Please Give Me the Younger Sister, Not the Older One - 1
I headed for the village chief’s house.
Just as in the game, the chief’s home was the largest in the village and stood right at the center, so it was easy enough to find.
“Excuse me.”
Old men with little need for sleep were still awake even late at night, and the village chief was no exception.
“Ian? What brings you here at this hour?”
“I’ve come with an answer about the marriage I mentioned.”
“Has the goddess answered your prayer?”
“Yes. Thankfully, Helia responded.”
“Hmm? Well, now, that’s something.”
At my claim that the goddess had answered my prayers, the chief asked again, a faintly mocking tone creeping into his voice.
“So what did the goddess say? That you should marry Isolde after all?”
“Lady Helia told me to go to the village chief and the mill.”
“At this hour?”
“Yes. She said the answer would be there.”
“I see… All right.”
The chief still looked suspicious, but once I invoked the goddess’s will, he put his doubts aside for the moment and came with me to the mill.
And there, he saw it with his own eyes.
Perfect timing.
Two man and woman, locked in a kiss.
“What in the world do you two think you’re doing?”
The chief was utterly stunned to see his son kissing Isolde.
“F-Father… this is…”
At his father’s shout, John frantically tried to explain himself, but I beat him to it.
“Father? Chief, I think you owe me an explanation for this.”
I leveled my iron sword at the chief’s throat.
It was an old blade, but Ian had clearly kept it in good condition; the edge gleamed sharp in the moonlight.
“I-Ian! Calm down.”
“Calm down? You want me to calm down? The woman you introduced to me was secretly carrying on with your son!”
I put as much outrage into my voice as I could.
It made the negotiation much easier.
“O-oh, no, no, this is a misunderstanding. I never dreamed Isolde was meeting my son.”
“You didn’t even know which woman your own son was seeing, and yet you tried to arrange a marriage between her and an outsider like me? Chief, are you really asking me to believe that?”
“That’s…”
He opened and closed his mouth, unable to answer.
He knew it too: there was no way to explain this away, no matter what he said.
“There was a reason the goddess led me here. I’ll be telling everyone about this today.”
“W-What?”
“The nuns will confirm that my prayer was heard by Lady Helia. And then everyone will find out exactly what you and your son were trying to do.”
“Ian! P-Please, calm down and think about this. There’s no need to tell everyone, is there?”
With a desperate plea, the chief clutched at my pant leg.
The office of village chief wasn’t hereditary like a noble title; he had to earn the villagers’ recognition to hold that position.
And now the woman he’d arranged for me to marry had been sneaking around with another man.
Worse, that man happened to be the chief’s son.
Not only could he become the target of the villagers’ scorn, but his position as chief might be at risk as well.
“I understand that you’re shocked. I’ll compensate you, so just bury this in your heart.”
“If you want that, then hand over five gold coins.”
“Five gold coins?!”
Ten silver coins made up one gold coin.
And a farmer’s yearly earnings were only around ten silver coins.
In other words, I was demanding five years’ worth of wages as compensation.
It was, of course, absurd.
But an absurd demand was exactly the kind I could force through.
“A settlement needs sincerity.”
“Even so, five gold coins is far too much.”
“Then let’s make it ten.”
“Didn’t that go up?”
“Because my anger is growing in real time. If you can’t pay, I’ll assume there’s no settlement at all.”
“All right! I’ll pay, so please, calm down.”
The chief eventually threw up his hands and surrendered to my threat.
“But ten gold coins is a huge sum. I can’t pay it all in cash. Instead, I’ll exempt you from the cost of using the land and the mill.”
As expected, the land in the village wasn’t the chief’s property.
The real owner was the local lord, and the chief merely managed the village on his behalf.
In other words, this man was trying to pay my settlement out of the village’s operating budget.
Like father, like son? Or maybe the chief’s just trash too.
Still, if I got my compensation, I didn’t much care where it came from.
There was just one thing I had to press on.
“You said you’d give me land. Does that mean you’d accept me as a villager?”
“Naturally. Once you’re married, of course.”
The reason the chief was doing this was probably to claw back the ten gold coins somehow.
If I settled in the village, he’d be able to levy taxes on me.
But then something happened that he hadn’t anticipated.
“No. I’m going to marry John.”
“I-Isolde?!”
Isolde, who had been watching from the side, suddenly cut in.
She was trying to seize the moment and snatch her chance to marry John.
That insane bitch.
Like always, she couldn’t bear the world not bending to her wishes, so she leaped before checking the situation at all.
