WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Protagonist of a Romance Fantasy Only Likes Me ◈
Chapter 4: Because It’s More Fun. (3)
──────
6.
The midday sun blazed into the common carriage.
Countless eyes turned toward Lancel.
Unlike the private nobles’ car, where one could lie around alone, there was not even room to set a foot in the common carriage.
‘She’s somewhere in here. Marigold.’
Lancel shoved his way between the people staring at him in confusion.
“Hey, there’s no room as it is! Who’s pushing?”
“Argh! Who was that? Who stepped on me?”
“What do you think you’re trying to sneak off with, bastard? Don’t even think about touching my luggage!”
“What the hell are you talking about? When did I touch it?”
“You little...!”
Shouts and fists flew in Lancel’s wake.
After searching the first common carriage, Lancel immediately moved on to the next.
The second, third, fourth...
After repeating this a total of eight times, he soon reached the last car of the train.
‘How much money did she save?’
It was a windowless cargo car.
The cheapest place to ride.
The loud clatter of the wheels, the stale smell of mold, the humidity from sweat and breath, even the somewhat nauseating smell of alcohol.
Lancel entered with doubtful eyes. Was she really here?
“You damned bitch! What are you making trouble for?”
Then, a loud voice rang out from afar.
“I said to polish my shoes. When did I ever say I’d pay you? What a ridiculous little brat.”
“You said you would! One copper coin!”
“Do you have proof?”
“Everyone else heard you!”
“Did you people really hear that?”
“You said you would pay her, old man. Are you really trying to cheat a child over one copper coin?”
“What? You bastards, all of you...”
“You heard them, right? Pay me!”
“Get lost, you beggar brat!”
Smack!
“Yelp!”
A small shadow was knocked onto the floor.
“Impudent little thing! One copper coin just for polishing my shoes? I should polish them myself! They hardly look any cleaner anyway.”
Lancel saw the girl sprawled on the floor.
A small body, golden hair tightly tied back, and shabby clothes beneath a worn cape.
Moisture glimmered in her emerald eyes, but she did not let it spill.
Instead, clutching her reddened cheek, she suddenly threw a punch.
Perhaps because he had not expected her to fight back, the old drunk took the blow to his groin head-on.
“Guh...!”
“Whoa.”
There was no doubt.
“Pay me!”
Those features.
She was so filthy that he had not recognized her at first, but they gradually rose from his memories.
“You flea-sized bitch. You’re... in for it now.”
“Uh, ah!”
“That crazy old man...!”
Voices of shock spread through the car like waves.
A shining object had leaped from the drunkard’s clothes, as his face and neck reddened with pain and rage.
The girl’s expression hardened.
“What? You think I survived twenty years in a brothel because I’m afraid of seeing blood, you damned bitch?”
Just before he could thrust the knife forward, someone caught his arm.
It was Lancel.
“Who the hell are you?”
The blade swung back, tearing a long strip from Lancel’s clothes.
“Right. This is why I kept wasting ten years at a time.”
“What the... guh!”
Lancel casually twisted the man’s jaw with his palm. The drunkard crumpled to the floor.
Lancel had already pulled the man’s purse from his clothes with his other hand.
He took out a handful of coins.
“Silver coins!”
The man had looked like he had nothing, but he had been carrying quite a stack.
Lancel handed all of it to the fifteen-year-old girl before him.
“Just because you’re right doesn’t mean it’s always good. Sometimes you have to let things go, even when it leaves a bad taste. Here. Take it.”
“Th... thank you...”
After glancing around for a moment, the girl plucked only one copper coin from among the many coins.
Lancel stared blankly at the coins left in his palm, then put them back in the drunkard’s purse.
“What is your name?”
He looked straight into her eyes as he asked.
The train wheels rattled loudly. Light slipped through cracks in the splintered wooden wall, sweeping quickly over the two of them.
Breaking the brief silence that made time seem to stop, the girl slowly opened her mouth.
“Mary.”
Marigold.
Lancel had met Marigold.
7.
Lancel spoke with Marigold for a while on the spot. It was nothing particularly important.
“Mary. Where is your hometown?”
“What? My hometown is...”
“Where exactly did you come from? Why are you on this train? Is there anyone traveling with you?”
It felt a little like an interrogation.
Perhaps because he seemed suspicious, a hint of wariness crossed Marigold’s face.
Lancel cleared his throat softly. He had gotten ahead of himself because there were too many things he wanted to know before he could even feel happy to see her.
“I asked because it’s strange for someone so young to travel alone.”
“...I’m not that young. I’m fifteen this year.”
Even in this world, fifteen was still young. Moreover, Marigold was a little shorter than other people her age, so she looked even younger.
It was due to the game system, where even physical growth was determined by how much nourishment one received.
“Follow me.”
“What?”
“You need work, right?”
Marigold’s eyes widened.
“H-how did you know?”
“You’re polishing even a drunk’s boots. Anyone could tell you need work.”
