I’m the Future Crazy Male Lead’s Mother Chapter 14

And I pondered.

Was there really any reason to drag this trash to my rice field?

The answer was obviously ‘no.’

‘I can just find other workers.’

Just as I was thinking that and quietly turning away with a cold expression, it happened.

“Huh?”

Leon spotted me.

The silver-haired, red-eyed man narrowed his eyes and pointed directly at me with his index finger.

Seeing his silver hair and red eyes made my heart ache. He had become my favorite simply because of those two features.

Was my favorite character really like this?

Had I completely misinterpreted his character?

How tragic.

“Am I drunk? I’m seeing a woman.”

“What? A woman? Where! Where!”

The bald man suddenly jumped to his feet and made a gesture as if saying, Oh my, how lovely!

“We finally have a female member in our gourmet club!”

No, you don’t.

As the place suddenly turned into a marketplace, Leon staggered to his feet.

He approached me unsteadily with a skewer in one hand, and the strong smell of alcohol wafted from him.

I discreetly hid Axion behind me.

“Who’re you?”

Leon asked while picking his ear. I answered expressionlessly.

“No one.”

He tilted his head.

“Then am I seeing things?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, don’t joke around.”

He held out a lamb skewer.

“Want to join?”

“Rejected.”

I shot back without hesitation.

At my answer, Leon lowered his eyes with a crestfallen expression.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

His shoulders drooped.

The lamb skewer drooped along with them.

“Ah, I need to save up the membership fees to get a magical oven.”

While he was mumbling, a small hand reached toward the lamb skewer he was holding.

It was Axion’s tiny hand.

“Abubu! Uah!”

“Hm? You want some?”

“Uu!”

“Sure!”

I smacked Leon’s hand away as he fearlessly brought the lamb skewer toward Axion’s mouth.

“What do you mean, ‘sure’?!”

His heavily drunken hand easily fell away.

The lamb skewer dropped to the floor with a soft thud.

“Ah! My lamb skewer!”

“What are you doing giving lamb skewers to a one-year-old?”

Seeing those silver hair and red eyes moving vividly right in front of me was quite fascinating, but that feeling lasted about 0.1 seconds.

I had no interest in getting to know the Black Hawk’s drunken commander who reeked of alcohol and could barely stand.

“Ah, right. Come to think of it, didn’t the lord say something about helping some young lady?”

The brown-skinned man who had been secretly inhaling all the lamb skewers while everyone’s attention was focused on me spoke up.

He was the man who had been getting salted earlier.

The bald man, who hadn’t noticed the disappearing lamb skewers, rolled his eyes around and went, “Huh?”

“Ah! I think he did say something like that.”

“What the hell? Why didn’t I know about it as the commander?”

Leon complained as he picked up the lamb skewer from the floor and blew the dirt off it.

“That’s because you became commander based on your skill at grilling skewers. Hehehe.”

A knight who had been lying down and rolling around answered.

“Ah, right. That’s true.”

Leon answered nonchalantly before tearing into the skewer he had picked up.

I covered Axion’s eyes.

I wanted to cover his ears too. Why did I only have two hands?

“Then, I’ll be going.”

“Huh……?”

I decided it was time to put a period to my interest in them.

I needed to get this trash out of my sight quickly and preserve the image I had of the Black Hawk in my mind.

These people weren’t the Black Hawk. They were just trash, exactly as Dazar had said.

‘There should be some trash there. Pick out a decent group of those who can be recycled.’

Recycled?

I scanned the men in front of me.

The brown-skinned man who had been secretly inhaling lamb skewers had finally been caught and was now being beaten by everyone.

As they repeatedly stomped on him, he made pathetic “Ahng~” sounds while the men cursed him with disgusted expressions.

“You bastard, you’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”

“Die. Just die, you bastard.”

There was no trash worth recycling.

“Uh, but I’m sorry about this. We’re kind of busy.”

I had already said goodbye, indicating that I was leaving, but perhaps his ears were clogged because Leon belatedly gave me the unwanted rejection.

Leon tossed his finished skewer onto the floor and scratched the back of his head.

