My Youngest Keeps Bringing Home Male Leads - Chapter 77

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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 77
Veins bulged visibly beneath his clenched jaw.
Murderous intent, plain as day.
It was as though transparent needles bristled around him, and suppressed rage stabbed at his skin with every breath.
‘Is he serious……?’
Count Valdemar was in the imperial capital, Cadelion.
To truly kill him, one would have to scale the impregnable walls of Kavas first, then breach the rigorous guards protecting the imperial capital.
Yet he spoke as though he genuinely believed he could accomplish it.
Agnes felt a chill run through her at the rootless certainty in his voice.
Was he truly the Ruppert she knew?
This man who charged headlong into the impossible and spoke of killing without hesitation—she didn’t recognize him.
Seeing Agnes pale and speechless, Kesenor quietly severed Ruppert’s murderous intent.
“Enough, Ruppert. You’re frightening her.”
“……!”
In that instant, the suffocating pressure that had weighed down the space lifted like fog dispersing.
Agnes, who had scarcely been able to breathe, gasped for air.
Ruppert’s eyes, when she glanced up at him, were clouded with confusion.
Normally he would have laughed it off easily, reassured her everything was fine—but now his mouth wouldn’t open.
Kesenor, leaning back against the sofa, observed the anxious tension flowing between the two with a thin sigh.
“Aser, you may go.”
“Me?”
“Ruppert, you as well. I have something to discuss with Miss Agnes.”
After Aser quietly departed via Teleport, Ruppert gazed at Agnes in silence for a long moment before rising from his seat.
He bowed deeply to them both, then opened the door and stepped outside.
Click.
As the door closed, it felt as though the rope constricting her heart had finally come loose.
Kesenor waited quietly while Agnes exhaled shallow breaths, exhaustion etched across her face.
Only when Agnes had finally composed herself
did Kesenor regard her with a heavy gaze and murmur softly,
“Perhaps……”
Stroking the armrest with his fingertips, he whispered,
“he might actually succeed.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The assassination of Count Valdemar. Have you considered giving it a try?”
Agnes’s expression hardened in an instant.
Gone were the fear and shock from before.
She was angry.
With eyes narrowed sharply at Kesenor, she clenched her teeth.
The sight reminded him of someone he’d seen just moments ago.
When he’d witnessed Agnes trembling before Ruppert, he’d felt a secret pleasure—but seeing her react the same way now filled him with displeasure instead.
As though a carefully maintained boundary had been crossed, Agnes cut him off with a firm voice.
“I cannot do that.”
“And why not?”
“Ruppert is my family, Marquis. I cannot send him to what might be his death.”
“I believe Ruppert may well be capable of succeeding.”
“Is Count Valdemar not an intimate of the Crown Prince, as you yourself said? Is the count truly such an easy opponent?”
“Easier than a Dragon, at least. What I’m telling you is that Ruppert’s potential may exceed what we can imagine.”
But Agnes seemed unable to truly accept this.
That was understandable enough.
Kesenor himself would not have believed it if he hadn’t witnessed it firsthand.
True, he could not guarantee Ruppert’s safety, but wasn’t accepting such risk necessary to bring down an opponent like Count Valdemar?
Yet her resistance quickly exhausted his interest, and Kesenor planted only a single seed in her mind.
Hoping it might yet take root someday.
“Ruppert is no longer the man you once knew, Miss Agnes. I trust you will not forget that.”
As Agnes left the room after exchanging farewells with Kesenor, she was so lost in thought that she failed to notice the figure waiting outside the door.
“Ruppert?”
She nearly collided with him, but Ruppert stepped back quickly enough to prevent it.
Concerned she might stumble, he had gently steadied her shoulder—but let go just as quickly.
His face was deeply troubled.
It seemed he had been standing there all along.
Like a puppy who’d done something wrong, run off alone, and returned drenched through and through by the rain.
But where the fear of Ruppert had been, only rage remained.
With cold eyes fixed upon him, Agnes seized his arm and pulled him forward.
