Chapter 337

Gorilla VS Bear [Part 3]

“Well, there’s a lot of difficulties. I’m sorry, everyone. I have made the atmosphere gloomy… I can’t keep chasing my dreams forever.”

Marion was 17 years old. She was already at an age when she had to think about her marriage. In one part of her brain, she knew she had to fulfill her role as a daughter of a noble, but a part of her also wasn’t willing to give up her dream no matter what. She was feeling conflicted every day, yet time was running out for her.

“Marion-sama. I will lend an ear anytime. Don’t say you want to give up and let’s think together of a way to become a knight, shall we? I think it is such a pity to give up since you are still young.”

Emma held the hands of Marion, who was smiling weakly.

Marion’s palms were more callused than Emma’s and were more similar to those of her father, Leonard, and older brother, George. They were the hands of a warrior thoroughly trained in swordsmanship. You could tell the incredible efforts she had put in just from her hands.

“Emma-sama, I’m already 17 years old.”

‘Even if Emma, several years my junior, said I’m young, I…’ Marion looked troubled.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Bluntly speaking, seventeen was not an age when one could keep dreaming. It was considered a marriageable age, so most young ladies her age already had a fiance, married, or… had children.

In the first place, even if daughters of a noble had dreams other than marriage, they wouldn’t come true. They couldn’t even work outside the house without the understanding of the person who would be their husband.

As Marion gained insight into the world, she couldn’t help but think that her dream would be difficult to realize.

“What are you saying! You’re not already 17, you’re still 17, Marion-sama! 17 is a lump of possibilities, bubbling with youth and vigor!”

Emma shook her head at Marion, who was laughing at herself with self-deprecation.

From Emma’s perspective with her past life memories, 17-year-olds were a minor who was prohibited from drinking alcohol and smoking and had no voting rights or driver’s license.

Emma wanted to say to Marion that it was too early to give up her dream, or rather, her journey had just begun from this point on.

“Fufufu, I feel like I have cheered up somehow when you put it that way.”

Francesca, the same age as Marion, felt like a load had got off her chest after seeing Emma’s lively figure arguing strongly that seventeen years old was vivaciously young.

Francesca had her already settled engagement wiped blank not long after she failed the First Prince Faction’s baptism. She had to search for candidates from scratch to find the next engagement partner. Starting a search now when it was already this late, she couldn’t even complain if she ended up as the second wife of a much older aristocrat.

“Even Franscesca-sama too… Everyone is still at an age when you can become anything you want. Besides, even if you don’t get married in the first place, there are still—…”

“Emma?”

“EEEK! M-Mother?!”

Right when Emma was about to say, “Even if you don’t get married in the first place, there are still many fun things to do out there…” Melsa, who had been simmering monster meat a little further away from the girls, had stood right behind her before she knew it.

“What were you going to say just now?”

She had frighteningly sharp ears.

Although Melsa was smiling sweetly in front of Emma’s academy friends, she could only appear as the demon incarnate in Emma’s eyes.

“Eh?”

“I felt like I just heard something I couldn’t allow to pass by just now, though?”

“Eh? Uh, uhhh…..”

“You don’t possibly intend to not let me hug my grandchild (in this life too), do you?”

“Eek… D-Did I say such things? No, of course I didn’t! I-I, uhh… was just saying to the downcast Marion-sama that ma—… EEK!”

“Marriage doesn’t have to be rushed” was what Emma wanted to say.

But her mother’s stare was too scary. Still…

“Ma… M-M-M-M-M… M-My cat Koumei-san… That’s right, I was going to introduce Koumei-san!”

Emma caved in under Melsa’s pressure.