My Youngest Keeps Bringing Home Male Leads - Chapter 51

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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 51
The moment the long journey ended, when I finally arrived home.
A familiar voice reached my ears.
Yet it felt strange in equal measure. Perhaps it was simply that so much time had passed, or perhaps Amy’s circumstances had changed in the interim.
Was this place where I stood reality, or was it a scene from a novel I’d read in my previous life?
Did my sister Agnes truly exist?
Was she merely a phantom—present in my dreams only because she was the story’s protagonist, vanishing the moment I opened my eyes?
So Amy stared at her unfamiliar sister in a daze, uncertain what to do.
The way Agnes rushed toward her was like slow motion from a film.
It was remarkable that such a word even came to mind.
Within that frozen frame, Amy saw the landscape unfurling on either side of her sister.
A radiant garden.
Sunlight flooded every corner, leaving nowhere dark.
The grass was neatly trimmed, and flowers bloomed everywhere.
That too felt strange.
In Amy’s memories, the Laberose Mansion had always remained ashen.
The garden was perpetually overgrown.
In her younger days, it had been for Amy like a forest full of things to explore.
Martha would fret about insects biting her, but Amy had taken her first steps among weeds that grew differently each day, delighting whenever an insect poked its head through.
She even remembered clearly how her sister and Rupert, unable to bear it, would bicker while cutting back the weeds.
When she stamped her feet and clapped her hands, Agnes and Rupert would turn to her and laugh.
Once her sister left for the Valdemar Mansion, she could see them no longer, but Amy continued to venture out into the garden alone.
A place thick with mottled moss, where grass grew taller than Amy herself, corners crumbling everywhere.
Eventually Martha blocked her path, saying it was dangerous, and she could no longer go there.
That garden had transformed remarkably.
Amid the cascading flood of memories, Amy beheld Agnes.
Running so quickly that the hem of her pale blue dress fluttered around her calves.
Her sister’s cheeks were flushed with color.
The haggard, weary expression that had greeted her every day in dreams was nowhere to be found.
Neither was the apathetic gaze—those eyes that had seemed deliberately drained of all feeling.
The whites of her eyes had turned red.
Awash in every emotion, she looked ready to burst into tears at any moment.
Coming right up to her, Agnes suddenly swept Amy into her arms.
Her vision lurched upward.
Held so tightly that she could barely breathe.
When their cheeks pressed together, a warm tenderness clung to her softly.
Amy accepted the sensations offered to her in a daze, finding them strange.
Agnes whispered in a trembling voice.
“You haven’t grown at all. How is that possible…….”
She rubbed her cheek sorrowfully against Amy’s, her voice breaking as tears mixed with her words.
“Where did that year go? You should be six now.”
I don’t know either.
I had no consciousness in the Rift.
Since I didn’t eat, perhaps I didn’t grow?
But I couldn’t answer.
When her sister’s tender voice reached her ears, and Amy found herself wrapped in the familiar yet comforting embrace, all mingled with a soft fragrance.
From very early childhood.
When she recalled—with her entire being—that sensation which had always been there since days she couldn’t even remember.
Amy forgot everything.
The reason for wandering across the continent for so long.
The memories of her previous life.
The burdensome secrets of this world.
“Hic, hic.”
Though she tried desperately to hold it back.
“It was hard, wasn’t it, Amy? I missed you so much. I missed you more than anything.”
At those words from her sister, everything crumbled.
“Waaaaahhhhh!”
She wanted to embrace her sister.
She wanted to hold her tight, but her arms were too short and her hands too small.
All she could do was cling.
Clinging tightly to Agnes, Amy wailed and shook her head.
Judging by how her clothes felt soaked against Agnes’s chest, her sister must have been crying too, though Amy couldn’t quite tell from where she was.
True to her six years, Amy cried with the abandon of a small child.
For a long, long time—until exhaustion left her incapable of another tear.
* * *
Agnes felt hollow, drained of all strength.
Only after settling the exhausted, weeping Amy onto the bed did she realize how utterly spent she herself had become.
Even for a six-year-old, the child had been quite heavy.
Holding her for so long had left her arms with nothing left to give.
Agnes sat perched on the edge of the bed, staring down at Amy in a daze.
A low voice sounded from beside her.
“Shall I rub your arms for you?”
