“Young lady, young lady, young lady... Wake up.”

Yurine opened her big, red eyes as a gentle voice caressed her ear and she felt a light touch on her shoulder.

“Good afternoon, young lady.”

“Yu~”

At the sound of his name, she raised her head and looked at the handsome young man in front of her.

“I'm here, young lady.”

Yurine was in a wagon she did not recognize, but much bigger than before. The walls were white, inside there were crates, sacks, furniture and candles in wall-mounted candlesticks. The windows were made of glass, not wood as in the old wagons, and in front of them hung red curtains, obviously made of quality fabric.

The red leather seat was much softer and more comfortable than in their old carriage. In fact, it was so comfortable that Yurine hesitated for a moment whether to get up or not and stretched.

But she had to get up because Yu was telling her that if she slept too much during the day she would not be able to sleep at night and the nights were not good. So she lifted her head and studied the handsome young man who called her young lady.

“Yu is so cool!”

When Yu started laughing, Yurine realized she was thinking out loud and covered her mouth with her tiny hands. She was red with embarrassment again.

“Yes, I know I am.”

Yurine smiled lightly as Yu gave her a peck on the cheek. What she had just said was embarrassing, but she was happy that she was able to convey something of her feelings to Yu.

“Yu! Why are you dressed like that?”

“This is how a butler should dress. If the young lady is not satisfied, I can buy different clothes.”

“Young lady?”

Since her mother was the Cardinal of Virgo, they called her, Her Eminence or the young lady. For Yurine, whom she introduced as her daughter, they called her little lady. Yurine had been uncomfortable being called that at the time, but now she liked it when Yu called her that.

She looked Yu up and down. He was wearing a black butler's suit that fit him perfectly. His hair was neat and Yu was growing it out at Yurine's request. He agreed to grow it out a little for Yurine, even though he said he would be uncomfortable if it grew too long.

To keep his beard from growing, he used an ointment he had found a recipe for in the library at the Wizarding Academy. Thanks to the ointment, Yu's face was completely smooth and Yurine could now kiss him without anything pricking her lips.

He had a gentle smile on his face as always, his fingers were long and graceful, his legs long and his belly flat. His eyes, the most beautiful part of him, were as mesmerizing as ever. He had a faint scent of lilac because of the perfume he wore around his neck. Yu was very impressive.

“Well done, Yu. I congratulate you. You have now fully achieved the honor of serving a superior being like me, a noble lady.”

He straightened up in his seat and started applauding Yu.

“Yurine, you're exaggerating.”

Yu held her cheeks with both hands and pinched them. When he took his hands away, Yurine's white cheeks turned pink.

“Then it's time for lunch. After lunch we'll stock up on supplies and leave Seussu.”

When Yurine got out of the carriage, she saw another difference. Apart from being in a town, there were six rinos pulling their wagons.

“I bought three more to move faster, so I think we can reach Andromedia on schedule.”

“So, where are we going to eat?”

Yu locked the carriage door and looked around. He was looking for a place he had seen before.

“There's a place over there that looks modern. Let's go there.”

Yurine took Yu's hand, who was playing the role of a butler, and they went where he pointed. Yu called the restaurant in front of them modern, but the word modern Yurine knew was different from the word Yu used.

The word Yurine knew meant something that was in keeping with the times. Yu, on the other hand, used the word modern for things that were similar to his world.

She was trying to speak like Yu by looking at the places where he used the word, but he used it in such unrelated places that Yurine couldn't adapt to it, and it frustrated her.

But she believed she was finally beginning to understand. Usually simple things were modern.

The weather was cloudy. Instead of sitting at one of the tables outside in case it rained, they sat inside at a table where they could see their carriage through the window.

As a young girl cleared the tables outside, Yu waved his hand to who he assumed was the owner of the restaurant.

“Here you are, sir,” the restaurateur said.

“What's on the menu?”

“Today we have chicken broth soup, chicken and rice. If you have time, I can make a different soup.”

Yu turned to Yurine first. “Is that all right with you?”

