THE HERO'S SON IS A MONSTER-Chapter 70: Brat

My mother seemed surprised by this outcome, but she seemed to have learned her lesson. "No more fish for you," she said.

I could tell she wasn’t happy; she had that tone that adults have when they concede to someone they can’t really understand but still have to put up with. After that, she made sure to always get me other kinds of meat. It was just another thing to add to my truly special menu.

I hate to admit it, but I was a spoiled brat.

While I had a real reason to hate fish, I had no real reason to hate almost all vegetables. My mother had to do all kinds of gymnastics to feed me. I had products bought especially for me and cooked to my liking.

Yes. I hate to admit it, but I really was a spoiled brat.

One day, while we were still living in the middle ring, we were invited to dinner by a friend of my mother’s whom I had never seen before. She was a beautiful woman with long black hair and golden eyes and I remember her stern expression very well.

Shortly after we arrived, my mother left with this woman to another room so they could talk, leaving me in the dining room with this woman’s child. My memories of her are rather hazy – she didn’t leave much of an impression on me. All I remember is the one time she spoke directly to me about the evening.

"Don’t you want to eat it?" she asked me, noticing that I wasn’t touching anything. She was talking about my plate full of vegetables and fried fish, in short, mud in my eyes.

"I don’t want it," I replied, crossing my arms.

The girl’s eyes widened a little, as if I had just said something inconceivable.

"What? Do you have a problem with that?"

"..."

She did not answer. She just nodded and continued eating as if nothing had happened. Now that I think about it, she looked pretty dark and scared me. I remember thinking that only fish and vegetable eaters could look so scary, although that conveniently excluded my mother.

Anyway, a few hours later, my mother and this woman reappeared. My mother looked satisfied while the woman still looked as stern as before. She looked in my direction with her cold eyes and raised an eyebrow.

"You haven’t touched your plate," she remarked.

A shiver ran down my spine for some reason. That’s when my mother intervened.

"A-Ah, it turns out she’s already had her dinner, see?"

The woman looked at my mother with expressionless eyes. "I see. But common sense would dictate that you warn me in advance."

"I know. This won’t happen again."

My mother seemed intimidated by this woman too. Even I could tell she was choosing her words carefully.

When we got home, my mom made me dinner as usual and didn’t say anything to me that night. Three days later, this black-haired woman came to the house but it wasn’t for dinner, it was to chase us out of the middle ring.

"Mother, why were we exiled to the lower ring?" I asked him as we walked out of those dirty sewers.

Why?

My mother never explained it to me. At first, she said it was ’thanks’ to that woman. She seemed satisfied and thankful to her even though she had to work every day and had to deal with inferior people. She was even smiling.

Why?

My mother never said a thing. She only said it was that woman’s doing. She seemed tired but continued smiling as if she was sure our situation would go back to what it was before. But it appeared more and more forced over time.

Why?

My mother kept silent. In fact, she wasn’t saying anything anymore. No, actually, she was talking – to herself often. She wasn’t listening to me anymore.

Why?

I stopped asking. She would not explain anything at all. She would just look at me with ’those’ eyes; she would look at me as if I didn’t belong ’here’.

That’s when I understood – it was all my fault.

After all, that day, she looked fine until that woman mentioned that I didn’t eat. Was that the reason? Was she some powerful bibliomancer who I angered by not eating her food?

Was it because I acted spoiled, unlike that child? It must be that. There’s nothing else I did that could have caused that. Otherwise, mother would not have forced me to eat it. My body would not hurt that much right now...

It... It hurts. I don’t want to feel my hands anymore. I never thought that having a bone stuck in my throat would be the least painful thing I could experience. What to do? I... Why do I start to feel ’that way’ towards mother?

This isn’t good. I must stop. It simply isn’t good...

(This... is good...)

With a spoon in her mouth, Alexandra had a thought that surprised her. While she only accepted to have dinner there because of her "little sister", she wasn’t expecting lower ring level of food to be this high. That was at least one thing she couldn’t complain about.

Well, no. She could do without Minium’s enthusiastic munching noises but she would tolerate it. For today at least, someone had to teach her manners.

"So? Is it good? Anju’s cooking is delicious, right?" Lupa suddenly asked. She was sitting in front of Alexandra, her chin resting on her palms with a little smile on her face.

"Why don’t you have a taste? That’s better than asking for my opinion," Alexandra replied with an irritated tone. For some reason, the question slightly annoyed her so she decided to play dumb.

"Come on! That isn’t how this works you know?" replied Lupa, still smiling as if nothing happened.

This seemed to confuse the girl a little, leading her to answer nonetheless, although with an unusually sheepish tone, "... Well, I suppose it gets the passing grade."