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Chapter 07
Rihart tilted his head as he looked at her.
“Lise?”
“Yeah, Rihart. I get it, something like that.”
Alina cleared her throat and gave him a smile.
Even the way Rihart looked at her nervously seemed pitiful.
“From now on, I’ll take care of you every day. But in return, don’t eat anything someone other than me gives you. Can you do that?”
“Yes!”
Rihart nodded enthusiastically like a good child. Alina washed the strawberries she had picked from the garden in the creek and handed them to him.
While he munched on the strawberries, she began searching the ground of the garden with a serious expression.
“Greta, I’m going to the training grounds.”
“Alone? Why don’t you take Marika with you?”
Greta, who was roasting a whole lamb in the main kitchen, wiped the sweat off her forehead as she spoke.
Alina glanced around the kitchen. Greta, Marika, and the rest of the staff were all busy preparing for the banquet.
“Trudy isn’t back yet either. I can go by myself.”
“All right.”
With Greta’s permission, Alina picked up a basket almost as big as her torso.
Her expression as she headed toward the training grounds was far more determined than yesterday.
When she passed the garden and arrived at the dusty training grounds, Klaus greeted her with a bright smile.
“Miss Lise, you’re here! What’s on the menu today?”
“Chicken soup. I know soup two days in a row must be boring, but you’ll need to avoid anything too heavy for a while.”
“That can’t be helped.”
Contrary to his arrogant and picky first impression, Klaus always used polite speech even toward Alina, a mere kitchen assistant.
As expected of the eldest son of the Froebe family—known for producing captains of the knights—chivalry seemed ingrained in him.
“Oh, and Caden went hunting with his younger brother today. With him gone, things should be less chaotic than yesterday.”
Alina smiled brightly at Klaus’s comment.
“That’s too bad. I wanted to get closer to Caden.”
“Even if you don’t want to, you will. He said he’d bring back a deer for you from the hunt.”
“A deer? Can he really hunt something that big?”
Alina widened her eyes in surprise.
As a knight, Caden would of course be skilled in combat, but she was surprised he boasted about bringing back something as large as a deer.
“Hahaha. He’ll ‘bring one back,’ sure. Not that Caden will be the one catching it—Elian will.”
Klaus swept his blonde hair back and laughed heartily. Alina tilted her head at the unfamiliar name.
“Elian?”
“Caden’s younger brother. He’s attending the academy right now. Once he graduates, he’ll enter the Blue Lion Knights too.”
“Then both brothers will become knights?”
“In a sense, yes. It’s not that unusual, really. The Blue Lion Knights are also a gathering of young nobles from Malerhark. Not that their skills are anything less because of that.”
“Captain, the targets are all gone!”
“…The targets fall, though.”
Klaus sighed and raised his voice.
“I told you to shoot until the center is filled with arrows! Stop slacking!”
After scolding a knight, Klaus turned back to Alina apologetically.
“Training will take about thirty more minutes. Would you like to wait in the tent?”
“Yes. Take your time.”
Alina left Klaus behind and stepped inside the tent.
No one was there yet. She pulled a tablecloth, the pot of chicken soup, and a paper bag of freshly baked bread out of the basket one by one.
This is where it matters.
Alina gripped the basket handle and exhaled shakily.
At the very bottom was a stone identical to the fragment she had seen before—the one she had dug up from the garden yesterday.
Suppressing her pounding heart, she reached for the stone.
“Hey! Let’s eat lunch first!”
Just as she lifted it, Klaus’s voice came from outside the tent. Alina inhaled sharply.
Quick.
She hurried to the side table and swapped the stone with the fragment inside the box.
Afraid it might glow at her touch, she transferred the fragment using the handkerchief she’d brought.
Just then—
“We’ll finish training here today! Bear with it, everyone!”
The moment she placed the fragment into the basket, Klaus entered the tent with the knights.
It was by a hair’s breadth.
“Training ended early today, I see.”
Alina stepped in front of the basket, forcing an awkward smile. Klaus, oblivious to her tension, strode over.
“Yes. As soon as they heard you’d arrived, everyone insisted on eating first.”
He glanced at the pot she’d brought.
