Perhaps.

“Jade!”

But it was a clear voice. Not low and resonant.

Jade opened the door.

“What brings you here so early in the morning, Nina?”

The one smiling brightly wearing a red hat was the girl who had fully recovered. With her cute cape on, she looked like a fairy from a storybook. Surely Pavel must love the girl despite their difficult circumstances.

“This. Dad told me to bring it to you!”

Nina held out a small bundle in her gloved hands. Jade invited the girl in and unwrapped the cloth on the table.

Inside the bottle was something very yellow, almost golden in color.

“Nina, is this…?”

Nina smiled brightly.

“It’s honey. Dad says it’ll keep for a long time.”

“What? But that’s too precious!”

“No, it’s not. Dad has a place where he regularly exchanges goods, and they gave it to him. When he shared some of the medicine you gave us, they said thank you and gave this.”

“Even so….”

There were two bottles. The sticky liquid filled to the brim seemed to reflect Pavel’s feelings.

Groaning with gratitude, Jade busily searched through the cupboard. Although medicine was all she had to give, she had to find something.

Meanwhile, Nina was curiously looking around the house.

“Is there anything you need at home?”

“My dad’s an excellent forest man. We don’t need anything! This house has a huge fireplace.”

“Is that so? Maybe because Axel likes it warm. Ah, Pavel might find this medicine useful too….”

She began putting various medicines into the cloth. Cough syrup, fever reducer, joint medicine, disinfectant, and so on. They were made for Ollie, but Pavel would surely need them someday.

Nina giggled watching this.

“I told Dad you’d do this. That’s why he said not to wrap it in cloth. He said we might get a lot in return.”

“Oh really? But I have cloth too.”

Jade laughed playfully and eagerly searched the cupboard again. Now even she was confused about what she had made.

Then Nina tilted her head.

“Why are you alone today? Where’s Axel?”

Jade finally pulled out an ointment good for bruises from the very back.

“Ah, Axel… he went to hunt a bear.”

“A bear?”

Nina’s eyes widened. Jade laughed like a sigh.

“I probably had the same expression as you when I heard about it. I knew the forest was big enough for bears to live in, but I didn’t know they actually did. And I certainly didn’t expect him to go hunting one.”

“But why didn’t Jade go with him? You’re a pair, aren’t you?”

Jade shook her head as she put the items into the cloth and tied it.

“We’re not a pair. If I use a forest expression, I’m like a parasitic plant. You know, those vines that climb up big trees. Sucking up all the nutrients. I’m not very useful….”

At her slightly weak voice, Nina tilted her head.

“That’s not true….”

“It is. Ah, Nina. Let me see your wound. Take off your gloves.”

The girl removed her gloves.

Thankfully, the stubby finger on one hand had healed completely, and apart from being slightly shorter, there were no functional problems. The Loroa root had truly been effective. It wasn’t for nothing that it appeared in the first chapter of the magic potion book.

“It doesn’t hurt, does it?”

Nina spread her fingers as if to show them off.

“Not at all! It doesn’t hurt. Dad says the same thing every day.”

“If you knew how painful and miserable you looked when I first saw you, you’d understand.”

Jade chuckled seeing the small lips pout.

As she watched the kind woman apply a cooling ointment, Nina suddenly said,

“Jade is like a fairy.”

“Me? I’m not a fairy, I’m a magician. Is it because of my light hair color?”

“No. It’s because of Axel.”

Nina raised her own eyes with her other hand, mimicking cold eyes. Jade giggled.

“Really? Why do you feel that way? Well, I’m happy to be a fairy thanks to Axel.”

“There were a couple of times when he came to our house without Jade.”

The girl started chattering away.

She was probably talking about when Jade and Axel had fought over the ‘bait’ issue. During those three days, he must have visited Pavel’s house several times.

“I was really scared every time. Dad said he came to help, but there was no expression on his face at all. So I pretended not to be fully awake. Funny, right?”

While understanding the girl’s words, Jade strangely wanted to defend Axel.

“He’s not very expressive by nature. But it’s not because he has bad intentions, he just doesn’t see a reason to smile unnecessarily….”

Nina smiled brightly.

“But he wasn’t very scary when he was with Jade. He usually smiled when he was with you.”

“That was probably not just smiling, but laughing pitifully or incredulously…?”

Jade made a reasonable guess, but what the girl saw seemed different.

“No. His eyes really turned down more. The whole aura was more comfortable. So you two are a pair. You make each other better, don’t you?”

“I really don’t think we’re a pair.”

“Then a gang.”

“……”

Leaving behind those harsh words, Nina hugged the medicine Jade had wrapped and left, saying her dad was waiting. She also grumbled cutely that if they kept exchanging gifts like this, she might end up becoming an errand girl.

