“Of course, I came to give you the apple pie Mom made….”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You think I’m going to believe that?”
Cherrybell eyed me warily like a cat with its fur all puffed up.
If it weren’t for the horns on her head, you might not even know whether she was a sheep beastkin or a cat beastkin.
At times like this, feeding her something sweet was the most effective way to calm her down.
When I held out the apple pie, Cherrybell accepted it with a very reluctant look.
She kept glaring at me suspiciously, so I shoved the apple pie right into her mouth.
“Mmmpf, mmph!”
Her resistance was short-lived.
Slowly, the fierce look on Cherrybell’s face began to crumble.
She chewed eagerly, savoring Mom’s apple pie with an expression of pure bliss.
“You’ll choke. Eat slowly.”
I also pulled out a bottle of fresh milk from the basket.
Though her face turned sour at my overly kind gesture, she accepted the milk without complaint, probably because her throat was dry.
By the time the once-full basket was empty of pies, I carefully broached the topic.
“So, about that….”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“What? You haven’t even heard what I’m going to say yet!”
Cherrybell let out a heavy sigh and shot me a look filled with suspicion.
“I can already guess. You’re going to ask for some of my herbal concoctions, right?”
She hit the nail on the head.
My carefully prepared expression faltered for a second.
Since I’d been found out, it seemed better to just be honest.
“You’re right. Please help me.”
“And why exactly should I?”
Cherrybell’s tone didn’t even contain a sliver of hesitation.
Seriously, couldn’t she at least ask why first?
How heartless.
“Today is my final assignment. If I fail this time too, I won’t just be remembered as a disgrace to the sheep beastkin — I’ll never be able to leave Meadowland either.”
Cherrybell stayed silent, deep in thought.
A heavy silence filled the space.
Finally, after a long pause, she asked with a crooked face,
“So?”
Her voice was flat, as if even continuing the conversation was too much trouble.
I had considered trying to look as pitiful as possible to stir some sympathy, but judging by that cold expression, it wouldn’t work.
It felt like even if I stabbed her with a needle, not a drop of blood would come out.
“Wait, are you still holding a grudge because I accidentally crushed your herbs when I tripped before?”
“At least you remember.”
“I told you I was sorry! I even served as your maid for half a year to make up for it!”
“Maid service, huh?”
“I carried your heavy bags even though you already had a squire, cleaned your room, and whenever you wanted snacks, I ran to the kitchen to fetch them. After all that, don’t you think you could forgive me by now?”
I spoke with all the injustice I could muster, and Cherrybell let out a long sigh.
“Sure, you tried to apologize in your own way. But do you realize what kind of consequences your actions left behind?”
“What kind of consequence…?”
“Because you ruined my assignment, my perfect report card that I was aiming to fill with only A+ marks until graduation now has a miserable A on it! No matter how much you apologize, that’s a fact that will never change for the rest of my life!”
My little sister cried out in anguish.
But honestly, I had no idea what to say in response.
“You just thought I was being fussy over nothing, didn’t you?”
“…No.”
“Don’t lie! I can tell. Just talking to you brings back all those memories. Now that I’ve finished the apple pie, hurry up and leave!”
Cherrybell’s face twisted into a ferocious expression.
It looked like she could spit poison just by glaring at me.
I realized that further persuasion would be pointless. I would have to completely change my strategy.
‘I really didn’t want to resort to this…’
It was a bit underhanded, but I didn’t have time to spare.
Considering Cherrybell’s grudge-holding nature, I would also have to be ready for her to hate me even more than before.
“Cherrybell, you know something?”
Cherrybell, who was struggling to push me out the door, answered gruffly,
“What?”
“I know about your secret hobby.”
“What are you talking about…?”
Cherrybell’s eyes wavered nervously.
Of course she would — if I were her, I’d be scared too.
My sister Cherrybell, whenever stressed, would secretly write hardcore novels that let her vent all her bottled-up desires.
Spending so much time researching alone must have made her terribly frustrated, because the stories she wrote were mostly explicit 19+ romance novels.
I had found this out completely by accident.
