My Possession Became a Ghost Story - Chapter 3
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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“Meow?”
Pudding meowed cutely. I want to bite him! What does it matter if he has three eyes? He’s just so adorable. I had to give up on having pets in my previous life due to circumstances, but I never expected to raise a cat here.
I was going to have him examined separately, but the Butler brought holy water and said I just needed to make him drink this. What kind of world setting is this where holy water cures all infectious diseases? Then why did they kill the cats? What’s going on with animal ethics in this other world.
When I poured the holy water into a water bowl, Pudding lapped it up deliciously with his tongue. But why is he keeping one eye closed? Maybe because of his fur, it just looked like he had two eyes.
Come to think of it, he only opens all his eyes in front of me. Ah, so two eyes are the default and he only opens the third eye occasionally.
The Butler confirmed that Pudding had drunk all the holy water and left. Is it done now? Hooray!
“You drink water well too, such a good boy.”
I placed Pudding on my lap and gave his bottom some gentle pats.
***
Pudding seemed to think of me not as his butler, but as an innkeeper. One with free room and board included at that…
Pudding is a free spirit. I’m a shut-in who stays cooped up in my room, but Pudding must be popular since he’s always wandering around outside. Still, he always comes back before bedtime to sleep with me. I don’t know why a cat likes walks so much. Is it because he was originally a stray?
I tried to put a collar around his neck so he wouldn’t get into dangerous situations while wandering around. A Maid gave me a collar. It was made of soft fabric with the Rohanson Family crest embroidered on it. She suggested I try embroidering Pudding’s name myself. It seems the original Evangeline was good at embroidery.
But I’m illiterate and don’t know how to embroider either?
Before I could make excuses, the Maid gave it to me and ran away.
The Maid who I asked to buy me alphabet books hasn’t come for several days now. She said it would take one day, but she’s probably deliberately not giving them to me, right?
I thought she was a tyrannical villainess since the servants were just trembling, but it seems there was also a setting where she was secretly being bullied. Well, these days even villainesses in romance fantasy novels get bullied terribly. That’s why when people possess them, they start by slapping people and establishing authority. Of course, I didn’t hit anyone.
“Sorry for being such a useless butler who can’t even write your name…”
I want to learn to read quickly. This half-hearted other world possession is too much…
***
When I woke up, I could read letters.
What is this? Customer service? If it’s a possession correction, why didn’t you do it earlier instead of now! I was annoyed, but I decided to think positively about receiving the correction now rather than never.
Maybe crying about not being able to read my pet cat’s name had an customer service effect. Tears streamed down my face. Now I can read and write Pudding’s name too!
I picked up a needle. Since I had learned to read, I thought I might be able to do some of the embroidery that Evangeline’s body had learned.
Yeah. I couldn’t.
The result was disastrous. I wrote “Pudding” but it was unrecognizable.
Should I throw it away and start over? I hesitated for a moment, but Pudding meowed and urged me to put the collar on him quickly. This angel cat!
I put the collar on Pudding. They say if a cat wears a collar well, you’re a blessed butler, and Pudding was naturally gentle, so he didn’t resist the collar much. The size was just right, and just in case, I made the seams weak. If Pudding applied a little force, it would break.
“Do you like it?”
Pudding went to the mirror and looked at himself. Then, seemingly pleased, he meowed.
Suddenly thinking it was strange, I realized that Pudding even knows how to look in mirrors. Other world cats are incredibly smart… Or not? Is our Pudding special? Well, our cat is the best in the world.
***
Rohanson Viscount went down to his Estate.
In fact, it was closer to running away. He left so hastily that it looked like he had fled in the night with just a few sets of clothes. While he was in the Manor, he was terrified, saying that ‘eyes’ kept watching him. It wasn’t just the Viscount; a Maid named Daisy was the same. That Maid wouldn’t even try to open her eyes.
When I asked if I should write her a recommendation letter to another family, the Maid shook her head and said she absolutely wanted to go to a Monastery. Her posture with closed eyes and clasped hands looked exactly like she was praying. Since the eyes wouldn’t be visible once she left the Manor, she would probably live comfortably at the Monastery psychologically too.
With the Viscount away, the Manor’s duties were entrusted to the Butler. The Viscount would handle family-related matters well from the Estate, so there was exactly one thing the Butler had to be responsible for. Regarding Evangeline.
The elderly Butler looked at the weeping cherry tree outside the window. The pale Evangeline was walking in the Rear Garden, followed by a cat. That must be the cat she said she wanted to keep. It looked like a peaceful scene at first glance.
Bright red handprints remained on the Butler’s shoulders. Could the cat that Evangeline was raising really be an ordinary animal?
