By the time I finished handing out the last toy and turned around, Nolan was already surrounded. A dozen tiny hands tugged at his sleeves, begging for their turn.
One clung to his leg like a koala. Another tugged insistently at his sleeve. The third—the original pigtailed girl—was now perched on his shoulders, her small hands tangled in his red hair like reins.
He looked like a man who’d accidentally stepped into a trap—one made of sticky fingers and relentless enthusiasm.
Shaela appeared beside him, a sleeping baby cradled in her arms. She took one look at Nolan’s irritated expression and smirked.
"Tired already?" she asked, her voice dripping with amusement.
Nolan’s eye twitched. He shot Shaela an annoyed glare. "Get lost, Umbrella Girl. I’m not going to throw you."
The effect was immediate.
Shaela’s face—along with the tips of her ears—flushed a brilliant scarlet. The baby in her arms gurgled innocently, completely unaware of the sudden tension.
"I—that’s not—" she sputtered, her grip tightening slightly on the infant. "I wasn’t asking you to—"
One of the children, a boy missing two front teeth, tugged on Nolan’s sleeve. "Can you throw me again? But higher this time!"
Nolan looked down at him with the expression of a man who’d rather be anywhere else. "No."
"...U-unless," Nolan added stiffly, "you promise not to scream in my ear this time."
The child’s grin returned full force. "Promise!"
As Nolan reluctantly lifted the boy, Shaela turned away—but not before I caught the way her lips twitched, as if fighting a smile.
Suddenly, a voice piped up beside me.
"Do you smell it too?"
A big question mark appeared in my mind. I turned to my right to see a bespectacled girl—maybe twelve years old, same height as Princess Sara—staring intently at Nolan and Shaela with a knowing smile. When I didn’t answer immediately, she turned to me, one eyebrow raised expectantly.
"W-what smell?" I asked under her withering "Can’t you tell?" gaze.
The girl sighed dramatically, adjusting her glasses with a practiced flick of her fingers. "It’s the smell of love," she declared, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.
Two more mental question marks popped into existence.
Since when did love have a smell?
And why has no one told me about this before?!
The girl shook her head at my obvious confusion. "You’re really a newbie at this, aren’t you?" She gestured toward Nolan and Shaela, who had somehow escalated from bickering to full-blown arguing—though neither had moved away from the other.
"Look," she said, her tone that of a seasoned expert explaining basic arithmetic to a particularly slow student. "See how his ears turn red whenever she calls him ’rude’? And how she keeps finding excuses to stand near him even though she claims to hate him? And the way they’re both pretending not to notice how close they’re standing?"
"That," the girl said smugly, "is the smell of love. Sweet. Impossible to ignore once you know what to look for."
I opened my mouth—then closed it.
Girl, you are misunderstanding everything.
Nolan’s ears were turning red because Shaela was insulting him, not because he was secretly smitten. And they weren’t standing close intentionally—they were arguing! Did you expect them to scream at each other from across the courtyard like some kind of dramatic stage play?
More importantly, why are you thinking ?!
I eyed the girl’s smug expression with growing horror. What kind of books are you reading at this age?!
Urgh... I think I need to have a talk with Miss Talien about the orphanage’s reading materials.
Just as I was mentally drafting my complaint, the girl dropped another bombshell.
She sighed dramatically, adjusting her glasses again. "At first, I was shipping you two, you know."
I blinked. "...What?"
"Mm. You and Shaela." She nodded sagely. "You’re a good guy, after all. You are kind, rich, smart, responsible, children like you, and... handsome." She gave me an appraising look that made me suddenly self-conscious.
Wait, when did this conversation turn into an evaluation of my marriage prospects?
This kid must have been reading too many of those "Commoner Seduces the Duke" novels.
And, why did she pause at the handsome?!
"And Shaela does have a crush on you—she always sneaks off to your shop, but she never has the courage to actually talk to you."
What? She has a crush on me?!
Wait? Was that why she was sneaking glances at me and blushing for no reason all this time?
That... actually explains a lot.
I glanced at the twelve-year-old matchmaker. "Is it okay to casually reveal someone’s secret ?! And to me?"
She adjusted her glasses with a click. "Relax. I’m just speeding up the inevitable." Leaning in conspiratorially, she added, "You two would’ve taken decades to notice on your own."
Before I could say anything, she steamrolled ahead: "Maybe so, she always hid from you. That’s why you probably didn’t see her while visiting before."
Oh, that’s why I didn’t recognize her before.
"Stupid girl, she thinks she’s ’not suited’ for someone like you." The girl rolled her eyes. "Really dumb, doesn’t she know how beautiful she is?! She could charm any man if she wanted to. Even y—"
She abruptly cut herself off, squinting at me like a scientist examining a failed experiment. "Nah, with your dense personality, she probably couldn’t..."
"...Thanks?" I said weakly, not sure whether I’d just been complimented, roasted, or both.
The girl waved a hand, already moving on. "Alas, your love would’ve made a great story, too. But sorry, good guy—I ship more." She gestured toward Nolan and Shaela, who were now engaged in what appeared to be a heated debate about proper umbrella etiquette, of all things..
I stood frozen like a statue, my mental processors overloading.
CPU malfunction detected.
Error. Reboot failed.
Please consult the nearest adult for assistance.
The girl patted my arm sympathetically. "Don’t worry. You’ll find someone eventually."
And with that, she skipped off, leaving me alone with my existential crisis, a thunderstorm of thoughts, and the unshakable feeling that I’d just been outmaneuvered by a twelve-year-old love guru.
As I watched the kids swarm Nolan again, one terrible truth became clear: in this romcom fantasy world, I wasn’t just a background character - I was the comic relief.