The Seven-Year-Old Village Chief in Exile - Chapter 19

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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 19
“Waaah! Waaaaah! Mama! Maaaamaaaa!”
Mother and daughter, reunited at last, wept with abandon. Their faces flushed crimson, and they clung to each other’s garments as though drowning.
Dalis reached out and caressed Flora’s face without end.
“Let me see your face, yes? My baby, why have you grown so thin……!”
Her daughter was more gaunt and hollow than she remembered, and the sight wrung fresh tears from her eyes.
“…….”
“…….”
The faces of the exiles grew tender with bittersweet longing. Several turned away, their shoulders shaking.
The contagion of tears spread to me as well, and I found myself sniffling too.
‘They must all be thinking of family and friends left behind…….’
The yearning in their eyes was unmistakable.
It was hardly the moment for such a thought, but an idea I’d been turning over ever since rescuing Flora and bringing her here surfaced once more.
‘What if, instead of letting the exiles go, I brought their families and friends here instead?’
But the notion felt too self-serving, and I abandoned it just as quickly.
* * *
Livy emerged from the bedroom, closing the door softly behind her.
“Dalis and Flora have fallen asleep.”
The reunited mother and daughter hadn’t separated for a moment, and in the end had collapsed in each other’s arms, utterly exhausted.
“Sigh… what are you going to do now, brother…….”
Livy regarded Ian with a look of sympathetic concern.
“It seems Dalis will have little time to think about romance for a while.”
“What? You really knew the whole time?”
“You didn’t?”
Livy’s surprise proved even greater than his own.
Ian closed his eyes tight, looking utterly bewildered.
And I was there in the front courtyard with Modi, who had come as a representative of the exiles, watching the scene unfold.
Modi spoke up.
“Hebenia, what do you think? Will it happen?”
“Even so, they won’t sleep under the same blanket for another five years, I’d wager. Though perhaps Flora’s words—’I wish Ian was my papa’—might accelerate matters.”
“……Did you notice anything strange out there, in the world?”
“A man walking around with his undergarments on display.”
“What?”
“It’s the fashion these days, apparently.”
Modi, reeling from this shocking glimpse of civilized society, pressed his fingers repeatedly to his temples, his eyes and mouth firmly shut.
I patted his back reassuringly and offered comfort: “The world can be cruel, can’t it?”
After a moment, he composed himself enough to speak.
“While you were away, we gave thought to what comes next. And we’ve reached a decision. Unanimous, at that.”
I nodded silently.
‘As I expected.’
Will you help us get outside?
‘I will help.’
Time spent laboring together had kindled affection in me, and so I would help them on their way, wishing for their happiness.
“We…….”
I clenched my fists to keep my resolve from wavering.
“……would like to stay here.”
“Yes, of course I’ll help you…….”
……Wait?
I stopped, tilting my head in confusion.
“I’m sorry?”
And I asked again.
“You want to stay here? You’re not leaving?”
“If you’ll have us.”
“Of course that’s wonderful!”
I answered quickly.
“We’ll have allies for Revolution!”
“What?”
“What about your families outside?”
I continued as if nothing were amiss.
“Don’t you want to see them? They’re precious to you. Everyone was sad when they saw Dalis and Flora.”
“There’s something else I need to ask of you because of this. Forgive my shamelessness…….”
“Surely you don’t mean to bring them here to this place of exile?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“How could…….”
How could you have made a decision that suits my heart so perfectly!
I felt a rush of delight.
But because Modi looked so deeply pained, I sensed the moment and held my tongue, waiting for what he would say next.
“We were ordinary folk, content with the lives we were given. And so, naturally, I came to love the place where I lived. The Empire was our pride and our honor.”
But then we were betrayed.
By the country we believed would protect us.
“Even if my name is cleared, I don’t think I can ever live the way I did before.”
“…….”
I could only nod.
The Empire had turned innocent citizens into criminals. And those closest to them would have witnessed every moment of that transformation.
Even if they were exonerated and freedom was restored, would everyone around them truly believe it?
Would they embrace them and say they’d endured enough?
‘I can’t be sure.’
Reality is cruel.
‘And…….’
It’s a grim thought, but we can’t overlook the possibility that someone close to them had a hand in this terrible tragedy.
Ian was the prime example. He’d been brought to Exilium because of his colleagues’ betrayal.
And he’d witnessed their treachery with his own eyes, hadn’t he?
“Uncle.”
I took Modi’s hand gently.
“Let’s carry out a Revolution together.”
“So I wasn’t mishearing after all.”
“Of course it will be difficult. But wouldn’t our hearts feel at ease if we struck them down? When you think about it, we’re acting in self-defense, aren’t we?”
“Child, don’t make such bloodthirsty proposals in that innocent voice of yours.”
“Sign up now and we’ll give you a buy-one-get-one deal—we’ll hunt down every traitor and let them taste hell!”
“‘Buy-one-get-one’—what on earth…….”
Modi asked for some time to think it over.
But I knew what that meant. It was a gentle refusal.
“Hebenia, you’re strong, but we’re just ordinary people.”
