The next day, after leaving three portions of food for Paimon, who was sleeping in at home, Su Yu and Furina made it to the Academy without a hitch.
At first Furina had been a little curious as to why Su Yu always cooked multiple portions every time, but later she found that nothing went to waste, so she stopped being curious.
Anyway, if Su Yu said it was fine, then it was fine.
She, Furina, didn’t need to think about so much.
Her sister had said that fools have fool’s luck; just eat and be done with it.
After parting ways with Furina at the entrance, the moment Su Yu stepped through the classroom door he saw Kaeya standing in the back row, staring at him with a face full of dark lines.
Clearly Teacher Xianyun had struck; she was still standing at the podium, watching Kaeya, who dared to be angry but not to speak.
And Kaeya had already begun communicating with Su Yu through his eyes.
“Bastard, did you do this?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb!
Teacher Xianyun would never have come up with that reason!
‘Entering the classroom with your left foot first, disrupting class order.’ What do those two have to do with each other?
Do you know how Diluc laughed at me?”
Looking at Kaeya, who kept twitching his eyebrows and winking at him, Su Yu looked over in Diluc’s direction.
This red-haired young nobleman was at that very moment pursing his lips, watching the utterly stifled Kaeya with an expression of intoxication, as though Kaeya’s humiliation made every inch of him feel utterly wonderful.
Su Yu suspected that if the school rules didn’t forbid it, Diluc would surely have brought out fine wine, savoring it while enjoying Kaeya’s predicament.
Taking all this in, Su Yu remained perfectly calm.
After nodding to Xianyun in acknowledgment, he also disdainfully raised a middle finger at Kaeya.
Heaven’s wheel turns.
Yesterday’s grudge repaid today; you could call that efficient.
Just as Kaeya was so enraged by that middle finger that he darkened by two shades, Arataki Itto appeared at the doorway right on cue.
And his sudden appearance also made the dark aura on Kaeya’s face fade by three parts.
Naturally, Su Yu took all this in.
Though he didn’t know what had happened between Arataki Itto and Kaeya, it was clearly nothing good.
Before Su Yu could react, the moment Arataki Itto laid eyes on Su Yu he opened his backpack, took out a pack of Chinese herbal medicine, and said with some concern:
“Sworn brother, take this and eat it.
I went to great lengths to beg it off Tighnari, that friend of Cyno’s.
I heard your body’s weak, so take it to build yourself up!”
“Uh…
actually, my body isn’t weak.”
Yes, Su Yu’s body really couldn’t be called weak.
Though he couldn’t compare to an oni like Arataki Itto, he was, after all, Furina’s exclusive steward, handling both cooking and housework.
A person who could perfectly complete all the household chores couldn’t be called weak, surely.
“Is that so?
I heard from Tighnari that this prescription was carefully formulated by him, saying it was, uh, to thank me for blocking Cyno’s pestering for him.
His tone was weird.
Aiya, anyway, I didn’t really understand what he said, but I roughly got one thing: that drinking this medicine strengthens the body and is a great tonic for the kidneys.
I’ll just take it back and re—”
“Actually, I’m not weak.
I just don’t want to betray Brother Arataki’s good intentions.
I’ll accept this medicine.”
Arataki Itto had only pulled the medicine back a few centimeters when Su Yu, at the speed of light, stowed it into his own bag.
Then he glanced at the stunned Kaeya.
Su Yu could roughly guess the reason Arataki Itto had done this, but he’d already messed with Kaeya once today.
No rush; next time he’d do something even worse.
Class had just ended, and before Su Yu could go beat around the bush with Xianyun about Zhongli’s whereabouts, Ningguang had already appeared at the doorway of Su Yu’s classroom.
Receiving the signal, Su Yu also came out the door to meet up with Ningguang.
“Ningguang, coming to find me right after class.
Is something urgent up?”
No sooner had Su Yu finished speaking than Ningguang rolled a pretty pair of eyes, then said:
“You tell me, Boss Su.
What else could I possibly be coming to you about?”
“If you want to treat me to a meal, let me check whether I still have an opening in my schedule.”
Su Yu opened his phone with great solemnity, poking at who-knows-what, until Ningguang covered her forehead with one hand and signaled defeat:
“Boss Su, stop clowning around.