“Come with me, Ruppert!”
Once outside the Mansion, Agnes walked with long, brisk strides and said nothing.
She felt Ruppert following behind her.
She couldn’t bring herself to turn around.
If she opened her mouth now, a torrent of bitter recriminations would spill out—so Agnes pressed her lips together hard.
After walking for some time, she arrived at a Lake that lay beyond a small forest.
She’d come here often as a child, on little outings, and her feet had carried her here now without conscious thought.
It was her first visit since her mother had passed.
When the brilliant blue expanse opened before her eyes, her spirits lifted a little.
“Look at this, Ruppert. It’s just as it was.”
She’d heard recently that Amy had come here to play.
The overgrown grass had been tidied up somewhat as a result.
“I wish I’d brought something to eat.”
As she made to sit on a jutting rock without ceremony, Ruppert hastily spread his handkerchief across it for her.
She wiped away the sweat that had seeped through with the warmth of the sun, using the back of her hand, and combed her tangled hair through with her fingers.
The dense trees beside the Lake shaded them from the sun, and a cool breeze stirred softly.
The blazing anger within her gradually lost its heat.
As her turbulent emotions grew calm like the surface of the Lake, Agnes whispered without turning to look at Ruppert.
“Are you still certain of your resolve?”
“Pardon?”
“Staying in our household. Taking up your father’s work and remaining at my side.”
Realizing she meant the conversation they’d had not long ago, Ruppert nodded quietly.
Only then did Agnes turn her head and gaze at him.
“Then I’m still your mistress?”
“Yes, you are.”
“Do you truly think so?”
Recalling what had just transpired, Agnes gave a hollow laugh.
His meek compliance only stoked her anger anew.
“If you dislike my decision, you won’t obey?”
……
Ruppert stared at her for a moment, then looked away and lowered his head.
It was an unbecoming thing to say between them.
Agnes had never once treated him as a servant.
She made requests, not demands, and never forgot to thank him when he helped.
She had never once overridden his wishes.
Agnes twisted her lips into a smile.
“Why? Are you hurt?”
“No, Agnes.”
“What do you think I felt?”
The moment those few curt words left her lips, something that had been lodged in her chest came surging up.
It felt like it was strangling her throat, and struggling to breathe, Agnes spoke slowly, each word ground out with effort.
“When you said you were going to kill someone. What do you think went through my mind?”
“If you would only permit it, Agnes, I would——”
Seeing him about to rehearse the same justification again, Agnes covered her ears.
“Enough!”
Her breath had grown ragged.
Ruppert’s eyes widened as he looked at her, startled.
It was the expression of someone who had witnessed something they ought not to have—as though a corner of his heart had cracked away.
Agnes understood why.
She wiped the tears that had somehow spilled down her cheeks with the back of her hand, and laughed freely at his foolishness.
“When you fell into the Rift, you said you wanted to see me again, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Then what do you think I felt? When you and Amy disappeared into that Rift, what did I think had happened to you both?”
Even now she could recall it vividly.
The scarlet fissure.
Two people so terribly precious to her vanishing into that gap.
Pulled down into some unknowable place, into a mire so dreadfully dark and terrible.
“Have you ever heard this? When children lose their parents, they’re called orphans. But there’s no word for parents who’ve lost their children.”
Agnes made no attempt to wipe away the tears that flowed without end, instead forcing her eyes wide open, fighting against the blur that kept threatening her vision.
“Both Alfred and I had already held the funeral in our hearts. Of course we thought you were dead too—Amy, whom we raised from the moment she was born.”
She had lost two family members at once.
Even when she wanted to weep, no tears would come.
The only reason she could gather her wits at all, after repeating those strange, choking sounds over and over, was that she was not the only one who had lost family.
“I was out of my mind for a while—truly lost in a daze. And when I saw Alfred’s face after so long, it was so devastated. But then Alfred asked why my face looked like that, if I was all right. And there he was, having lost you, his own son, with his eyes sunken and hollow, looking as though he hadn’t slept in days.”

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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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