The Perfect Knight and the Illusionist (BL)
Chapter 13: Dinner

Chapter 13: Dinner

MARIUS

"This tastes sooo good,"

Skylark said for the fifth time, with his eyes twinkling and his mouth full of steak served at the dining hall. The meat was reasonably tender and hardly of prime quality, but it seemed this was the boy’s first taste of the herb cream sauce that was popular with steak in the capital region. It was understandable considering he was from the far South.

"Easy, Leo. You are going to choke," Thomas said, but still seemingly also enjoying the food.

Dimitri was already on his third serving, but I was rather surprised that Skylark was almost done with his second serving too. For such a frail boy, he had an unexpectedly vigorous appetite.

"Is the food acceptable to you, too, Ma... Marius?" Alexis, sitting on my left, asked me.

"More than acceptable, Alexis. These potatoes are delicious," I said.

"Yes, this butter goes very well with them too," Briant, on my right, remarked.

Skylark then suddenly stopped chewing and looked at us, blinking his eyes a few times. Then he asked,

"You guys think these potatoes are good?"

"You don’t think so?" Thomas asked him, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh, the meat and the sauce are so good here, but the potatoes—they are nothing compared to what we have in Erdville!"

I didn’t take offense at his social faux pas of disparaging something that I had just said was good. But then Skylark looked at me. Our eyes met, and he immediately apologized.

"I’m sorry... I didn’t mean to say they were bad," he said, swallowed, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

"No offense taken. It’s fine, Skylark."

"What else is good in Erdville?" Briant asked, his voice smooth.

Skylark’s eyes started to move from side to side, as if that helped him think.

"So many things. Our potatoes are very famous, the berries are also said to be the sweetest in the region, and we also have so many different kinds of fish from the river."

His face beamed with joy as he recalled.

"Is that where you ate twenty people?" Thomas asked.

"That—that was a mistake!"

"So you didn’t mean to eat them?" Thomas quipped again.

"Aw, you know what I meant!"

We all laughed, and I joined in too. But I couldn’t help but notice that while having gone through two whole servings of steak, Skylark hadn’t touched the broccoli. Seeing that this was my chance to ask some questions myself, I asked him,

"Aren’t you going to eat your broccoli?"

The boy suddenly tensed up.

Did I say something wrong?

"Do... do I have to?" he asked, stuttering.

"Here, if you don’t eat your greens, you don’t get your dessert," Dimitri said, pointing his big finger at Skylark’s plate.

The boy sighed, poked the broccoli a few times with his fork, and asked,

"Really?"

Dimitri burst out laughing, and ruffled—ruffled!—Skylark’s hair.

"Haha! I’m just kidding, Leo."

I felt a sudden pang in my right temple, as if a vein had popped, and my grip on the fork and knife tightened. I squeezed them so hard my hands were trembling, and I felt my chest fill up with heat as my heartbeat rose. Skylark then looked at me, his gaze meeting mine first, then slowly traveling down to my hands.

His eyes went blank. Those were the same eyes that I saw in forest animals when our eyes met before I released the arrow during a hunt.

Something was seriously wrong. My mind frantically raced to find the right words to explain, but I first had to determine what exactly it was that I had to explain.

And ultimately, I lost the race.

Skylark’s eyes came back to life, filled with a rush of desperation, he started to shove all the broccoli on his plate into his mouth at a frantic speed.

"Whoa! Leo, slow down!" Thomas said.

"I said I was kidding!" Dimitri tried to reassure him, struggling to hold back from laughing.

"It seems Leo really wanted dessert," Briant said, turning to me with an amused smile.

My grip loosened and my shoulders dropped. I got up from my seat, my chest now aching.

I had to find something.

My eyes scanned the dining hall, but my senses were dulled. I had to do a double take and strain to focus on anything. Then I finally found it. A table where the dessert doughnuts were laid out. I walked in quick strides, picked one that seemed to have the thickest sugar glazing, put it on a small plate and came back to the table in haste, but not running.

It seemed Skylark had finished all the broccoli. The boy didn’t look happy at all.

"He... here."

I placed the plate with doughnut in front of him. He looked up at me, still frightened, and now additionally confused.

"You can eat your dessert... Skylark."

Everyone at the table, also confused, somehow saw humor in the situation and laughed.

The boy looked at me, looked at the doughnut, and looked at me again.

"You don’t have to eat the broccoli if you... don’t like it."

That’s not how I was taught.

But that was the only thing that felt right to say.