Sitting in a chair next to the table, pondering their conversation, Jade scratched her head.

“I didn’t see him alone, so I’m not sure….”

Scary, it couldn’t have been that bad.

Nina probably couldn’t read his expressions properly because Axel was unfamiliar to her. His cool eyes sometimes looked too cold.

But the heart inside was definitely kind. He picked up and tried to help people who had nothing to do with him—like Jade, for example.

If Nina knew that, she wouldn’t find him scary.

Realizing she was thinking about this with no one to hear her excuses, she couldn’t help but laugh dejectedly.

“I don’t know. I should go shovel snow….”

It’s a bit easier if you clear it when the sunlight is strong. Instead of wasting time on useless thoughts, she should get to work.

Day four. Another crack was added to the wooden piece on the table.

“Oh my, Jade.”

Ollie clicked her tongue and placed a bowl on the table.

“I noticed the snow was all cleared on my way here. Doesn’t your back hurt?”

“Axel had already cleared most of it. I just swept away the bits that had slightly frozen on top. What if I need to run to Ollie’s house urgently?”

“That’s right, we can’t have you falling on your way in an emergency…. Still, you look quite gaunt after just a few days. Have you eaten?”

Jade wiped the sweat from her forehead and shook her head.

“I’ve been eating and doing well. I haven’t had breakfast yet today because I was fetching water. I’ve been making potions so diligently lately that I’ve used more water than expected.”

“You’ve been busy. Here, eat this for now. Axel asked me to do this before he left. He told me to drop by and check on you occasionally. He insisted so much that I thought he was going to be away for a month.”

Unwrapping the cloth and lifting the lid of the bowl revealed a clear soup filled with vegetables.

As she took a spoonful, the salty taste stimulated her appetite a bit. Dipping the dry bread beside her into the soup warmed her insides.

“When did he visit you too, Ollie? He left early in the morning.”

“That’s what I’m saying. Is he a parent leaving his child behind or what?”

A child?

Jade ate a few more spoonfuls with an embarrassed face. Ollie clicked her tongue and drew back the curtains to let more light in.

“Do you need anything at home?”

“I have everything. More than enough dry firewood, a reasonably stocked pantry, and water. Yesterday, I picked some frozen berries from the branch ends, and they were quite good. Very sweet. Would you like some?”

“Ah, speaking of sweetness, I had something to thank you for! Moon flower wine.”

At the words ‘moon flower wine’, Jade deflated.

“It was really exquisite. So sweet that I couldn’t tell if I was drinking wine or flower nectar. I don’t regret giving up the wine from my storage at all.”

“Um, Ollie….”

It was the fourth day since Axel had left. No matter how busy she kept herself, there was still some free time left. As he had said, she was back home and seated before the sun had fully set.

As a result, there was more than enough time for useless thoughts.

For example, thoughts like whether Axel had left the house because he was annoyed by some mistake she had made while drinking.

Even though he had clearly denied this before leaving, these self-deprecating thoughts grew larger and larger when she was alone.

Jade stirred the soup with a gloomy face.

“Axel is quite honest, isn’t he?”

Ollie spoke with her eyes half-closed.

“To describe it as honest… Jade, you really like Axel, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Why, do you dislike him?”

Jade, who had strangely jumped at the mention of liking him, tried to regain her composure under the suspicious gaze.

“No, no! I like him. Axel is a better person than one might think.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway, Axel isn’t honest, he’s excessively frank. He’s the type who doesn’t care whether his words hurt others or not. How self-centered he is!”

“If he were self-centered, why would he get rid of monsters for us… hunt bears… when it’s not even his job….”

Jade mumbled in his defense—lately she found herself defending him strangely often—but Ollie snorted loudly.

“He does those things because they’re not difficult for him. He’s willing to take on physically tiring tasks but detests emotionally draining ones. That’s why he behaves so extremely.”

It seemed to make sense, yet it didn’t.

Axel did seem that way in the beginning. Helping her moderately and ignoring her when it became bothersome.

But it wasn’t always like that. If he disliked emotionally draining things, why would he need to argue with her?

He insisted on his opinion even to the point of arguing with her. Telling her not to recklessly put herself in danger.

Seeing Jade tilting her head in confusion, the old woman smiled gently.

“Of course, he might act differently with you, the magician, so you might not know.”

“Right? You’ve got it wrong. Axel is actually quite soft-hearted.”

“Oh, I never thought… Axel being soft-hearted….”

Ollie knew about the numerous things Axel had done outside—trampling on someone’s feelings—but she deliberately swallowed them back. There were so many such incidents that she almost choked trying to swallow them all.