83 Lancera's dedication

She showed the same reaction as before, but I knew from my years of experience that I had succeeded in soothing her.

I grinned with pride and mustered up the most woeful and expectant puppy eyes—forgive me, I meant kitten eyes—that I could, breaking Asu's defenses like a wrecking ball.

"I-I! I…" (At this point, Asu must've blushed under her mask; I grew jittery just by imagining it.) "I guess I'll forgive you… Just this once."

She continued with a trembling voice filled with embarrassment, "I understand that you couldn't restrain yourself because of your love for me, but… L-Lancera! Don't do s-s-s-such e-e-embarrassing things in public! W-What if somebody saw?!"

Once she finished speaking, Asu snatched the Tanghulu from my hands and chewed on it loudly; in her shame, she had forgotten her elegance and the fact that we were supposed to call each other by our nicknames.

But I didn't remind her. After all, I felt a burst of warmth rising within me upon hearing Asu's words, and it rendered me unable to think straight.

Did she view me in higher regard than delicious food? Higher than strawberry shortcake? *

*VA note: For reference, Lancera says this with such shock because back during Asura's pov, we learned that Asura's top 2 favorite things in the world were: Strawberry shortcake and cats.

Without me realizing it, I felt like I was on cloud nine.

I was glad that I had bought that armful of food. Because of it, Asu became more comfortable during our date, and I found out that Asu liked me more than I had thought.

With those thoughts in mind, my mind took off, calculating all the different activities that Asu would be interested in doing in the festival—basically, what we would be doing next.

Asu was a fan of being the perfect noble lady, therefore, she 'enjoyed' all the things that she was supposed to enjoy (the activities that beautiful, rich, noble ladies usually liked). For example, even though she hated sewing, she had to brag about how sewing was her favorite pastime.

The Golden Song Festival didn't have any of what nobles typically enjoyed, but that didn't mean that it was filled with filth and crudeness. On the contrary, there were many peasant events that were just as intelligent and meaningful as aristocrat events.

One of such are bard performances, where stories were told with torrents of emotion and liveliness. Even though Asu wasn't a fan of literature, she probably would still truly enjoy it.

Having made my decision, I took her hand with the excuse of preventing being accidentally separated and led her through the festival.