God Of Crafting

The breakfast, for how fancy it was… surely didn't feel like just a normal, morning meal.

Not with the weird stares, Claire kept stealing off my face while pretending to be perfectly immersed in her toast with strawberry jam.

There wasn't really any good opportunity for me to bring up the small talk, though, with how the cook continued to create more and more pieces of art with the ingredients he had and stuffing them all over our table.

'How are we even supposed to eat all of this?' I thought, conveniently ignoring the possibility that this abundance… would soon turn into scraps that would then turn into garbage.

This kind of waste was too painful for someone like me, who, by the merit of my own choices, ended up living literally from paycheck to paycheck, doing groceries according to the discount schedule of all the nearby supermarkets and had his diet restricted not by its nutritional value but the cost to nutrition ratio.

"You can stop making this kind of face," Clarie suddenly sighed, shaking her head after giving me an actual stare for a moment. "Whatever we won't eat will be added to the table for the staff, so it's not like we are going to throw all of this food away."

This sentence instantly gained both my attention but also the attention of the chef, the server tasked with bringing the food over from the kitchen's counter, and then a… cupbearer? Yet, while I was simply shocked by the audacity of such an arrangement, where our own workers were fed scraps of whatever we opted not to eat, the staff's reaction proved the reasoning behind it was vastly different.

For me, it was the arrogant waste of food turned into an audacious way of showing superiority over people working for us. For the staff, however, it appeared as if the need to explain something that clearly appeared to be obvious to them was the shocking factor of the moment.

"No, it's not what you are thinking either," Claire sighed again, this time much heavier. "We are not feeding them scraps, we simply share leftovers," she explained before pointing her hand at a fish cake, something a highlander-born me wouldn't touch with a teen-foot-pole.

"I don't have the taste for a fish right now and, as far as I recall, you don't like fish in general, right?" Claire asked, only to then glance up at the server…

"Thank you, miss," the man quickly moved in to grab the platter before bowing his head and putting it away into the heated compartment of a rolling food cart.

"We get the variety of foods that we pay for, and then they get to snack on the foods cooked by a world-class chef," Claire finished her explanation before shaking her shoulders. "I know that this might seem weird given your upbringing, but trust me, it's not wasteful nor insulting."

I squinted my eyes a bit before taking a small breath and raising my eyes to the server and… the cupbearer? The maid? The butler? The very upbringing of mine that Claire just mentioned prevented me from pinpointing just what exactly that second server's job should be.

"Let me verify it," I announced before turning over and sitting on my chair sideways so I could properly face the staff. "Are you guys really fine with it? And just to make it clear, whatever your answer will be, we are not going to blame you or punish you if you happen to disagree. I'm sort of out of the water here, but as someone who worked as a cashier in low-end retail, I just…"

All three of them, the server, the chef… and whoever the heck was the third guy simply put on a polite smile.

"Sir, the food that's touched is sealed and sent over to be used as fodder for the animals on one of the farms owned by the estate. The food that was left untouched goes straight to our table or becomes a snack for us three and the others to enjoy throughout the day," the chef explained from behind his counter while his hands kept moving as he prepared yet another dish.

"So you are happy with this arrangement?" I asked, just to be sure… and even though I knew that this kind of questioning was nothing short of me putting Claire's words into doubt.

"Yes, we are," the cupbearer answered, only to be followed by the nod of the server's head.

"Well then, I'm sorry to bother you all," I replied, using the awkwardness of the moment as an excuse to stand up while wiping my mouth with a fancy napkin before nodding my head over to Claire. "Thank you for the meal," I put my hands together before bowing towards the table a bit and then attempting to move out…

"Can you tell me what it was that you were mumbling to yourself back in the workshop?"

Seeing how I was about to escape, Claire finally cracked and raised the very topic that I could tell to be the reason behind her weird mood and all the glances she stole at me throughout the breakfast.

"About the scythe?" I replied with a question of my own, although just for the clarification sake.

"The scythe?" Claire twisted her eyes while putting on a slightly weirded-out expression. "What would you need a scythe for?"

'So, she didn't really hear all that much of me mumbling to myself, huh?' I thought, solving one of the riddles CLaire created by approaching me so silently I never knew she was in the workshop before she spoke out.

"First, a training exercise. Second, a weapon. Third, just trying to get my creative juices flowing so I can get some new, interesting ideas," I shortly explained only to finish it up with a shrug of my shoulders.

"Wait," Claire raised her hand like some sort of a student asking their teacher to repeat the last example because she failed to follow. "The training I can understand just like the creativity… but a weapon?"

The look of surprise on the girl's face shifted into one of guilt mixed with anxiety and worry.

"As I thought, that incident…"

"This time it's not what YOU are thinking," I quickly stepped in to correct Claire before she could draw some sort of conclusions from what was clearly her misunderstanding. "It's not like I'm scared or traumatized. It's more of me just doing one for the boys, you could say?" I leaned my head over to the side while putting a look of uncertainty on my face.

After all, with all things considered, I didn't really know why I ended up vibing with the idea of crafting a weapon so much; it's just happened.

"I see…" Claire mumbled only to breathe a sigh of relief before raising her eyes again, this time her face turning into an accusatory one. "Then, just one last question," she started with the preamble only to rest her elbows on the table and rest her chin over her head as she stared right into my face.

"Why did you leave the bed before I woke up instead of waiting or even waking me up yourself?" she asked, finally revealing what I failed to notice as the primary cause of her bad mood. "Do you have even the slightest idea how worried I was when you weren't there as I woke up?"