When I was about to meet a rabbit beastkin for my fifth assignment, I remembered that Cherrybell had once done some research on rabbit beastkin.
So, to find some references, I sneaked into her room — and that’s where I found a book titled The Ecological Characteristics of Rabbit Beastkin.
But as I read it, the content started to get… weird.
It described how a rabbit beastkin, unable to control their heat, kept spending wild nights with multiple males…. I had to rub my eyes several times in disbelief.
“Wait, what the heck is this…?”
It was only then that I looked closely at the cover again — it was a fake.
Hidden beneath was a handwritten novel.
I felt like I had stumbled onto a side of my sister I was never meant to know.
In my panic, I accidentally bumped into a nearby bookshelf, and a bunch of similarly disguised manuscripts rained down on me.
‘And all of those stories… were absolutely insane.’
I thought I was pretty grown-up at the time — but that was just an illusion.
There are vast, hidden truths in this world that I had yet to comprehend.
The protagonists in Cherrybell’s novels always engaged in the most outrageous sexual acts, accompanied by vulgar language.
The characters, the settings, the actions — everything changed according to the theme, and the more I read, the more fascinating it became. I just couldn’t tear myself away.
However, if Cherrybell ever found out that I had secretly been reading her erotic novels, she would probably try to drown herself in the pond out of sheer humiliation.
Not wanting that, I had kept quiet about it all this time.
|”The latest one you wrote starred a professor named Lord Randolph, right? I think the title was… ‘Mr. Randolph and the Promiscuous Pony’ or something like that…”
Cherrybell’s face twisted in horror, as if she had just witnessed the end of the world three times over.
“And there was another novel where the male lead was the Grand Duke of the North, and he had this fetish where he could only get excited if he put naughty fishnet stockings on a beastkin’s horns—”
“Mmph!”
Cherrybell hurriedly clamped her small hand over my mouth.
Then, in a voice rougher than I had ever heard from her, she growled,
“Shut that mouth…!”
Her trembling eyes were a storm of emotions — shame, fury, and humiliation all mixed together.
Shaking all over, Cherrybell finally screamed in a voice that sounded like she might cry any second,
“So what do you want?!”
“Just a little of that sleeping incense you made. I’m not asking for something impossible, right?”
“Can’t you just make that yourself?”
“You know I can’t use the herbs I prepare myself.”
It was true.
If I could make even a single stick of sleeping incense properly, I wouldn’t have failed so many times with my assignments.
For some reason, I had absolutely no talent for herbalism.
Even when I followed instructions perfectly, anything I made turned into some bizarre third thing entirely unrelated.
Last time, I had made a nutrient spray for plants, but when I used it, perfectly healthy plants turned into carnivorous monsters and started attacking people.
Because of incidents like that, the herbalism professors had started calling my abilities “the devil’s gift” and treated me like a walking curse.
“If I succeed with this assignment, it’s not just good for me — it’ll be good for you too, Cherrybell. You won’t have to deal with people whispering that you have a hopeless idiot for a sister.”
People were always comparing me and Cherrybell.
She had talent in everything she did, while I struggled to succeed at anything.
I was the perfect topic for gossip.
I wish all the insults had been aimed at me alone, but no —
I heard there were plenty of kids who tried to hurt Cherrybell with their words, making her feel ashamed by association with me.
‘They were probably jealous of how perfect she was, looking for any flaw to drag her down.’
I smiled bitterly at the memory.
Cherrybell frowned deeply.
“I was never embarrassed about that,” she said.
“Yeah, I know. It wasn’t you who was the problem — it was me. But still… even if you’re not ashamed, it must not have felt good hearing that kind of thing because of me.”
Normally, with Cherrybell’s personality, if something bothered her, she would have snapped back at me immediately.
But now, strangely, she stayed silent.
Maybe, deep down, she had thought about it too.
It wasn’t something she needed to feel bad about — it was just the way things were.
“If I were you, I would’ve been frustrated too. That’s why… just this once, help me. This is really my last chance.”
Cherrybell opened and closed her mouth as if searching for words, but no sound came out.
Finally, she let out a deep, resigned sigh.