Chapter 92. Christmas Eve, Operation: To Kill A Mockingbird’s Love (4/8)

“Rosa, you’re mistaken. I’m actually vegan, I can’t eat carrots, mushrooms, or any kind of salad. I also have a wheat allergy. I feel faint! I feel bloated! The toast I ate yesterday has even left me with a bread hangover.” I tossed out this idiotic line in hopes of making myself look pathetic.

“What? You never told me that! You mean all this time you’ve been forcefully eating everything I’ve made for you without voicing a single complaint? Ran, you’re the sweetest boyfriend a girl could ever have.”

Rosaaaaaaaa! I’ll remember this! Mark my words, Rosa, I will definitely remember this day! In the future, you will regret everything you said today!

Alicia had a somewhat moved look on her face. Like she was happy I was willing to go so far just to eat the food she’d made.

Why! Why does nothing faze you, woman! It was like I was launching atomic bomb after atomic bomb but the protagonist came out unphased every single time without a single scratch. Who was this monster named Alicia really?

I know… I just need to do the opposite next time. I just had to straight-up throw it away.

As such, after we all had lunch we all watched a crappy Christmas movie together. I wanted to die yet again. Alicia said it was her favorite Christmas movie as well.

An hour into the two-hour-long movie I abruptly interjected, “This movie sucks. Alicia, please go to the kitchen and make me a sandwich.” I’d played the card, ‘Be a bore’ and also, ‘Get in the kitchen, woman’ cards in rapid succession. How was that? I looked over to her and confirmed her reaction...

She obediently stood up without the slightest complaint, she did exactly as I’d requested and headed into the kitchen. She even looked a bit eager. She hadn’t even heard my complaint about the movie sucking, nor had she interpreted the message as, ‘get in the kitchen where you belong.’

Wait, could it be one of those situations where she loved the movie so much because of how bad it was? Was it a, ‘so bad it’s good,’ sort of thing? And also when I asked her to make the sandwich, was she not angry because she thought if Rosa, my girlfriend, wasn’t injured I’d have asked her? She didn’t want her injured friend to do such a thing so she was more than willing to oblige to my unexpected selfish request?

Impenetrable. Her defenses could not be breached. This woman was a Goddess. A true Goddess that a mere mortal like me could not dream of landing a single hit on. I was outclassed. She was in a realm of her own. She’d transcended to a level I could not reach.

I was ready to start hurling out a bunch of curses about the game balance of the world. What bastard designed this broken character? Isn’t she just too strong? Please nerf Alicia, her resistance values are too unbalanced. I wanted to file a bug report and complain to the devs but there weren’t any for the real world.

I could only resign myself. I noticed Chris looking at me with pity in his eyes as he shook his head like I’d stepped on a land mine and was about to face certain death. This little shit… it’s your precious elder sister making a sandwich for your enemy, don’t look at me like I’m pitiful!

Besides, I never planned to eat it all in the first place. From the very start, I planned to throw it away, you fool.

When Alicia returned with the sandwich in hand she presented it to me with a serious look in her eyes. She’d prepared it without Rosa’s assistance this time.

It’s… just a sandwich, right? There’s no way you could possibly mess even this up, right? Right! How do you even screw up a sandwich and make it sweet? No… you aren’t seriously going to tell me you put sugar in it… right? Say it ain’t so. You’re lying… you’ve got to be.

I pried it open a tiny bit to see inside the bread and was just about ready to throw it on the ground in rage and retort. Why! Why did you seriously put raw sugar in this! You’re going to enrage the gods of sandwiches at this rate!

Haaaah. Haaaah. Haaaah. I was actually trying to catch my breath in my mind from all the internal retorts I was making.

Begrudgingly, I opened my mouth and took a bite. My immediate thought, crunch. The damn raw sugar was crunchy. Next came the sweetness of the sugar. As for bread, what bread? It was sugar. The only thing I felt in my mouth was sugar. The ingredients? Sugar. What ingredients? It was like they didn’t even exist.

