I Became the Emergency Food Supply of the Bear Family - Chapter 74

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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 74

The seal of House Nuarel, carved clear and precise into the wax. The soft paper beneath her fingertips. Each letter written with careful, deliberate strokes.

“P.S. From now on, I won’t seek you out in secret. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable anymore. And yet, sometimes, just once in a while without meaning to, my eyes may still wander your way. For those moments alone…… I’m sorry, but please bear with me.”

With that postscript, the letter ended.
Ber’s eyes trembled as they traced over the paper again and again.
The Young Marquis of House Nuarel—that Kaien, the very embodiment of terrible obsession—had written such a letter. She never imagined he would offer her words so entirely stripped of pride, and her heart grew complicated.
‘He’s changed. He’s changed so much.’
Even the Kaien of the original story had been obsequious before Anya, but beneath that was always something forceful and arrogant.
But this.
‘He’s promising not to even let his gaze linger on me without care.’
Ber traced her fingertips across the letter, lost in thought.
Perhaps I’ve been too fixated on the original Kaien.
That I cured Kaien’s lung disease was surely a great help to him, but I too have received his aid many times over.
When I suddenly transformed into beast form. When I was being hunted by Lorenzo. And even today, when he handed me my student ID.
Ber’s expression darkened.
A wave of remorse welled up inside her.
I was utterly terrified at the sight of that ‘wolf’ I hadn’t seen in so long, but it was fundamentally different.
Kaien was not the White Wolf. He was not that wolf from that day.
‘And yet I……’
I need to apologize to him properly about that day, no matter what.
Yes, perhaps.
With the Kaien he is now, I might not need to be so guarded.
Ber carefully folded Kaien’s letter and tucked it deep into a drawer.

***

The morning spring break was drawing to a close.
The Great Hall of House Nuarel.
Through the heavy silence that blanketed the vast space came only the sound of a knife cutting meat.
Raul glanced toward the head of the table as he worked the blade through his food.
The seat was empty. No plate awaited there, no fork, no napkin—nothing prepared.
During spring break, Raul had returned to the Marquis’s house. In truth, he hadn’t wanted to come back. The break was so short already—why force himself to return at all?
Besides, even if he did, there was no use. He would never obtain what his mother wanted.
That was the truth. Not once during those short two weeks had the Marquis taken a meal with them.
The Marquis had begun to neglect them starting from the moment Kaien received his full recovery diagnosis.
The frail legitimate wife had borne a frail son and died young. Perhaps the Marquis had foreseen such a future. He began roaming abroad even before his son’s birth. And so, the year the Young Marquis Kaien was born, Raul fell into the world as well.
He must have been the only wolf therianthrope among the illegitimate children. Less than a year after the Marquis’s wife passed, he and his mother were taken into House Nuarel.
The sole heir, the Young Marquis, suffered from the same lung disease as his dead mother, barely alive and unable to endure Swordsmanship Training. The Marquis himself had begun to suspect whether his deceased wife had hidden her illness before the marriage.
The situation was favorable. Without even trying, his mother could become the next Marquis’s wife, and one day he himself could seize the Young Marquis’s position from that frail ‘brother’.
Yes, everything could proceed exactly as his mother desired.
But why? Even knowing the situation was advantageous, his mother’s cruel acts never ceased.
She abandoned the boy in the Northern Region, then in the dead of winter, she blocked the firewood from his chamber, leaving him to catch cold.
For Kaien, already suffering from congenital lung disease, such an illness was fatal. His mother acted as though she wished him dead and gone. It never occurred to her that the Marquis, eventually sickened by such cruel conduct, might cast her aside.
Though now, Raul sometimes wondered if his mother had perhaps foreseen the future much like the Marquis had.
‘But that he would be completely cured of his lung disease overnight……’
After all the physicians spoke of a ‘miracle’ and gave him a clean bill of health, Kaien had completed his rehabilitation in mere months. Then he threw himself into Swordsmanship Training and rose to Raul’s level in what seemed like an instant.
The previous winter, when Raul heard that Kaien had returned home, the Marquis rose from his dining table with such force.
It was the first time Raul had ever seen the Marquis look so pleased.
“Raul.”
His mother, who had been quiet all this while, wiped her mouth with her napkin and turned to face him.
“You are preparing well for the Swordsmanship competition, yes?”
“……Yes, as usual,”
“As usual? Is that how you expect to succeed? Do you even have the will to try? If you wanted, I could arrange for another instructor for you, I’ve…….”
At Raul’s response, which didn’t even spare her a glance, Marinella sighed and fell silent.
Heavy silence descended once more over the hall.
Raul chewed the meat grimly. The juices that burst in his mouth tasted only bitter.

***

Summer semester had begun.
The fountain in the Academy Garden sprayed its waters, the trees deepened their green, and student activity grew more vibrant.
At the Royal Academy, a grand event was held each summer semester.
The Harvest Festival.
A name more fitting for autumn, perhaps, but it seemed to express the students’ accumulated achievements as a “harvest.”
The Swordsmanship Department held a competition, the Magic Department held magical duels, the General Studies Department held research presentations—and for several weeks, the Royal Academy became a festival.
‘In the original story, Adrian and Kaien fought one-on-one with Anya caught between them.’
After Adrian rescued Anya from Kaien’s violent touch, their fight, which seemed ended, resumed once more.
Kaien had taken Adrian’s childish dare—that they decide by combat who would dance with Anya at the Ball the next day—and fallen for it entirely.
The outcome of that duel had been bitterly unpleasant for Kaien.
‘Both were injured in the fight, but Anya only treated Adrian’s wounds.’
Kaien had watched from afar as the two danced in the hall, then quietly faded away, his injured arm cradled, which had sparked another wave of sympathy for him at the time.
But now, everything would unfold in an entirely different direction.
Since the Wild Boar Incident, Anya and Adrian seemed never to have crossed paths. And Kaien had never even gotten his face off the ground with her.
“What’s wrong, Ber?”
Anya reacted to the sigh Ber let out, hoping that everything would pass without incident.
“Oh, it’s nothing really. I just haven’t decided on my research topic for the Harvest Festival yet, so I’m a bit lost. Have you decided? Is it Herbology, as expected?”
“Yes. It’s a subject I’ve studied since childhood, and it seems the safest choice. What about you?”
“Well, I……”
Should I try to dredge up memories from my childhood?

“So this is what you submitted?”
Louie and Perdi, who had come to the General Studies 1st Year Research Exhibition Hall, began reading through Ber’s project with gleaming eyes.
“Let’s see. The title is ‘A Handbook to Aid Communication with Young Therianthropes.’ Communication with a therianthrope before Humanization is not easy. If the parent or caretaker transforms into beast form to converse, but the child is young, their language will be clumsy. In such cases, ‘Body Language’ becomes useful.”
“Wow! That’s amazing! Isn’t this your cute little paw gestures, Ber?”
“The illustration is a baby bear. It kind of looks like Louie when he was little, doesn’t it?”
“I know this! I want to, study too, right?”
Louie gestured at the bear drawing in the research handbook. He mimed holding a pen, moving his hand as if writing something, then patted his chest with a laugh. Watching him, Ber felt oddly embarrassed.

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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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