1518-chapter-3
“Meow?”
Pudding meowed cutely. ‘I want to bite it! So what if it has three eyes? It’s too cute.’ I gave up my past life due to the circumstances, so I didn’t expect that I would raise a cat here.
I was going to have the cat undergo a separate checkup, but the butler brought holy water and told me that the cat only needed to drink it. ‘What the heck? Does this world have the view that all infectious diseases can be cured with just holy water? Then why did they kill the cats? What the hell is up with animal ethics in this world?’
When I poured the holy water into the bowl, Pudding enjoyed drinking it with its tongue. ‘But why does it close one of its eyes?’ It seemed as if it only possessed two eyes, perhaps because it had thick fur.
Come to think of it, it only opened all of its eyes in front of me. ‘Oh, then I guess the two eyes are a default set and the third eye only opens once in a while.’
The butler made sure that Pudding had drunk all the holy water before taking his leave. ‘Can I raise it now? Yippiee!’
“You drink well, I’m proud of you!”
I put Pudding on my lap and patted its butt.
• • •
Pudding seemed to recognize me as an innkeeper instead of its owner. The innkeeper who provided a free room and boarding option on top of that…
Pudding was a free soul. I was a hikikomori who stayed in my room, but it seemed that Pudding was a social butterfly because it roamed around every day. Still, before I was asleep, it would always come back into my room and lay with me. ‘How come a cat likes to take a walk that much? Is it because it used to be a street cat?’
I was about to put a choker around its neck so that there wouldn’t be any unwanted incidents while it was roaming around. The maid gave me the choker. On that choker, the emblem of this count’s household was embroidered on a soft cloth. The maid asked me whether I could embroider Pudding’s name on the choker myself. Evangeline seemed to have been good at embroidery.
‘But I’m illiterate, and I don’t know how to form letters well.’
Without giving me a chance to explain myself, the maid gave me the choker and embroidery set before running away.
The maid whom I asked to buy an alphabet book hadn’t come to me for days either. ‘She said that it would only take one day, but she’s not giving it to me on purpose, right?’
I thought Evangeline was a villainess who overused her power because the servants were only shivering in front of me, but it seemed that there was a set-up in this story where she was secretly bullied. Well, indeed, these days, villainesses are also bullied a lot in romance fantasy novels. So, when they transmigrated, they would slap the bullies’ cheeks and discipline them. Obviously, I wouldn’t slap her.
“I’m sorry for being a bad owner who can’t even write your name…”
‘I want to learn the alphabet as quickly as possible. The sloppy transmigration of this world is too much…’
• • •
When I woke up, I could suddenly read letters.
‘What the hell? Is this an after service or something? You should have given the ability to me earlier as a compensation to the transmigrator, why do you give it to me just now?’ Although I was indeed pissed off, I decided to think of it positively in some ways now that I finally had my compensation.
It seemed that there was an effect of after service following my cries as I whined saying that I couldn’t read my own cat’s name. Tears streamed down my cheek. ‘Now I also know how to read and write Pudding’s name!’
I picked up a needle. I thought that perhaps I would be able to do embroidery which had been learned by Evangeline’s body now that I had mastered alphabets.
‘Yeah, I was wrong.’
The result was horrible. I wrote the name Pudding, but I couldn’t even read it myself.
‘Should I throw the choker away and do it again?’ I contemplated for a while, but Pudding meowed and urged me to hang the choker on its neck quickly. ‘What an angelic cat!’
I put the choker on Pudding. They said that if a cat wears its leash well, the owner has been blessed, but perhaps because Pudding was originally a meek cat, it didn’t show any refusals when I put the leash on the cat.
It was exactly the right size, and the leash joints were fragile just in case. It would break if Pudding put a bit of strength into it.
“Do you like it?”
Pudding went to the mirror and stared at itself. Afterward, it meowed, as the cat seemed to like it.
Suddenly I found out that it was strange, after thinking about it for a while, Pudding also knew how to look in the mirror. ‘Cats in this world are really smart… or am I wrong? Is my Pudding special? Well of course, my cat is the best in this world.’
• • •
The count of Rohanson went down to his manor.
Actually, it was more like he was running away. He appeared to have sprinted so fast that he escaped in the middle of the night with only a few clothes. All the while he was inside his mansion, he was terrified by the ‘eyes’ that kept staring at him. Not only the count, but the maid named Daisy also experienced the same thing. That maid didn’t even try to open her eyes.
The count asked whether she would want him to write a letter of recommendation for another household, but the maid shook her head and told him that she wanted to go to the monastery no matter what. Her closed eyes and cupped hands gave the impression that she was praying. Because it seemed that those eyes wouldn’t be able to look at her if she went out of the mansion, psychologically, she would be fine in the monastery.
The count left his spot empty, and the mansion duties were entrusted to the butler. The count would still be able to take care of family affairs well in his manor, so the butler had only one responsibility—to face Lady Evangeline.
The old butler looked at the weeping cherry tree outside the window. A cat was following the all-white lady as she walked in the backyard. The cat seemed to be the one that she said she wanted to raise. At first glance, the scenery looked peaceful.
There was a bright red handprint left on the butler’s shoulders. ‘Is it true that the cat that the lady raised was an ordinary animal?’
