Chapter 159 – Stepmom
The stepmom came into her house with her shopping cart, and when she saw us, she opened her eyes wide.
“Who are you?”
The first to speak was his father.
“He’s my son.”
“Ah! You said you were in the capital?”
The stepmother looked startled, then she came over to me and bowed her head.
“Hello. My name is Fiona.”
“Ah, yes.”
I awkwardly accepted her greeting.
I also felt it when I saw her dealing with a kid in her neighborhood earlier, but she didn’t look bad.
But why would such a person ever marry an old widower?
When I asked with such a question, she said that she was a stepmom… Fiona replied with a smile.
“My husband is my lifesaver.”
“A life saver?”
When I looked at him with an expression seeking clarification, my father scratched his cheek and replied.
“I first met Fiona about five years ago.”
“Five years ago, when the man-horse war had just ended?”
“Yes. It happened after you went home the last time.”
My father said that with a reminiscent look on his face.
***
Fiona was a refugee who lost her hometown because of the man-horse war.
She fled alone without her family and arrived in our village.
It was her first meeting when she knocked on our door to buy her groceries with her few pennies.
In fact, she looked like a beggar and had short hair to the extent that I can’t even remember her now. She later said that when she asked why, it was to keep her virginity.
Anyway, I gave her her meals for free, as I had a decent life thanks to the money you sent her periodically.
Then she said that it was only a few pennies, but she couldn’t do it, and she desperately tried to pay for it.
So having received her money, I asked her.
Do you have a place to go?
Then Fiona shook her head and said.
He said he was thinking of going to the capital to find a way to make a living.
Then I remembered you and said
Then, since my son lives alone in the capital city, why don’t you go and work for him?
Then she kept asking me if Fiona was okay with her.
To that question, I said it was because I felt sorry for the suffering of a child the age of my daughter.
Then she said that Fiona would go to you.
“But you didn’t come.”
I’m going to talk about that now, so shut up.
“Yep.”
While the group of refugees who came to our village left and wrote a letter to you, Fiona, who had been eating and sleeping at our house for several days, said she wanted to pay for her food, and she took care of the housekeeping. Thanks to that, for the first time in several years, I was able to eat warm rice and go to and from farming with peace of mind. To be honest, at first I thought of her as a daughter-in-law.
“Then why did you marry her father?”
… There was a reason for that too.
Since her long life in exile made it impossible to send Fiona, who was not in good shape, to the capital right away, I kept her letter at her house as an excuse to send her when she recovered a little. I’m also looking for a company to send along with. But maybe it was because she was old, and when she overdid it, she came down with a cold. She was lying motionless in bed, but Fiona was by her side, taking great care of me.
She nursed me and said
He said that it seemed like it was I who needed help right now, not my son, so I wondered if it would be better for me to work as a housemaid in this house.
I finally accepted the request because I could read the sincerity in her eyes.
Living alone wasn’t good enough anyway, so I thought I should raise her like a daughter instead of you.
“But after living together, we fell in love with each other, and the stepmother liked her father, so we got married right away?”
Right.
“It would be nice to eat in a cage.”
Right.
“…Don’t talk.”
Yes. Well thought out
***
All the women who heard the love story between the father and the stepmother liked it, saying it was touching.
However, when I heard that the age difference between the two was 20 years, I couldn’t understand it.
Isn’t it usually called a thief when you have this much age difference?
When I mentioned that fact, Vanessa, who was next to me, hurriedly stepped out.
“I don’t think age matters when it comes to love. No, wouldn’t it be enough to have love in the first place?”
“I think so too.”
“…This time, Kaldrash-nim was bad.”
Is that so?
Listening to it, I wonder if I was too narrow-minded.
Come to think of it, most of the girls in my family are older than me.
At most, Dorothea and Sophia are the only ones who don’t fit that standard.
Anyway, while the story was coming and going, it seemed that the stepmother had unpacked what she had bought in her kitchen.
