"Your taste buds are just weird. The meat I grilled is delicious~"
"Don’t eat the burnt bits."
"Ah, my meat!"
I grabbed the blackened piece Ruby was about to pop into her mouth, wrapped it in a napkin, and tossed it aside. She was so much trouble I really couldn’t look away for a second.
"Hehe~ Manager, your face keeps getting more fun to look at."
"That’s called despair."
"Isn’t that the same thing?"
I just poured myself a shot of soju and knocked it back. Then I poured another.
The alcohol settled in my stomach, and the worries swirling in my head started to quiet down a little.
"Hey, Manager... can I have some of that too?"
"So you can start a fire after drinking? You two stick to cola."
"But isn’t it a bit harsh to make us drink cola when there’s such a treat right in front of us?"
Hmm. Now that she mentioned it...
I almost agreed without thinking, but I quickly came to my senses and shook my head.
But then—
"Here you go, Manager~ I’ll pour you a drink, so have this and reconsider."
"I’ll pour one for you too."
"Oh... thanks."
Ruby and Audery, who seemed to have finally recognized their manager’s divine grace, kept refilling my glass, and I kept drinking gratefully. At some point, I started feeling tipsy, and my head began to spin.
"Hey... what you guys are drinking... that’s not soju, is it?"
"Huh? No, no. This is just water. Right, Madness?"
"That’s right, Manager. It’s just plain water."
"Yeah... the alcohol... is just for me to drink..."
If I let these crazy women drink too, it would definitely be a disaster. Thinking about it now, it was a little risky bringing them to a place with alcohol at all, but today I was just feeling too frayed inside. This chapter is updated first at novelping dot com.
"So, Madness. You’re grilling your own meat now?"
"If you keep calling me that, I’ll spit on the meat."
"No matter how mad you are, you wouldn’t do something that cr— Ah! Manager! She really spat on it!"
So noisy. Seriously. See, now everyone’s staring at our table because you’re making a scene.
I opened my mouth to tell them to cut it out, but before I could get a word out, a neatly wrapped ssam was shoved deep into my mouth.
"Manager, have some ssam."
"Here, have another drink, too~"
"Mmph... yeah... thanks..."
My mouth was stuffed full with the ssam Audery had personally wrapped with her pale, delicate hands. While I was chewing the delicious bite, Ruby filled my glass to the brim with soju and fed it to me.
Being served like this, after all the times I usually took care of them, wasn’t so bad. I decided to enjoy this little reward for a while.
I was blankly munching away when—
"Excuse me, perhaps..."
"Annoying... buzz off..."
For some reason, some grating, hard-to-make-out noise reached my ears. No, I could hear it, but my head just wasn’t processing it right.
As a competent manager, I needed to assess the situation, so I lifted my bleary gaze.
"Even so, I’m trying to—"
"Heads... aesthetics... full of holes..."
There were some men standing by our table, and then...
"What... are you guys... doing...?"
"Huh? No, no. Manager, don’t worry about a thing. We handled it."
"...Really?"
Just as I was coming to my senses a little from Ruby gently stroking my cheek with the back of her hand and smiling, Audery had already wrapped another ssam and put it in my mouth. As I was chewing... I spotted a black handgun sitting on the table.
I told her not to take that out normally.
Frowning, I finished the ssam first—it was delicious—then leaned back, rubbing my now-full and secure stomach. I felt like I might live now. I was also getting sleepy.
"You guys... eat up... and pay the bill..."
The moment I slowly took out my wallet, my heavy eyelids blinking, my consciousness just clicked off.
◆ ◆ ◆
"Our manager is kinda cute, isn’t he?"
"...Coming from you, I have no choice but to agree."
Ruby and Audery leaned back in their chairs and simultaneously looked at Elias, who was sleeping soundly. Maybe because his usual gloomy expression had softened thanks to the good food and drink, his decent features, including his deep-set eyes, were actually shining for once.
"Ooh, choo-choo~ Sleeping so well, our baby~"
Ruby smiled brightly as she gently stroked Elias’s cheek with the back of her hand. Her smile held a slightly different feeling from the one she wore when teasing her manager to her heart’s content, but unfortunately, Elias, drunk and asleep, couldn’t see it.
"Alright... shall we start the real heroes’ and warriors’ time now~?"
"You plan to drink more here?"
"Well, yeah. Should we go to a hotel like this and screw the manager? Or go back to the inn quietly like good girls and get some rest?"
Audery glanced at the sleeping Elias’s face and the neckline visible above his collar, then wordlessly knocked back another shot of soju.
"Yeah, yeah. Gotta drink hard in secret now so you don’t regret it later. ...Though, with so many eyes on us, I’d rather go somewhere with a private room."
"I agree. Honestly, it’s starting to get on my nerves too."
"Sorry... it’s because of me..."
"...What do you mean by that?"
With a genuinely apologetic expression, Ruby fidgeted with her hands and spoke carefully.
"Guys keep seeing me and coming over. No matter how pretty I am, isn’t hitting on someone at a BBQ place just not right?"