Chapter 8 Manual to Cajole him!

Not knowing what is running inside Ash's mind, Steve added fuel to it by signing him to eat and get healthy sooner because the empress Lynn is waiting to meet him for a very long time and tapped his shoulder as an encouragement. The disgust on Ash's face grew to the point he couldn't hide it anymore and pushed Steve's hand off his shoulder forcefully. Seeing his reaction even when Lynn was so kind to him, made Steve very angry but he knew he can't touch this man who is standing before him, so he left without wasting any more of his time.

Ash stood there where he was, without moving an inch, neither touching the food nor moving out of the room. He didn't know what to do, how to escape from this place and Lynn, or how to find Liam or any of his people who are still alive. He was thinking so many things inside his mind while unknowingly staring at the food on the table. After a little while, his eyes widened to the point where his golden pupil fully expanded covering his entire eyes. To his surprise, all of the dishes on the table were his favourite and arranged exactly in the way he likes them. Ash couldn't believe what he was seeing and momentarily thought that whoever made this food must be someone very close to him when he was still at his palace and the only person whom he could think of is Liam Hood.

"Are you not going to eat?". Ash turned his head so fast that it could have been snaped if he was still in that prison. Contradicting how wide his pupil expanded looking at the food, shrunk back at the same wavelength looking at the person who is currently standing at the door. Lynn walked inside the room with a blank face. She untied her sword from her waist and kept it on the chair and sat on the one next to it all while looking at the table and then slowly turned to look at him. "What are doing standing there? I told them to make these dishes for you to eat and not to stare at them?". She, of course, knows all of his favourite foods because she looked for them when she was still reading the novel and even ordered similar dishes in the UberEATS. Ash was even more surprised to hear her say that, as there is no way the empress of the Sapphire dynasty would remember what the last crown prince of the Wales Dynasty likes to eat and that he is someone specifically from the family her father destroyed. 'What is she planning now?' He was sure that there is no way she would be this good and decided by himself that the food is either poisoned or she is here for some purpose. Lynn raised one eyebrow at him. Looking at the slight change in her expression, he felt complicated and decided to go with whatever she is planning for now as his primary goal, for now, is to make contacts and find out if any of his people are alive. He slowly walked forward and sat opposite to her looking at her eye level.

"How dare you sit in front of the empress like this? How imprudent?" the general who was standing behind her screamed at Ash loudly for which he didn't bat an eye instead he was looking straight into her eyes. Lynn raised her hand to stop him from saying any more words and looked straight into Ash's eyes just like he was staring at her. After a minute of having 'whoever blinks their eyes first, loses' contest, Lynn very softly moved her eyes from his face and looked at the dishes on the table. "I had always wanted to taste them". Saying so, she picked up the fork and ate a steamed bun filled with soft duck meat from his plate with it. Without waiting for him to respond, she proceeded to take the wheat noodles from his bowl, slurped it and finally drank the sweet rice water from his cup. "They are not poisoned". She lifted her head and looked at him. Again, without waiting for him to respond, she rose from the chair, took the sword and walked out of the room. Before leaving the room, she stopped and said to him without turning back, "Eat. You need strength to do whatever you want" and left.

Ash was still sitting in the chair looking at the fork she just used to eat and picked his own and started eating. For some reason, he thought of the bright face full of panic and anger he had seen 2 days before inside the prison and he compared what he had seen today. "She seemed very tired and yet... she still came here to check on me? She.... Did she really bring me out of the prison to sleep with me?" he spoke to himself. Hesitating for a second, he started eating the noodles from the bowl she just slurped from.

.....

Lynn entered her study, slammed the sword on the table and turned to look at Steve. "Steve! Do you really think this will work?". Steve nodded his head and looked at her proudly. He signed "In the manual our expert mentioned, the most effective method is that you have to be mysterious and intimidating for him to spare his attention on you and then you slowly make him realize that you care for him". Lynn looked up and down at him very suspiciously. The day they brought Ash out of the prison, she asked his help for some ideas to cajole Ash and he went disappearing to do some research on that. A day later, he came back and said that he met an expert who had the best of ideas and he learned all of it to help her coax Ash. Lynn had no idea what kind of expert he met or what kind of lessons he learned from that so-called expert. She still decided to try the tricks. "Now let's wait for him to slowly come out...."