Chapter 169: The Mango Spoon
When everyone heard that tone and those words from Amelia, they sensed she was attempting to cover something up. Even if the words themselves sounded reassuring, her voice betrayed her in a manner she couldn’t completely conceal.
They had no desire to press her or force her to speak about whatever was troubling her; they simply wished to pull her out of that strange psychological state she seemed trapped in ever since her arrival. Perhaps a few simple words and spending time together would suffice to make her feel better.
Cathy smiled at her, speaking in a calm, reassuring tone:
"Of course! Lord and Lady Oster would never leave Lady Amelia alone for long. Their journey will come to an end, and they will return to you. It’s as simple as that."
Amelia nodded upon hearing Cathy’s words. The irony was that Cathy herself knew all too well what it meant to have your parents far away—in fact, she had suffered from it to a far greater degree than Amelia ever had. Yet here she stood before her, simply assuring her that things weren’t that bad.
Perhaps it was because she knew firsthand that certain burdens became lighter when you found someone telling you that everything was going to be fine.
In truth, however, her parents’ absence was hardly the sole matter consuming Amelia’s mind.
Simultaneously, she was attempting to channel her limited magical power—energy she had recently elevated to the Second Stage following the Gap Stage, the Magic Heart Stage—utilizing it to deploy her detection and sensing techniques to trace the origin of that bizarre entity floating before her.
Was it real?
Or was she merely imagining its presence?
Her sensing techniques were extraordinarily advanced for her current level, far from the type that could be easily fooled. Thus, she persisted in examining the existence of that entity using every method at her disposal.
Yet the result remained unchanged.
There was indeed something there.
Something real.
Had she not been absolute in her sound mind, she would have begun to suspect she was suffering from severe hallucinations, for the mere existence of such an entity before her defied everything she knew about the world.
How could such a thing even exist in the first place?
Was someone watching her?
Was someone observing her from a vantage point she couldn’t reach?
And most importantly...
How was the System repaired?
What was this mission the entity had spoken of?
Questions piled up inside her mind, each potential answer opening a new door to even more complex inquiries. Ultimately, however, she resolved not to allow this matter to ruin the time spent with her friends.
If a true problem existed, it wouldn’t vanish simply because she ignored it for a few hours. And if someone was indeed watching her, it was best not to reveal that she had begun to suspect their presence.
Thus, she raised her head once more, a bright smile blooming across her face.
"Yes, I believe so too."
Amelia’s demeanor shifted noticeably after those words. That joyful expression her friends were accustomed to seeing returned to her face, as though the cloud overshadowing her mood had suddenly dissolved.
Even so, the other three still felt something was off.
Yet they didn’t pry.
In the end, they were here to enjoy their time together. As long as Amelia no longer appeared lonely or sad over her parents’ absence, that was more than enough for them.
Perhaps they had misread the situation from the start; perhaps she hadn’t been sad at all, but was simply pondering something entirely unrelated to her parents.
Albert alone, however, couldn’t completely cast the matter aside.
He glanced at Amelia from time to time, pondering her state far more deeply than the rest of his friends. He considered her his best friend; she was the very person who allowed him to live alongside her despite knowing his true identity—the fact that he was a dragon—without ever looking at him as though that made him any different from her.
Thus, he secretly resolved not to let her continue down that train of thought.
If there was a simple way to make her happy, he would execute it.
Even if that way was merely a scoop of ice cream.
A short while later, the orders finally arrived. The waiter placed the dishes and cups before each of them with professional finesse, scattering sweets and beverages across the table. Before Amelia was placed a cup of mango ice cream, nearly identical to the one Albert had chosen for himself.
Albert looked at Amelia’s cup, then down at his own.
Then an idea struck him.
A brilliant idea within his little mind.
He wanted to share some of his mango ice cream with her.
Since he possessed immense innate magical speed that he had recently discovered, he reasoned that the execution would be effortless: he would scoop a spoonful from his cup, move with lightning speed, deposit the ice cream into Amelia’s cup, and return to his seat before anyone even registered what he had done.
A flawless strategy.
Theoretically.
Albert deployed his speed.
In a single instant, his little body rocketed forward at a velocity utterly mismatched with his size. The flaw, however, lay not in the speed itself, but in the precision.
Instead of the spoon reaching Amelia’s cup, a catastrophic chain of errors unfolded within a fraction of a second.
Albert moved far too fast, lost control of his trajectory, and ended up crashing violently against the parlor’s wall. The large spoon he was holding became bizarrely stuck right across his face, his clothes smeared with mango ice cream, while another glob clung stubbornly to his face.
"Owww..."
Silence fell for a brief moment.
Everyone in the establishment turned toward the absurd scene.
Albert was pinned against the wall in a manner far from any respectable attempt to help a friend. The spoon meant to deposit ice cream into Amelia’s cup was instead lodged before his face, while ice cream was plastered over his clothes and face as if a full-scale battle had erupted between him and the mango cup—ending in the cup’s utter victory.
Albert remained motionless for several seconds.
Then, with an absolute calm entirely unfitting for the catastrophe surrounding him, he attempted to act as though nothing had transpired.
As if a dragon child hadn’t just slammed into the wall of a luxurious parlor using magical speed simply to give his friend a spoonful of ice cream.