Chapter 5: I became a Jean Valjean for you (2)

“Bark. Bark bark bark! Bark!”

“…Hello to you too.”

“Grrrr. Grrrr.”

Instead of words, he spit out animal sounds from his mouth.

“Grrrr!”

I tilted my head.

“Are barking and growling literally the only things you know how to do?”

The male lead shook his head in response to my question.

“Right. You can understand human speech. But then why don’t you speak? Maybe…are you able to understand but unable to speak?”

This time he nodded his head, still glaring at me ferociously, of course.

…Well. Despite the glaring, he was behaving pretty obediently.

I looked at him, feeling a little weirded out by his glare, and then took a pouch out of my chest pocket and handed it towards him. As soon as I opened the pouch, a delicious smell drifted out. Ricdorian’s eyes widened.

“Do you like bread?”

Head tilt.

“I’m saying, I’ve become a Jean Valjean for you.”1

I dangled the bread that I had stolen from the kitchen, wait, no, technically, the bread I had hidden in my pocket during mealtime, in front of Ricdorian. The male lead’s bright blue eyes followed the bread as I waved it in front of his face.

Well, what do we have here.

If the bread moved right, the eyes went right. If left, then left…and so on.

Wow. How cute. Though I shouldn’t be teasing him with food.

“Want some?”

“Bark!”

“No, not that. Repeat after me. Please, give me some.”

“Bark? Bark bark bark?”

“Please give me some.”

“Bark bark bark bark!”

“…Exactly who taught this guy to speak in dog language.”

The fact that he could understand but couldn’t speak the human language meant that someone had taught him to do so. Ugh. Exactly what kind of crazy bastard only taught this guy to speak in dog language?

I stopped looking at the male lead, shaking my head.

“Okay, wait.”

I moved my hand back. The blue eyes followed the bread in my hand, with a ‘why aren’t you giving it to me’ look. I flinched at the gaze of the starving beast.

…If there wasn’t a chain, I would have run away by now.

“Now that I think about it, if I just give this to you, you’ll just devour it without thought. So just wait a second. Oh don’t look at me like that, I’ll give it to you, I’m just afraid you’ll choke on it!”

Maybe he didn’t hear me, because his gaze was growing more vicious by the second.

– Clank. Clank.

I ended up giving him a piece of bread when his chain started rattling from his pulling.

“Eat up.”

As soon as I gave him a piece, he gobbled it up.

“Eat slowly. Otherwise you’ll get a stomachache.”

He gently bit my hand and closed his mouth over it. My hand tickled.

“…Does it taste good?”

There were bread crumbs stuck to the side of his mouth. Ricdorian’s eyes shined as they looked up at me.

Ah. I guess this means he likes it. …And who exactly taught this guy to act like a dog, too?

He kept licking my hands to indicate that he wanted more, so I handed him another piece.

“Cough, cough cough!”

Told you so. I knew he was eating too quickly. The male lead looked up at me with teary eyes and grabbed onto his throat. Unfazed, I quickly taking off the cap of the water bottle.

…He won’t bite me now, will he?

Perhaps because of his parched throat, Ricdorian was only focused on drinking water.

– Gulp gulp.

But while I was blankly watching him drink water.

Wait a second.

…When did he get so red?

Under the lamp’s light, I could see the male lead’s red ears, red cheeks, red shoulders…in fact, everywhere below the neck too. When I put my hand on his cheek to check, he blinked his eyes and tried pushing away my hand away.

“Pl, pl, please st, stop. Pl, please t, t, take off your hand.”

I smirked.

“But you ate pretty well from my hand a few minutes ago.”

At my remark, his face flushed red as if it was going to explode. It was the reddest I’ve ever seen a person’s face gets. I looked at him, interested, and tapped his cheek. His eyes shook with tears as he stared at me.

Wow. It’s quite easy to tell when his personality switches.

“I-i-if you aren’t g-going to take responsibility for what you did to me, th-th-then don’t t-touch me!”

…Uhm. There’s already another person who will take responsibility, though.

The female lead, obviously. Pretty and kind Francia, with the ability to free the male lead. She was the perfect match for Ricdorian.

And that’s why I visited the cell without a care about ‘taking responsibility’ and whatnot. I mean, the female lead would easily appear in front of the male lead, so before that happens, I was going to have a good time looking at his pretty face.

“You aren’t hungry anymore?”

I looked at Ricdorian after thinking through my thoughts. The male lead, who had regained his rationality, still had a flushed face. He looked as if I was bullying him.

“N, n, not, not hungr-”

– Goreureuk.2

Well, that wasn’t my belly, for sure.

Wow. I never thought his face could get even redder than it already was.

“Pfft-”

I put on a straight face and looked at the male lead who looked like he was going to burst into tears at any second.

“Hunger isn’t something to be embarrassed about. Do the prison officers not give you your meals?”

I was sure he was given food. After all, Ricdorian was the only heir to an archduke. He was only imprisoned here because he couldn’t control his powers, so of course he would get food to eat.

Though his meals weren’t of the best quality. I looked at the dirty food bowl and sighed. Seriously, what was that, were they feeding a pig. How could the prison officers give him something like animal feed to eat.

“Come over here and eat. There’s a lot left.”

I had brought enough bread. After all, the prisoners were nobles, so we were given more than enough food to eat. According to Baron Paladis, though we were prisoners, if we weren’t given enough to eat, the prison officers would get in big trouble.

Anyway, because of thi, I was able to steal a lot of bread into my pouch, which I dangled in front of the male lead now.

Huh. His eyes were shaking, but why wasn’t he coming over?

“Should I go over there? I can go over there and feed yo-”

“I’m go, go, going!”

He reluctantly approached me, but slowly.

“Okay I’ll just come to you.”

So I moved over to him instead. As I neared him, he flinched.

Come on. It’s not like he was a kitten who’d ventured outside for the first time, why did he keep reacting so strongly to the smallest of actions.

It was cute, though.

“Go ahead and eat.”

“…Bu, but I want to eat with my hands.”

_-_-_

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