HH Chapter 31

[Hint! How about seeking help from those around you?]

At that moment, a notification popped up, informing me that a quest hint had been generated.

‘Has it been that long already?’

Hints. 

A system that randomly offered advice when more than half the time limit for a timed quest had passed.

‘Those around me….’

…Which is just one person right now. 

I looked up at Lena. When our eyes met, he didn’t avoid my gaze and just stared down at me. A brief silence fell between us.

“What is it now?”

Lena furrowed his brows, unable to stand the silence. I realized that this man lacked patience. He couldn’t tolerate even a moment of silence and became irritated if the conversation didn’t continue.

“What are you doing here, Lena?”

The nights in this mansion were barely enough for me to gather clues freely. But spending more than half of that time avoiding and being conscious of this man didn’t seem right.

Besides, even if he didn’t trust me, ghosts also had a limited time when they could be active. Wasn’t it too inefficient for Lena to follow me around all this time?

I wanted to know why he was doing this.

Lena was silent for a moment. He seemed to think about my question, then answered simply,

“You are my objective.”

At the completely unexpected answer, I pointed at myself and asked,

“……Me?”

Why?

“I’m curious about you, in many ways.”

“…….”

“I won’t kill you until my curiosity is satisfied. I’ll play along with your petty tricks and lies as much as you want.”

Lena, his eyes narrowed, asked,

“What book are you looking for?”

‘What’s this?’

Is he offering to help me? I guessed the role assigned to him.

‘A helper?!’

[Main Story Progress: 5%]

At the same time, the system seemed to agree with my inner thoughts, stamping its seal of approval. Even with this confirmation, I was still dumbfounded.

‘A ghost…as a helper?’

I finally understood why the defensive scroll didn’t work. It was because he didn’t harbor any hostility towards me.

This world revolved around me, the player. It might sound selfish, but it was true. As a result, I tended to categorize people as either friendly or hostile towards me.

Ghosts are obstacles and antagonists to the player. But now….

“You’re not trembling now.”

“I’m not as scared anymore.”

“Now?”

Why is someone I’d classified as hostile suddenly being friendly towards me? 

Why did the system give him a name?

Lost in unanswered questions, I held Lena’s gaze for a while. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a mind reader. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking just by looking at his eyes, but one thing was certain.

For the first time, his intense gaze didn’t feel overwhelming.

5. Growth

As a side effect of recategorizing him, Lena seemed a bit more approachable now. The moment I started thinking of him as an ally, my tension melted away, and I even started feeling an inexplicable sense of familiarity towards him.

It seemed to be the same for him, as he even took a thirty-minute nap on the desk yesterday.

‘Wow, he sleeps?’

Just the other day, he’d been constantly eating, and now he’s casually taking naps in front of me…. I was dumbfounded by his un-ghostly behavior.

“By publication date?”

Then I realized that the books in this library actually had some sort of organization.

The one who told me this reached out his hand, looking at the same shelf as me. He pulled out a book within reach.

“They’re sometimes mixed up, but it’s mostly correct. So you don’t even know the publication date of the book you’re looking for?”

“No, unfortunately.”

I couldn’t focus on the conversation. I’d glimpsed the book he was reading; it didn’t have a title on its side, and the contents seemed… obscene.

‘This pervert….’

Why is he reading porn in front of me? 

As a sophisticated individual, I felt embarrassed on behalf of the shameless man and looked away, pretending I hadn’t seen anything. Lena was probably a helper character who assisted me in gathering clues. But the real problem was something else.

‘Even if he helps me… I don’t even know what book I’m supposed to find.’

The quest only told me to find a defensive magic book, without providing any other information.

So, the title, publication date, content, even the author…. I knew absolutely nothing!

When I confessed this to Lena, he looked at me incredulously and declared,

“Are you stupid?”

What made it worse was that I couldn’t even deny it. Being unable to understand even when he’s offering to help.

Yes, I’m stupid….

I sighed, muttering self-deprecatingly.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

The guest’s daily routine had become quite regular.

7 AM: When morning came, Chahyun would knock on Haylan’s door. The two of them would descend the stairs together and have breakfast in the dining room.

8:30 AM: After a short walk, the pair returned and holed up in the library, each reading books or studying.

And at 6 PM, a simple dinner.

When the sun began to set, everyone would retire to their rooms, and the day’s routine came to an end.

It was an utterly ordinary routine, but even that was a significant change for this mansion. Because Haylan was now part of Chahyun’s daily schedule. Their young master was the type of person far removed from anything resembling rules.

“Did the Young Master eat something wrong? Didn’t he dislike the guest?”

“The Head Butler is strange too. Why is he telling us to be nice to the guest?”

The servants were still adjusting to the change and were just cautiously observing the situation. They couldn’t understand why the young master was going along with everything Chahyun suggested. It was a phenomenon that couldn’t be explained unless he had been brainwashed.

They were still uncomfortable with Chahyun’s constant cheerfulness. It wasn’t normal for someone to smile all day, yet this man maintained that ake expression from morning to night. He definitely had an ulterior motive.

“And the Young Master… even if it’s the Miss’s last wish, how can someone change so drastically overnight?”

“Sister, I think the guest did something to the Young Master.”

With suspicious eyes fixed on Chahyun, they were ready to separate him from the young master the moment they received the order.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

My daily routine these days was very simple. When the sun was up, I’d hang out with Haylan or read books with him, and when everyone else was asleep, I’d rummage the library.

“You still haven’t memorized it all?”

“I have.”

I realized that I’d severely underestimated this little guy. Haylan bombarded my brain with an enormous amount of theory every day, and I had to memorize it all.

But since the amount being crammed in far exceeded what I could comprehend, I got almost half of Haylan’s questions wrong.

Haylan tapped on the desk and said,

“It’s strange. You’re better than me at constructing magic circles, so how is it that you keep messing up because you can’t properly memorize a single attribute formula?”

“…….”

“What are you staring at? Also memorize the ones you got wrong.”

Haylan looked away from my worksheet without a second thought and munched on the cookies I’d given him.

The reason he didn’t lower my affection points despite looking at me as if I was a complete idiot was because of those cookies. And I realized this morning that I was running out of cookies, after only a week.

‘Oh my, are you giving these to me?’

‘This… for me?’

‘…Thank you for the food.’

‘Yur said she received a gift from the guest yesterday; so it turns out it was this. I will gratefully accept it.’

The affection system only applied to Haylan, but I was friendly towards the servants I saw often, and thanks to that, the ‘Poisoned Tea’ bad ending had disappeared. Yay!

And I’d also become close enough with some of them to call each other by name.

The servant who always brought me breakfast was named ‘Yur’ and was twenty-eight years old. Seeing her tie her hair with a red ribbon every day and paint her nails red, it seemed she liked the color red.

The person who cleans the ashes from the fireplace was Mr. Hengel, who had a three-year-old daughter. He’d even promised to show me a picture of her later.

The skilled chef’s name was Heinz, and the person I often ran into, though I didn’t know what he does, was Mr. Luke.

And the head butler’s name was Joe. When I told him that there was someone with the same name in my mercenary group, he chuckled softly, lamenting the woes of having a common name. He also gave me permission to write about him in my letters.

After bribing everyone I became close with a bag of ginger cookies, they also started calling me by my name instead of “guest”! But because of this positive change,

‘Did I give away too much?’

Because I’d been tossing gifts around so freely, the snack bag I’d brought was already empty. I had to hold back for a while…

‘No, there’s nothing to hold back. I don’t even have any cookies left…”