“Shall I set the pot on the stove? It must be heavy.”
“I can do it.”
Alina set the basket down and hung the pot on the stove hook.
She had added extra ingredients to replenish the knights’ strength, so the pot wasn’t light.
But better she lift it herself than let Klaus linger near the basket.
“Starting tomorrow, we should come to the dining hall instead.”
Klaus spoke seriously as he watched the small Alina ladle the soup and stir it.
Until now, he hadn’t cared much about what came from the palace kitchen—he hadn’t expected anything remarkable.
But after tasting her cabbage soup, the knights’ perception of the kitchen changed.
Food, they once thought, was just something to fill the stomach.
But Alina’s cooking invigorated them and even made them want to work harder.
“It feels wrong to receive food like this from you without doing anything in return.”
When Klaus opened the discussion, other knights added in.
“I agree. Wouldn’t it be easier for you if we came?”
“Let’s do that, Miss Lise. We’ll come from now on.”
“I’m really fine.”
Alina gently declined.
“If you walk to the dining hall, it’ll break your training rhythm. Besides, starting tomorrow, the sous-chef will come instead of me.”
“What? Already?”
At the mention of the sous-chef, the knights—who had just brightened at the sight of chicken soup—immediately soured.
“Can’t you become the sous-chef instead?”
“Oh, um…”
Before Alina could respond, the knights burst into complaints.
“The sous-chef is a typical Malerhark man! All he knows is meat!”
“He’ll just bring steak again.”
“Even if we need protein, eating steak every day gets tiring. We’re not carnivores.”
“And if he cooked well, fine—but everything is so salty! We have to drink a bucket of water after training.”
“I’ll talk to him separately about that.”
Alina said, flustered by their complaints.
The Blue Lion Knights were chosen from the highest-ranking young nobles fresh out of the academy—and their taste was naturally refined.
Traditional Malerhark cuisine—grilling, steaming, frying—didn’t suit them.
Noble banquets preferred dishes with Zenotat-style methods mixed in.
Even so, the cuisine never strayed too far from Malerhark standards.
So for these knights, Alina’s pure Zenotat cooking was practically revolutionary.
And Alina—before reincarnating—had been preparing to open her own restaurant.
In her second life, she worked in the Zenotat royal kitchen; in her third, she worked in a Zenotat-run restaurant and learned countless recipes.
Through reincarnation and regression, she’d absorbed a vast range of culinary knowledge. Though she was only nineteen, her skill far exceeded her age.
Naturally, the knights grew attached to her cooking.
One knight spoke solemnly.
“If it’s Miss Lise, we’re fine eating just soup and pancakes indefinitely.”
“‘Fine’? We’d be thrilled! Please do that!”
Their pleas were earnest. But Alina, the lowest-ranked kitchen worker, had no authority.
“This isn’t originally my job.”
“That’s why you should become the sous-chef!”
“If I build experience for about ten years, maybe I can.”
“Ten… years…”
The knights drooped at her answer.
Their concern for her slow promotion pricked at her conscience.
The real reason she had returned wasn’t pure kindness, as they assumed—it was to swap the stone fragment.
Even if it was to survive, she was essentially betraying knights who had opened their hearts to her.
Feeling guilty, she had poured even more effort into today’s chicken soup.
She simmered the stock alone for two hours with vegetables and chicken.
Watching them eat, she smiled gently.
“If you ever need my cooking, feel free to visit the storage room. I’m always there.”
“Yes…”
The knights picked up their spoons with gloomy faces. Alina secretly sighed as she watched them eat.
Maybe, if she was lucky, she really could become sous-chef in ten years.
Maybe even more—not just sous-chef, but the one running the entire palace kitchen.
Of course… that was if she lived another 10 or 20 years.
In her fourth life, Alina wanted to live quietly, safely, and for a long time.
Even if that meant secretly swapping stones and doing things that pricked her conscience.
Leaving the training grounds, Alina collapsed into a chair in the garden.
“Hoo…”
She had acted calm in front of the knights, but ever since swapping the fragment, her heart hadn’t stopped racing.
She placed the basket on her lap. Inside were the empty pot and the fragment.
