What’s Wrong With My Marriage? I Was Bought as a Wife, Yet My Husband Is Madly in Love With Me! - Chapter 25

In the house where his mother was no longer present, a small, old pot remained.

Inside was the soup his mother had likely made for him. She must have prepared it before the fever took hold and made her unable to move. The soup gave off a foul odor, having already rotted. Seeing this, tears finally spilled from Klaus’s eyes.

His mother was dead.

Never again would she make this soup he loved so much. Never again would she smile at him. Klaus, who had been nothing but an unfilial son, could no longer reform himself and repay her in any way. Realizing the magnitude of what he had lost, Klaus fell into despair. Unable to even cling to his mother’s remains, he stood frozen near the crematorium until he was eventually taken to the relief shelter. He couldn’t force food down his throat; he spent his days simply huddled on the floor.

Even when he felt hunger, his stomach rejected everything, and he would simply retch.

He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t truly living, either.

He wanted to immerse himself in memories of his mother, but when he thought of his own past actions, he felt he didn’t deserve that luxury. He felt as if he could hear voices condemning him for being a coward who didn’t even have the courage to commit suicide.

He didn’t know how many days he spent clutching his knees, but one day he noticed a plate had been placed beside him, filled with soup. He couldn’t bring himself to touch it because it reminded him of his mother’s face, but the next day, the church nuns came to collect the dish.

“The Orlov family servants made that, didn’t they?”

“The one who helped with the cooking was the young lady of the Orlov house. You’d better mind your manners and your language around her.”

“Eh? But the way she’s treated, it’s not how you treat a sister. There was another one, wasn’t there? A younger sister?”

“I thought there were only two sisters as well. But the Orlov family has an eldest son as the heir and three daughters.”

The people in the relief shelter were either lethargic like Klaus or terminally ill, so the nuns seemed to think it was safe to speak freely. Being fond of gossip, they chatted away as they collected the plates.

In the slums, it was common for nobles to provide money under the guise of “volunteer work.” However, for the most part, this meant paying people to run a soup kitchen or making large donations to the church. It was extremely rare for a noble’s daughter to actually come to the church herself to engage in the labor.

For a brief moment, Klaus felt a flicker of interest.

A short while later, he heard voices announcing that the volunteers had arrived.

A young girl entered alongside a nun. Though she wore a fine dress, something about it looked mismatched. When she walked around distributing soup, Klaus noticed her hands were rough for a noblewoman. They wouldn’t look like that unless she performed manual labor and water chores daily.

If he hadn’t overheard the nuns’ gossip, he might have assumed she was just a personal maid who had been allowed to wear her mistress’s dress.

“Please, have some.”

Even when there was no reply, the girl continued distributing the bowls. Naturally, she came to Klaus’s side, placing a bowl down with a kind word. Just as she finished serving everyone, a voice was heard shouting a name from outside.

“Luce! Don’t dawdle, we’re going home!”

Klaus was sitting near the window frame, so he pushed himself up slightly to look outside.

There stood a woman in a garish dress, shouting at the girl from moments ago. Her voice was so shrill that every word reached Klaus’s ears.

“What an inconsiderate child you are! Making such ‘poor-man’s food’—what if people start thinking our family has no money!”

“…Sister, please don’t yell so loudly. It’s a fact that we don’t have money.”

“Don’t you lie to me! Father always tells us not to worry about a thing and to buy whatever we like. You’re the only one who constantly grumbles about money. Are you just being mean because you’re jealous of me? You have a nasty personality, Luce.”

“But we haven’t paid enough money to actually cover the cost of the soup kitchen.”

“I heard it from Father. He said you asked for more money just because you wanted a bigger allowance. …Luce, don’t tell such lies. If there’s something you want, just say so plainly. Even Father will forgive a little selfishness if you’re a good girl.”

Finally, the girl called Luce bit her lip, looked down, and fell silent.

In reality, the lack of money was likely true. If they had wealth, they wouldn’t go out of their way to send a daughter to a church in the slums. Even if it were a daughter’s whim, she would have been accompanied by a much more ostentatious guard. They had no such thing.

“Fine, whatever. I’ll report to Father later that Luce was being selfish again. Really, Luce… is it that hard to be kind and not be mean to people? I suppose it can’t be helped since your soul is twisted.”

With a deep sigh, the flashy woman departed.

All that remained was the girl called Luce, who had distributed the soup. The image of her back was burned into Klaus’s mind.

Once he grew curious, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. However, he hesitated to speak.

He was a pauper, and she was a noble daughter.

Furthermore, Klaus often suffered from a severe stutter when he was nervous. It didn’t happen with his mother or friends, but when facing someone for the first time, the words would often get stuck in his throat.

Still, Klaus wanted to thank her. He also felt that the way her sister-like figure had accosted her was wrong.

So, summoning every ounce of courage, Klaus spoke a word of thanks. But perhaps because he hadn’t used his voice in so long, it was hoarse and sounded nonsensical even to his own ears.

Luce simply stared at him in surprise, saying nothing. Overcome by shame, Klaus managed to stammer out an apology.

At that, Luce offered a gentle smile and encouraged him to try the soup. By some twist of fate or cruel irony of destiny, it was his favorite pea soup. The same kind his mother had made for him at the very end.

After Luce left, Klaus tasted the soup. No nausea followed. Instead, tears began to flow.

(Surely… surely this encounter was sent by God. To someone like me, who neglected and essentially killed my mother… God has given me a chance to repay a kindness.)

For the first time in his life, Klaus felt a genuine sense of gratitude.

Determined to move forward, Klaus left the relief shelter and sought day labor. There weren’t many places willing to hire a filthy man with matted hair and a scraggly beard.

Still, Klaus worked desperately. Wanting to send a token of his gratitude to Luce, he negotiated his wages so that he would receive leftover flowers in lieu of some of his pay for hauling goods.

When he handed her the flower, Luce smiled with such joy. To him, she looked so, so beautiful.

(…I want to make her happy.)

Klaus felt this desire with every fiber of his being.

However, she was a noble’s daughter, and this was nothing more than Klaus’s one-sided feelings. They were not meant to be together. It pained his heart to think that she would eventually marry into some noble house. Even so, he knew she would be happier that way than marrying a day laborer like him.

In any case, after the day he gave her the flower, Luce stopped coming to volunteer, so he assumed he would never speak to her again.

Still, he spent his days working, grateful for the fact that he had met her.

It happened when he was heading to a job cleaning sewers that had been advertised due to a labor shortage. As Klaus walked down a different path than usual, a man suddenly collapsed right in front of him. Although his clothes were dirty, he wasn’t emaciated like the people in the slums. He was clearly a resident of the main streets.