Yurine nodded her head in agreement.

“Do you have salad?”

“Yes.”

“Let's have the ones you mentioned with the salad, then.”

When the waiter left to bring the food, Yu took the time to arrange the napkins, forks, utensils and knives on the table.

“Yu, do you know how to be a butler?”

Yu laughed knowingly and then spoke as if he had been doing this for years:

“Don't worry. I've watched all the episodes of The Black Butler and I know all the opening and ending songs by heart.”

She didn't understand the words Yu used, but he was still very cool.

“Yu, what does endin mean? What does openin mean? What is the Black Butler?”

“A story from my world. I told you about the TV and the telephone, the pictures move in the frame and you watch them, it's one of them. You can think of the ending as a song they sing before the end of the show, and the opening before the show.”

Yurine believed that he came from a different world. She kept making Yu tell her about his world and listened to him excitedly. According to him, magic or people with cat ears did not exist in his world. This made Yurine completely unique for Yu.

“Yu, tell me the story you told me.”

When the food they had ordered for lunch arrived at their table, Yurine took the first bite and Yu began to tell the story.

“The family of a little boy is framed and the boy is kidnapped for a ritual to summon the devil. When the devil arrives, he makes a deal with the boy, not the summoners, and the boy asks him to help him avenge his family. The devil will serve him as a butler in the process and when the boy gets his revenge, he will eat his soul.”

“IHH! You! You want to eat my soul?”

Yurine put down her fork and raised her finger at Yu and shouted. A few people in the restaurant stopped looking at their food and turned to them.

“Please forgive my little lady's rudeness.”

Yu stood up, bowed his head and apologized, then sat down and looked at Yurine.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“I haven't coveted your soul yet, but I do plan to eat you for dessert from time to time.”

Yu was laughing again as Yurine hid her cheeks with her tail.

“Yu, you're stupid. Feed me.”

Yu heard her, though her voice was hoarse with embarrassment.

“Yes, my lady.”

Yu shredded the meat and put it in the rice, shredded the bread and put it in the soup. He mixed the salad and filled the glass with water. Then he started feeding Yurine, starting with the soup.

When Yurine was first created, her mother fed her this way. Later she stopped feeding her, saying she needed to grow up, but she still liked being fed by someone else, so she sometimes asked Yu to do it.

But she was careful not to overdo it. If she did, Yu might get bored like her mother and stop feeding her. Yurine had to get the balance right.

After Yurine finished her meal, Yu quickly ate his and paid the bill. They took an umbrella to protect themselves from the pouring rain and Yu told them the next thing they had to do.

“We need to get supplies now, and we'll be on our way before the rain gets too heavy.”

Yurine grabbed Yu's hand again and they entered a town for their first shopping trip.

“Did you hear? They robbed the capital, they're talking about tens of thousands of gold coins...”

“You mean the circus? I heard this morning...”

As soon as he stepped into the butcher's shop, he overheard two customers talking to each other. They were talking about the theft Yu was responsible for.

“The fleeing robbers were all found dead, but the stolen goods were missing...”

“Since what they stole is missing, some of the robbers were found dead, not all of them...”

“But they're talking about hundreds of dead? What kind of monster could do this?”

“I don't know, but tens of thousands of gold coins, huh? The money I've touched in my lifetime is not even worth a thousand gold coins...”

Yurine could feel Yu tensing up. His cheeks hardened and the smile disappeared from his face, but it was only a glimpse. Immediately afterwards, he straightened his shoulders, smiled and, hiding his uneasiness, greeted the butcher behind the counter. All the while he was sniffing something.

“Good afternoon sir, what can I do for you?”

“A ton of beef jerky.”

“A-a ton? Did I hear wrong?"

“No, I want a ton of meat.”

“Yu, are we going to eat meat all day and night?”

Yurine made a righteous rebellion. Their wagons were already full of dried meat. How could they finish so much meat?

“I want it for the rinos, Yurine, one of them eats twenty kilos a day. We have a month ahead of us, what's in the wagon is not enough, and I don't want to keep replenishing supplies. For now, if there's enough meat for two and a half weeks. Then we can resupply on the road.”

