Conquering the Academy with Just a Sashimi Knife (Novel) - Chapter 117 - Awkward Relationship (2)

Chapter 117 – Awkward Relationship (2)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Abel recalled a fragment of memory. A past from when her parents were still alive. The pungent smell of cheese lent a sense of immediacy to the recollection.

-Hmph- I know how to use a knife now too! I’ll cut my own food and eat it myself.

At Abel’s grumbling, her father smiled gently. With an endlessly warm smile, he said.

‘Hahaha. Our Abel is all grown up already. But even so, not yet. Originally, the people of House Nibelung do not hold blades before the age of seven.’

-Eh, but Grandfather said that Dad was holding a sword from the time he was old enough to choose one at his first-birthday ceremony?

‘Father, really……’

-He also said this. `Your father is a talent who will leave his name in Nibelung history, Abel.`

At Abel’s imitation of the Sword Emperor’s voice, her parents chuckled softly. A proud smile spread across her tiny lips.

Her father had been a prodigy. He had shown outstanding talent with the sword before he had even learned to walk.

His talent had been so great that it was enough to earn its own page in the lineage of House Nibelung. Even so, he had been a man far removed from arrogance. He had been born humble in character.

‘Ahem. It seems Grandfather remembered that wrong. Ah, anyway, Abel, would you put down the knife and hand me your plate? Daddy will cut it into pieces that are easy to eat.’

-But I was all grown up now……. Dad was always treating me like a little kid!

Even while sticking out her lips in protest, Abel pushed over her plate. That gentle smile of his was unfair.

Her father smiled warmly and cut the meat into sizes that were easy for a little child to eat.

As Abel continued to whine, her mother whispered quietly to her.

‘Did you know that, Abel? Entrusting food like this to someone else is a way of expressing that you trust them that much and like them. Daddy’s acting like this because he wanted to receive Abel’s love.’

-Eh, why?

‘Because eating is the most important thing in life. So you can only entrust it to someone you truly trust.’

-Ah……!

The innocent Abel accepted it immediately.

‘When you become a lady too, Abel, you’ll understand what that means. So just this once today, let Daddy win.’

Her mother winked one eye and laid a finger against her lips. Abel nodded and copied the same gesture.

‘Asking someone to do something like this means that person is……’

Now that she was seventeen, she knew it had simply been concern that their daughter might hurt herself.

But now, the parents who had given her those warm words were no longer by her side.

* * *

“……?”

Moisture shimmered in Abel’s eyes.

All I had done was ask her to cut the meat for me, and this was the reaction.

‘…Was that really such a shock?’

I had only asked in order to avoid triggering the manifestation of the Blessing of the Sword God, but Abel looked like she was right on the verge of tears. I had no way of knowing what the trigger had been.

It was terribly awkward.

Just as I was about to slowly pull back the plate I had held out.

Grab.

After my wrist, this time Abel grabbed my hand as well. While rubbing at the corners of her reddened eyes, she said.

“Sorry. That just made me think of the past for a second.”

“……”

“I’ll cut it for you. Just wait a second.”

Abel started cutting it with utmost sincerity. At her sudden change in behavior, my expression turned dubious.

Even when I reached out to say it was fine, Abel slapped my hand away with the fork. She looked ready to cut through the plate itself if necessary.

“Here, eat. I cut it into bite-sized pieces for you.”

“……”

I alternated my gaze between the neatly cut food and Abel’s face. When our eyes met, she averted her gaze and resumed eating.

Munch, munch. Abel moved only her lips in silence. A flush still remained at the tip of her nose and around her eyes.

Within the awkward silence, the meal was roughly coming to an end. I had intended to use this moment to suggest that Abel join my party, but……

With the mood like this, there was no way I could bring that up. It was almost a miracle I hadn’t choked on anything yet.

“…Why aren’t you asking?”

The one who opened her mouth first was Abel. She kept her eyes on the food as she moved only her fork and knife. There was still moisture mixed into her voice.

“You must be curious. About why I cried.”

To be honest, I was curious. Abel had suddenly burst into tears. At first, I had been startled. But instinctively, I understood.