His vision swayed. The Manor he had lived in all his life felt exactly like the inside of a monster’s belly.
He drew the curtains and sat down. A Maid sitting across from him was drinking tea. The hand holding the cup trembled, but she seemed better off than Daisy.
“I can hear cat sounds.”
Hena was the girl who became responsible for serving Evangeline after Daisy. After what happened to Daisy, no one wanted to serve Evangeline, so they raised the wages. Hena, who was in urgent need of money, took the position. But Hena too seemed unlikely to continue the work. The Butler looked at the girl sitting before him with pity.
A perfectly fine girl had returned with her mind disturbed in just one day, so it would be even harder to find Maids now.
The Butler opened his mouth to say something, but to Hena’s ears, instead of a human voice, she could only hear meowing sounds. Hena couldn’t hear what the Butler was saying, but hoping it would be the answer he wanted, she opened her mouth.
“Evangeline asked if there were any cats. I answered that they were all dead, but they definitely killed them all, so why can I hear sounds?”
Hena had once cleaned up the corpses when they killed the cats at the Rohanson Estate. It was disgusting, but she volunteered because they paid extra. Several sacks of dead cats that had been lured by food came out. They were all dead, soundless cats. Now, belatedly, they were crying.
The Butler couldn’t hear cat sounds. The Butler, who was adding content to report to the Viscount, asked Hena if he should write her a recommendation letter. It was a grateful offer, but to Hena’s ears, she could still only hear cats meowing. The Butler wrote on paper and held it out. Hena shook her head.
Right now, since mysterious things were happening here, it was okay to say she heard cat sounds, but if she transferred elsewhere, she would definitely be treated as sick and fired.
“I’ll keep working. I can’t hear, but I’ll be fine if I read lip movements.”
Hena had a younger sister. For her sick sister’s sake, she needed to keep working.
***
A reply came back from the Viscount. He was throwing a tantrum, telling them to feed the cat holy water or something to check if it was a monster. Holy water didn’t work on Evangeline either, so would it work on the cat? The Butler had doubts but followed his master’s orders. The price of holy water was quite expensive. Only nobles could afford to buy this without hesitation.
Hena turned pale when she learned this. If there was holy water, her sister could be cured. To think they were feeding such a precious thing to just a cat.
“Do you want it?”
How long has it been since I heard a human voice? Hena turned her head and looked around, but there was no person. There was only a cat grooming itself. A cat?
Is that the cat that Evangeline is supposed to be raising?
“I asked you a question, so you should answer.”
Huh?
“You want that water. You can have it. I’ll tell you how.”
The cat opened its eyes. Three eyes looked at Hena.
Monster, it’s a monster. Hena ran away. I have to tell the Butler. That Evangeline’s cat is a monster! If I report that, couldn’t I get some reward from the Butler?
And Hena stopped.
A mere reward money couldn’t buy holy water. What did the cat say? That it would tell her how? She thought of her sister laughing brightly and running around healthy. Then she turned back. As if it knew this would happen, the cat was waiting for Hena in that spot.
Hena switched the holy water as the cat instructed. She didn’t know how it was prepared, but even the delicate patterns on the bottle containing the holy water were identical.
The Butler showed no reaction even while watching the cat drink the fake holy water. Unlike with Evangeline, only Hena realized the fact that ‘real’ holy water worked on the cat.
The cat would occasionally come to Hena after that, making various requests.
Last time, it ordered her to make Evangeline personally embroider the collar it would wear. Hena was afraid Evangeline would be angry, so she handed over the collar and embroidery set and ran away. It seems Evangeline really did pick up a needle for the cat. The cat proudly showed off the messily embroidered collar, bragging about it.
Evangeline wrote strange letters on the collar but actually called the cat Pudding.
After serving the monster-like cat during the day and the fearsome Evangeline who was too frightening to even look at, the workday ends.
Serving Evangeline really paid well. Even after covering living expenses for two people, there was plenty left over. Thanks to this, Hena could stop by the market on her way home and overspend on foods her sister liked.
She’ll like it, right? Hena’s heart melted sweetly. Her sister, who drank the holy water, was getting healthier day by day. Just a few days ago, she had trouble even eating soup, but now she was making a fuss about being hungry.
When she got home, her sister was sitting in front of the door.
“Sister!”
“Were you waiting outside in the cold?”
“I missed you. You worked hard. Let’s go in quickly!”
“Alright. Kanna, stop being so clingy.”
Her sister jumped into Hena’s arms. It was a dreamlike moment that could easily make her forget about serving the bizarre cat and scary Evangeline during the day.
Hena thought she had done well to listen to the cat’s proposal then. Was it because she had pleased the cat well? Now she couldn’t even hear the cat’s meowing anymore.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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