“Sir, I don't have that much meat...” said the butcher. “You can only get that much meat from farms outside the town. Since rinos are not very common, the meat produced for them is available in certain places.”

Yu sighed and looked at the counter. Two magic stones were keeping the meat cold under the glass.

“So we're going anyway... Can you give me directions to this place?”

When the butcher gave him directions to where he could buy the meat for the rinos, Yu started looking for meat for them to eat.

“You clean the meat, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“Let's buy breasts then, lose five kilos. Do you sell those things, they keep the meat cold...”

“Storage vault.”

Yu couldn't remember the name of the device, so Yurine reminded him.

“Thank you, safe deposit box.”

The butcher nodded and while he was cleaning the meat, his apprentice brought a small steel box. When he put the lid on the box, it closed so that no air could get in, and the blue magic stone on top cooled the inside.

“The stone will last three days,” said the butcher's apprentice as he handed Yu the box.

When they came to İlonya, they bought one of the storage crates and tried to see if it really kept the cold.

Actually only Yu had tried it, Yurine already knew that the device was used.

But as the apprentice said, the magic stone on it was a special kind and didn't last very long. So you had to buy new magic stones all the time, and magic stones were expensive, making the tool a product for the rich.

“I was wondering where that familiar smell was coming from. Oh, right... Seussu is famous for its sujuk, right? To see it here... I can't believe my eyes.”

“Genuine Seussu Sujuk, made from beef. And it tastes like marshmallows... But it's a bit expensive...”

“Fine, give me all the ones in that row. Those eggs look good too, I'll take those too.”

“Eggs, huh? You're young and all, but you know your stuff.”

“Shame on you, sujuk is our business.”

The butcher made Yu five sujuks while Yu put the cleaned meat into the storage crate.

The butcher then told Yu how to cook the meat better and gave him some recipes. Yu then carried the meat with the sujuks to the wagon.

“It's big, but there's no room left... How did I fit it in the old wagon? If we could squeeze the meat we're going to buy in there... We'll manage.”

Yu took Yurine's hand again and they started walking towards another shop.

“Let's buy some fresh bread, then we'll buy some fruit and vegetables, and after we've stocked up on water, we'll buy some meat from the place this man described and set off. It will be faster if we take the highway, but as a precaution we will use the ring road. There will be a few villages ahead of us, and when the animals run low on food, we will buy some more supplies there and continue on our way.”

After Yu had finished, they loaded their purchases into the wagon and went into the driver's compartment. The rain had picked up, but thanks to the protection on the driver's side, they didn't get too wet.

***

“Yu, you sing beautifully.”

“Thank you dear.”

Yurine had asked him to sing. As Yu sang a song from the twenty-first century, they left the town and walked towards a bridge.

“Yu, you know what? My mom sings very well too.”

“I thought so.”

“She has a beautiful voice. Do you think so, Yu?”

“Yes.” When he first heard Rie's voice, he thought it was beautiful. “You like saying my name, don't you?”

“Y-yes...”

It wasn't easy for Yurine to accept such things, but she took Yu's arm and said his name again.

Going around the river would have taken time and they would have had to go into the forest. They had to use the bridge here to reach Andromedia on schedule. The wagon was moving fast and Yu slowed down as soon as he saw the bridge.

“I knew it would be like this, but I came here for hope.”

There were soldiers on the bridge. At least Yu guessed that they were soldiers. Before they realized they were approaching the bridge, Yu changed direction.

“What's going on?”

“There is a roadblock on the bridge, if we go there they will stop us and search the car.”

And if they searched the wagon they would find the gold inside. There was twelve thousand gold coins inside, Yu had sent the rest to Andromedia with Sivina and Ana.

When the soldiers turned the wagon around and looked at the seven thousand pieces of gold inside, they would not have been able to prove that it was theirs.