There was clearly a story bound up in those tears. Which was exactly why I asked nothing.

The emotions gathered at the corners of her eyes. Longing and loss.

After twenty years of living by the knife, I had eaten a proportional amount of reading-the-room meals too.

Just from a person’s eyes, I could vaguely infer their emotions.

Without the slightest change in expression, I speared a piece of meat with my fork. At my nonreaction, Abel’s brows curved.

“Geom-ma, do you really have no interest in other people at all? Even if your way of thinking is different from an ordinary person like me, still.”

Too faint to be called a reproach, too serious to be called a scolding.

The rims of Abel’s eyes reddened even more. In a voice on the verge of tears, she pressed on.

“You get along with everyone else so well… so why are you always like this only when you’re with me? And while we’re at it, you hid the fact that you were the top student when I first met you, didn’t you? Right in front of me while I was openly complaining.”

“……”

“Back then, I thought there had to be some reason you weren’t saying anything. But the more I look, the more I realize I was wrong. Back then, you were just annoyed, weren’t you?”

“……”

“Do you think everyone is some kind of genius like you? No, not at all. People like me, ordinary people, live by leaning on one another emotionally and sympathizing with one another.”

I put a neatly cut piece of meat into my mouth. I chewed in silence.

Abel, having poured out a round of words. She took several broken breaths. Then, as if entering a lull, she covered her face with both hands.

Silence fell once more. I swallowed the meat and washed down my mouth with water. Then I spoke in a cool voice.

“Stop with the self-indulgent whining already.”

“…What?”

Abel’s eyes widened round. The only emotion left on her face now was bewilderment.

Right now, Abel was being dragged around by emotions that had been triggered. Of course, I could have simply sat there and listened quietly. Whatever she said, I could have handled it and soothed her in some vague way.

But that would not be the right way to deal with things for Abel’s sake. Even if you called it meddling, I’d had no comeback. I know perfectly well it was not really my place to interfere.

‘But.’

I set down my fork. Then, folding my arms, I continued.

“Abel, it’s fine if you want to say whatever you want to me, but what you just said came entirely from your own inferiority complex, didn’t it?”

“……!”

Abel’s shoulders trembled finely. I had deliberately struck the exact sore spot. Without stopping, I drove the words in like nails.

“And you keep saying I’m different, different, but those remarks are words that fundamentally look down on me. Tell me, are you saying those things while knowing what kind of effort I’ve made and what sort of life I’ve lived?”

“Th-that’s……”

Abel’s lips moved. I immediately cut off any chance she had to object.

“And Abel, right now you’re also belittling your own effort. By putting the label of “talent” on me.”

“……”

The people around me call me a genius at knife work.

In my previous life, I had reached the top of the industry in only five years, so it was natural enough for those words to come out.

But they didn’t know the details beneath that. They ignore the hardship of the process and look only at the result.

I held the hilt until blood crusted over my hands. Looking at filleted fish bones, I replayed knife motions in my head and practiced them.

The yearning to reach the summit. That was the driving force that had allowed me to become the best blade-hand in the country.

The same was true now.

The Blessing of the Sword God. While it was manifested, it was without question a powerful force with few rivals. A blessing that let me cut down enemies others could not even face.

Behind that, however, followed an enormous risk that gnawed away at both body and mind.

If I exceeded the time limit of the Blessing of Painlessness, I’d end up in the hospital.

If the Synchronization Rate rose, my humanity would begin to dry up.

Others call it talent, but to me it was a transactional blessing.

It was a heaven-defying power that demanded payment from my physical endurance and mental strength.

That was why I trained my body and built up my own strength.

And the reason I was trying so desperately to acquire those damned mana stones also came down to only one thing in the end.

‘Surviving.’

At first, I had not felt even a fingernail’s worth of urgency. But in the end, I overturned that careless mindset.

I quit the game halfway through, so I only know the story up to the middle-late section. The road ahead was fog.

And the proper storyline had become tangled. Everything was an unknown.

There was a high probability it was because I, who should never have been anything more than Background Character A, had taken root in Kang Geom-ma’s body.

