My Youngest Keeps Bringing Home Male Leads - Chapter 35

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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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Episode 35
Above the dimming sky, the aroma of baking bread drifted upward in wispy tendrils.
The dried meat had been simmered until tender, then combined with vegetables into a soft stew, and warm flatbread fresh from the oven completed the meal.
When beer—pulled from the corner of the storehouse where it had lain dormant—was poured out, smiles bloomed across every face.
At last, it felt as though she had returned to the village of her childhood.
Among the pleasantly drunk villagers, Agnes found familiar faces one by one, then realized someone was missing.
“Timona. Where did Kania go?”
“Kania?”
“Did something happen to her? I don’t see her anywhere.”
“Well, about that……”
According to what followed, Kania lived in a hut on the outskirts of the village.
Agnes gathered up bread and fruit, and set off there with Ignitan.
A faint glow of firelight seeped from the small hut, which looked as though it might crumble at any moment.
Agnes knocked lightly on the door.
“Sister! Kania, are you there? It’s Agnes. Do you remember me?”
A shadow flickered across the curtain drawn tightly shut.
It seemed to peer out through the gap to confirm who stood outside, and then came the sound of heavy, hurried footsteps from within.
The door swung open abruptly.
“Agnes?!”
“It really is you, Kania! How have you been all this time?”
“Goodness! That little girl has grown so much?”
The last time she’d seen her was when Agnes was nine years old.
Yet Agnes recognized her as Kania at once.
Her freckled cheeks and the warm smile that had filled them were exactly the same.
Back then, Kania had been sixteen.
She’d been like the leader of all the village children.
In place of the busy adults, she would gather the children together and lead them about with spirited energy.
Of course, it fell to her to discipline the mischievous ones as well.
‘She helped me so much when I had to deal with the twins.’
Agnes often recalled what Kania did and tried to imitate her.
But now, in her late twenties, Kania had lost most of the vitality she’d once possessed.
She was pitifully thin, and looked exhausted.
Agnes thrust the bread and fruit forward without preamble.
“I brought some food for you.”
“So much? Where did you get it?”
“Well, the thing is……”
Agnes exchanged a glance with Ignitan, and they stepped inside together.
After hearing the whole story, Kania let out a heavy sigh, her face darkening.
“That Baren—treating you like that too……”
“What exactly happened in the village? Baren was tormenting the people, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, that’s right. It started when……”
Kania told her what had happened in the village all this time.
“Actually, Baren was driven out of the village once before your mother passed away.”
“Why?”
“He’d been making life miserable for people since childhood, and he was the same once he grew up. One day, old Tom interfered in something, and this brute knocked him down and beat him senseless.”
The Village Chief, Yohas, upon learning of it, said he couldn’t forgive him even if he was his own son, and cast Baren out.
However, deeply distraught, Yohas fell ill afterward and languished for some time.
It was around the same period that Agnes’s mother died giving birth to Amy.
“Then Baren slunk back. He said he’d worked as a mercenary, and wouldn’t you know it, he had a sword at his belt. Since he was always violent, everyone was too frightened to challenge him.”
Agnes shook her head slowly.
According to what Timona had told her, there had been someone who resisted.
“But it wasn’t you. Timona told me you rushed at him, telling him to stop.”
“That’s right. I must have been mad. I should have just left it alone, but I was foolish enough to act without thinking of the danger.”
She’d been frightened as a child, certainly, but what Baren—now grown and armed with a sword—would do to Kania was obvious enough.
He and the young men around his age formed a Vigilante Group, and made an example of tormenting her.
Even when Kania worked hard to help with village tasks, Baren would mock her by distributing rations mixed with sand and grass.
“Perhaps I looked so pathetic that people took pity on me. They secretly shared their portions with me, so I managed to survive that way.”
“But it wasn’t enough, was it. Is that why Ronan left?”
“That’s……yes, that’s right.”
Kania affirmed it with a groan.
Ronan was Kania’s younger brother.
Unlike the spirited Kania, he was quiet and gentle, following behind her in silent support and offering help whenever he could.
“Since he’s a man, I thought he’d adapt more easily to life outside than I did. But with no word from him, I don’t even know how he’s managing.”
Agnes smiled bitterly.
She wanted to offer some comfort, but the words caught in her throat, and nothing would come.
‘At least my situation was better than his.’
The humiliation from the debt collectors.
The reproach from the maids of the Valdemar household.