Needless to say, that only made things more awkward for the chief and John, while I, on the other hand, gained the upper hand.
“I have no intention of marrying some hideous brute like that. Keep that in mind.”
“This is insane.”
In the end, it was the chief who only grew more and more troubled.
. . .
“What?”
After hearing the whole story, Adelia stared blankly at me, as if she’d been struck by lightning out of a clear blue sky.
For her, it was surely a terrible shock.
Before her daughter had even married, she’d already been sneaking off to meet another man.
And not just any man—the village chief’s son.
“Isolde, is that true?”
“Yeah. I’m going to marry John.”
At her daughter’s brazen reply, Adelia looked so stricken she seemed to fold in on herself and sat down heavily.
“I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.”
With visible effort, Adelia bowed her head to me and the chief in apology.
But no one accepted it.
“There’s no need to apologize. I failed to keep my own son in line as well.”
“Chief…”
“But I have no intention whatsoever of letting my son marry Isolde.”
“Chief? What do you mean by that? You promised you’d marry Isolde off.”
“Handle it yourself. And don’t blame me. I’ve already paid a tremendous price to clean up this mess. As chief, I believe I’ve done what I could.”
“....”
The chief had drawn a hard line with Adelia.
From the start, he had never intended for his son to marry Isolde.
Part of it was her personality, but the real reason was her younger sister, Isabel.
He couldn’t afford to let his grandson be born with an incurable disease.
Rose’s Punishment wasn’t a hereditary disease, but that was information only the player knew.
Obviously, a man as ordinary as the village chief had no way of knowing that, and so he had stubbornly opposed John and Isolde’s marriage from the beginning.
“I’ll be going now.”
The chief left first.
Judging by his expression, he was probably heading home to beat his son senseless.
“I-Ian…”
Left alone with me, Adelia asked as if clinging to a straw in a storm.
“If Isolde only kissed him, then it should still be fine, shouldn’t it? She’s still a virgin…”
“Do you really think that makes sense?”
I cut that straw cleanly in two.
“Even if she were still a virgin, I have no desire to take as my wife a woman who has already given her heart to another man. That would be true of any man, not just me. Who would believe that a child born from a woman who wasn’t pure is really mine?”
“Ah…”
At my answer, Adelia could only suffer in silence.
As a woman living in this world, she understood all too well just how important a woman’s chastity was.
And yet her foolish daughter had thrown it all away and caused this disaster.
As her mother, she must have felt nothing but despair.
Should I stop here?
Judging I’d gained enough of an advantage, I took Adelia’s hand.
“But I still intend to marry.”
“N-No, please don’t. I still love him.”
“...I wasn’t talking about you.”
Of course, Adelia was so beautiful it was hard to believe she was the mother of two daughters.
But she still wished to keep faith with her dead husband, and I had no particular need to marry a widow.
What I need right now is a virgin.
Pointing toward the woman beyond the curtain, I said once more,
“I’d like to marry that lady.”
“You mean Isabel?”
Adelia, startled by my words, looked at me suspiciously.
To dispel that suspicion, I laid on a romance that did not suit me at all.
“I fell in love with her the moment I saw her. Even now, her beautiful voice still makes my heart flutter.”
“B-But as you know, Isabel’s condition is…”
“It’s all right. I’ll take responsibility for her, no matter what.”
At my confident declaration, Adelia avoided answering right away.
“Let me speak with Isabel for a moment.”
“Yes. I’ll be waiting.”
Adelia went to Isabel and spoke with her in hushed, serious conversation.
This has to work.
To obtain the Great Root Herb, I needed the urine of a virgin.
What a fucking nightmare, all because of that unicorn barrier.
And it couldn’t be just any virgin, either.
She had to satisfy the insane condition of being a virgin in body, mind, and spirit all at once.
Of course, she had to still have her hymen; she couldn’t have fallen for a man like Isolde; and she couldn’t have a lustful nature like Reyna. Only the urine of a girl who was truly ignorant of sex and had never yet known love could breach the unicorn barrier guarding the Great Root Herb.
Finding a virgin with body, mind, and spirit as pure as Sumire won’t be easy.
Waiting for Sumire, the heroine of Kunoichi’s Circumstances, was one option, but that was a last resort.
Fortunately, I didn’t need to wait several years out in the forest for a perfect virgin to appear. There was one nearby.
“Um… Ian…”
“What did Isabel say?”
“Well…”
As if the answer would be difficult to give, Adelia fidgeted with her fingers before finally forcing the words out.