“You can see what’s written over there, right? ‘Gourmet Club.’ Our motto is slacking off at work. So I don’t think we can help.”

“Oh, and by the way, ‘slacking off at work’ means being a salary thief. You know what that means, right?”

He added that with a goofy grin.

I’ll say it again: there was no trash worth recycling.

“Ah, yes. Thank you.”

They couldn’t help me.

Well, thank you very much for that.

 

***

 

I quickly escaped the trash heap, hugged Axion tightly, and ran as fast as I could.

As soon as I arrived at the annex where we were staying, I shouted,

“Grandpa! Take care of Axion for a moment!”

“Huh?”

Carl, who had been drinking some red ginseng extract, took Axion into his arms with a startled expression.

The red ginseng extract he had been holding splashed onto the window as he hurriedly caught him, but I had no time to find that amusing.

I dug my toes into the ground, clenched my fists tightly, and started running again.

Straight toward that crazy in-law who had introduced a trash heap to me as though it were a labor recruitment agency.

According to the information I had obtained by grabbing several attendants by the collars, he was in his study.

“Hey!”

“What?”

With the large window wide open, he was sitting on the sill with his long legs stretched out, looking remarkably relaxed.

The long pipe precariously hanging from his lips slipped.

“Why? Has the sky fallen?”

He quickly caught the falling pipe and glanced up at the sky.

The white curtains gently fluttering in the winter breeze were strangely beautiful, completely at odds with that violent man.

But I had no time to appreciate such unbalanced beauty.

I was panting heavily.

I had run all the way here without stopping, and I was completely out of breath.

My chest rose and fell with every breath I inhaled and exhaled.

“The sky, huff, what does that have to do with…….”

My favorite character had certainly fallen apart. I grumbled inwardly as I wiped the sweat dripping down my forehead.

He hopped down from the window and approached me.

I had noticed it last time too, but there were hardly any attendants around him.

For someone of his rank as a duke, there should have been attendants waiting in every corner.

Yet even when I burst through the door and entered, no one noticed. He was completely alone.

He tilted his head and looked down at me.

“If it’s not the sky, did the ground collapse?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

“Know what?”

“Those trashy people. How am I supposed to find workers to use in my fields there? Find me some other workers!”

“Ahhh.”

He nodded as though he finally understood, then drooped his eyebrows as if he were terribly troubled.

Then, in a voice that contained absolutely no sincerity, he said,

“What should I do?”

“?”

I suddenly felt uneasy.

I narrowed my eyes.

He gently placed his long, bony fingers against his temple and slowly circled them.

“There aren’t many servants in Siastor. We only keep the minimum number of people we need.”

“So?”

Surely not. I forced an awkward smile.

“Due to the nature of our family, we avoid bringing in outside workers whenever possible.”

“…….”

“Therefore, those guys are the only people available for manual labor.”

“…….”

“Do your best.”

He chuckled.

For a moment, I desperately wanted to grab the salt the bald Black Hawk knight had been holding earlier.

Would sprinkling it all over that irritating face with a whoosh calm me down even a little?

“You want me to make a rice field with those people who look like they’d get drunk and roll around in the fields?”

“If you don’t like it, do it yourself.”

“How am I supposed to make a rice field by myself?! Then at least assign me the people who are supposed to come here for training.”

At my furious shout, he answered kindly.

“They aren’t people of the Siastor family. Do you intend to treat Imperial workers like your slaves?”

“Ugh.”

I would have even liked to use the commoners belonging to the duchy as workers, but unlike other noble families, the families of Transcendents didn’t have territorial subjects.

Although they had received their titles from the Imperial Family because of their duty to guard the ‘Rifts,’ taking responsibility for commoners on top of protecting the continent would have been too much of a burden.

‘Haa.’

Had this crazy in-law and I been enemies in a past life or something?

Did he have some kind of grudge against me?

This was a tremendous challenge to my very existence.

Images of those drunken vagabonds flashed through my mind, rolling around on the training-ground floor as if it were their own bedroom, completely drunk and sweeping up the dust with their entire bodies.

Remembering them, I scrunched up my face.

The corner of his mouth curled upward into a grin.