My Youngest Keeps Bringing Home Male Leads - Chapter 39

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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 39
With that thought, Elisabeth purchased worn clothing and secured lodging in a reasonably dilapidated part of town.
It was not a place any noble would deign to stay.
But for Elisabeth, who had lived in the Laberose Mansion—which was scarcely better than a ruin—it was nothing to speak of.
When insects occasionally appeared and crawled across the floor, she would simply call her younger brother from the adjacent room, as she had done at the mansion.
Bang, bang, bang.
“Edmund! There’s a bug!”
Then Edmund would shuffle over wearily and crush the insect with his shoe.
The very next day, Elisabeth asked the innkeeper for advice.
“I’ve come from another village—how do I go about finding work?”
The innkeeper looked her over with a suspicious expression, but soon answered.
“The Job Agency? From the Plaza, take the widest alley. You’ll find it there.”
Elisabeth understood the reason for the woman’s strange reaction only after visiting the Job Agency.
The place resembled a battlefield.
People desperate to secure employment had converged like clouds, shouting and pointing fingers at one another in chaos.
The atmosphere was not conducive to children like Elisabeth and Edmund.
As Elisabeth would learn later, the influx had grown worse as people migrated south, driven by increasingly frequent Rifts opening in the North.
In short, far too many people needed work.
Because of this, no one would entrust jobs to two inexperienced youngsters.
“Sixteen, you say?”
“And this little one is fourteen?”
“Ever done a day’s work in your lives? You look far too soft for real labor.”
“Your parents must have raised you delicately. What brings you to such a harsh place?”
“If you’ve been blessed by your parents’ means, you should stay at your mother’s side. Isn’t that right?”
The first two days, Elisabeth and Edmund stood dumbly and returned empty-handed.
But by the third day, Elisabeth began forcing her way into conversations, raising her voice to match theirs.
Yet no one took her words seriously.
“Sister, do you think it’s because we’re too young?”
“That can’t be it. Look—even younger children than us are working over there.”
Walking through the streets, Elisabeth and Edmund saw children even younger than themselves laboring diligently.
Some were apprenticing at workshops; others helped in blacksmith forges.
A few worked as shop clerks.
Though it looked grueling, the fact that they earned money on their own was enviable.
“Could it be our hands?”
Elisabeth gazed down at her own palms. Compared to the hands of children working throughout the streets, hers were far too smooth and unblemished.
After about a week had passed with no success whatsoever,
Elisabeth returned to her lodgings to discover that the Gold Coin she had hidden away was gone. She confronted the innkeeper with a pale face.
“The money in my room—it’s disappeared!”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Didn’t you take it? There were no signs of anyone breaking in!”
“Do you have proof?! You’re accusing an innocent person over a paltry sum? How dare you!”
It made no sense.
The amount was so vast that the shabby people of this street might never touch such wealth in a lifetime.
‘How dare they belittle me, of all people.’
Her fury was boundless, yet she was helpless.
Revealing her station would be futile—the prestige of Laberose House had already crumbled to nothing—and she would only invite further humiliation.
Leaving the lodging house, Elisabeth confirmed with Edmund the Gold Coin she had kept in her possession.
Thankfully, she had divided roughly half of her funds to carry separately, foreseeing such calamity.
But at this rate, she would return home with nothing.
The thought only sharpened her desperation.
The next day, Elisabeth approached the Job Agency differently than before.
“My mother and father are both dead! That’s why I need to earn money! I’ll do anything—just please give me work!”
She could not fathom where such force came from.
Grabbing and clinging to the people who tried to push past her, Elisabeth’s lovely face flushed red as she cried out with raw desperation.
Thanks to this display, the two of them secured work for the first time.
It was only cleaning lodgings and hauling cargo, but they threw themselves into it with earnest effort.
However, their employer seemed to have other ideas.
Citing clumsy hands as reason, both were dismissed after merely three days.
The money they earned for their labor came to barely a single Copper Coin.
“Hic, sniff, …w-waaaaaah.”
In a shabby rented room, Elisabeth pulled the blanket over her head and sobbed.
‘Am I truly so useless?’
Earning money proved far harder than she’d imagined.
After Mother died, Agnes had insisted she stay home, confined to the house.
Elisabeth obeyed her sister’s wishes, yet every day she’d thought to herself:
‘I could do it too. How hard could earning a few coins be?’
