TSBSFVW 83

Chapter 83
Bread Thirteen. The Carefully Built Tower on the Swamp (3)

A few days later there was also an opportunity to sneak into Ban’s residence.

But he treated her with the same cold dismissal at the door.

By now it wasn’t surprising.

Peeking through the door crack and seeing Eli’s face made Ban’s expression change immediately; his features went stiff as he spoke.

“How did you come here?”

“…….”

Before Eli could answer, Ban noticed Morris standing behind her. He sighed.

“You always have cleverness in useless ways.”

“You figured you’d be welcomed, huh.”

Morris, too, scoffed in a slightly colder voice. Ban glared at him and said,

“Go back. I have nothing to say to you.”

“Ban.”

“Eli, please go back. Don’t ever come again.”

Listening quietly, Eli felt anger rise at Ban’s attempt to chase her away like she was an unwelcome guest or a nuisance customer.

‘When has he ever treated me like a public nuisance and yet clung to me even when I begged him not to come? He barged in with a big smile before…’

Was it too much to be angry just because she’d come to her own residence without giving prior notice?

“I promise I won’t come again.”

“…….”

“I only wanted to check if you were safe and doing well.”

“Then you must be satisfied now. As you can see, I was doing perfectly fine.”

Yet his neatly arranged blond hair was messy, and the face that used to smile like a puppy was now cold and expressionless.

Eli realized his green eyes were a colder shade than in her memory.

Trying to find the Ban she knew in that blank face and the eyes with a different temperature, Eli searched for even the smallest sign.

Any tiny cue would do.

A look, a nuance, the smallest change.

But unlike Edmund, whose face she could not see at all, Ban looked straight at Eli yet acted like someone else.

“This isn’t the time to indulge in worrying about me for no reason. Wouldn’t it be better to spend the time thinking of countermeasures?” he said.

“…….”

“Go back, Eli. Don’t do this again. If you’re discovered, it will make things difficult for me as well.”

It sounded as if he wanted nothing to do with someone like her.

Don’t you know what people are saying about you?

Eli didn’t press him further and turned away without regret.

Morris seemed to have something more to say, but Ban slammed the door as soon as Eli turned her back, as if to say there was nothing more to discuss with Morris.

Eli returned to the store with Morris.

Morris, as though it were predetermined, took the table by the window.

“Friends are exactly the same, both of them,” he said.

His words were exactly the same as before. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

Eli huffed.

“Even if they have mouths, they don’t say anything?”

Morris asked.

“Or they just don’t know how to make excuses?”

“All of it!”

“Isn’t that true of you too, Eli? You didn’t even get angry when you were blatantly dismissed.”

“You have to have a reason worth getting angry for.”

Eli wasn’t a fool.

Considering the situation and the mastermind behind all this, the two of them were virtually under confinement.

She wasn’t shameless enough to get outraged merely because she was told to go back, because they didn’t want to see her face.

‘To think existence itself would trip me up—what the hell a bastard I am.’

So innate and persistent—origins were such a rotten, stubborn thing.

Would it have been any better if she had started her business in the Yan Empire? No—Duke McClure would have tormented her relentlessly no matter where she was. Rayad might have more influence since it’s practically his backyard, but the outcome would have been no different.

The result would be the same: the tower she had painstakingly built would be trampled by him.

‘Ed is probably being held by the elders…’

The shackle keeping the free-spirited Edmund in place was Eli.

The elders, prodded by Duke McClure, must have used Eli as leverage to restrain Edmund so he couldn’t do anything.

‘Ban is probably a result of a marriage proposal scheme by that bastard?’

To control the third son who had entered the Otter Knights, the Cronin house would have found Eli a convenient control device…

That she had accepted the match dutifully, that she had taken leave from the knight order she loved—these clearly showed she was keeping herself in check on condition that nothing was done to her.

If that were not the case, they wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of distancing her so strongly.

She hoped that Edmund was genuinely too busy with tower matters to pay attention to Eli’s situation. She hoped Ban had suddenly become busy with wedding preparations and, coincidentally, couldn’t come to the shop.

Even if they had truly lost interest in her, Eli could accept it.

She’d prepared herself for that from the moment she accepted them.

But Edmund and Ban both pushed her away like she was some kind of contagion.

Don’t ever come close again.

If they were trying to fit this into the suddenly spreading rumors and circumstances—if they believed those words and kept their distance—Eli could understand the misunderstanding. Maybe Edmund and Ban would have preferred that.

Seeing it with her own eyes, even though she’d expected it, made her twice as angry.

