WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

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◈ I Became a Blacksmith the Rankers Are Obsessed With ◈

Chapter 023

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I Like You, Dolores

* * *

A mysterious chess master.

'No, wait, I did win the actual game of chess.'

The mysterious, moderately skilled chess player, Lionel.

In Isabella's mind, Lionel's identity had been narrowed down to roughly one of three possibilities.

First, the child of some noble family.

Second, a child being raised by some knight order.

Third, some up-and-coming prodigy being groomed by one of the newly risen powers, a climbing party or a freshly founded guild.

It had never even occurred to her that he might be connected to Dolores.

There was no way Dolores would ever marry a man and have a child.

When she'd visited this mansion a year ago, Ruby had been the only child here, after all.

"He's my child."

"Uh...?"

Isabella's mind went blank for a moment.

'What is going on?'

And then.

Isabella caught an interesting change cross Dolores's face.

It twisted, subtly...

A faint flush rose to her cheeks.

An "oops" look layered on top of that.

The face of someone who'd just realized she'd misspoken.

'...Oho.'

Well, this was new.

Isabella's interest in Lionel welled up even further.

A clear misstep on Dolores's part, committed in a momentary excess of emotion.

Just who are you, Lionel, that Dolores would react like this?

And in that instant.

Isabella's signature accelerated thinking kicked in.

- Crackle...

Information rearranged itself inside her head.

[Why is she overreacting like this.]

'This isn't the scale of reaction you'd get over just some boy.'

[The fact that it's a boy is strange to begin with.]

'You'd never take in a man. Not even if he were a child.'

[Where on earth did that glove come from.]

'The you I know would have used the glove as bait to milk me dry.'

[Lionel's right hand... was swollen.]

'That boy turned me down, said he had no interest in magic.'

She viewed the situation in third person, her thoughts accelerating all the while.

Isabella's heartbeat quickened by a beat.

- Crackle.

The noise cleared, and the information began converging toward a single conclusion.

'Lionel is connected to the +20 glove.'

The realization left Isabella's head perfectly clear.

At last, she'd gotten her hands on a weakness in Dolores, that cold, sharp woman who seemed kind every once in a while but was mostly just rude.

"...Heh heh."

She nodded along with a pleased smile.

"I've figured it out, Dolores. The heart of your fury..."

But right then.

"Huh?"

- Whirrr...

Without her even noticing.

A blue magic circle had been quietly forming beneath Isabella's feet.

Her gaze dropped to it.

A teleportation spell that forcibly sends an endangered ally out of the battlefield.

Since there was no intent to harm her, Isabella's automatic defenses hadn't triggered.

Dolores, without even looking at Isabella, had a hand pressed to her forehead.

Wearing an expression of genuine exhaustion.

"Elysia, wait-"

- Bang!

Isabella's body vanished in an instant.

"Haah..."

Dolores, puzzled by her own flare of emotion,

let out a sigh.

* * *

I'm not joking.

After listening to someone talk for three straight hours,

I felt like I could still hear her voice even in the bath.

It had been a while since I'd met someone this exhausting to be around.

Without even drying my wet hair, I headed for the study where Ruby was.

"You abandoned me."

Ruby, this isn't something you do to a person.

I knocked on the study door,

"Ruby~"

and swung it open without waiting for an answer.

"Oh... hey, you're here?"

Ruby answered without even looking up, her face buried in her book.

"Hey."

I walked over slowly and gently lowered the book,

and found Ruby biting her lip and puffing her cheeks out, like she couldn't hold back her laughter for one more second.

Look at this, look at this.

She'd known the whole time.

"Did you have fun?"

Ruby asked, the corners of her mouth curling up,

and at first I considered sentencing her to a toe-tickling punishment...

"Heh heh. Yeah."

but since this was the first time I'd seen Ruby laugh this brightly, this happily,

I just ruffled her hair and threw myself onto the beanbag beside her instead.

Honestly, Isabella didn't seem like a bad person.

She was the passionate type, so it probably would have been hard to push her away, but I didn't especially feel like doing that either.

- Fwump.

My half-exhausted body sank into it.

Exhausting. I felt like I could just fall asleep right here.

Starting tomorrow, I needed to make Dolores's socks...

and I was curious what she and Isabella would end up talking about.

Isabella seemed to have come here out of curiosity about my glove, after all.

Just then,

I felt a gaze on me from beside me.

Turning my head slightly, I found Ruby studying my forearm intently.

"...?"

"It's gotten a little thicker. Firmer... I think."

Even in an elementary-schooler's body, running it ragged for hours would still cause a temporary pump, I supposed.

Ruby seemed to find that fascinating.

"So it actually does something."

"Would I be doing it if it didn't?"

Sharp eyes. Guess that's what being a mage does for you.

Ruby quietly stared at my arm like that for a few minutes.

Whether she watched or not, I just rested.

I don't know how much time passed like that.

