This Novel is not my Novel

Only after several more complications were we finally able to finish cooking and gather around the table.

It was then that I had my first proper look at the other team's dishes.

The side dish is Cajun chicken salad, and the main course is... sweet pumpkin seafood rosé gratin?

The side dish required no particular explanation, so setting that aside, the main course was not made by mashing or slicing the sweet pumpkin and mixing it in.

Instead, they had hollowed out the pumpkin to use as a bowl, filled it with the other ingredients, then topped it with cheese and melted it over an open flame.

Perhaps that cheese was why Pret had chosen Helga, who possessed the Fire Attribute, as his first teammate.

As a rule, one sweet pumpkin gratin was served for every two individuals.

The reason I used "individuals" rather than "people" was because the familiars were included.

And the reason I said "as a rule" was because there were exceptions.

Naturally, Fjodora and I decided to share our sweet pumpkin gratins with our respective familiars.

Vigdís shared one with Helga, while Pret shared with Sveinn.

Reisir, Ríolíkin, and Professor Bjorn, however, each received an entire pumpkin to themselves.

Since that left the numbers uneven, Lissy had half a sweet pumpkin gratin placed in front of her.

Fortunately, Lissy did not seem to feel excluded.

Instead, she appeared relieved that she had avoided having to share a single dish with someone she was not close to.

For reference, we agreed that once everyone had finished the food initially given to them, whoever was still hungry could take the remaining half.

More importantly... He managed to prepare seafood with a group of complete beginners. That's genuinely impressive. And the chicken in the salad is fried, isn't it?

Perhaps for ease of eating, every shrimp had been fully peeled.

Judging from the texture, he also seemed to have removed the tough membrane from the squid properly.

As for the chicken, despite being thoroughly cooked inside, the exterior was not burnt in the slightest and instead had a golden hue.

On top of that, it tasted excellent.

I could not help gazing at Pret in admiration.

"☆Pretty Girl☆ seems to like the food I made. Staring at me with such passion... This junior is ever so bashful."

Apparently noticing my gaze, Pret cupped both cheeks with his hands and spouted nonsense.

Yet there was not the slightest trace of embarrassment on his face, nor did his cheeks redden.

As always, he was simply behaving in an exaggerated manner.

The protagonist of someone else's novel, however, seemed deeply displeased by Pret's attitude.

At least, that was what his complaint suggested.

"Pret, you didn't make all of this by yourself, did you? I'm sure we only managed to get food of this quality because you struggled to teach your teammates how to cook. But that doesn't mean you should act as though everyone else's efforts meant nothing."

"Ahaha? I think there has been a misunderstanding. Unlike your team, ours didn't combine ingredients that everyone prepared together. We each made our own portions."

After hearing Pret's explanation, I swept my gaze across the table and examined everyone else's food more closely.

The fillings inside the sweet pumpkin gratins were covered in melted cheese and sauce, making the finer details difficult to inspect.

But I could immediately see that the pieces of chicken on the salads were all different colors.

Now that I look at it, Fjodora's chicken is a little... No, very burnt. Pret must have helped, because it doesn't seem completely inedible...

Apparently, Fjodora had been assigned the setting of being a disastrous cook.

Despite also being characterized as having an extremely refined palate.

It seemed she had ruined the gratin as well, judging from how badly her face contorted as she placed a piece of squid in her mouth and chewed.

Pret must have helped with the seasoning.

Perhaps she had mistimed the cooking and made the squid tough.

"Ah! For reference, I made Reisir's, Ríolíkin's, and Professor Bjorn's entirely by myself. The others were already struggling just to prepare one serving's worth of ingredients."

In other words, while Helga, Lissy, and Fjodora prepared one serving each of seafood and the other ingredients, Pret had taught them how to prepare those ingredients and given them the sauce recipe, all while completing five sweet pumpkin seafood rosé gratins.

No, that wasn't all, was it? He made the salad too...

I already knew that Pret was versatile, but this showed me that he was even more capable than I had imagined.

That left me impressed all over again.

The protagonist of someone else's novel, however, appeared to have reached a different conclusion.

His gaze turned uneasy as he stared at the sweet pumpkin seafood rosé gratin before him.

"I made it with the utmost care, so please enjoy it, Reisir!"

"Uh... Yes... All right..."

In the end, the protagonist of someone else's novel had picked a pointless fight and gained nothing from it.

After taking a bite of seafood from the gratin, Reisir's expression became tinged with both admiration and resentment.

Apparently, it was too delicious for him to refuse to eat merely out of displeasure.