She asked with a lively smile.
“Is everyone going to have dinner?”
Then Vanessa reflexively stood up.
“I’ll help you. Mother.”
“Please let me help too.”
It was the same with Camilla.
Both of them were using honorifics, but considering their actual age, it was actually nonsense.
Putting aside the others, Vanessa had been living since before the kingdom was formed.
Am I such a conservative person?” I thought, but on the other hand, I knew that Vanessa would be hurt if I cared about her age, so I quietly kept my mouth shut.
As the two entered the kitchen with their stepmother, her father approached and spoke to the remaining Ozma and Dorothea.
“Wouldn’t you like to hear about his childhood?”
Then, it was probably not because of their mood that the eyes of the two began to glow.
I asked Sophia, who was my only consolation, for some coffee from the capital.
***
Although the two helped, Fiona, the stepmother, was basically good at cooking.
Originally, she lived with her parents and three younger siblings in a mountain valley, but it seems that they all died in a human-horse war and were left alone.
Hearing her sad story, Vanessa shed tears, and Ozma made a puzzled expression.
Even if she didn’t direct it, there was a close relationship after all.
She looks like a normal human because she is now erasing her demonic features with her polymorph magic. I don’t know how she will react when she finds out that she’s demonic.
It’s the same for other kids, though.
After we ate, we sat around the living room and finished talking.
“So you’re saying she was twenty-two when she married her father?”
“Yes.”
As Fiona nodded her shy head, her father bobbed her butt on her couch, feeling that her father was restless.
“If you’re going to keep talking about uncomfortable things, go back to the capital.”
“No, what kind of nonsense is that for a son who just came down today, mister. I’m sorry.”
“Aren’t you afraid of me?”
I had a lot to say, but I held back.
There are a lot of eyes to see, but it is also true that this would not have happened if I had come down to my hometown a little more often.
So I quickly changed the subject.
“But why was the house built so big? There are only two of us living there.”
Then his father said loudly, and refined his voice.
“When you come down from the capital, you need at least one room to stay in. And when you have children, you will need a room even more.”
“Honey…”
Then Fiona, who was next to her, blushed and bowed her head.
He seems to have no tolerance for such talk.
“Are you going to have a baby?”
“Your father is not yet dead.”
“No, that… Think of age…”
My father is now forty-five.
Even if a child was born right away, there was a high probability that the father would be lying in bed today and tomorrow when the child was ten years old.
When I mentioned those concerns, my father shrugged his shoulders.
“If anyone hears it, they’ll know that you’re going to death for your father. And what are you worried about? There’s an eldest son who’s going well in the capital, and he’ll take care of my younger brother.”
“It’s going to be comfortable when you sell it in your later years. Father.”
Haha! It’s all thanks to having a great son!”
When I was sarcastic, my father laughed heartily and chose to break through head-on.
Well, it’s not that we don’t have money in our family, and having a younger brother with a 30-year age gap feels a bit strange, but isn’t it just the two of us that are happy?
I decided to think as positively as possible.
“Other than that, where are you going to sleep? There are spare rooms, but they’re not big enough for five people.”
Hearing that, I looked at the room my father pointed to.
It was definitely small.
For six people to sleep, some will have to lie on the floor with blankets.
And in this case, there was a good workaround.
“Then I’ll go to the inn and sleep. I was going to have a drink with Timmy anyway.”
“Oh, did you meet Timmy?”
“Yes. We met at an inn for lunch earlier.”
“Timmy is such a nice guy. She wants you to be friends too.”
“I still think so.”
When I said that and smiled wryly, my father said as if he had just remembered.
“By the way, have you met Helen? She used to be really close.”
“Helen? Wasn’t she married so she left town?”
I was a little startled by the name that came out of my father’s mouth.
That’s also true, because Helen is my dearest childhood friend who got my bachelor ticket off me.
