Chapter 163: Chapter 162: Pretending to be kind?
Nero didn't even have time to act, but seeing that Choko had already taken care of everything, she smiled.
"Tsk, a bunch of hypocritical kids!"
Just when the little girl was going to be happy that she finally got something to eat and gained some coins, although she didn't know how much she had, she heard a male voice not far away and shivered.
"Huh?" Nero turned towards the voice.
Not just her, but the rest also turned and saw a tall man with short black hair and dark green eyes walking towards them. The man was in uniform, with city guard clothes.
"What do you mean by that?" Choko narrowed her eyes at him.
With a sneer, he said, "Pretending to be kind, giving these poor children something to eat, but not taking responsibility for raising them, just self-satisfaction, nothing more than hypocrites who want to pretend to be kind!"
"Pretending to be kind!" He emphasized for the third time with much disdain.
The malnourished little girl shuddered. It didn't seem like the first time this had happened. That same guard has done this before, whenever someone showed kindness to them and gave them some money or something to eat if that guard saw it, he scolded them in the same way.
"Pretending to be kind?" Nero had a smile on his lips as the veins on his hand's back suddenly tightened, causing bone-cracking sounds to echo.
Nero knew Choko very well, well enough to understand that she was a kind girl. Seeing someone sneer and say that Choko's act of kindness was fake made her angry.
Yui slightly lifted her beautiful, cold eyes as they glared at him coldly. Although she was holding back, her aura was so strong that the guard could only stand and hold back. She said softly in her cool voice, "Have you ever had to order food on the street to survive?"
"Yes, I have!" He spoke with a certain amount of pride, "By that I understand-"
"Understand what?" Yui interrupted, "Do you understand what it's like to be hungry? Or do you understand that it would be best if someone adopted them? Maybe you managed to get adopted?"
"Yes, I went-"
Yui interrupted again: "So you were adopted, and you're grateful to whoever adopted you, so you think it's better to be adopted, but you despise anyone who shows any sign of kindness, even if it's just giving these children a simple piece of bread, yes? "
"Exactly!" He was already annoyed at being interrupted twice and raised his voice a little.
"Hahaha, you are hilarious and very hypocritical!" Yui's laugh was cold and full of contempt: "You despise people who gave you something to eat earlier, but you forgot one little thing, oh big hypocrite. This is… Without these people who gave you something to eat earlier, you would have died in a dark alley while starving!"
Honda added when looking at the guard, "I must criticize the words you just said; not only do you not help these kids who ask for food because they are hungry, but I bet that whenever someone tries to give them something to eat, you hypocritically criticize them!"
Little by little, other people started to crowd around, as they listened to what these young students were saying, many of them nodded their heads in agreement.
"I don't want to be adopted..." The youngest child's voice was barely audible. Only the brother holding her little hand seemed to have heard.
He murmured to her, "I don't want to either, I want to live with Mommy."
Many knew each other, and have seen this same guard make this kind of comment, however, no one debated it so hard that it made the guard's face turn red with anger like a baboon's butt...
"They want to live, so they ask for money to eat. Or do you think they don't want to go on living?" This time it was Nero who told him. Her eyes suddenly turned sharp, like a cold, merciless knife.
The guard flinched at Nero's gaze. He didn't even care about his face which turned red with anger and shame, not caring about anything else he turned and ran to escape that place.
The people around continued to shout and criticize, while Nero and the rest walked away from the crowd as they brought the three children with them.
If one were to pay even a little attention, one would understand that these children were by no means, vulnerable children.
If they were vulnerable, then they wouldn't be begging for food to survive, as they were too young and could only depend on other people's help to survive; they would just give up and starve to death or simply choose suicide.
They wanted to be strong, that's why they were alive and living up to the present.
After letting the children feed themselves with fresh bread, Choko understood the children's situation better.
It turns out that the three children are brothers, and the reason they were asking for money was that their mother got sick and lost her job. Her former job was to work as a maid for a noble family, and when she missed work due to illness, not only did she lose her job, but her employers warned that whoever employed her became enemies of the Cont family.
"Bunch of bastards!" Jana's face darkened. She hated that kind of person the most.
It was unbelievable that they could harm a family so much, even put a single mother through such a situation just for missing work when she was sick.
Nero wasn't entirely nice, but she still promised the kids, "I'm going to talk to my older sister and look into your mom's situation. If it's like you said, I'll ask her to hire her mom to work at our house, okay?"
"I really appreciate it!" The eldest said as she bowed towards Nero.
It was by no means elegant, but it was very cute when she showed such sincerity.
The other two children, one boy, and one girl cried as they said 'thank you'.
The importance of a job was visible to them. After all, before their mom lost her job, their life was relatively good.
Their mother was still trying to find a new job, while they went begging on the street.
Their mother didn't like that they did that, but she just couldn't stop it given the current situation they were in.
"I will look into it."
Suddenly, Elsa appeared like the wind.
The three children almost jumped in surprise.
Nero wasn't that surprised, after all, she didn't know when her sister would be around, since she said she would protect her.
"Okay, you are the best." Nero hugged her fawningly.
In Nero's view, the best way to help these children would be to get their mother a job. After all, however poor their lives are, she believed they would still prefer to live with their mother.
Later, Elsa finished investigating. The truth was, the children's mother did nothing sinful and simply didn't go to work for two days, but still sent someone to tell her that she had been sick. But for this arrogant noble family, even if it is sick, in their view, it needed to work.
It's not like she didn't want to, she did get a really bad fever, so bad that she passed out in the kitchen and with a lot of effort the three kids managed to bring her up to her room.
After two days of rest, even though she was not fully cured, she went to work, however, she was fired without any rights.
Because she forced herself to leave, her body is still weak, and since she was left without a salary, the lack of food made her body weaker.
Nero went to the children's house, a health potion was not something relatively expensive for her. For the time being, that was the most she could do, the rest depended on the woman herself working and providing a better life for her children.
What can be said about all of this is that if it weren't for the guard criticizing them, maybe they would never have known the whole situation of the children, and not even have had this final result.
But with that, it was also a fact that the guard didn't even bother to find out if these kids still had parents and found out about their situation, but maybe finding out that kind of thing never crossed his mind...
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