Time Healer Ceres - Chapter 14

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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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The news of Aunt Agnes going to prison felt both satisfying and unsettling all at once.
“We were ordered to receive Damage Compensation, but you know what happened? The woman got divorced. She doesn’t have money to survive on herself—she won’t have a single coin left for us, Antonian.”
When Agnes’s affair with Headmaster Arnold came to light, her divorce followed swiftly.
Since the fault lay entirely with Agnes, she’d been cast out without receiving even a copper of Spousal Support, or so he’d heard.
“Then…….”
“Right. We don’t get our money.”
Forget settlement payments—the Damage Compensation the court had ordered was gone too.
Instead, since the woman hadn’t properly fulfilled the court’s verdict, her sentence would only grow longer.
‘The real problem is money, as always.’
Seres’s gaze drifted toward the debt collection notice.
Antonian’s voice grew hollow as he registered it.
“So we really do have to sell the shop?”
Getting back Yulia’s medical expenses that had been squeezed out of them had only doused the most urgent fire; nothing was actually resolved.
The debts still loomed like mountains, and Antonian knew it well enough.
But…….
“Even if we sell the shop, I don’t think all this debt will be cleared.”
Seres answered with silence.
The shop in the heart of the Capital, wasn’t that what had been said?
If the location was good enough to fetch a decent price, a fair sum would come in—but it didn’t seem like it would settle everything they owed.
“First…….”
Seres stood up at once.
“Where did you say the shop was?”
* * *
“Two stews here.”
“I’ll have a large one.”
“Me too!”
Delasi Street 1st Avenue—arguably the heart of the Capital itself.
Lavish, upscale establishments lined the street in every direction, a feast for the eyes. There was even a saying: if you want to know what’s in fashion across the Empire, visit Delasi Street 1st Avenue.
Yet on this bustling thoroughfare, one shop stood out peculiarly.
Surrounded by clean, sophisticated buildings without a scratch, there sat a single small, shabby structure.
A stew shop bearing the disdainful gazes of every other proprietor on the street.

