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“YOU met the raffle winner? How’d it go?” asked Bean Jelly Man.
“It was…rough.”
The stuffed toy appeared in his dreams again that day.
Edmund wondered why he always looked like that, but upon closer inspection, he realized his cape had turned from brown to yellow. He couldn’t remember which color the real character had had, but apparently, this god just liked to look like Bean Jelly Man.
The raffle winner was named Clarissa Tessarini, the daughter of a marquess. She was engaged to Edmund’s friend, Prince Dino Mento.
Edmund did know of her by name, but this was his first time meeting her in person. She was far more…intense…than he’d imagined. Clarissa apparently took a liking to Edmund’s looks and kept staring at him, complimenting him, and inching closer to him.
He wanted to ask her what about her fiancé, but an engagement between royals and nobility likely had nothing to do with love.
“I know you told me to use my looks to my advantage, but I’m going to run out of energy if it keeps up like this,” complained Edmund. “Could I have some sort of disguise?”
“Makes no difference to me so long as you find me a heroine. How about we make you a cat? The people demand floof in this era of suffering. And I’ve always been a cat person, anyway.”
Just as Edmund learned of Bean Jelly Man’s preferences—which wasn’t something he cared about—he turned into a cat with shiny white fur.
Then, in cat form, he visited Prince Dino Mento, Clarissa’s fiancé. Apparently, he had also been reincarnated.
Edmund needed to get him to agree to a contract where he carried out the role of the main love interest. He felt bad about deceiving his close friend, but at least the prince wouldn’t be in danger since either way, he would end up marrying Clarissa.
They were already engaged, after all. There was nothing wrong with them getting married…right?
The problem was that Edmund was trying to negotiate with a farming prince who dreamed of growing rice. Dino was so uninterested in the proposals that Ed eventually caved and threatened to make him king, which was when Dino realized who he was.
There was no fooling your best friend.
Edmund got him to agree to the contract, but he was already feeling weary from his efforts. Next was the hardest part: finding the heroine.
Bean Jelly Man did tell him who was reincarnated, so it was less about finding a heroine and more about negotiating with a heroine. That, though, was far more difficult than Edmund had been led to believe.
First of all, the girls all seemed uncomfortable the moment there was a white cat in their room. He couldn’t blame them for being surprised when a cat talked to them, but he couldn’t get them to agree to a contract if he didn’t explain it, so he had no other choice.
He didn’t mind much when they chased him out the window or door, but the worst was when one chased him around with a broom. He had Bean Jelly Man find him some more demure ladies since this was putting him in danger.
That resulted in girls that were too demure. One passed out the moment the white cat started talking to her. Others just groaned in fear, utterly unable to have a conversation.
So, he asked for courageous girls and ended up nearly being sold to a circus as an animal of curiosity. Then he asked for innocent girls and got ones that only pretended to be innocent in front of boys.
Prince Dino was his best friend; he couldn’t bring in a weird girl to hang around with him, even if it were only temporary. After all his encounters with these girls, he was starting to lose faith in the female race.
“Perhaps I should observe the heroine candidates for a short time before trying to engage in negotiations,” he decided.
Clarissa and Dino had already entered the academy. There was essentially no time left to find a heroine, but he didn’t expect things to go well even after feeling out the candidates a bit.
Exhausted, Edmund told Bean Jelly Man his proposal. Bean Jelly Man jiggled his head and said, “Whatever works for me. What kind of girl do you think?”
“She can’t be too demure. But she can’t be too aggressive or scheming, either. That would cause trouble. And she definitely can’t be the kind of person to torment a cat.”
First and foremost, Edmund just wanted to have a safe conversation with the girl. He felt faint when he realized he’d never even made it to the negotiation table with any of these girls and imagined the difficulties of what lay after that step…
“’Kay, how about this girl?” suggested Bean Jelly Man. A paper appeared in his hand out of thin air, and he handed it to Edmund. On the paper was a name and a simple background. “I avoided her cause I figured she’d ask me to cure her mom, which sounded like a pain to deal with,” Bean Jelly Man explained. “But we’re out of options. She seems adaptable, works hard, and loves cats.”
“Hm,” pondered Edmund.
Based on that, he didn’t have to worry about her tormenting him, a cat. He decided to start by observing this “Nina” girl.
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NINA Scaglione had ivory hair and pale coral eyes. She wasn’t the sort of bam-in-your-face beauty that Clarissa was, but she was the sort of cute that made her feel approachable and friendly. Edmund found that was much more his type compared to Clarissa, who’d left him traumatized after their encounter.
She was a commoner living with just her mother, busy with her part-time jobs from morning until night, but had no problems regarding work attitude or relationships with her coworkers.
Edmund also spotted her petting the roaming cats on her way home from work, which told him he didn’t need to worry about being in danger when interacting with her.
“This is looking promising,” he murmured.
He had a good feeling when he finally met her. She didn’t pass out, wasn’t far too suspicious of him, and didn’t chase him around. Just that alone was enough to be grateful for.
He actually realized as he thought about it that he hadn’t ever had a chance to discuss the contract in detail. Nina was also kind to him in cat form. Or rather, she would furiously pet him all over. That was a little odd, but it was far better than being tormented.
His gratitude also knew no bounds when Nina said she’d consider the contract once they’d proved the god’s powers to her. He was so grateful, in fact, that she nearly seemed like some goddess of mercy to him.
“I hope Nina gets the part…” he muttered to himself. That was to help him with his own contract. He wanted to hurry up and fulfill it so he could be healthy. But he also thought that if he had to work on fulfilling this contract anyway, it would be nice if he could work with that coral-eyed girl.
He didn’t understand the emotions he was feeling. It must be that his mental state was just unstable due to the difficulties he faced searching for a heroine. He told himself that as he turned into a white cat to visit Nina’s room.
Were the butterflies in his stomach just from impatience, him being unable to wait for his body to be healed? Or was there another reason?
He honestly didn’t think too deeply into it then.