It’s good news.
Yae Miko says she can cooperate with us, but she has conditions.
She says to hurry up and accept her friend request; her conditions are right there on it.”
The moment Su Yu heard “accept her friend request,” the chat screen was instantly flooded with message after message.
“Hah, so you do know how to accept a friend request.
Is this the attitude of someone asking a favor?”
“Forget it.
This big sister is magnanimous and doesn’t hold grudges against petty men.
I won’t stoop to your level.”
“Let’s talk about the card-printing collaboration.
That Ningguang of yours really shows no mercy.
I wanted to see exactly what content you’re printing on the cards, and she wouldn’t even show me, saying we should discuss the profit split first.
Am I that terrifying?
No matter how I tried to negotiate it wouldn’t work.
So tight-lipped~”
“It’s gotten to the point where I want to poach her to work for me…
just kidding!”
“I can agree to the collaboration, and the profits can be the same as market rate, but you have to help me too.
Hurry over and properly discipline Ei!
Hurry and restrain her.
Make sure she doesn’t cook when she’s out of your sight.
Do you know what cold-dish cuisine she made me last night?” You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
“At first I saw she’d made no small progress, and I even thought about giving it a try.
But luckily I had a flash of inspiration and fed a bite to the little dog nearby.
Now I reckon it’s still blowing bubbles!”
“No matter what I say she won’t listen, she keeps insisting I try it.
If you don’t help me, I won’t even be able to go home today.”
“Hurry up and reply!
I can smell Ei’s presence!”
“Come quickly to Main Teaching Building Room 505!”
Seeing the messages cut off abruptly, Su Yu felt somewhat helpless.
That Ei was still too impatient.
When he watched Ei cook, could that even be called cooking?
If he wasn’t watching, one step further and it would probably become an alchemical potion.
He’d originally wanted to quietly ignore Yae Miko’s messages, but at the thought that the pink-furred fox would run into some food-safety issues, Su Yu still decided to go restrain Ei a bit, and then take the opportunity to negotiate with Yae Miko a while more.
Hold Ei hostage to command the fox~
…
Time flew, and it was already the last day of the time-limited quest.
After school, Su Yu had already escorted Furina home, yet Su Yu hadn’t seen even a shadow of Zhongli.
He hadn’t even seen the man.
Getting him to treat them was even more of a pipe dream.
The day before, Su Yu had even gone to visit Xianyun’s home, and had even prepared himself for Xianyun to demand an exorbitant price, but Xianyun’s head, after all, wasn’t full of twists and turns.
She directly said she didn’t know Zhongli’s whereabouts, and added that if Su Yu found him, she hoped he’d inform her of his whereabouts.
The only thing that could be learned was that Zhongli had bolted one day after Venti disappeared.
If they could find Venti, there was a certain chance of learning Zhongli’s whereabouts, but as for finding Venti, the difficulty was no less than finding Zhongli.
Going around in a circle, the problem had come right back.
Now Su Yu was already working hard to persuade himself not to care about this quest.
Maybe the mysterious unknown reward was just a pair of socks, for all he knew.
The good news was that Su Yu and Ningguang’s business plan was already advancing in an orderly fashion, and Yae Miko had also signed, as if in humiliation, an unequal contract with a profit split the likes of which she’d never had before.
Mm, Su Yu expressed that he didn’t care about the reward at all.
Really…
As for the gacha segment, where he’d single-pull whenever he could single-pull, there was no point saying more.
Su Yu now understood what “single pulls are a slow death” meant.
Always pulling socks.
Every color, every kind.
Really, he was a proper gentleman…
But then again, the variety of socks in this world wasn’t exactly complete.
If he introduced some of the best-selling types from his past life, could that speed up the completion of the bet?
Su Yu still understood the principle that biting off more than you can chew is unwise.
Right now the board-game cards business hadn’t yet shown any profit returns, so other ventures would still have to be carefully planned.
“Ahhh!”
Just as Su Yu, wearing an apron, was standing before the fridge in the kitchen, thinking about Zhongli’s whereabouts on one hand and what to make Furina for dinner tonight on the other, a somewhat cracking, distorted cry of anguish came from Furina’s bedroom.