This House Has A Delicious Restaurant - Chapter 19.5 - A Flower on the Parched Land (Past) - Part 2

It was the first time I had seen Zerdan curse.

Realizing I didn’t seem offended, Zerdan looked appalled, as if he was horrified that I was oddly moved.

I wanted to encourage him to curse more, but I was afraid he might ignore me if I did.

Suppressing my personal feelings, I forced a friendly smile.

“I was just joking. You remind me of someone I know, so it felt a bit new.”

“Someone who looks like me?”

“Yeah. Although it’s very different from how you are now.”

“…I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“That’s okay. By the way, where is that Terry person? The lady who brought me here mentioned him.”

The name Terry made Zerdan’s expression noticeably harden. It seemed like a sensitive subject for him. I had a vague idea of why.

Zerdan scowled and glared at me.

“…What did she say about him?”

“Hmm, she said Terry was the most precious person to her.”

Zerdan’s golden eyes trembled uncontrollably.

It was clear that Terry was receiving all the love while Zerdan, as the biological child, was being treated poorly and used as a test subject.

Zerdan pressed his palm against the glass, feeling its cold surface.

“Zerdan, you asked me earlier what abilities I have.”

“……”

“What abilities do you have?”

“…I don’t have any. I’m the only one in my family…”

Zerdan spoke in a gloomy tone. I responded with a soft, comforting voice as if soothing him.

“I see. Then Terry must be an ability user. Your mother is quite lenient with ability users.”

“……”

“You asked earlier if I had any abilities because you thought your mother needed ability users. The reason you’re trapped here, despite being powerless, must be because you’re needed for something… It seems like they plan to conduct some experiments on you.”

Zerdan looked at me with a surprised expression. Realizing that his reaction confirmed my guess, I smiled.

It would be adorable if future Zerdan also displayed his emotions so clearly.

“What kind of experiment?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Well, since I might end up in the same situation as you, I want to know what I might be facing.”

“…Who would follow an unknown person without thinking?”

A sigh was heard. Zerdan hesitated for a moment before speaking.

“They’re going to experiment to turn a powerless person into an ability user. Ding, if you’re also powerless, you’ll likely undergo the same experiment as me.”

“Is that possible?”

“I don’t know. But since they think it might be possible with that person’s abilities, they’re trying it.”

“That person, you mean Terry?”

“Yeah. To be precise, it’s Terry. He was brought here about a week ago by my mother. I’m not exactly sure what his ability is, but I heard he has some monstrous power. I don’t know for sure because I only heard it from my parents. I guess they believe that person might be able to grant miracles, like turning a powerless person into an ability user like me.”

“Is turning someone into an ability user considered a miracle?”

I couldn’t help but laugh derisively.

Abilities were something one was born with, and indeed, being an ability user had its advantages.

But in modern times, there are more powerless people than ability users. Many people don’t even understand abilities properly, so why go through all this trouble to turn Zerdan into an ability user?

“What does your mother want?”

“I’m not sure.”

Zerdan answered honestly.

Well, it’s unlikely he’d know. I nodded in understanding.

While I was talking with Zerdan, the woman who had disappeared earlier approached me again and handed me some clothes. They were clean, black, and patternless.

“Change into these. You’ll be going to your room now.”

Zerdan’s gaze followed me as I turned.

The woman who guided me into the glass partition not far from Zerdan asked me casually how I felt about having my own room.

Her nonchalant question almost made me mistake this place for a very ordinary and nice room.

After all, if you’re an orphan, any place might feel like a nice room.

“I like it.”

I smiled and said what I didn’t mean, making the woman smile pleasantly.

“Good. If you need to use the bathroom, just let me know whenever I’m here. I’ll make sure you get your meals at mealtime.”

“Yes, thank you.”

Her words implied that if she wasn’t around, I wouldn’t be able to go to the bathroom freely.

I nodded like a well-behaved child. Zerdan looked at me disdainfully, as if he thought I was pitiful.

Starting with me, Zerdan’s mother soon began bringing other children from somewhere else. The common thread among the children was that they were all orphans who no one was looking for and had abilities.

One by one, the children began to fill the transparent glass partitions.

The children didn’t understand what was happening but were excited by the clean clothes and warm food provided to them.

I also settled into a partition near Zerdan. We were all wearing the same black clothes.

When more than half of the partitions were filled, the woman smiled with satisfaction.

“To see so many ability users in front of me…”

The woman had an ecstatic expression on her face.

I still hadn’t met Terry. Even though we’d been here for several days, I hadn’t seen him even once. It seemed that ability users didn’t live together in this place.

Neither had Liffree or the one presumed to be Ding arrived yet.