- Knock knock.

Someone knocked on the door.

"Yes."

The door opened the moment I answered,

and Dolores was standing there.

Wearing, of all things, a rather gloomy expression.

* * *

'Lionel? I got the ore ready, and I even oiled it down.'

She seemed to have spent extra time out and about, preparing gifts for me and Ruby.

There was nothing left on the day's schedule,

and as time passed, the three of us got ready for bed.

- Zzz...

Ruby fell asleep,

and moonlight spilled through the window onto the bed.

My body was exhausted from the hard training and from being trapped in Isabella's conversational ant-lion pit,

but my mind was still wide awake.

".........."

I turned my head to look at Dolores.

She had her eyes closed, seemingly settling in for a peaceful sleep.

Honestly, having known her for such a short time, it was hard to say for certain,

'She looks like she's lost some of her spark.'

was the thought that crossed my mind.

Something had felt a little different ever since Isabella arrived?

But I wasn't exactly the type to sit on my curiosity,

and I wasn't sensitive enough to carefully puzzle out someone's feelings on my own either.

"Dolores."

I called her name quietly.

".........."

At my call, she slowly opened her eyes, smiled, and turned her head toward me.

I got straight to the point.

"Did something happen today?"

"...Sometimes, when I look at you, Lionel..."

"Yes?"

"you don't seem like a child at all."

".........."

That hit uncomfortably close to home.

Instead of answering, Dolores just gave a warm smile and sat up.

Then, just like yesterday, she came around the bed to my side.

- Rustle.

The blanket lifted slightly, and she lay down beside me.

"I suppose I just feel a little sorry toward you, Lionel?"

"Me?"

What would she have to be sorry to me about?

"Today was a bit chaotic, wasn't it."

"It wasn't bad."

She seemed to be talking about Isabella.

And it hadn't been an especially bad feeling, honestly.

".........."

But maybe that wasn't the answer she'd wanted?

Dolores shut her eyes tight... and finally, with some effort, spoke.

"If you ever want to take magic lessons from Isabella... just tell me, any time."

"What?"

"I could even send you to her by carriage."

What was she even talking about.

Absolutely, absolutely not.

I'll admit, Isabella genuinely didn't seem like a bad person, personality-wise.

But I had zero desire to sit face-to-face with her again.

I couldn't do that a second time. No way.

".........."

I studied Dolores's expression carefully after that shocking statement.

It couldn't be that she wanted me gone.

Wait a second.

Eyes closed, wearing the face of someone bracing herself for something.

Only after seeing that expression did something click.

'...No way.'

This woman.

Did she think I'd taken a liking to Isabella?

From Dolores's point of view,

it might have looked like I'd had a pretty good time with Isabella.

So, worried that I might want to take Isabella's magic lessons,

she'd steeled herself to allow it even though she clearly didn't want to.

"Um, Dolores."

"Yes?"

"I like you, Dolores."

Dolores's eyes slowly opened.

What did she think was the reason I worked this hard, anyway.

"I don't want magic. I don't want anything else, either."

I held her gaze and kept going.

"And I have no intention of going anywhere."

I said it like I was joking, but...

"I like you, Dolores."

This life, it's you, Dolores.

If a thirty-year-old said something like that, people would point and call him pathetic, or crazy.

But I'm Lionel. Thirteen years old.

This much cringe, I could live with.

"I see... Lionel..."

Dolores closed her eyes and nodded.

Right then.

My gaze landed on her feet.

They were bare.

I'd told her to go without them, and she'd actually gone and done it.

And her feet, without the equipment that suppressed the curse...

'They're frozen.'

They were frozen a stark blue, plain to see even from the outside.

She must have gone around all morning barefoot inside just her shoes.

This woman was planning to just live like this until I finished making her new shoes.

And she wanted to send me off somewhere, in this state?

That was ridiculous.

My chest tightened with discomfort.

Once something got its hooks into me, I had a tendency to stop seeing anything else around it.

- Grab.

"Eep?!"

I grabbed Dolores's foot.

"Lionel, let go! It's cold..."

It was cold. Genuinely, unbearably cold.

Living like this, it just wasn't right.

I don't know. I just couldn't leave it.

"I'll be right back."

I shot up from the bed.

My sleep privileges were already forfeit anyway. And my hand, whether the medicine had finally kicked in or not, had mostly healed by the afternoon.

I grabbed her socks off the side table,

Tmir's Ice-Bound Soles, and gripped them tight, giving them a shake.

- Swish swish.

As I held her socks up and waved them around,

Dolores's cheeks flushed red.

"I'm taking these."

Late at night,

if you're going to work, you're supposed to do it when your mind is sharp and wide awake.

Same went for studying, for gaming, for anything.

"Go ahead and sleep first."

Dolores opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again.

[No one can stop him once he's like this. Yeah, yeah.]

It was the face of someone who already knew there was no point trying to stop him.

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