When they brought the gold from Rolderhelm into İlonya, they had managed to get a document to confirm to the state that it was theirs, but there was no record of it. So the illegal gold was in their wagons and nobody was supposed to see it until they reached the Mora.

“Take out the map.”

Yurine unfolded the map and brought it in front of Yu. She was holding it tightly to prevent the map from curling because of the wind.

“Oh, we'll have to go further down the road.”

They would have to go around the river. For this, the wagon turned east and they started moving into the forest.

“There's a forest here, are we going into the forest again?”

“Yes, once we get out of the forest, we will reach the villages ahead. We'll replenish supplies there and then we'll head steadily north. We will be late, I hope we don't worry Sivina and Ana too much. We told them we would be back in a month.”

Yu, of course, had not told Sivina and Ana that he was a swindler, and he could not tell them about his plan for a big score in İlonya. He didn't want to lose his servants, who he thought would be loyal to him anyway, by doing such a thing in their presence.

So he sent them ahead to Andromedia to announce the arrival of the new cardinal and to prepare the cathedral for them, telling them that they had business to attend to and that they would come to him in a month.

“We'll have to spend the night in the forest, we have to take turns again.”

“Got it. Yu, you can trust me.”

They would have to stay in the forest again. They had to keep watch to prevent their belongings from being stolen and to avoid being attacked.

There were not many people in these woods, and even if there were, there would only be a few hunters or foresters, and they would only steal a small amount of stuff. Yu's main fear was monsters.

“Yu, if we're going into the forest, wouldn't we be buying meat for the rinos for nothing? They could find rabbits there and eat them.”

“These are tamed animals, maybe they will try to hunt if they have to because of their instincts, but I don't think they can hunt right now. Also, rinos are not supposed to taste blood. If they get used to the taste of blood, they might attack humans when they are hungry.”

Then Yu started telling her things that even he didn't know.

Rhinos were carnivores and were hunted before humans domesticated them. When this hunting started to harm people's lives and property, people gathered and started hunting the rinos, and the surviving rinos were domesticated.

But then again, the ancestors of these animals once hunted humans. So it was better not to accustom them to blood.

As they entered the forest and the sun set, they began to have difficulty seeing ahead. Deciding that it might be dangerous to go any further into the forest in the dark, they stopped beside the river they had been following.

“How many days will it take us to cross this forest? It's hard to tell from the map...”

Yu took out the candles and put them in the candlesticks outside the wagon. With the help of a mechanism used as a lighter, he lit the candles to provide some illumination.

Then he gathered the brushwood he found in the neighborhood and built two campfires in front of the wagon. One to cook the soup and the other to cook the fresh meat they had bought.

“I've made soup before, but this is the first time I'm making meat, sorry if it's bad.”

After she and Yu took out the stools and the dining table, Yurine placed the items on the table. When she was done, she sat down and waited for Yu to finish preparing dinner.

“I finally found it.”

“Found what?”

“After I had the pasta, it occurred to me that there was something missing in this world, but I couldn't figure out what it was. I finally figured out what it was, there is no yogurt in this world.”

Yu liked to eat pasta with yogurt and it was strange to eat pasta without yogurt. Even if there was no pasta for dinner today, there would be pasta on the table tomorrow or the day after, and there was no yogurt, no ketchup, no mayonnaise to eat it with. For Yu Valarfin this was a problem.

“Yu, what's yogurt?”

“It's white, it has to be eaten cold. İf you want can eat it with banana or strawberry.”

Yu's favorite was cocoa, but he didn't find any cocoa here. So even if he managed to make yogurt, he couldn't eat yogurt with cocoa.

“But I don't know how yogurt is made. I've never wondered. I know it's made with milk, but how do they turn milk into yogurt? There was fermentation, but I don't know how fermentation works.”

“Yu, forget about the yogurt. I feel something.”

Yurine's ears on the top of her head twitched as the wind blew hard, blowing out the candles outside the wagon. Yu lifted the food from the fire and approached Yurine.

"PHUEL'LA!"

Yurine's warning shot traveled through the forest and hit the ground, lifting the soil into the air.