When I was about ready to get up and throw it away in front of Alicia, I looked over to Rosa and notice her glare. It told me if I dared throw it out she’d pick it out from the garbage and shove it down my throat forcefully.

Scary.

Next was Irene, her eyes were similarly scary. ‘Do you dare throw away a sandwich my precious daughter poured her love into?’

As for the little shit, Chris, he merely looked at me with schadenfreude. It wasn’t his problem. His eyes even looked like he wanted me to eat it all and throw up. He wanted me to suffer some of the pain he’d suffered when his sister tried to occasionally make some food for him when their mother couldn’t.

Lastly, when I looked at Alicia, she had her innocent eyes locked onto me. Does it… taste good? She looked like she wanted to ask that shyly with her eyes.

Pressured to such a degree, my stomach turned. I wasn’t able to throw it out as I originally planned.

My mouth was dry… from the damn raw sugar.

I clenched my teeth and sucked it up. I prepared myself for death. However, if I was going down… I’d drag Chris by the foot down to hell with me. Don’t you dare think you can get off easily. If I have to suffer, so do you, you little bastard.

“Hmm… the taste is quite unique. As for whether it’s good or not, I feel like my opinion alone wouldn’t be convincing. If I say it’s good you might just think I’m being nice. But if I say it’s bad, Rosa might just think I’m not being honest. As such, I’d like to get a second opinion before I deliver my verdict on this sandwich.” When I said that, my eyes locked onto Chris.

His body froze up as a shiver ran down his back. His entire body suddenly trembled. The look in his eyes was one of despair. Brat, it’s a sandwich your elder sister mad, don’t act like it’s the end of the world.

Sure, it’s bad, but if you trick your brain it’s still something you can get through. You just need to tell yourself it isn’t sweet enough and it needs to be sweeter and your brain will do all the work for you.

I took another bite out of the sandwich and chewed it slowly as I did precisely that. I simultaneously held out the other half of the sandwich to Chris.

‘Take it, brat,’ I told him with a sharp glint in my eyes.

With an unsteady hand, he received the sandwich. He gulped nervously and opened his mouth. Hand, shaking, he raised the sandwich up with a deep sense of fear and dread in his eyes.

Boy! It’s just a sandwich! For the love of god, the world is not about to end, child!

Right when the sandwich entered his mouth, before it even touched his tongue, tears formed in his eyes.

He finally bit into it and dramatically tore off a piece the same way titans in a certain anime ripped off the heads of humans when they ate them.

He slowly chewed it, shoulders trembling.

“Chris, so you’ve been moved to tears by how good it tastes too? It really is quite delicious, isn’t it? Make sure to eat it all, it was made by your precious elder sister filled with love, you got that?” I said kindly on the outside. My true thoughts were more along the lines of, ‘How is it, you little shit? You wanted to pity me? Pity yourself!’

He stiffly nodded his head and said, “Yeah… it’s sooooo… good.”

“Great, your sister has improved a lot, hasn’t she? Aren’t you glad, Chris? She can now make food for you whenever you want. It’s truly envious you have an elder sister like her.” I hammered the final nail into the coffin. In the future, he’d be forced to eat her stupidly sweet food on a more frequent basis. You want to be enemies with me, then be prepared for when I treat you like one too, little boy.

He looked at me and reconfirmed in his heart that I was the most notorious devil in existence. To him, I was now an enemy of mankind. We’d burnt the bridges. There was no more room for reconciliation. He would bite my throat and rip it out if given the opportunity.

While the two of us had our secret petty little battle going on in the background, I finished my sandwich. Chris eventually finished his and collapsed on his side onto the couch with listless eyes.

‘Too much sugar sis. Why can’t you just do it right?’ That was what he wanted to say, but he couldn’t.

In the end, this plan had worked heavily against me. I’d scored pretty high points with Alicia, especially after I mentioned that stupid bread hangover thing. To her, she thought I was working hard to overcome my weaknesses with certain foods.

She even looked at me like she was impressed and found me admirable.

I sank deeper and deeper into depression the more I thought about it.