What he was really saying was that they were afraid—they didn’t have the strength to stand against the Imperial throne.
I understood completely.
‘I endured and stayed quiet when I was powerless too.’
Just as I was wondering if it truly was impossible, my lips drooping, a thought struck me.
‘……Didn’t Ian become incredibly strong?’
The image of Ian training with me in the Primordial Forest came to mind.
“Uncle.”
I asked him.
“Is it difficult to defeat monsters?”
“Very difficult.”
Normally, you’d need at least ten skilled fighters to defeat even a single demon beast the size of a house.
“But what if one person could do it? Like a cannibal demon that lives outside the village?”
“Then that would be a Transcendent Being.”
“A Transcendent Being?”
“It means a master of martial arts who possesses power beyond the limits of ordinary humans. For example, a Holy Maiden, a Grand Archmage, an Aura Master, and such…….”
“…….”
As I listened to his explanation, my heart began to pound.
‘But Ian caught one…….’
With Berity’s help during training, Ian had defeated a monster on his own strength. Just for that one final moment, but still.
And I had defeated a monster with my own power, with their help as well.
‘So if uncle and the aunts just went through four or five days in the Primordial Forest, wouldn’t they become as strong as a Transcendent Being?’
A Revolution would be easy, wouldn’t it?
As I was happily planning the future, Berity came to find me.
“Miss! Your health check results came back, but they keep being returned because you never set an address, so you need to confirm them right away!”
“A health check……?”
Ah.
“It’s going to be sent by post in a week!”
“We don’t have a mailbox!”
“Make one, then!”
“Sigh.”
I’d completely forgotten what the Bleached Demon had said.
* * *
I asked the adults if they could make me a mailbox.
Some of the men who happened to be practicing their carpentry skills made a small one for me right there on the spot.
“You could just ask me to grant a wish instead.”
“Please don’t interfere with our rehabilitation training. Skills improve only through constant use.”
“Such enterprising, constructive people. I like them even more for it.”
Soon the mailbox, which looked rather like a little house, was finished. Crude but oddly charming.
The moment I planted the mailbox by the front gate, document envelopes materialized in the air and were sucked into it like metal to a magnet.
“Wow!”
I pulled out the document envelopes that had crammed the mailbox, yanking them free like radishes.
There were twelve envelopes in total, one for each person, with names written on the front.
“Line up, everyone!”
I distributed the envelopes to the adults in order as they stood in line. I kept sleeping Dalis’s set aside.
Fortunately, everyone in our exile group received a clean bill of health.
It was likely thanks to how excessively comfortable and pleasant our life in exile had been.
We hadn’t missed a single meal, not even the day before the guards tried to kill us.
That’s why I received an overweight assessment.
‘Of all things…….’
In my previous world, I’d always been underweight, so the word “overweight” felt strangely novel.
‘I must have been eating and living really well here.’
That’s when it happened.
“……What’s this ‘Knight of Cold Blood’?”
Ian had uttered something that sounded like middle-school syndrome. My ears perked up at the interesting term.
“Brother, what’s wrong? Has middle-school syndrome finally struck?”
“There’s something strange written in the remarks section. And what exactly is ‘middle-school syndrome’ that keeps getting mentioned?”
“Remarks section?”
I checked my own assessment form.
At the end of the paper was a box labeled “remarks,” where mine simply said that since I was overweight, I should consult with my guardian about diet management and exercise.
“Hebenia, do you have anything?”
“Mine just says I got fat and should exercise.”
“You look pleasantly rounded.”
“What? Hebenia has to watch her weight too?”
“Livy.”
“Even Popina is overweight. And there’s something strange written in his aptitude section.”
“Popina too?”
I felt a small pang of betrayal.
“Did you get an aptitude reading, Livy?”
“Yes. Mine says ‘Grand Archmage Blessed by Demons.'”
Livy made a ruined expression.
“My younger brother is training to be a Temple Knight, and if it gets out that his sister is a Grand Archmage blessed by demons, he’ll be expelled on the spot!”
“……Remember that your crime was violent robbery first.”
If that were public, he’d already be gone.
‘But did she really say she’d worship demons while her brother was aspiring to be a Temple Knight?’
These strange aptitudes weren’t only Ian and Livy’s problem.
Everyone in our exile group had childish, cringeworthy “aptitudes” written down.
“We’ve all got strange ones written too…….”
“Wait, is this ‘Berserker Drenched in Blood’ supposed to be about me?”
“…….”
Everyone except me.
“Hm.”
Later, I learned that the adults had already picked up on my dejection by that moment. Apparently my duck-like pouting mouth was that funny to them.
But the real shock came from somewhere else.
Popina.
“Sir, you’re a bald chef, overweight like me, but why does your aptitude say ‘Priestess Who Commands the Destiny of Stars’?”
“Oh, that’s a typo.”
Berity corrected the error.
“I’m a ritual dancer, not a shaman.”
“What? That’s even more terrifying…….”
The exiles around me, myself included, fell into profound shock.
They whispered to each other as though they’d glimpsed something dangerous that should never see the light of day.
It seemed they were more startled now than when they’d learned the Emperor had framed them.

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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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