“Ah.”
Marigold accepted this with an embarrassed expression.
As she hurried after Lancel, who was walking ahead, she quickly added, “No, even if I do need work, I won’t do just anything. I won’t take just any job.”
Doubt raged within her over whether she could trust this man and follow him.
“Looks like we’re on the same page. I don’t have the nerve to make a complete stranger of a kid do just any job either. So quit talking nonsense and follow me.”
“I’m not a kid. I’m fifteen... Ugh!”
Marigold forced her way through the crowded people with all her strength as she followed him.
By the time they reached the second common carriage, she was nearly exhausted.
“Ugh, how much farther are we going?”
“We’re almost there.”
They reached the first common carriage. Marigold leaned heavily against the wall and caught her breath.
“Huff, huff. I didn’t think we’d really come all the way to the end...”
“What are you doing? We still have farther to go.”
“What?”
“Follow me.”
Marigold began to follow with a blank expression, then suddenly grabbed Lancel by the collar.
“Wait, wait! Not there! That’s where the nobles ride!”
“Is it?”
“I’m telling you, it is! Now that I look at you, mister, you’re kind of...”
“Kind of what?”
Lancel gave a dry laugh.
He placed a hand on the door leading to the nobles’ carriage.
“Eek!”
Marigold knew well what it meant for a commoner to open the nobles’ carriage without permission. She could not hide her horror. She could be killed on the spot by a blade thrown by a guard, and no one would pity her. There were occasionally people who sneaked in for robbery or assassination.
“Who dares...?”
The fierce gaze of an armored guard shot through the open door.
Marigold’s face went pale. She hurriedly tried to pull Lancel back by the waist. If they ran now, perhaps they might still be shown mercy.
That was what she thought.
“Sir Lancel.”
Until she saw the guard’s vicious eyes soften in an instant.
“Please refrain from entering the common carriages, Sir Lancel. If something happens, it will be our fault.”
“If you were that worried, you should have followed me.”
“If we leave this place, our heads really will roll. What are you saying?”
“I’ll be more careful next time.”
Marigold looked blankly between Lancel and the guard.
“Sir Lancel, what is that kid trailing behind you?”
“I picked her up.”
“What?”
The guard merely shrugged at Lancel’s answer.
Lancel walked to the room directly beside his bedroom, where the maid traveling with him was staying.
When he knocked, the maid immediately appeared after putting away some clothes.
“Do you need something, young master?”
“Give this girl some work for the time being. You can put her to work as much as you please until we reach the capital.”
The maid did not ask anything else. She simply nodded lightly and took Marigold’s hand.
“Mary. Starting today, I’ll give you five copper coins a day, so assist the maid with her work. If you’re useless, you’ll be thrown out immediately, so keep that in mind.”
Of course, he had no intention of throwing her out. If anything, he wanted to keep hold of her himself.
But Marigold nodded so eagerly that it seemed her head would make a rushing sound through the air. From her perspective, after begging for scraps while polishing boots in the last car, this opportunity must have felt like sudden good fortune falling into her lap.
The maid smiled and patted Marigold’s head.
“That’s good. Five copper coins is generous. By the time we arrive, you’ll have as many as six silver coins.”
============
June 21, Imperial Year 816. Clear weather.
Special event triggered! “Temporary Maid Employment!” Starting today, you will earn five copper coins a day!
※Noble favor has descended! While working as a train maid, meals will be provided free of charge. You will save on meal expenses from today!
============
‘I haven’t even said I’d feed her yet.’
Of course, he had intended to provide food, but seeing the game system make such a fuss by itself left him feeling strange.
Servants were normally provided with food supplies on the train, so perhaps that was why.
‘What would happen if I said I wouldn’t provide it?’
After considering it for a moment, Lancel decided to keep quiet. He simply did not feel like saying it.
8.
That night.
Lancel lay in bed, somehow unable to sleep.
The image of Marigold, whom he had met only after thirty years, kept circling in his mind.
A kid who had lived as a noble until she was ten, then suddenly became a commoner, perhaps something even lower, and drifted all the way here.
‘Is Marigold really the one who will free me from this regression?’
He did not know the answer.
The only certainty was that there was no other candidate besides her.
Was not the nature of this endless regression, which he had already endured for more than a hundred years, nearly two hundred, a phenomenon that began with Marigold restarting the game?
If so, the answer was simple.
He only had to prevent her from restarting the game.
‘The problem is how.’
Should he tell her directly? No, could Marigold even make that decision herself in the first place?
‘I don’t know.’
He lay there for a long time with complicated thoughts.
Then the door to Lancel’s bedroom quietly began to open. A small shadow slipped through the gap.
He even knew who it was.
‘Marigold?’
Marigold, the fallen lady.
She had sneaked into Lancel’s bedroom.
“Why do you keep stopping me? Honestly, all that nagging. I told you I can handle it myself.”
She was speaking with something invisible.
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
