Volume 3 Chapter 10 The Side Story of the Village Butcher – Part I
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
Chaa in Toyata village thought of himself as a local celebrity.
This year, at 28, he had grown up eating as much meat as he wanted, so even though he was short, he weighed twice as much as the other men around.
He had never lost a fight against anyone his age, and he was absolutely confident in his strength.
Some laughed at him for being a mass of fat, but he believed he was packed with muscle.
In fact, he could move pretty nimbly despite his appearance.
Ever since he took over the butcher shop from his dead father, he strutted around with his meat cleaver sheathed at his waist like a sword.
In a small place like Toyata village, there were only a few shops registered with the merchants’ guild.
Chaa’s butcher shop was one of those few, and he was proud of it.
The pride a merchant should have might have twisted a bit in his case.
His privilege from being ignorant of the world had shaped his natural arrogance, laziness, and cunning.
As the owner of the family butcher shop passed down since his grandfather, he felt he had an undeniable difference from the villagers.
Having thought this way since childhood, by the time he became an adult, he became a boss-like figure secretly pulling the strings of troublesome youths in the village.
In a remote village, meat was a weapon worth more than gold.
Even though he genuinely despised those who wagged their tails at him for meat, he learned how to manipulate them as his pawns.
Laken, the village head, was hard on Chaa, saying he took after his father’s worst traits.
Laken probably thought he was giving advice, but it never reached Chaa.
After his father’s death, Laken became the only one in the village who could scold Chaa, becoming quite a thorn in his side.
Despite being an old man, Laken was surprisingly strong, and even the tough guys in the village acted like scared kittens in front of him.
Unlike the other villagers who backed down when Chaa yelled, Laken stood apart.
Losing Flare, the woman he had long eyed as worthy of being his wife, to a city guy was also because Laken’s gaze was too sharp.
Chaa believed this.
Flare kept ignoring Chaa’s passionate proposal, and it was a nightmare for him when she rushed to marry Munin, who was nothing but a weakling in Chaa’s eyes.
The skinny Munin, who used to cry and obey when Chaa squeezed him tight as a kid, suddenly started to defy him when he returned from the capital with his own will.
He became a full-fledged member of the Craftsman’s Guild and, before anyone knew it, he was richer than Chaa.
Chaa finally realized it was because he was just a kid that strength worked to make him forgive him.
That marked the end of his boyhood, albeit a bit late.
Chaa’s selfish plan to marry Flare, the village chief’s daughter, and eventually become the village chief of Toyata faded away like smoke.
* * *
Next on Chaa’s target was Anita, the granddaughter of the village chief.
She was a bit young to marry, but being a super gorgeous beauty and Flare’s relative, she had a promising future.
Without a brother to be born, Anita’s future spouse could eventually become the village chief, making her even more convenient than Flare in that regard.
Chaa approached Anita with clear ulterior motives, and she responded with brute strength.
There was no way a grown man could be defeated by a girl’s strength.
Chaa still believes he could have won if he had gone all out.
However, he couldn’t just go after the village chief’s granddaughter, so while being one-sidedly beaten up, he got knocked out.
Thanks to this incident, many of the younger guys who were Chaa’s underlings began to distance themselves from him.
He noticed he was nearing 30 and couldn’t continue fooling around with the young ones forever.
It served as a pretty decent trigger.
The lineage of the village chief was a jinx for him.
Knowing his place, Chaa next aimed for his childhood friend, Nora.
Nora was the daughter of the butcher in the neighboring town, and because their parents were friends, she had been close to Chaa since they were little.
Now that she’s all grown up, Chaa figures she’s not quite on par with Flare, but she’s still a pretty decent woman.
Since he relies on Nora’s butcher shop for all his meat needs, he’s been feeling a bit inferior to his childhood friend lately.
But he’s sure of one thing: Nora must be in love with him, there’s no doubt about it.
That’s just how positive Chaa always is.
Every chance he got, Chaa would tell the people around him how smitten Nora was with him.
Most of it was just his imagination, but the more he talked, the more he felt like it was actually true.
Someday, he’ll end up marrying the owner of the big butcher shop in the neighboring town, and he wants to pass on the family store in Toyata village to his second son with Nora.
By the time he could say it with confidence to the village head, Laken, he realized how much he’d grown up──enough to find the old her, who wanted to marry Flare and become the village head, laughable.
Chaa was a dreamer, but he wasn’t dumb.
He was social and had the strength to make decisions.
A strong determination and unwarranted confidence could be good qualities if he was heading in the right direction.
If his parents had shown him the right path, if he had met a good mentor, or if he hadn’t fallen in with bad friends, he might have become a well-liked character and the face of the village by now.
He might have been sweating over the family business and living happily with his wife.
Lately, he’s been noticing that his perception and reality are a bit out of sync.
But he couldn’t admit it.
He didn’t want to admit it.
Someday, a miraculous turnaround would happen, and he’d return to the ideal world he’d imagined.
The wrong reality needed to be corrected.
This belief was almost a religion to Chaa.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
Thanks for reading.
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