CH 52.2

Why did Mr. Cloud came here?

She was puzzled for a moment, but soon she found the answer without any difficulty.

‘Perhaps it’s because of the adventurers I introduced to him before.’

The S-class adventurers she had introduced did not return.

That meant only one thing.

Results must have been disastrous this time too.

So, he stormed to the guild to find her, and later came here after hearing about her situation.

Elisha walked into the living room, wiping her damp hair with a towel.

Cloud was sitting on a chair in front of the table.

Seeing that the wine bottle he brought with him was still capped, he must have been waiting for her.

At that little consideration, Elisha smiled as she naturally sat down next to him.

“Did I make you wait for too long? I hope you don’t mind.”

“If you accompany me for a drink, I won’t.”

“It looks to be some premium quality wine… Then I’ll like to thank you for the treat.”

Elisha took a sip of the wine Cloud poured for her.

The mesmerizing smell of the wine, of expensive alcohol, tickled her nose.

She put down her glass and nudged.

“Did you hear all those rumors?”

Cloud twirled his own glass of wine and nodded.

So, he knew.

“As rumored, my husband had an affair and left me. My child said he prefers a stepmother who truly loves him, and followed along.”

She poured another glass of wine and gulped it down her gullet.

Then, she smiled a little.

“Mr. Cloud, you know? I thought I was working really hard for the family. I even sacrificed myself for my family. But I guess my family didn’t feel that way.”

Elisha bit her lips and gulped down another glass of wine.

‘Should I tell him my story?’

The things she had kept inside her all along?

Elisha no longer felt worried and decided to just let go. She desired a little comfort, even if it was from someone she barely knew, because she was exhausted to her very core.

“I was in debt, about 30,000 gold coins.”

For a moment, Cloud’s hand stopped twirling the wine glass.

“You wanna know why?”

“Yeah. Just how did you get to owe such a big debt…was purchasing this house so expensive?”

“I inherited this house from my parents. It’s a bit grating to say this, but thankfully, I was the only child in the family. Thanks to which, when we got married, we started without any debt.”

“Then where did all that debt came from?”

“My husband gambled secretly and pulled us all into debt.”

“30,000 gold coins worth of gambling, really?”

“It was originally 3,000 gold coins. But my so-called husband hid it from us and tried to solve it on his own, but as time went by, it became ten times the principal amount.”

“Ten times the principal amount? What kind of crazy interest rate is that? Why didn’t you report it right away?”

“I wanted to… but then my husband would have been jailed for gambling.”

“Isn’t that way better than paying back ten times the principal amount?”

At Cloud’s words, Elisha laughed bitterly.

“Then what about Jerry? I can’t let my child bear the name of a criminal’s son.”

“…”

“However, we tried to argue with them about the batsh!t crazy interest rate. Do you know what they did?”

“Um, your husband got…?”

Elisha grinned.

""

“Right. They crippled his legs. Because of which, he was no longer even capable of earning that sum. But, do you know what they said after doing that to my husband? They said, if we couldn’t return the money, the same situation would be my son’s future too… Then, I realized—my whole family will die if they caught the wind of my thoughts on reporting them.”

“…there are many adventurers you know, right? If you couldn’t report it, why didn’t you commission the adventurers to fix them for you?”

“Commission the adventurers? Hahaha haaaha…!”

Elisha laughed with tears in her eyes as if she had heard something very funny.

“Well, would those adventurers really help me? It would already be very generous of them if they didn’t try to wield my weakness to put a leash on me.”

Elisha gulped down another glass of wine.

Even though she drank alcohol without any snacks, she was as good as drinking it as water.

“Anyway, I had to pay off the debt no matter what. First, I sold all the precious jewelleries I had inherited from my parents. I also had to unearth all the money I had saved up to send my son to the Imperial Academy. Even after all that, we still had 10,000 gold coins less. Do you know how desperate I felt back then? I even thought it would be better to just embrace death.”

Then she met Mr. Cloud. Elisha murmured.