Until then, nothing unusual had happened, so I simply accepted and ate the meals the woman provided.

Zerdan noticeably seemed more anxious as more children arrived one by one.

The woman checked each child’s condition one by one. She continued with casual conversations while handing out the meals.

The children smiled brightly at her kindness, but both Zerdan and I found her demeanor unsettling.

“How are you feeling today?”

“I’m great! The meal was delicious! It’s a bit boring, but it’s not cold here, so I like it!”

“That’s good to hear. Do you have any pain anywhere?”

“No!”

“Any unusual things happening?”

“Unusual things?”

“Yes. Anything different from usual.”

“Well…”

Unusual things.

The woman asked the same questions to all the children. Most of them didn’t catch the point of the conversation and answered that there was nothing unusual.

While she knew the children had abilities, she didn’t know what kind of powers they had, so she must have been contemplating how to conduct the experiments.

The woman repeated the same conversation and questions with me, and I pretended not to know anything and shook my head.

The woman sighed. Then, she frowned at the children around her, as if displeased.

One day, a child asked for treatment because they had fallen the previous day and had bloodied their knee.

The woman nodded absentmindedly and looked at the child’s knee with a peculiar expression.

Instinctively sensing that the injury might somehow be related to the child’s ability, the woman concluded that the wound was relevant.

She smiled.

It was the beginning of the first experiment.

Whether it was good luck or not, the first experimental subject was a child near me and Zerdan. This allowed me to observe how much attention the woman paid to that child.

The child, unaware of the impending misfortune, was simply happy with the woman’s attention.

It had been about 2 days. The woman had not treated the child’s injury. Instead, she began checking how the wound changed over time.

She seemed to be observing whether the child’s ability could heal the wound, but from what I could see, it didn’t seem to have any healing abilities like Sidon’s.

It was probably related to another type of ability.

I rested my chin on my hand and looked disdainfully at the child, who was happily eating the snack the woman had brought.

“There’s a saying that ignorance is bliss.”

“Do you also think that child has an ability?”

“Your mother has the power to distinguish between regular people and ability users, right? Then the child must be an ability user. It doesn’t seem to be a healing-type ability, though.”

“It’s been 2 days without any reaction… What kind of ability are they suspecting?”

Zerdan frowned.

He seemed frustrated as he had been paying more attention to it than I had, and there were no noticeable changes.

Until recently, the woman had shown a bit of interest in Zerdan, but recently, she hadn’t even glanced at him.

Her apparent preference for ability users over her biological child must have been obvious to Zerdan as well.

“Are you jealous? The woman doesn’t even pay attention to you.”

“…Not at all.”

“You’re lying, your face clearly shows jealousy.”

“You’re really annoying.”

“I know that’s a lie too, Zerdan.”

I smiled as I looked at Zerdan, who was closest to the glass. He turned a little red, like someone caught in a secret, and moved a bit farther away. It was cute.

In this place, it seemed that only Zerdan and I had a sense of the situation, so we must have had some strange sense of camaraderie.

We would only have these conversations when the woman was away. The other children around us had no interest in us, and the only outsider was the woman.

But today was different. The only door opened, and I naturally assumed it was the woman, but a stranger entered instead.

A tall man in a neatly dressed suit.

With black hair and a cold demeanor, he carried a small child in his arms and scanned the surroundings. When he spotted Zerdan, he approached him without hesitation.

“Zerdan, how have you been? You look like you’ve lost some weight… Are you eating well?”

Zerdan didn’t answer.

I stared intently at the man who sat down opposite Zerdan and looked at him with pity.

‘Clearly Zerdan and Bella’s father.’

Black hair and black eyes.

He was a handsome man with a calm and more mature presence compared to Zerdan. While Zerdan always had a slightly mischievous, smiling—yet never truly kind—image, the man before me resembled him but with a more emotionless and composed demeanor.

If he were my type, I might have been tempted to touch him once.

Since he resembled Zerdan, it was hard not to find him attractive.

I had been staring too intently, as the man’s gaze shifted from the silent Zerdan to me.

“Hmm?”

With a gaze as if evaluating a regular experimental subject, I just smiled silently.

Since I saw no reason to attract attention, I tried to look away, but the child in the man’s arms started to whimper, apparently waking up from sleep.

“Oh, sorry. Did you wake up because it was noisy?”

The man’s voice was gentle.

His voice was even more affectionate than when he addressed Zerdan, and I couldn’t help but shift my gaze to Zerdan. I noticed his expression had hardened into something frightening.

Only then did I realize that the child in the man’s arms had silver hair. I must have been so distracted by the man’s unexpectedly appealing face that I hadn’t noticed this detail.