Chapter 37: Help Me, Store Manager! (Patreon)

Subaru Natsuki raised his eyes and looked the customers over carefully, from head to toe.

Both girls were beauties. The one who seemed higher in status had long silver hair and wore a cat-eared cloak. She was taller than both Anna and Felt, almost as tall as Cru-Cru.

But for some reason, despite looking that good, the kind of beauty who should be doted on wherever she went, she was timid and painfully unsure of herself. Her low self-esteem was visible to the naked eye.

Because of that, the pink-haired maid beside her almost fooled him. The maid wore a plain, near-maid outfit, showed only one eye, and that eye was brimming with attitude. For a moment he nearly mistook her for the one with the higher status.

The aura of the two was completely reversed, honestly.

But since he knew nothing about them, and the maid hadn't done anything wrong yet, he was an outsider and could only keep his mouth shut about it. Instead he asked, "May I ask which Royal Selection candidate you support, dear customer, and whom you'd like a reading for?"

"Um... before the reading, could I ask you a couple of things?" The silver-haired girl pressed her fingers together, visibly nervous.

Subaru slipped into character in a heartbeat. "Hm? Of course. Serving customers is my job right now. What would you like to ask?"

"It's just, um..."

The silver-haired girl found it very, very, very hard to say. She spent a long while steeling herself, then finally asked in a low, whimpering voice like a wounded little animal, "When you say you read the Royal Selection candidates here, do you mean all of the candidates?"

"Of course."

"Does all of them include that half-elf... Emilia, too?"

"Of course! And by the way, I only do readings here. I don't support any mudslinging. Even if you're anti-Emilia, everyone in the Royal Selection gets equal treatment at my stall, so please don't use any nasty nicknames for any of the candidates here, okay?"

"Eh? Then, if someone else here insulted the half-elf, what would you, um, Mister Shopkeeper...?"

"One warning, two strikes and you're out, and if you refuse to leave, I'll show those guys my iron fist! So, dear customer, be careful. You can't break the rule a second time."

Her mouth fell open, her eyes wide.

For some reason, after hearing his answer, the silver-haired girl went completely blank.

Subaru guessed it was because his stall was the only place that didn't allow people to call Emilia a half-elf. It was so rare that it stunned her.

From the intel he had now, among the four Royal Selection candidates, Emilia was the most unusual case.

Four hundred years ago in this world, a being called the Witch of Envy had tried to destroy everything, and was finally defeated by the party that saved the world. The shadow the Witch of Envy cast over people had lingered unbroken, all the way to the present.

And as luck would have it, Emilia looked exactly like the legendary Witch of Envy. If the dragon's insignia hadn't chosen her, she wouldn't just have been unable to become a candidate. If she entered the Royal Capital without a disguise, people would probably shout at her to get out.

With a disadvantage that natural, that comes purely from her appearance, Subaru truly felt regret and sympathy.

What he sympathized with wasn't that Emilia obviously had almost zero chance of winning the Royal Selection. After all, with him around, none of the candidates could ever rise to the throne anyway.

What he sympathized with was this: because of her looks, even as a candidate her reputation was that terrible and she was openly looked down on by everyone. It wasn't hard to imagine what kind of discrimination Emilia lived in day to day.

It might be something like Naruto's environment, and that must be rough. The classic Will of Bullying.

For some reason, light blazed up in the silver-haired girl's eyes. The timidity and self-doubt on her lessened noticeably in an instant. She braced against the stall's little table and leaned closer to Subaru, her voice urgent.

"Y-you mean, at your stall, Emilia isn't a half-elf? Emilia is just Emilia?"

"More like, at my stall, everyone is just themselves," Subaru nodded. "Well, if someone really does something bad someday, that's a different matter."

"She won't do anything bad!"

The silver-haired girl said it flatly, with total certainty. "Emilia would never do anything bad! Emilia is a good girl!"

"Huh? Oh, oh..." Subaru scratched his head. Seeing her reaction, he realized his first guess might have been wrong.

This girl might not have come to look down on Emilia at all. Just like Anna's hometown loyalty toward Anastasia, or Cru-Cru's fangirling over Crusch, this silver-haired girl happened to be an Emilia fan!

When she'd said "half-elf" at the start, she had been worried that the fortune-teller might be prejudiced against Emilia and twist good things into bad ones on purpose, and she had been testing him.

Not bad. If she had fans like this, the Emilia camp might actually have a bit of a chance.

Standing dutifully behind her, the pink-haired maid spoke flatly. "E— my lady. Lord Roswaal did not bring you to the capital to play around in a place like this."

The moment she opened her mouth, the pressure came rolling in. What kind of good maid talks with that much nerve?!

Worst of all, she was trying to steal his first customer. Could he put up with that? If he swallowed this, he'd be nothing but a spineless turtle!

"Bang!"

He slammed a big hand on the table, forced his face into a scowl, and glared with eyes as wide as bronze bells. "Listen, since this customer came to me for a reading, it's fate. Even if you aren't getting a reading yourself, please don't get in my way, all right? Do you know what it means to block someone's road to riches? That's a blood feud!"

"Ram does not know. Ram only knows you are certainly a noisy clown. The great affairs of the realm, and the Royal Selection above all, rest with the kingdom's upper echelons, with Lord Roswaal, with the dukes, with the Council of Wise Men. You? You are just a common man on the roadside, and you dare talk of reading the candidates? Could your reading shake the odds between them?"

Ram's tone was flat, but paired with that deliberately sneering expression, it was outright mockery and provocation.

Subaru Natsuki was furious!

"Come on!"

In terms of closeness, he could never beat this pink-haired maid, so he would influence the silver-haired girl's judgment instead!

"You like Emilia, right? Come on, miss, say it boldly and don't worry, it will turn out well. Say it, say it from the bottom of your heart. Forget that sharp-tongued, arrogant, pink-haired maid, don't mind her at all. Tell me, what do you want to do, and what did you come here for?"

"I, I—"

Led along by the momentum, the silver-haired girl, the half-elf Emilia, finally blurted it out.

"Please, help me, take a look at Emilia's face reading, Mister Shopkeeper!"