Looking back, such things were truly nothing.
She’d never been subjected to violence, and she’d never gone hungry for want of food.
Agnes bowed her head in silence.
Her eyes burned hot, but if she let them, Kania would try to comfort her.
‘That’s why I have to try harder.’
Not to cry like a child here, saying she was sorry, that she’d done wrong.
‘The hardship can’t be undone. What matters is making sure they can live peacefully from now on.’
And so she found herself thinking anew about what she must do.
Until now, she’d thought it enough to repay the debts and protect the fiefdom.
For her siblings’ sake, she needed only to keep the title and maintain it.
‘But will that truly be enough?’
No matter how much money one had, it dwindled with spending.
If she didn’t earn a great sum, she’d only squander what she had and lose everything in the end.
‘I need to find another way.’
A way for ‘us’ to survive without depending on the money Amy brought home.
Kania watched Agnes, lost in thought, with concern in her eyes.
“Are you all right, miss?”
“What do you mean?”
“The Vigilante Group won’t stay quiet. They were part of tormenting the villagers too.”
“I know. That’s why I’m staying in the village tonight.”
“You are?”
Agnes glanced silently at Ignitan, who sat without speaking, and smiled.
“I have a very reliable knight with me, after all.”
That night.
After the villagers had fallen into deep sleep.
Six men calling themselves the Vigilante Group gathered at the mill.
After plotting their plan in whispered voices for some time, they scattered to attend to their assigned tasks.
Only two remained at the mill.
Peta and Jen.
The two had been tasked with rescuing Baren.
But beneath the moonlight, their faces were marked by anxiety and unease.
“Is this right? He really wants us to burn down the warehouse?”
“That’s what Baren told us to do.”
“What if he runs off alone and leaves us behind?”
“No way. If he did that, why would he kill the miss?”
“That’s true! Is he insane? Why kill the miss at all?”
“Otherwise he’ll have them coming after him again, won’t he? And that knight who was following—didn’t he drink himself into a stupor and pass out? When will another chance like this come around?”
Jen seemed indifferent, but Peta was deeply unsettled by the situation.
“No, you know as well as I do. That bastard is the kind who’d kill the miss, frame us for it, and still have room to spare.”
While they’d been boasting about being the Vigilante Group, things had been fine.
Just wearing the sword Baren had bought them at their waist was enough to make everyone too terrified to resist, and they’d been free to eat, drink, and indulge as they pleased under the guise of keeping watch.
But setting fires and killing people—
Didn’t that make a man less than human, a piece of garbage?
Jen glared at the reluctant Peta.
“What is it? Are you going to betray us?”
“You bastard. Is betrayal the real problem here?”
Anger flared up hot, and his words came out rough and coarse.
Come to think of it, Jen had always suited Baren well.
They were both equally wicked.
But Peta was not.
Baren had beaten him more than once.
‘I’ve gone along with it because there was no choice, but killing the lord’s daughter is… different.’
Peta, like Jen, had lived in this village for generations.
It meant his ancestors, stretching back into the mist of time, had depended on the Earl of Laberose.
‘Perhaps I can convince Jen after all.’
With that thought, Peta deliberately raised his voice.
“I’m not talking about betrayal—I’m talking about confession. If Baren abandons us, what then? Do you trust that bastard? And if your neck gets cut off because of him, you’d be fine with that?”
“No, ……that’s—”
“See? You think the same way I do.”
“Then what are we supposed to do? If we were going to confess, you should’ve said so earlier. The others have already set out to burn things down, and now you want us to go confess instead?”
“Fools suffer with their bodies. Men like us, clever men, we know how to survive on our own.”
“The villagers won’t let us off the hook.”
“So they’ll kill us? Maybe. But if this job goes wrong, then we’re truly done for—you understand that, don’t you?”
At that, Jen fell silent, considering.
It was a plausible argument.
If something truly happened to Agnes, they could be executed for complicity in murdering a noblewoman.
“And who knows? Maybe they’ll even reward us if we confess.”
“But there are the others too…….”
As Jen muttered on, Peta suddenly burst out.
“You worthless dog. If you want to live by killing people, go right ahead! Not me—I’m not sinking that low, you bastard.”
Peta remembered his childhood, peaceful and calm, when the Lord’s house still stood whole.
If such days could return.
He felt he could accept whatever punishment came for what he’d done.
When the two of them finally went to find Agnes.
Agnes and Ignitan were, of course, already awake.

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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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