The name on the sign was quite poetic.
But…….
“Damn it, this is making my stomach turn…….”
“I told you to drink in moderation, you idiot.”
“That’s mine, damn it! Get lost!”
“Oh? A greenhorn cutting in line? Let’s see if you’re that tough when you’re dying.”
All that emerged from inside the shop was harsh noise.
Curses were standard fare; scuffles broke out constantly.
Yes—the clientele here was almost entirely Mercenaries.
“Ahhh, this is the flavor!”
“I drank so much yesterday just to have this.”
The shop had only one item on the menu.
Meat and Vegetable Stew.
From early morning, customers poured in entirely for this single dish.
Some came to shake off the previous night’s hangover; others rushed in with empty, growling bellies.
A steaming bowl of stew—most who came here for that were regulars.
Five years was the baseline; many hadn’t missed a single day in over twenty.
The stew shop, Where Your Footsteps Linger, was always loud with Mercenaries crashing in for their soul food.
“Won’t you bring out the stew?”
“Yes, coming!”
Trembling in the midst of the coarse shouts and hostile atmosphere, a man in his late twenties moved about with anxious diligence.
He was Mark, the shop’s sole chef and only staff.
Crash!
“Damn it! What did you just say!”
“What, scared? Did I say something wrong?”
Mark, just emerging from the kitchen with food, went pale as the customers’ quarrel erupted right on schedule.
‘Here we go again!’
Day in and day out, the sight of customers fighting had long stopped becoming familiar to Mark—instead, his fear only deepened.
“Hey! You bastard! Who got blood all over my stew? Was it you?”
“Did you take a blade to the skull? Why are you attacking an innocent person, you ass?”
What had started as a quarrel between two men spread to the other patrons, and within moments the restaurant descended into chaos.
Tremble, tremble.
Mark, helpless to do anything, crouched in his usual corner as he always did, waiting for the fighting to end.
At least there was this small mercy: even after the brawls, the regulars paid for the things they’d broken before leaving.
‘Sigh.’
Because this happened constantly, he couldn’t even hire other staff.
There were far too few hands to run the place alone, but……
‘I’m so sorry! I can’t keep working here!’
‘Ugh! I’m quitting. These people terrify me!’
‘Aaaah! I can’t work here anymore!’
Most quit without even lasting half a day.
Now, for years, he’d been keeping this shop alone.
‘Galen……’
Mark wiped his eyes as he thought of the former Lord of House Drew.
To someone with nowhere to go and no money, who’d gone hungry for over a week and collapsed on the street—the kind master had given him a warm bowl of stew, free of charge.
It was Galen, Lord of House Drew, who taught him how to work in a restaurant.
Understanding Mark’s desperate situation, he’d given him a room and set his wages far higher than anywhere else.
To repay that kindness, even after the master and his wife died in an accident, Mark couldn’t bring himself to leave—he’d remained here steadfastly all these years.
‘And Miss Yulia is ill.’
After Galen passed, he’d heard that the House’s circumstances had grown difficult—that too was why he couldn’t bring himself to go.
He wanted to be of help to the young mistresses and the young master, no matter what.
‘But……’
Crash!
“You bastard!”
“Hey! Grab him!”
……Even he couldn’t say how much longer he could endure this endless cycle.
Watching blades clash and watching the shop’s wares go flying, Mark shrank further into himself.
Was it only his imagination that today’s fight seemed especially long?
“This is a complete mess.”
“……?”
That was when it happened.
As Mark sat trembling, waiting for the fight to end, a young woman’s voice reached his ears—a voice he’d never once heard in all his time here.
A voice he’d never heard before in a place frequented mainly by rough mercenaries.
“Who……?”
Lifting his head cautiously, Mark spotted a woman standing beside him, arms crossed, watching the chaos unfold—though he had no idea how long she’d been standing there.
“Huh?”
Mark’s eyes widened as he studied her face more closely.
“Se, Seres?”
Though he’d only seen her face once, how could he ever forget it?
That still-lustrous platinum hair, and those violet eyes that drew the gaze in an oddly compelling way.
Yet the reason he hadn’t recognized her at once was because her presence had changed so utterly.
‘Something……’
Long ago, Seres had entered the shop clinging tightly to her parents’ hands—a timid, careful child.
She’d been so delicate that she’d flinch at the smallest sound, her eyes so anxious they seemed ready to spill tears any moment; the rough mercenaries had taken care to mind their behavior around her.
But now?
“You there.”
“Y, yes?”
At Seres’s call, Mark found himself jumping to his feet without thinking.
“Give me that.”
“Eh?”
Mark answered blankly until he realized what Seres was pointing at—the tray he was holding—and his expression grew puzzled.
Why the tray, suddenly?
Surely she wasn’t planning to serve food in the middle of all this chaos?
“Miss Seres, right now you should really stay out of the……!”
Before Mark could finish, Seres snatched the tray from his hands, turned it over in her fingers for a moment, and then hurled it with all her strength.
“Wh, what—!”
Contrary to Mark’s expectation that it would lose momentum mid-flight, the tray, launched by her slender arm, maintained its speed and struck the back of a mercenary’s head with a sharp crack—right in the midst of the fiercest fighting.
Crack!
“Ugh!”
The Mercenary struck by the Tray didn’t even manage a proper reaction—he convulsed once, foam flecking his lips, and collapsed.
“……!”
The other Mercenary, suddenly bereft of an opponent, froze. Silence flooded the shop.
Stunned by the abruptness of it all, they turned as one toward the direction the Tray had come from.
There stood a woman with her arms crossed, utterly composed—Seres. The Mercenaries’ faces twisted in confusion.
Who in blazes was she?
Seres, unmoved by their hard stares, extended her hand toward Mark.

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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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