She’d believed that if she and Edmund ventured out, money would come easily enough.
How foolish that notion had proven.
‘I can’t even manage menial work!’
It had always been this way.
No matter how hard she tried, she could never catch up to her sister.
Mindful that Edmund might hear her from the adjoining room, Elisabeth stifled her sobs.
Childhood memories surfaced with painful clarity.
When Elisabeth had just begun to walk, Agnes was already seven years old.
“My, did you solve this, Agnes?”
“Yes, I did!”
“How remarkable, my daughter! However did you grow so clever? To solve such a difficult problem!”
“And that’s not all, Madam. Her manners are so impeccable, so graceful. Agnes shall be a treasure of Laberose House.”
“You flatter me, Teacher.”
Agnes had always received praise from everyone around her.
At first, Elisabeth marveled at it. Later, she resented it.
“Mother, what about me? What about Elisabeth?”
“You do well too, Elisabeth!”
“Does Sister do better, or do I?”
“When you’re as old as Agnes, you’ll be able to do just as well!”
“Really?”
“Of course!”
But when Elisabeth turned seven, she could not match what Agnes could do.
‘Am I stupid? Is that why I can’t do it?’
When Elisabeth asked such things, Mother would scold her with a stern expression.
“We don’t speak that way, Elisabeth. You are precious simply by existing.”
“But Mother, you only ever praise Sister!”
Clever and graceful Agnes.
Edmund, though fragile in spirit, was equally sharp.
Both Father and Mother were wise, yet Elisabeth was different.
She’d felt hurt at first, but eventually told herself it was all right.
Mother and Father loved her anyway.
Whenever she grew melancholy, they would pull her close and whisper their love.
‘Someday I’ll find something I’m good at.’
Then one day, Mother passed away.
Father left the house and never returned, leaving Elisabeth and Edmund often alone together.
“Sister, are you busy?”
When Elisabeth sought her out from boredom, Agnes was always frantically occupied.
She managed the Mansion in Father’s stead, or tended to baby Amy.
“Sister, shall I look after Amy instead?”
“It’s all right, Elisabeth. You attend to your own tasks.”
“But I have nothing to do.”
“You should study. I have Martha and Ruppert to help me, so it’s fine.”
But soon the tutor’s visits ceased.
It felt like an eternity since she’d sat face-to-face with Agnes and truly talked.
Agnes was always with Amy, except when working.
As if the newborn was Agnes’s entire family.
Though Elisabeth and Edmund had no one else to depend on but Agnes.
‘How hateful.’
Once, when Agnes stepped away and Elisabeth had to mind Amy,
watching the infant lie still and babble, looking so carefree, she’d struck her—more than once.
It felt as though she’d been robbed of Mother, of Sister.
All by this mewling thing who could do nothing but eat, sleep, and cry.
‘It’s your fault, Amy.’
As she rocked the rickety cradle, Elisabeth whispered bitterly.
“You’ve made everything harder for all of us since the day you were born. Your sister, us, everyone in this family.”
Words she’d hurled a thousand times before.
Even when Amy was crawling, learning to walk, running about, beginning to speak.
“Your sister struggles because of you.”
If I’d grown up like everyone else, I would have become a fine lady like her.
Accomplished, gracious, elegant—a baron’s daughter.
Elisabeth Laberose.
But now she could learn nothing, could only watch the hours slip away in endless futility.
“Everything is ruined because of you.”
When she said such things, Amy would look up with her bright eyes—whether she understood or not, Elisabeth couldn’t tell.
The expression on her face, unmarred by tears, kindled an irrational fury.
Perhaps that was why the cruel words came out—words she should never have spoken.
And yet this little creature had just barely crawled back alive from the Rift, and brought home a fortune for the family.
“I’m worthless trash.”
The fact that she was inferior to Amy—it stung, it ached, it was unbearable.
Elisabeth wept herself to sleep.
For days afterward, she lost all confidence and locked herself in her room.
Then one day, someone knocked on the door.
When she opened it, the radiant man she’d seen before stood in the doorway.
He’d been her sister’s guest—his name was Silmare, she was certain of it.
“How did you… what are you doing here?”
“Would you mind if your younger sister joined us for a conversation?”
“I… what is this about?”
“I won’t take much of your time.”
At first she hesitated, but when she met his warm gaze, Elisabeth found herself nodding without thinking.
“Edmund is in the next room. I’ll call him right away…!”

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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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