"More importantly, this stew is delicious too! ☆Pretty Girl☆ and Yor seasoned it, right? I've been cooking for a long time because of my life in the circus, so I'm used to it. But the two of you have only been doing it for half a year at most, and even then, you probably only made simple dishes occasionally. This is genuinely impressive!"

Once Reisir fell silent, Pret addressed me again.

For some reason, his words felt like an attempt to probe whether I truly had never cooked before Yor was born.

As I hesitated, unable to answer immediately—

"And the garlic bread that ☆Pretty Girl☆ whipped up all by himself while the stew was simmering is incredibly good too! It goes perfectly with the stew!"

—Pret added that.

He must have been incredibly busy cooking his own food and helping his teammates, yet somehow he had still noticed.

"That was... merely ready-made bread with garlic sauce spread over it."

"Yes, and I'm saying that sauce is delicious."

"It was thanks to the recipe Yor taught me. The ingredients were high quality as well."

"Come on. Having an excellent recipe and high-quality ingredients doesn't mean just anyone can make delicious food, does it? Looking at it that way, ☆Pretty Girl☆ clearly has a talent for cooking!"

"...Hmph."

Repeated praise was embarrassing enough.

But I also felt guilty because I was lying, so I hurriedly ended the conversation.

"I wanted ☆Pretty Girl☆ to praise me too... but it isn't easy."

Pret muttered his disappointment.

Even so, he did not pester me for praise or stare at me with an oppressive gaze.

He merely adopted the relaxed attitude of someone thinking, That day will come eventually.

Thanks to that, I was able to continue eating in silence.

Of course, that did not mean silence descended upon the meal.

The students chatted back and forth about how the food tasted and how much fun they had during the cooking process, creating a warm and cheerful atmosphere.

After several more bits of casual conversation—

"Miss ★Cool Guy★, you were truly impressive yesterday. When you not only challenged Young Master Ofrausi to a duel but also proposed fighting him yourself, I worried that you might be doing something reckless. Yet to think you would crush him so completely and thoroughly before claiming victory... I was genuinely impressed."

—those words left Fjodora's mouth.

The pride in her tone undoubtedly belonged to Fjodora herself.

But did she truly bring up this subject entirely of her own volition?

At present, Fjodora was the piece the original author could move most easily.

Perhaps because that idea had become lodged in my mind, even a remark I might otherwise have dismissed now bothered me unnecessarily.

Given Author Senna's tendencies, I doubt she'll allow a villain who harassed and insulted a heroine candidate to leave the story like this...

The man had been bound in wire and rendered completely unable to move.

He had been beaten senseless until he could not even utter the words of surrender, then lost consciousness, suffering physical pain and public humiliation.

But would Author Senna and her readers truly accept that as the end of the villain?

He never apologized to Helga. The readers have no way of knowing whether he reflected on what he did.

No matter how many people had witnessed his humiliation, enough time would inevitably reduce it to nothing more than an embarrassing incident from his immature youth.

And he was still the son of a wealthy family.

There remained a possibility that he would find someone more vulnerable than Helga and torment them by wielding his family's power.

A clear ending did need to be shown.

The problem was that Author Senna's preferred fate for villains was death.

Some might wonder why that was a problem, given that villains dying in a fantasy novel was hardly remarkable.

But to me, it was a serious issue.

Villain or not, he is still a named character who cannot be dismissed as a mere background element.

The more frequently the deaths of named characters were mentioned, the less weight death would carry for the readers of that work.

Furthermore, it was House Ofrausi that possessed power.

As an individual, Drembi was a worthless man without a single admirable quality.

And despite that, he had dared to harass a heroine candidate.

Naturally, Author Senna would portray his death lightly.

The readers would find it satisfying and come to predict—or expect—that future villains would likewise be neatly eliminated through death.

And...

Reisir, as the protagonist, would be assigned the role of executioner.

I knew.

I knew how much Reisir had blamed himself and suffered after taking a human life for the first time in the original novel.

I also knew that as he gradually became accustomed to taking the lives of villains, his emotions dulled, and every time he realized it, he was tormented by self-loathing.

The idea that treating the deaths of characters lightly might increase the likelihood of supporting characters dying as well was merely my personal deduction.

Perhaps my fear and worry had gone too far, causing me to assign excessive meaning to something insignificant.

Even so—

I can't simply remain complacent and do nothing, can I?

The ideal conclusion would be to give the villain an ending other than death.

Even if that proved impossible and the villain absolutely had to die, I had to prevent any development in which Reisir stained his hands with human blood.

If he kills even one person, Author Senna will keep placing unforgivable villains before him, as though urging him to commit murder. In the end, Reisir's mind will be worn away...

The cheerful side he displayed now often felt exceedingly irritating.

But I did not dislike it.

I did not want that brightness to disappear.