His vision was throbbing. The mansion where he spent his whole life felt like a behemoth’s belly.
He closed the curtain and sat down. The maid who was sitting on the opposite side was drinking tea. Her hand, which was holding the teacup, trembled, but she looked better than Daisy.
“I can hear cats’ voices.”
After Daisy, Henna was the second girl entrusted with serving Lady Evangeline. Since Daisy became like that, no one wanted to serve the lady afterward, thus the wage to serve Lady Evangeline was raised. Henna, who was in dire need of money, took the position. However, just as expected, Henna also found it difficult to continue with her duties. The butler stared at the girl who was sitting in front of him pitifully.
Since a perfectly fine girl went back after going insane within only one day, it would be harder to look for another maid now.
The butler opened his mouth and said something, but Henna could only hear a cat meowing instead of a human voice. Henna couldn’t hear the butler’s speech, but she spoke while hoping that it was the reply he was looking for.
“Her Ladyship asked me whether there was a cat or not. I replied to her that they were all dead—I’m sure that all of them had been killed—but why can I hear cats’ voices?”
Henna had cleaned up the cats’ corpses when they were all killed in the household once. She was uncomfortable doing so, but she volunteered because they promised her more money.
There were a couple sacks of cat corpses that were caught using cat food as bait. They were all silent dead cats, but now they were meowing belatedly.
The butler didn’t hear a cat’s voice. What the butler actually said to Henna was a question about whether she wanted him to write a letter of recommendation for her, according to the message that the count conveyed to him. It was a much-appreciated offer, but Henna could only listen to cats’ voices still. The butler wrote on paper and gave it to her. Henna shook her head.
Right now, in this household, there is a mystery taking place, so it was okay for her to say that she was hearing cats’ voices, but it was obvious that she would be treated as a mentally ill person and get fired if she was transferred to another place.
“I will keep working here. I can’t hear you, but it will be okay if I focus on your mouth.”
Henna had a younger sister. She needed to keep working for her sick sister.
• • •
There was a reply from the count. He was furious when he told the butler to feed the cat holy water to check if it was a monster or not. ‘The holy water didn’t work even for Lady Evangeline; will it work for the cat?’ The butler obeyed his master’s order despite questioning it. Holy water’s price was quite expensive. It was only the nobles who could buy it without any hesitation.
Henna was dumbstruck when she knew about it. If she had possessed holy water, her younger sister would have been better. She couldn’t believe that they were feeding such a precious thing to a mere cat.
“Do you want it?”
‘How long has it been since I heard a human voice?’ Henna turned her head and looked around, but she found no one. There was only one cat that was grooming its fur within her sight. ‘A cat?’
‘Is that the cat that Lady Evangeline said she wanted to raise?’
“You should answer when someone asks you a question.”
The cat opened its eyes. Its third eye was staring at Henna.
‘Mo-monster!’ Henna ran away. She had to tell the butler. ‘Lady Evangeline’s cat is a monster! Wouldn’t I be able to get some kind of reward from the butler if I told him that?’
Then, Henna stopped and stood still.
She couldn’t afford to buy holy water with prize money alone. ‘What did the cat say again? Would it tell me how I could get it?’ She imagined her younger sister, who became healthy and all smiles while running around. Then she went back down the road she had walked. The cat was waiting for Henna on the same spot, as if it had anticipated her return.
Henna swapped the holy water according to the cat’s instructions. She had no idea how it was prepared, but even the exquisite pattern of the bottle that contained holy water looked exactly the same with its imitation.
The butler showed no particular reaction when he witnessed the cat drinking fake holy water. It was only Henna who realized the fact that ‘real’ holy water worked for the cat, unlike its ineffectiveness toward Lady Evangeline.
Afterward, the cat would sometimes visit Henna and ask her for favors.
Last time, the cat ordered her to let the lady do the embroidery on the choker that the cat would wear herself. Henna fled after handing over the choker and embroidery set to the lady in fear that she would throw tantrums. It seemed that the lady really picked up a needle for the cat. The cat proudly showed off its badly embroidered choker.
The lady wrote strange letters on the choker and called the cat Pudding.
Her daily routine ended after serving the monster-like cat and the frightening lady, whom she couldn’t even raise her eyes to.
The wage for serving the lady was really high. It was far more than enough, even after the two sisters used the wage for their living expenses. Thanks to that, Henna was able to stop by the market on her way home and overspend her money to buy her sister’s favorite food.
‘She’s going to like it, right?’ Henna’s heart melted softly. Her sister’s body recovered and got even better as the days went by after drinking the holy water. It was difficult for her just a few days ago to feed her sister soup, but recently her sister made a fuss, telling Henna that she was hungry.
When she went home, her sister was sitting in front of the door.
“Sister!”
“You are waiting outside when it’s this cold?”
“It’s because I miss you. You’ve worked hard. Let’s hurry and go inside!”
“Alright, Canna, stop being so fretful.”
Her sister jumped into Henna’s arms. It was a dream-like moment that made her easily forget her duties to serve a bizarre cat and a frightening lady during the day.
Henna thought that it was a good decision for her to listen to the cat’s offer back then. ‘Is it because I am a good match for the cat’s preferences? There are no longer cats’ voices in my ears.’