“I realized it when I saw Mr. Cloud bribing me with 2000 gold coins to introduce some decent adventurers. I thought. My, this guy is a gullible idiot.”

“Hey.”

“Fufu, please don’t stare at me like that. I mean, I was in a hurry back then. There was no quick source of money open to me, and I still had a debt of 10,000 gold coins.”

“So, after introducing me to those punks, you ripped out 7000 gold coins more by introducing those S-grade weirdos?”

“Ding~Dong~Dang~ That’s right. Yes, I was finally able to pay off all my debts! Thank you, Mr. Cloud~!”

“Does it feels good paying off your debt from cheating others?”

“It did felt good. I felt freed from the heavy shackles that bound me. I thought that the only thing left to do was return to a happy family life again…”

The lively voice suddenly turned melancholic.

“I guess I was the only one who thought so. Seeing how they left me so easily without any second thoughts.”

“…”

“Maybe this is the price of sin I paid for cheating Mr. Cloud?”

Elisha laughed a little, as if joking with herself.

However, her calmness did not last long.

Lines of tears streamed down her cheeks. Her face was also slightly contorted with sadness.

“Honestly, it’s true that I resented my husband a lot. It’s 30,000 gold coins, alright? It’s an amount that made my mind turn blank. I tried hard not to express my real feelings, but he must have felt my resentment. He must have felt sad.”

She wiped her tears with the back of her hand. Still, she did not stop talking.

Like a child explaining why she’s crying.

“I was also very strict with my son. I was in a very sensitive state because of the heavy debt. I don’t even remember very well how I behaved with him at that time, but I probably wasn’t a good mother. So after I paid off the darn debt, I thought, I thought I could… finally be a good mother again…”

The older one gets, the less likely they are to confide their feelings.

There may be many reasons, but in Elisha’s case, she was the head of the family.

She was the pillar that supported the house.

When pillar falters, the house falters too.

That’s why she couldn’t show her weakness.

But now, she no longer had a family to support.

The tears that bursted out in a situation where she had no reason to hold back, didn’t stop.

Elisha looked at Cloud with her face messed up with tears.

“Mr. Cloud, the trip with the adventurers I introduced you… it didn’t go well, right?”

“…yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

Elisha bowed her head.

“I won’t make excuses saying that I did my best. I received a huge sum of 7000 gold coins from Mr. Cloud, but I didn’t do my job properly. I can’t return it back to you because I don’t have the money right now… but if you want, you can do whatever you want.”

“…it’s alright. In the first place, I am also responsible for things that went wrong. Besides, you too were fired from the guild because of that, right? Employing three S-class adventurers without clearance. Alright, raise your head.”

“Are you forgiving me?”

Cloud offered her another glass of wine.

“Thanks. Mr. Cloud is a very broad-minded person.”

Elisha’s smile reached her wet eyes.

After which, they quietly drank for a while in silence, while Cloud…

‘…it’s f**ked up.’

He was feeling strange.

Clearly, its true that Elisha cheated him. This is something she admits too.

But his conscience ached.

Well let’s say this feeling is like when you are playing a game, you found someone using cheats.

In revenge, you used bigger cheats and defeated him thoroughly and in passing, even deleted his account.

But you later came to found out that, that person was your best friend and he had to do that because he was in desperate need to earn some money for his mother’s medical bills. But now without his account, he was f**ked up.

‘…Should I introduce her to another man?’

This time, Cloud began deliberating whether he should visit a male escort district’s ace to balance things out.

“Ummm…”

Elisha’s head jerked down as she began to doze off.

‘…let’s put Elisha in the bed and think about it later.’

He carried Elisha and walked inside her bedroom. Just when he tucked her down in the bed and was about to leave—

—Elisha grabbed his arm.

“I… Mr. Cloud, it’s really absurd, but… just once… can you please comfort me…? It’s just so hard right now…”

Beyond the disheveled clothes, her curvaceous mounds stood out.