Bonus chapter! Big thank you to SadieWoods for donating!*********************************
“Oh, he’s not very nice to look at, but he’s very friendly and nice to talk to.”
Ken finished sweeping the living room, rested his chin on the long handle of his broom and told him absent-mindedly. Cheung turned his gaze from the bookshelf that he had been cleaning to look at him. Noticing Cheung’s troubled expression, Ken began to babble about his complaints absent-mindedly.
“Well, I’ve never asked you to go with me to pick up a girl, and that’s partly why it’s such a pain in the ass. If Lance was here, I would be guaranteed success. Last night too.”
“It’s because I have a higher success rate picking up girls by myself than I do with you.”
Cheung couldn’t ask him why he didn’t sleep well. Evan, who had just come out of the washroom with a waste bin, started to make tea.
“Don’t be so noisy….maybe.”
“You’re already an old man(1), and why don’t you settle down instead of playing around?”
“I’m only twenty-six!”
With the cheekiness that only the young could have, Ken chased Evan around the room with his broom. Cheung, who was beginning to understand that their quarreling was like a greeting for them, ignored them and moved on to the next bookshelf. If Ken was an old man at only twenty-eight, then Cheung was as well, so he secretly supported Ken’s efforts.
It had been three weeks since Cheung had joined the Severus Eyre.
That aside, the calendar system was roughly the same in this world, and there was around thirty days in each month. Maybe it was just something that was automatically translated when someone transmigrated like he did.
However, there was now twenty-eight hours in a day, and thus, more time to sleep.
There were twelve members in the group led by Lance, the group’s leader. Cheung had been properly introduced to the other four, who were present at his interview, the next day. They were all men that were in the primes of their lives, and although they didn’t look as good as their leader, they all had looks that would make heads turn when passing on the streets.
Some of the members were dismissive of him because he came from a well-off family. However, after he had been seen doing the bookkeeping calculations with sparkling eyes and a single-minded devotion, they now began to talk to him in a friendly manner.
Cheung never thought the day would come when a mental arithmetic geek would be useful, except for when instantly figuring out the price per hundred grams at the supermarket. It was a bit unexpected.
Additionally, there was a big, female tabby cat. Carl, who had picked her up in the woods, had named her Sui(3). She didn’t hesitate to climb into Cheung’s lap and purr loudly even when they first met.
With her large, round eyes, she easily gets rewarded secretly with snacks from everyone in addition to what Carl regularly feeds her, even the strongest of men couldn’t resist her charms. Cheung was more than happy to join her long line of tributes.
After finishing dusting off the bookshelf, Sui abandoned her efforts to remove a hair ball from her bed and approached Cheung’s feet, greeting him with a high, spoiled voice. Cheung apologized to her for being empty handed, and her wide eyes suddenly turned half-lidded. She rubbed her tail across Cheung’s feet with her long, beautiful tail and then moved on to press up against Evan and Ken, who had seemed to have settled their disagreement.
Cheung couldn’t help feeling like she thought of him as a servant, but he couldn’t help but like that about her. After all, she was just a cat, but he was a bit in love with the idea that paying tribute to her like that would bring him good luck in finding a woman.
At any rate, Cheung had no complaints about his relationship with his coworkers.
Except for one thing.
How could someone who’s “friendly and nice to talk to” warn him to not get to close to him?
Cheung breathed a sigh at the image of Lance that did not match Ken’s description of him. It was true that Cheung’s words and actions were incoherent, and he couldn’t really remember the scary look on Lance’s face, but he’d like to think that that wasn’t enough to make Lance hate him… so much that he wouldn’t even show his face.
From the exchange after the interview, I understood a bit more of Lance’s personality, and it didn’t seem like he was too narrow-minded.
Cheung noticed Sui swishing her tail while begging for food from Ken. Ken, locked onto her, was rifling through his pockets to see if he had something to give her.
Now that he thought about it, Cheung had never seen Sui approach Lance, who happily spoke to anyone in hopes of getting some food.
Instead, he had seen her react contrarily toward him when he was on his way to work that morning. Lance had been in the empty living room, eating and trying to pet Sui gently. However, Sui’s hair suddenly stood up on end, and she ran away while yowling in a threatened voice that Cheung had never heard before. Cheung saw Lance’s back through the gap in the door, and there was a sad slump to his shoulders that were usually so fine and broad, and even Cheung felt a bit sad seeing this.
Cheung had a feeling that this interaction had occurred with Sui several times before and ended in failure every single time. Although Lance was very strong and charismatic enough to be the leader, Jesse and Carl were even stronger than him. Sui was a nuisance with those two, so it didn’t make sense that she would instinctively avoid Lance.
“Why are you afraid of him even though he likes you?”
Sui, who hadn’t gotten what she wanted from Ken, had returned to Cheung and was lifted into his arms.
“I don’t like you, but you get along with me just fine.”
She huffed in front of Cheung, who was pessimistic about his troubled future; it was an unfortunate loss.
*********************************1. In the raws it says “ossan” (おっさん) which is a semi-rude way to refer to a middle aged person (generally someone 40+), so I used old man since that’s like… the English equivalent that I could think of b/c of this line: “The future is now, old man.” And all the other similar memes. Though saying something like “boomer” or “grandpa” might be just as good lol
2. Her name is written “スウィ” in the raws, and I’m terrible at figuring out names but we’re going with Sui for now (partly cause it’s the same name as the wonderfully cute slime from Tondemo Skill De Isekai Hourou Meshi)
TL Note: This chapter is a little short, but it is a bonus chapter! Luckily I was able to finish up my lab fairly quickly despite it lagging out several times x’D
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