That did not mean I could deny myself, though.

I had to prepare constantly, block off variables, and brace for the unknowable future.

That was why your words about me being a genius or whatever were words that erase all the effort I’ve put in up until now.

And more than that, you’re a child of one of the most prestigious houses, while I’m just a special advancement student, weren’t I? Whatever it was you meant to say, from my point of view, it was nothing but hypocrisy.

And so I spoke to her coldly.

“I’m sorry……”

The effect was clearly strong, because Abel apologized in a damp voice.

I let out a deep sigh. It felt like I had just given her a lecture.

“Forget it, let’s just eat.”

“…Mm.”

The answer came back small. For some reason, the release of tension drew out a faint laugh from me. At that, Abel flinched and looked my way.

Abel, who in Miracle’s Blessing M had been called the Ice Empress.

Maybe it was because of that contrast. This kind of human side of her felt rather cute.

But even more than that, the flow of this conversation was absurd.

To think that a request I only made in order to avoid manifesting the Blessing of the Sword God would end up leading this far. Even I felt quite embarrassed.

‘Has becoming this body also turned my head into that of a teenager……’

Clink, clink. Only the sound of dishes and cutlery meeting one another echoed quietly.

We were already in the middle of an overly rich dinner.

With this awkward silence poured over it too, I desperately craved something sharp and spicy. The cup ramen sleeping snugly in my suitcase danced before my eyes.

As my stray thoughts started heading in a strange direction, I suddenly snapped back to my senses.

More importantly, the whole point of this dinner had been overturned.

Far from even asking Abel whether she’d join me, it felt as though I had only made our relationship worse.

At that moment, Abel suddenly murmured as though speaking to herself.

“…My parents disappeared after going into a dungeon. Today is exactly ten years since the day the two of them vanished.”

The heavy topic, emerging without warning, startled me a little, but I listened in silence.

“You know, I’ve been waiting for this vacation alone. Because the minimum entry requirement for that dungeon is being a cadet of the academy.”

Abel took a sip of water to moisten her lips. Then she carefully opened her mouth.

“…So this vacation means a lot to me. And naturally, the pressure is heavy too.”

“It sounds like a very dangerous dungeon.”

At my question, Abel slowly shook her head.

“The dungeon itself isn’t especially high in difficulty. Honestly, it’s so low that even now I can’t understand how my parents disappeared there. It’s a very low-ranked dungeon.”

“……”

Just sitting there listening to her story, I felt a strange sense of common ground.

Hadn’t it been the same for me too, with the parents in this world suddenly vanishing one day? On that point, there was something Abel and I could understand in each other.

Besides, it also felt like I had gone a little too far in tearing into her just a moment ago.

So the train of thought that briefly continued inside my head soon became words.

“Let’s go together.”

“!”

“I was planning to spend this vacation going around dungeons anyway, so this works out well.”

Abel’s eyes widened round.

Her golden irises flashed vividly, and then tears welled up again.

“B-but… it has nothing to do with you at all. I can’t drag someone else into this trouble.”

“I’m already indebted to your family just by staying at your house during break. Might as well think of this as paying some of it back.”

To be honest, I said it that way, but that emotional response had only flashed through me for a very brief moment.

In the end, my judgment had come after all, after several rounds of strict calculation.

`The rank of mind` only forces complete rationality onto me.

‘If I help Abel, what I stand to gain will be overwhelming.’

That ice-cold reason told me so. At the same time, I was steeped in disappointment in myself. It felt utterly disgusting.

As though the place where emotion had just been was now completely empty.

Only a machine-like coldness remained inside me.

Of course, the fact that Abel’s feelings struck me as endearing also played some part. But only to a very faint degree.

‘If the Synchronization Rate rises, then the rank of humanity falls.’

What would I become at the end of that road? It sent a chill through me.

I briskly shook my head and asked for the dungeon’s location.

“Where are we going?”

Abel slowly raised her head and looked at me. The traces of sniffling she had shown just moments before had been wiped away.

“The Undead Dungeon.”

“……!”

Those words nearly made me choke.