When she turned, a man stood there—one she’d never seen before.
Or rather, his face was familiar enough.
Even the height she looked up to was the same, but something about his presence felt so different that he seemed like someone else entirely.
Agnes stared at him for a long moment, her expression vacant.
Neatly arranged chestnut-brown hair.
And eyes as deep blue as the night sky.
His sharp features looked hardened somehow, and most striking of all, his build was nothing like what she remembered.
Where had that wasted frame gone? Beneath his light clothing, the body that showed through was sculpted like a knight’s—all planes and hard-won muscle.
He’d always been tall, but with this added breadth he cut an almost imposing figure.
‘Well, with a frame like that, it wouldn’t be surprising if he’d actually slayed a dragon.’
But his eyes held the same warmth and faithfulness as always, and so Agnes found herself smiling naturally.
“What on earth happened to you there?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“The Rift wasn’t a Knight Training facility, that much I know. Did you go off to war somewhere?”
“Well, ……something like that, I suppose.”
“Rupert.”
The tears she’d barely suppressed threatened to spill over again.
Fighting to hold them back, Agnes reached out and drew his hand to her.
His palm was thick and calloused—unfamiliar. She traced the scars etched across it with her eyes, then leaned her head against him.
Her forehead reached to about his waist.
Unable to hold it back any longer, she wept quietly, whispering softly.
“Thank you, ……and I’m sorry.”
A low laugh drifted down from above her head.
A heavy warmth settled across her shoulders.
It was likely his hand.
While Agnes sobbed, Rupert said nothing at all.
He simply patted her back, the way he might have on some distant day when she’d wept alone after losing her mother.
After a long while, once Agnes had finally composed herself, Rupert offered her a handkerchief.
After wiping her wet cheeks, Agnes spoke with an awkward laugh, affecting indifference.
“You must be exhausted. I’ll show you to your room. Alfred will want to see you too.”
As Agnes tried to stand, Rupert pressed down gently on her shoulder.
“No, please. I’m all right.”
Rupert gestured with his eyes toward Amy.
“She’s been asking for you every night. It would be good if you were here when she wakes.”
“I suppose……”
Though she was desperate to hear what had happened, Amy came first for now.
And Rupert must be terribly tired as well.
Those questions could wait.
Agnes lay down on her side next to Amy.
Since Rupert remained standing, watching over them both, Agnes smiled and gestured for him to sit.
As the two of them gazed down at Amy together, memories surfaced.
When Amy had been newborn, she’d only been able to settle in Agnes’s arms, so the two of them had often cared for her together.
After Amy finally fell asleep, or whenever the child ran a fever, they would always keep watch over her this way.
Amy, sleeping as peacefully as she had as an infant, seemed both heartbreaking and precious.
“I heard you’d been ill.”
“The journey was difficult, I think. I’m fine now.”
I could check myself if needed. You should go rest too, Rupert.”
“I’m quite all right. There’s no need to worry.”
“And you were always getting sick when I wasn’t around.”
“But truly, I’m well now. Look—don’t I seem perfectly sound?”
Rupert, glancing over, looked so entirely changed from before that Agnes let out a soft laugh.
“That much is true.”
As her excitement ebbed and Amy’s warm body heat settled beside her, Agnes felt her eyes grow heavy, blinking with drowsiness.
Rupert wordlessly drew the quilt up and tucked it around her.
“I’m not going to sleep.”
Even as she pouted, exhaustion tugged at her with genuine force.
Rupert patted her gently, as one might soothe a child.
“I’ll keep watch over you. Please rest.”
“There’s no need for that anymore. You’d be amazed at everything that’s happened while you were gone…….”
There was the Magical Barrier now protecting the Mansion, and the Bracelet he’d given her to keep her safe, and the fire in the Village—how it was extinguished, she still wasn’t entirely sure…….
There was so much she wanted to tell him.
The familiar presence of him, and the whisper-soft breath of Amy beside her—both were so deeply comforting that Agnes simply closed her eyes.
Soon her breathing too fell into a steady rhythm of sleep.
Rupert sat motionless, watching over the two sisters lying side by side in slumber.
Then, after a long while, he reached out his hand.
As if to brush back the strands of Agnes’s hair that had fallen across her cheek.
But his fingertips never quite touched her.

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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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