Published: February 1, 2026
Although people might imagine he always eats with Gill, Lizel actually has breakfast alone surprisingly often.
Even on days with requests, if their timings don’t match, each just eats separately. The reason they so often eat together on days they have work is simply that Lizel, who wants to sleep until the last possible moment, usually gets woken by Gill and then just ends up sitting down with him in that flow.
Whether Gill stayed out all night or went out early in the morning, Lizel didn’t know, but Gill almost never spent the whole day holed up in the inn, so he was probably out somewhere today as well. Lizel was leisurely enjoying his breakfast alone.
“Mr. Noble!”
“Mr. Noble, good mornin’!”
He had just paused, wondering what to do with the rather large breakfast before him, when several childlike voices called out to him.
Lizel was still a man, so if he forced himself he could eat it all, but hard was hard. However, it seemed things would work out somehow.
The girl who’d been staying long‑term at this inn and some neighborhood children came quickly over to him. Seeing the textbooks clutched in their hands, he guessed it was the usual business.
“Teach me my homework— I’ll eat the rest of your food for you!”
“Me too!”
“You’re quite the negotiator now, being able to present benefits instead of just asking for favors.”
“Ehehe.”
The girl laughed shyly, clearly not understanding what his words meant at all.
She only knew she’d been praised in some grown‑up way, and was overjoyed with all her might because of that.
The children shifted the books in their small arms and scrambled up onto chairs that were just a bit too high for them. Ever since Lizel had scolded them, they’d properly kept the rules of not running in the dining hall and not eating while standing.
Lizel had often witnessed their mothers fuming, wondering why the children never listened to them.
“Y’know, the landlady knows you can’t finish all this, so why’s she always bringin’ you so much?”
“No, this is the exact amount I can just barely finish. She’s got it perfectly figured out.”
“Then why don’t you eat it all, Mr. Noble?”
“You get sleepy when your stomach’s too full, don’t you?”
The children nodded, “Oh, I get it,” and Lizel laughed in amusement. So straightforward.
Before coming to this world, the idea of having someone else eat what you left over was unfamiliar to him, but he had never had any disgust for that sort of thing. A flexible mind accepted different cultures easily.
“Your way of holding the spoon had finally gotten so pretty, too.”
“Ah, that’s right.”
Smiling at them as they happily ate the slightly cooled food, he prompted one of the boys.
The boy obediently, without complaint, squirmed his fingers and corrected his grip, and Lizel nodded in praise. Instead of dumping everything on them at once, he gave them one thing to master at a time; no child would resent that kind of casual guidance.
Their manners were steadily, bit by bit, improving, and their mothers were overjoyed.
Once, an extremely young girl had torn bread into pieces and deftly used a butter knife; her parents had been so shocked they were struck speechless. “She’s a girl, even if she’s still little, so it’s only natural she picks up graceful movements quickly,” Lizel had said with a laugh when they came especially to thank him.
“We’re done eatin’!”
“Thank you for the meal!”
“Yes, thank you. I’ll go put these dishes away, so get your things ready to study.”
Okaaay, they chorused, and Lizel lifted the tray.
Very different from a certain former pupil, who would show off teleportation magic every time they had a lecture and vanish somewhere dashingly. Thinking of that with some nostalgia as he carried the dishes, the landlady came over with a laugh, saying, “You don’t have to do that, honestly,” and took the tray from him.
She quickly cleared it away and briskly wiped down the table where the children sat before leaving. Watching her go, Lizel reflected on his previous failure at the food stall, thinking perhaps that kind of efficiency was what he lacked. He resolved to do better next time. He had no intention of giving up.