Chapter 53 – Imperial Palace ~ Master of the Cherry Blossom Palace 3
The soft, sweet smell that you might get from a different perfume or scented oil than usual woke me up from my sleep.
“Are you awake?”
A warm voice full of affection and interest brought me out of my consciousness that I had almost fallen asleep.
It took me a moment to realize where I was as I felt a softer texture than any bed I had ever laid on.
“I heard that he usually wakes up around this time, but he must be very tired.”
Before falling asleep, her mind was fully awakened as she remembered the thrilling and immoral sex she had with Natsuki while taking a bath.
“Huh, hot… !”
In a startled state, I jumped up from the soft pillow and looked around.
I was afraid that at any moment I would hear someone calling me a reckless guy and telling me to pull him out.
However, the only sound in the room was the sound of Natsuki diligently writing something with a brush.
“Oh, you’re awake.”
Natsuki, wearing thin silk clothes, sat down at a desk a little away from the bed, stopped writing something and smiled at me.
I felt happy that Natsuki thought of me as more important than the work she was doing, but at the same time, I felt uncomfortable, like I was sitting on a thorn cushion because I couldn’t be with her due to my status.
“If it’s okay, should I at least prepare breakfast?”
It was uncomfortable to sit still on the luxurious bed used only by the royal family, and it seemed like it would be difficult to wonder what Natsuki was doing, so that was all I could do.
However, after I told him that cooking for the royal family is done by professionally trained chefs, I realized. I was thinking that the sincerity and taste would probably be overwhelmingly superior compared to my own cooking, so I tried to cancel the offer.
Before I could cancel my words, Natsuki’s eyes opened wide, and she greeted me with a pretty smile that seemed to brighten the dark dawn sky.
“Is Setsuka making it herself?”
“Of course. Even though it looks like this, it is evaluated as having quite good skills.”
“… “Have you fed someone your homemade food and been evaluated?”
Natsuki’s voice sounded slightly muffled, but since it was early in the morning, I assumed that her throat was still not fully relaxed.
“Huh. The maid’s quarters provide ingredients, but you have to cook the food yourself. So, there was no difference whether I made it for one person or for 2 to 4 people, so I made a large portion and shared it.”
In fact, I laughed when I remembered the expressions of the three members of Ran’s group who were happy.
Natsuki rested her elbows on the arms of his chair, clasped her hands in front of his chest, and narrowed her eyes.
“Hmm…”
“Is there anything you don’t like or can’t eat? No, rather than that, is it okay if I use the galley as I please?”
When I got the chance to feed Natsuki, who was a member of the royal family and was already my lover, with the food I had cooked, I got excited and started talking faster. Natsuki, who looked at him for a while, let out a long sigh and nodded.
“Whew. As the owner, I must hold the reins well.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s no big deal. There is no need to go to the restaurant to get to the galley. “There is even a corner of this room ready for simple cooking.”
When Natsuki got up from her seat, I quickly got out of bed too. He got up so energetically that his chest shook and the thin gown he was wearing fell off and fell to the ground.
The body reflected in the full-length copper mirror was full of traces of sex left behind by Natsuki.
His face seemed to heat up when he thought of Natsuki’s passionate obsession with making me hers.
Natsuki looked at me with his clothes removed and raised the corners of his mouth.
“Are you seducing me with your body from early in the morning? “It’s obscene.”
I thought answering that it wasn’t like that would break the mood, so with a heated face, I quickly put my clothes back on and followed Natsuki.
A little away from the bathhouse, there was a small space divided into separate rooms.
It was a room with a small stove for making a fire and teapots, and it looked like a place to prepare for drinking tea during work rather than a meal.
“They prepare tea here and bring it to you. You remember Setsuka too, right? The girl who brought me here yesterday. “We met before going undercover.”
“Ah. That strangely featureless thing…”
It felt like he was talking behind my back, so I quickly covered his mouth with my hand, and Natsuki smiled slightly and nodded.
“That’s right. Her name is Aiko, and she has been protecting me closely since I was young. They say she goes around disguised to be purposely nondescript.”
“To avoid being remembered?”
