I Became the Emergency Food Supply of the Bear Family - Chapter 45

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 45

The entrance ceremony for Ferdinand Royal Academy was tomorrow.
Before they’d even set their luggage down at the lodgings, Theodore and Demirun had left, claiming they had matters to attend to—which meant the children and their two guards essentially had free time.
And so the three children of the Grizzly Family and their two escorts stepped out into the capital streets.
Though none of them particularly wanted to wander about after their long journey, Ber’s insistence had overcome their objections.
“How could I possibly rest when Aleksei’s saying he and I should go look around together?”
“Well, it’s right there. We could take a quick look and be back soon enough.”
That’s not happening. The capital isn’t as safe as you seem to think it is.”
To be honest, I came along because I was worried about Aleksei.”
“W-what do you mean by that, Olsen?”
The guard watched Aleksei’s face flush crimson as he glared, and could only let out an amused chuckle.
“All right, all right. Thanks for coming with me, anyway. Now come on, let’s get moving!”
“You shouldn’t give your thanks so carelessly, Ber.”
Perdi’s familiar scolding drifted from behind, though it hardly registered with Ber.
And no wonder—this was the capital. The primary stage of Enya’s story, the capital of the Albero Empire: Lua Albero!
Ber’s dark eyes sparkled with curiosity as they swept across the streets of the capital in every direction.
The reason Ber had insisted so stubbornly on coming to the entrance ceremony was precisely that she needed to reach the capital.
For the heroine’s sake. And for the future of the Grizzly Family.
Two years from now—at the age of sixteen, when the original story would begin—Enya would arrive in the capital with nowhere to call home.
The Oakley family, a squirrel demi-human clan, had originally held a small manor in the eastern reaches of the empire as minor nobility. But beginning with Enya’s grandmother, the family had begun its decline, and its members had scattered to the winds.
In the end, Enya and her mother were taken in as servants to a count’s household. The count, who had once been connected to the former Oakley manor, knew of a special ability her mother possessed.
An ability to move the time layered within living things and objects, turning it back to spring—the Spring Power, as it was called, known as the Eostreyan Force.
The count used her mother’s ability to his advantage, reverting portions of his own body’s time to cure his ailments, and accelerating time in his fields to increase the harvest yield each year.
But Enya’s mother, driven to exhaustion, eventually died. And with her death, the time the count had reversed in his own body began to revert back to normal.
The count believed Enya must possess the same ability as her mother, and tried once more to receive treatment. But no matter how much he tortured and tormented her, Enya could not manifest the power.
In the end, the count died without ever being healed.
Deemed worthless, Enya was cast out from the count’s household. To survive, she resolved to travel to the capital.
Fortunately, she possessed the means to support herself. Enya, too, carried the power her mother had been born with.

“You must never use your power. You cannot let anyone discover what you are capable of.”

Words she had heard beaten into her ears since childhood. And simultaneously, her mother’s final testament—words Enya would never forget.
And so Enya disguised herself as a healer skilled in herbal medicine, treating people’s minor ailments to make her living.
But the real problem was finding a place to live.
Though income arrived regularly, it was never quite enough to save toward a house of her own.
In the end, Enya drifted from place to place—sometimes sleeping rough, sometimes renting rooms at cheap inns.
Occasionally she would stay at a patient’s home in exchange for her herbal fees, and there had been times when she’d nearly suffered terrible things. For any reader, Enya was truly one of the most heartbreaking heroines of the story.
And yet, despite it all, Enya never lost her brightness.
The warmth of morning sunlight. Bread slightly softer than yesterday’s. A patient thanking her with genuine gratitude. In that bright heroine’s way of overcoming a grueling life through such small joys and happiness, Ber found herself moved to tears of comfort.
‘So that’s why I want to give you something small.’
Ber fingered the paper in her pocket, drawing a deep breath into the depths of her chest.
“Oh! I want to check that place out!”
“Wait just a moment, Miss!”
Having spotted the location she’d been searching for, Ber dashed off. Aleksei, flustered, followed close at her heels.
Walking right from the center street of the capital, you’d see the Clock Tower. Just past it to the left lay the Alley Market. At the deepest end of the market, beneath a red awning, sat wooden boxes stacked with brilliant red apples.
‘Just like in the original description.’
Walking through the Alley Market with its multicolored awnings, Ber marveled at the sight. Aleksei, who stayed beside her watching for danger, glanced back to confirm that Lui and the others were following, then let out a short sigh.
“If you keep running about like that, you’ll trip and fall. Whatever will you do then, Miss?”
“Trip? What are you talking about? I have good balance.”
Confident in her reply, Ber pointed to a shop at the end of the alley.
“I want to buy some apples there.”
“But Miss, I don’t have any money. Let’s wait for Lui to arrive—”
“I’ve got it!”
Ber pulled out coins and dashed forward again. Lui might be manageable, but Perdi and Olsen had sharp instincts—she couldn’t let them catch on.
“Hello, I’d like five apples, please.”
“Oh my. What a lovely little girl you are.”
The fruit shop beneath the red awning.
The shopkeeper, an elderly woman, placed five apples into a paper bag and handed it over. Ber snatched up the bag and quickly set coins into the old woman’s outstretched hand.
“Thank you so much!”
“Safe travels now. ……Hmm?”
After seeing the girl off, the grandmother felt something amiss. She examined the coins in her hand. Between them was a small slip of paper.
“Wait just a moment, Miss. It looks like you dropped this—”
But by the time she looked up, the child had vanished. The old woman glanced around, then slowly unfolded the slip of paper between the coins.
Ber watched the grandmother from beneath the awning of another shop, some distance away.
She could see the grandfather sitting behind the shop also reading the note—or rather, the letter.
‘Yes. I’m certain.’
The fruit shop with the red awning at the deepest end of the Alley Market. The elderly couple who ran it.
They were Ber’s chosen candidates to be Enya’s paternal grandparents.
The elderly couple who ran the fruit shop were background characters with even less page time than Theodore himself. Yet Ber remembered them.
After arriving in the capital, Enya worked as a street herbalist for about three months, earning money.
During that time, Enya treated an elderly woman’s knee. Perhaps thinking of her own departed grandmother, Enya refused payment and simply took a few apples from the shop.
After that warm scene, a development entirely different from the atmosphere of the story thus far unfolded.
Kaien, the eldest son of the Nuarel Family, a black wolf demi-human clan, could not overcome his congenital lung disease and lost his position as heir to a half-brother.
Desperate to cure his lung disease and reclaim his place as heir, Kaien sought the Eostreyan Force.
After receiving treatment for his lungs from Enya, who worked as a street herbalist in the capital, he became certain—that Enya was the incarnation of the Eostreyan Force, the one who held the Spring Power.
The moment certainty took hold, Kaien abducted Enya.
He confined her in his family’s mansion and continuously reverted the time in his lungs, making her use her power.
Kaien’s obsession was intense.
He revered Enya like a goddess, yet his unstable mind also drove him to treat her like a slave.
Whenever Enya gazed out the window with sad eyes, whenever she skipped meals claiming her heart felt heavy, whenever she spoke of missing her life on the capital’s streets—
Kaien would threaten her, demanding if she meant to abandon him and leave. But then he would crumble to her feet, begging her forgiveness. His feelings toward her were contradictory: a clumsy, desperate love, sharp with obsession yet earnest in longing.
It was a love still childish in its sharp fixation, yet proportionally sincere in its yearning.
But Enya could not return his affection.
No matter how infrequent it might be, she could not possibly accept Kaien, who acted like the count who had exploited her mother.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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