Chapter 81.1

Chapter 81.1. Loneliness and Vigilance

-Miu’s Mom POV-

It’s the first day of Golden Week. The Takano family was in a hurry to move.

As cardboard boxes were piled up in the room, Takano Mirei, Takano Miu’s mom, looked at her house, which she has lived in for 10 years from the garden. She thought that this house would soon be closed.

I’m looking around her house, which was built when I married. It was a home to which I was very attached. I feel lonely expressing it as a past tense.

“Hey, can I put this away in a cardboard box?”

“Oh, those are breakables, so put them in the breakable box over here.”

I answer my husband, Yoshiyuki, as he asks me with the wine glass in his hand. That wine glass was also one we bought when we first got married. I want to take good care of it.

Concerned about my gradually growing belly, I enter the living room from the porch to help, and my husband snorts in front of the various glasses, which makes me laugh a little at his comical sight.

“Oh, right, this way. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

He carefully wrapped the glasses in paper and put them away in a cardboard box filled with cushioning material, and she sat down next to him to help, but he hurried to stop me.

“The birth is still a long way off. If I stop moving now, I’ll make my body worse.” n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

I smiled, thinking back fondly to when I was pregnant with Miu.

“I see. I know it’s going to be hard from now on. Sorry. Mirei-san’s health comes first, so if there’s something wrong, please tell me.”

“We’re going to be living in a noble’s mansion. Yes, I know it’s a lot of work, but we’ve talked about how it will be the same shortly if we don’t do anything. I’ll be fine. Mom is strong!”

Mischievously, I flex my arms, and Yoshiyuki scratches his head and smiles kindly as if he’s no match for me. From now on, I’m going to dive into noble society. It will be hard for me, not to know the life of a noble. But it must be even harder for Yoshiyuki.

“Dear… Are you okay? Quitting the Ministry of Magic and becoming the president of Takano Transport is that much harder, isn’t it?”

Companies run by noble families are family businesses controlled by family relations who can use magic. It is not hard to imagine how Yoshiyuki, who cannot use magic, is viewed by his relatives.

“If you’re hiding painful feelings under a smile, not wanting your family to worry about you, please share them. We’re a couple. Double the happiness and halve the pain.”

Three days ago, my husband resigned from the Ministry of Magic and became the president of Takano Transport. Even I, who aren’t familiar with noble society, can imagine how insane it is for someone who gets thrown out for not being able to use magic to come back and become the head of the company.

There would surely be scorn, animosity, and other stares and people who would try to drag him down. My heart aches when I think about that. I wanted to help my husband as much as I could.

However, my husband’s face unexpectedly turned delicate. He looked more puzzled than distressed. Is something wrong? Is it because he has no idea how to run a business and is left to fend for himself?

I can imagine my husband sitting in a chair in the president’s office and spending the day alone and lonely, dazed with nothing to do.

“Hmmm… Everyone is very cooperative. How can I say? Yeah, they are cooperative.”

He doesn’t seem to be lying. He seems reluctant to say anything, but it’s not like he’s enduring the scorn. I’m his wife for 12 years. I know that much.

“Is something wrong? Oh, did the people the emperor put on you help you or something?”

My husband has borrowed three people from the emperor to act as watchmen. They all seem to be management specialists, so I wonder if they helped him with their shrewdness as soon as possible.

“No… One was fired from a company he used to work for. They discover that he’s been misappropriating money. He was doing fictitious transactions repeatedly as if his company was well run.”

“Report directly to His Majesty the Emperor! He said they were the best!”

I stop my hand from wrapping the glass and yell out. Wasn’t he the elite of the elite?

“Yeah …… I guess because he’s elite, he had to get results. So when we first met, he had this big attitude, but because of that, the other two were narrow-minded. They started looking at me to see how I was doing.”

Why the distant look? I try to tell him it’s a good thing it was before we worked together, but there’s still something there. I wonder.

“And 30% of the board members who were against me were suddenly fired one by one for embezzlement, being lazy, and sexual harassment. My first job was to get the board members removed from office, you know.”

“Eh… Huh, I wonder if His Majesty the Emperor helped?”

“No, I don’t think so. There’s no way His Majesty the Emperor would choose three people who would make fictitious deals. I thought it was Teijo-san, but he didn’t give me a clear answer. He casually told me that this is how nobles do things.”

“So you don’t know who helped you?”

“Yeah. I’m guessing that it was probably a result of everyone’s actions. I don’t think it was just one person helping, it was a lot of people helping. Of course, I don’t think it was just good intentions. So it’s impossible to confirm.”

My husband chuckles, saying that the reason is that each of them worked to eliminate him, and many probably got fired all at once. But I didn’t miss the slight pout on his mouth. There’s more to it.

“No more secrets, dear?”

I asked, somewhat childishly, puffing out my cheeks, and he scratched his cheeks and gave me another distant look.

“I’m feared in the company as ‘the magician who can’t use magic’. They say I’m a magically awesome person who returns from the dark to return my grudge of being thrown out and take the Takano family away from them.”

At any rate, they seem to think that he has eliminated not only the board members but also the personnel seconded to him by the His Majesty the Emperor, I’m empty laughing.

Ummm, hmmm. I’m at a loss for a comment. I don’t think it’s right to comfort him. It’s also somehow wrong to praise him for what he did. I don’t know what to do in this case.