Reborn in Type-Moon: Starting by Adopting Sakura - Chapter 25

Manaka's expression softened as she watched him, and there was something almost wistful in her eyes. "I'm really glad you noticed my efforts, Master. It's been such a long time since it was just the two of us in the mornings like this." She clasped her hands together, looking genuinely pleased. "Actually, since you came all the way to the kitchen, is there anything special you'd like me to add to today's menu? Another dish, maybe? I want to make sure our guests have everything they could possibly need during their... stay."

He cleared his throat. "Add something special? No, no... I was just wondering if all this work every day isn't wearing you out."

"Not at all," she replied, her tone as cheerful as ever.

Yuu wanted to make sure she understood he wasn't pushing her too hard. Of course, Manaka understood everything—probably better than he did. This whole elaborate hospitality routine was exactly what she'd been aiming for from the start. With Sakura now officially part of their household and expenses only going to climb higher, and knowing her Master's generous nature would never allow him to simply ask friends to leave over money troubles, Manaka had calculated her approach carefully. The guests were genuinely good people. If they happened to discover, completely by accident, that their extended stay was putting a financial strain on their host, they'd probably pack up and leave out of sheer embarrassment.

It was a perfect plan. Manaka kept her expression sweetly innocent. "As long as Master doesn't mind me taking charge of hosting Miss Irisviel and Miss Artoria, I'm perfectly happy to continue."

"All right then." Yuu could sense there was something slightly territorial about the way Manaka had been handling their guests lately, but he wasn't about to call her out on it.

He swallowed the rest of what he'd been planning to say and made a mental note to start taking on more commissions. Usually, he stuck to relic authentication work—each job brought in around £500,000, and the work itself was straightforward enough. The problem was that there simply weren't that many ancient artifacts floating around that needed his particular expertise. Even with his reputation, he was lucky to get one or two authentication requests per week. Most of his professional time was actually spent trading historical information with other scholars and collectors, work that sometimes paid nothing at all and occasionally even cost him money when he had to purchase access to private collections or rare documents.

Money had never really been a concern before. At his level in the field, most transactions were handled through favors and exchanges rather than cash payments—dealing with actual currency had always seemed almost beneath the dignity of serious scholarship and felt too mundane. Besides, his specialty was lucrative enough that a single authentication job could fund a comfortable lifestyle for months. He'd never had to think twice about expenses.

But taking Sakura in and training her in magecraft from the ground up was turning out to be a serious long-term investment, and there was no getting around the fact that it was going to require actual money.

And Sakura hadn't let him down—not even close. The girl threw herself into her studies like her life depended on it, which in some ways, it probably did.

Ever since Irisviel had arrived, Yuu barely saw Sakura except during meals. Right now, she was probably upstairs, hunched over her computer again, working through another set of programming exercises he'd assigned her. She had this determination that made him glad he'd decided to take her in as his apprentice. Most kids her age would have given up weeks ago, but Sakura just kept pushing forward.

...

The early summer heat hung over Tokyo like a heavy blanket, making everything feel sluggish and drowsy. Sakura pulled open the refrigerator door and found exactly what she'd been expecting—one lonely slice of cake sitting on the shelf, the sole survivor of what had probably been an entire box that morning.

When Artoria glanced up from her plate, she noticed a small figure hovering near the doorway. Sakura stood there looking like she wanted to say something but couldn't quite work up the courage, her clear eyes darting between Artoria and the remaining piece of cake.

Artoria paused mid-bite and gestured toward the empty chair beside her, a small invitation. But instead of coming closer, Sakura seemed to panic and disappeared back upstairs.

Artoria watched the empty doorway for a moment before returning to her cake, eating more slowly now.

A few minutes later, Irisviel wandered into the kitchen, still looking half-asleep and running her fingers through her damp hair. She'd clearly just gotten out of the shower, and her voice had that soft, dreamy quality it always carried when she wasn't fully awake yet. They'd been out exploring Shibuya until well past midnight, and apparently the late night was catching up with her. "Good morning, Lancer," she said, stifling a small yawn.

"It's well past noon already," Artoria replied, not looking up from her plate.

"Really? That late?" Irisviel blinked in surprise, suddenly looking more alert. "Where's Yuu?"

"He left early this morning," Manaka said, appearing in the doorway with a wooden tray balanced in her hands.

"For work?" Irisviel asked. The concept was still relatively new to her—growing up in the Einzbern castle, the idea that people had to leave their homes every day to earn money had been completely foreign. But after Manaka's patient explanations over the past few weeks, she was starting to understand how the outside world operated.

"Mmm," Manaka confirmed, beginning to clear away the empty dishes.

The simple answer hit Irisviel harder than it should have. She remembered the previous evening—how Yuu had taken her on that beautiful drive along the coastal highway, the way the city lights had reflected off the water, how free and alive she'd felt sitting beside him in the car. But now, sitting in the afternoon sun, all that freedom twisted into guilt.

Had she been completely selfish this whole time?

As the culmination of the Einzbern family's thousand-year magical research, Irisviel had been raised in absolute luxury, wanting for nothing. If her sacrifice could have furthered her family's goals, she would have given her life without hesitation—that was what she'd been created for. But stripped of all those expectations and responsibilities, she was just a young woman experiencing real emotions for the first time in her life.

Yuu had been like sunlight breaking through the eternal winter of her castle home. After he'd left Europe, she'd spent months staring out at the gray sky through frosted windows, counting the days and wondering if she'd ever see him again. When she'd learned he was in Tokyo, she'd boarded the first flight she could find, driven by the desperate need to see him one more time before her remaining time ran out. She'd told herself she deserved this small taste of freedom, this chance to live like a normal person.

But sitting here now, realizing that he was out working while she slept the day away, Irisviel couldn't shake the feeling that she'd been thinking only of herself.

Manaka made a few brief comments about the organization system before heading downstairs to work on the bookshelves in the study.

Irisviel followed after a moment's hesitation. "Let me help you with that."

"Oh, that's very kind of you," Manaka said, giving her one of those gentle smiles that never seemed to reach her eyes. She didn't refuse the offer, though.

There were two cardboard boxes sitting in the corner, both filled with what looked like academic texts and reference materials. The job seemed straightforward enough—sort everything by subject and get it all properly shelved according to whatever system Yuu had been using.

"So how did you and Yuu first meet?" Irisviel asked as she dragged one of the boxes closer, hoping to make some conversation while they worked.

Manaka's smile didn't waver, but she didn't answer either. Instead, she opened the second box and started pulling out books, explaining the filing process. "We need to catalog everything first, make entries in the directory, and then put them in their proper places on the shelves."

"Right, got it." But as Irisviel lifted the lid on her box, something else caught her attention immediately.

There was a thick ledger sitting right on top of the books, bound in plain brown leather.

Curiosity got the better of her, and she opened it to the most recent entries. The neat handwriting documented every expense from the past month in detail, and as her eyes moved down the columns of numbers, Irisviel felt her stomach drop.

She didn't need any special training in accounting to see what had happened. The spending had jumped to absolutely ridiculous levels since she and Artoria had arrived. Food costs alone had skyrocketed to amounts that seemed almost absurd—and now she understood why Yuu had been taking on extra work, why he'd been leaving the house so early and coming back looking exhausted.

They were bankrupting him.