take advantage of that and deceive us, there’s no way I can forgive you for that」
「A, are you threatening us?」
The man said with a trembling voice. Despite the fact that they were the ones who had threatened others first, they played the victims once things became inconvenient. They were the type that Kouga hated the most.
「If you guys think that your intimidation will work all the time, you’re greatly mistaken」
「H, hiii!」
When he added a small amount of killing intent into his intimidation, it was enough to make the two men start trembling pitifully. Then, their gaze fell on the brooch pinned to Kouga's chest.
「Th, that brooch…… Are you a member of『Snake』?」
Snake--in other words, Wild Tempest, which was the clan Kouga was in. Clan names often got aliases on the streets, and, in the case of Wild Tempest, their emblem, the『Snake』, had become their street name.
「Certainly, I'm a member of Wild Tempest, but……」
When Kouga admitted it, the men turned pale and their teeth started chattering.
「W, w, we’re so sorry! We didn't know that you were a member of Snake! S, so, forgive us! We’ll never come near this store again!」
「P, p, please! Please don’t kill us! We’ll not only pay for the dish, we’ll pay compensation too! H, here, here’s all the money we have!」
The two hoodlums removed their purses from their pockets and placed them on the table.
「Kill…… I didn’t mean…..not to that extent……」
He wasn’t going to let them off the hook easily if they were unreasonable, but he wasn’t going to go so far as to kill them. The difference in strength between Kouga and men was obvious. He could deal with them without needing to break a sweat.
「Th, then, are you going to cut off our noses as an example to others!? I’ve heard that members of Snake go around cutting off the noses of people they don’t like!」
「N, no, that’s……」
He was about to deny it, but he couldn't. Fresh in Kouga's mind was the scene where Noel, his clan master, had done just that with a big smile all over his face.
「W, well, that did indeed happen, but--」
「It’s true after all!?」
「Cer, certainly, it's true, but I didn’t say--」
「UWAAAAAA!!! PLEASE FORGIVE USSSsssss~~!!!」
The moment Kouga tried to explain himself, the men screamed and fell off their chairs. And perhaps they had gone weak in their knees and couldn’t stand up properly, but they scrambled away and escaped on all fours. Kouga was stunned by the abject terror that they showed.
「Why am I being treated like a monster because of Noel……」
Kouga sighed deeply, then turned back to Nina.
「Are you okay?」
「Yes」
Kouga scratched his head as Nina nodded without expression.
「Young lady, I can understand getting angry because they picked a fight with you, but you should choose your words a little better. If I weren't here, they might have gotten violent」
「Because Kouga is here, I determined that there would be no problem」
At her immediate answer, Kouga frowned.
「That’s not what I’m talking about……」
「Thank you very much for your help. I'll get back to work」
Nina bowed courteously, then left. Unable to stop her, Kouga sighed yet again.
「What a difficult girl……」
「She’s a cute girl, isn’t she?」
「Uwaa!?」
Kouga was got a shock when he suddenly heard a voice. Seated on a nearby chair was Alma, who was also a member of Wild Tempest. Alma, who had erased her presence completely and appeared without a sign, had a nasty smile on her face.
「Wh, what are you doing here?」
「I came here to eat lunch, of course」
「……Did you really come to just to eat lunch?」
「Sorry, that’s a lie. I only came because I was free and wanted to dig up dirt on Kouga」
「You’ve got a really bad personality!」
Alma and Kouga were allies, but their relationship wasn’t that good. It seemed like the fact that Alma and Kouga had been unable to settle their fight had left some ill feelings. Because of that, she would say mean-spirited things to Kouga and spite him at every turn, so he was really fed up with it.
「I was right to come. To think that the reason you said you wanted a side job was because you had set your sights on a girl. I’ll tell on you to Noel」
「Don’t come up with arbitrary delusions! That girl is just a colleague!」
Kouga hurriedly denied it, but the nasty smile remained on Alma’s face.
「Hmmm~. So you have a perfectly clear conscience?」
「Of course. Don't lump me in with a perverted woman like you」
「Swear to Noel?」
「O, of, of course……」
He proclaimed his innocence once more, but his voice unknowingly shook.
Noel was scary when he got angry. Even though Kouga didn’t have a guilty conscience, just by bringing up that name, he immediately felt uneasy. He was a trustworthy clan master, but precisely because Kouga knew how relentless his personality was, Noel was definitely the last person he would want to see him when he was being frivolous.
「You took a side job because you set your sights on a woman!? You big idiot!!! Spineless guys like you should all be castrated right away!!!」
--He could clearly see himself being yelled at like that.
「Kouga, you’re as white as a sheet, you know?」
「I, it, it, it’s just your imagination……」
Kouga, who had imagined the worst possible scenario, couldn’t stop his cold sweat from pouring out. Seeing Kouga in that state, Alma hugged her belly and laughed.
「Ahahaha, no matter how you look at it, you’re far too scared」
「It’s nothing to joke about…… You should know how scary Noel is……」
「Noel is certainly scary, but he’s kind at heart. Even if he finds out that Kouga has a girl he likes, he won’t get angry just for that. Probably」
「But I’ve already said that my conscience is clear……」
「Yes yes, okay, I got it」
「I get the feeling that you don’t get it at all……」
Certainly, Nina was a beautiful girl, but that didn’t mean that he had romantic feelings for her just because of that. Kouga also had his own preferences, and above all, he had a duty that was more important than love right now. So long as he had pledged to live for the sake of the man that he had fallen for, he didn’t have the time to become infatuated with women.
「In the first place, is it alright for you to be messing around? You're Noel's partner for the fund-raising party that he's throwing, aren't you?」
「Regrettably, I'm not a dummy like Kouga and Leon. I learned everything I that needed immediately after being taught. Capability-wise, this part is different」
Kouga scowled at Alma, who was pointing at her head smugly.
However, it was true that Alma's memory was very good. Not only that, she was very good at acting. Even during that time when Noel was directing them, she was the only person who didn't get yelled at. She had quickly finished the preparations for her role, then roared with laughter as she watched Kouga and Leon get yelled at.
「But it's also tough being so talented. If only I was an idiot like Kouga, then I would have been able to get verbally abused while being taught by a younger pretty boy」
Alma said some profoundly unfortunate things.
「To be liked by a perverted and idiotic woman like you, Noel is so pitiful......」
From the bottom of his heart, Kouga pitied Noel. Noel would probably also fall in love with someone, but at least there was no way it was going to be Alma.
Haha, looks like Kouga is not shipping Noel x Alma. But, what exactly is Kouga’s preference……
Not much happening this chapter, just a peek into the life of Kouga and the reputation of Snakes. One more chapter to go before the start of said party. Who are we catching up with next time? Noel is in it this time, so stay tuned!
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