“Huh. I met Setsuka several times, and we had a connection that I was the one who gave orders, so it was easy to associate her with her, right? However, imagine that she was encountered without any information within the Cherry Blossom Palace. “How many people work here can you remember?”
Unless you have an unusually bad memory, it’s clear that she probably won’t even be remembered.
And if you think about her skills when disguised as a coachman, she was a scary woman who would adjust her disguise little by little every day to make sure she didn’t leave an impression.
Such a scary woman sneaking between the ceiling and the roof at night to spy on her master’s affairs. She obviously wasn’t usually pervert.
“Is that woman named Aiko an ally?”
“Of course. “When I was young, I had no choice because I was ordered to, but when I grew up, I gave up my plan for succession and came down to the Cherry Blossom Palace, but I followed along even though I had the option of staying at the main palace?”
At first, she thought it might be a disguise, but when she saw Natsuki smiling brightly and saying that she had spent years trying to figure out her true feelings, she suddenly became curious.
“Even people who have been together since childhood are checked so thoroughly…”
“Why is she so absorbed in Setsuka even though we’ve only just met her?”
Natsuki turned his body and came closer to me, stroking my cheeks and the nape of my neck with both of his hands until the tips of his noses touched each other and then smiled slightly.
“Maybe it’s my fault for falling in love with a cute and pretty girl at first sight while flinching like this?”
“…”
Natsuki’s honest and overwhelming directness made my heart circulate hot blood throughout my body.
Compared to her upright love, I was trash, having two other women, Ain and Sophia.
He was the trash of trash, dating three other women at the same time.
When she tried to avoid eye contact out of embarrassment, Natsuki put pressure on her hand holding her face.
“No. Look straight at me.”
When her wavering gaze met Natsuki’s eyes again, she smiled with her eyes as if she had done well, and then kissed her lips several times.
“If there is anything missing, please tell me. The dish that Setsuka made herself was not good because she did not have enough ingredients. “I don’t want to leave the same memories.”
“Huh…”
When Natsuki let go and headed back to her desk, she almost collapsed in her seat from embarrassment and excitement.
“Ah… “
Feeling dizzy as if her head was spinning at the feeling of a little bit of love juice leaking from her underwear, she went into the small kitchen.
To bring her mind back to her senses, which had become intoxicated by the sweetness, I lightly tapped her cheek, cheered her up, and looked at the cupboard.
As it is a place where tea is prepared, most of the expensive sugar-filled confectionery that can be eaten with tea was stored.
While looking for something to cook with, I found rice, eggs, and some seasoning.
It was probably not prepared to feed Natsuki, but since Ikora had to stay around in an environment where her guard could not eat properly, it seemed like she was prepared to satisfy her hunger in a hurry here.
“Surprisingly, it is well managed.”
Even cooking utensils that were unlikely to be used very often were prepared for use at any time, including adding oil.
Boil the cleanly washed rice in a small pot without putting it in a pot. While steaming, I placed a pan that looked like a pot lid turned upside down.
Add a ladleful of cooking oil to a well-heated pan, make it hot, and crack an egg.
When the egg started to cook with the sound of frying, I stirred it with a ladle to break it up and added the chopped green onion, garlic, and onion to create a fragrant aroma.
As soon as it was properly cooked without burning, I put in the steamed rice and stirred the ladle by holding the handle and shaking the pan so that each grain of rice was coated with the egg mixture containing cooking oil, which was rich in flavor.
Finally, after adding a pinch of salt, fried rice was born that no one could say was delicious.
Once again praising the truth of fried rice for convenient eating, it was served beautifully in a bowl and decorated with tea leaves that can be used as herbs.
When I went out to the room carrying two plates of food on a tray, Natsuki was sitting comfortably in the living room near the bedroom door, waiting.
When I put it on the table, Natsuki approached me with an interested expression.
“I thought you would call me because there were insufficient ingredients, but was there enough?”
“There was something unexpected. And I wondered if something like this would be good for Natsuki, who would be used to the imperial chef’s good cooking.”
Natsuki nodded with a brief exclamation.
When I saw Natsuki sitting across from me and holding a spoon, my heart started pounding again because it felt like the morning after her first night together.
I was so embarrassed to see Natsuki enjoying the food that I couldn’t tell whether the food I was eating was going into my nose or throat.