She was five times more furious at Edmund and Ban for giving no sign, no hint, no words.

And a hundred times more furious at herself for being powerless while they held her back.

“You don’t misunderstand. It looked like both of them were prepared to be hated by you,” Morris said, surprised.

“There’s a limit to underestimating people—do they think my brain is dough?” Eli snapped.

“No, I didn’t think that badly. I didn’t think someone’s brain would be dough just because they like someone…”

“Whether you like someone or not, people’s brains aren’t made of dough. Some people occasionally seem to have shit in their heads, though.”

“…That’s not me, right, Eli…?”

Morris looked a little depressed.

“I use any means I can—connections, bribes—but I’m not a lawbreaker with shit in my head…”

“You kept that in mind this whole time?”

He must have been bothered by not having said a single word of defense when they were criticized at the tower.

“I kept it in mind. It’s not like showing only my good side would be enough.”

“Right now I can’t see anything good, so I can’t see anything bad either.”

“Whether that’s fortunate or unfortunate.”

“My head hurts so much I could scream, Morris.”

“So it’s unfortunate. Want me to blow on it?” he offered.

“Don’t you dare—get lost, you pervert.”

Eli swung her fist threateningly. Morris deliberately took the blow and faked being hurt.

“Maybe you learned that from Malina—your punches are spicy, Eli…”

It wasn’t an act. Morris actually hurt.

“Can this fist kill someone…?”

“Probably not.”

“Could I kill someone by strangling them?”

“You’d probably get hurt first. Don’t even think about killing someone, Eli.”

“If I don’t kill that bastard, I think I’ll die.”

She felt like she would die from anger.

Eli knew.

She believed Duke McClure would do whatever it took.

Though the rumors were terribly unfair and she regretted not having split Seth Hastings that bastard’s skull open, she had expected some obstruction from him.

Even if it weren’t the duke or Seth, any business owner with a storefront is always at a disadvantage toward customers.

Countless self-employed people tremble at delivery app reviews and have to swallow scams because whining customers win—if matters scaled up, the losses always fell to the business owner.

Eli thought that smear campaigns were something she could, in some way, overcome.

Like Morris said, she only needed time.

Endure, and you win.

But she hadn’t anticipated Edmund and Ban getting hurt too. Unlike her, they had a base to stand on, so she thought they couldn’t be touched. They were supposed to be the male leads of the original story.

‘Aren’t male leads supposed to be invincible?’

But compared to Duke McClure, Edmund and Ban were still rookies.

The autumn festival was still more than a month away, and even if she resumed operations in that time, business didn’t seem likely to recover.

And if the tower, under McClure’s orders, issued a weird result…

“Eli, Eli. Look at me.”

“…….”

“Does your head hurt a lot? Want me to blow on it?”

“Your breath won’t help it get better…”

“I might be able to fix it with a kiss instead of breath.”

“I don’t have the mood for jokes, you pervert…”

“Didn’t you know, Eli? Men are all perverts.”

“…….”

“Still, don’t distance yourself. I’m a pervert, but I have some reasonableness to me…”

“How am I supposed to handle him without killing him?”

“Even if it’s not Duke McClure, you inevitably make enemies when you run a business, Eli.”

“…….”

“In any line of work you’ll make enemies. You can’t just kill them every time. It’d be easier if you could, but there are opponents you can’t kill.”

“Stop being so right, it’s annoying…”

Morris let out a short laugh. Eli scrunched up her nose and puffed out her cheeks to hold back her anger, and Morris found it too cute to resist.

She regretted how her cheeks had lost some baby fat; when she puffed them up like a squirrel, she could see a little of the face from a year ago. The reddish near her cheekbones was appealing.

Only a few seconds after he said he was a pervert with reason—she’d get slapped if she put that cheek into his mouth and chewed it.

Actually, being slapped would have been fine—she was just afraid of being hated. So she held back.

“Morris, be honest.”

“I’m always honest.”

“If you lie, it’s your life and mine.”

“Alright, can you let go of my collar…?”

Our Eli was tough.

“You said you were fine, right.”

“I haven’t suffered any losses yet.”

“Okay. I’ll trust you.”

Eli swallowed the rest of her words. His blue eyes were dark with complicated feelings.

“This is unbearable, damn it! Eli! Is this true?!” Kyle shouted like he was breathing fire. He held a newspaper containing the tower’s announcement.

“People came from the morning and wrecked the shop! Is this true?!”

“Of course not! You know what we put into the levain, Kyle!” Eli was at a loss for words.