Investing In My Four Crippled Yandere Wives Get 1000x Returns
Chapter 39|An Ordinary Sunday

Chapter 39: 39|An Ordinary Sunday

For once, nothing was trying to kill them.

No dungeon assignments, no sabotage attempts, no formal Association summons — just an unremarkable Sunday morning, sunlight filtering warmly through the Hegeville house’s windows, the same run-down house Allen still insisted on maintaining despite the guild’s newer, considerably more polished headquarters.

He found Everlyn in the kitchen first, humming her familiar wordless tune while flipping pancakes with considerably more skill than her early cooking disasters had suggested was possible. She caught sight of him in the doorway and offered a warm, easy smile, gesturing toward the stack already cooling on a nearby plate.

"Smells incredible," Allen said, stealing a still-warm piece straight off the top, earning a mock-offended swat from Everlyn’s spatula.

Irene wandered in shortly after, hair still mussed from sleep, immediately eyeing the pancakes with unrestrained enthusiasm. "Please tell me there’s enough for seconds. I’ve got a whole day planned that requires significant fuel."

"What exactly does today’s plan involve?" Allen asked warily.

"Absolutely nothing productive," Irene declared proudly. "I’ve decided we’re all taking an actual day off. No training, no dungeon assignments, no guild business. Just... existing, together, like normal people."

"We’re hardly normal people," Vivian pointed out, appearing in the doorway with her usual effortless grace, though her teasing smile suggested she fully supported the idea regardless.

"Normal-adjacent, then," Irene amended. "Come on, when’s the last time we actually did nothing together?"

Myria wheeled in last, tablet notably absent for once, a rare, relaxed smile already tugging at her lips. "I believe the honest answer is never, actually. We’ve been rather consistently busy since the day we arrived here."

"Exactly my point," Irene said triumphantly. "So today, we fix that."

---

The day unfolded with a comfortable, unhurried simplicity that felt almost foreign after months of relentless training, dangerous dungeons, and political maneuvering. They spent the morning in Everlyn’s flourishing garden, Allen helping tend the newer plants under her patient guidance while Irene attempted, with mixed success, to identify which herbs were actually edible versus purely decorative.

The afternoon brought a lazy picnic spread across blankets in the backyard, Myria reading aloud from an old novel she’d found buried in a box of belongings salvaged from her old estate — something soft and nostalgic, entirely unrelated to strategy or dungeon mechanics, that drew genuine, relaxed laughter from all of them at several unexpectedly funny passages.

"You have a good reading voice," Allen observed, lying back against the blanket with his eyes half-closed. "You should have mentioned that sooner."

"It never came up," Myria said, a faint, pleased smile touching her lips despite her attempt at composure. "Strategy briefings don’t generally call for dramatic narration."

"Pity," Irene said, sprawled nearby with a stolen sandwich in hand. "I’d have paid actual money to hear you read dungeon threat assessments like a bedtime story."

"I refuse to dignify that with a response," Myria said primly, though the corner of her mouth twitched with barely restrained amusement, and she continued reading anyway, voice warm and unhurried beneath the afternoon sun.

Vivian, stretched out beside Allen with her head resting against his shoulder, seemed content simply listening to the ambient sounds around them — wind through Everlyn’s garden, Irene’s occasional interjected commentary on Myria’s reading, the distant, comfortable hum of a neighborhood that had somehow, over the past few months, become genuinely familiar rather than merely tolerated.

"This is nice," she murmured eventually, voice soft with contentment. "I don’t think I properly appreciated quiet moments like this before all of this happened. Always too busy calculating threats, analyzing angles."

"And now?" Allen asked.

"Now I can just... exist," Vivian said, a small, genuine smile touching her lips. "Without constantly bracing for the next crisis. It’s a strange feeling. Good, though. Very good."

The evening arrived gently, golden light stretching long shadows across the small backyard as they eventually migrated indoors, settling into the familiar, worn living room for what had become an unspoken tradition — simply existing together, comfortable and unhurried, no agenda beyond enjoying each other’s company.

Irene had insisted on some old comedy film playing on the secondhand television they’d finally managed to properly fix, though nobody seemed particularly invested in actually watching it, more content with the easy, familiar warmth of being tangled together on the couch, conversation drifting lazily between topics that mattered and topics that didn’t matter at all.

At some point, the conversation drifted toward memories from before Hegeville — not the painful parts, for once, but small, unremarkable fragments neither side had thought to share yet. Irene described a childhood obsession with a particularly ridiculous cartoon involving fire-breathing dinosaurs. Vivian admitted, with visible reluctance, to a brief and thoroughly embarrassing phase of collecting ceramic figurines before her training consumed every spare hour of her adolescence. Even Myria offered a rare, genuine laugh recalling a disastrous attempt at baking a cake for her own tenth birthday, back before dungeons and rank certifications had claimed every corner of her childhood.

"I never would have pictured any of you as kids," Allen admitted, smiling at the mental images. "You all seem like you were born fully formed and combat-ready."

"Everyone starts somewhere," Everlyn’s notepad offered, a fond, teasing addition to the conversation.

"Guild leader duties tomorrow," Myria reminded him eventually, though her tone carried none of its usual professional edge, softened by the day’s unhurried peace. "Recruitment interviews, dungeon assignment reviews, the usual."

"Tomorrow," Allen agreed easily, in no particular hurry to disrupt the present moment’s simple contentment.

Everlyn, curled comfortably against his other side, offered a small, warm smile, her notepad conspicuously absent for once, content simply to exist in comfortable silence rather than needing words to convey her feelings.

Allen glanced around at all four of them — Myria’s relaxed, genuine smile, Irene’s contented, sleepy energy, Everlyn’s quiet warmth, Vivian’s peaceful stillness — and felt something settle deeply, permanently into place.

’Four months ago,’ he thought, watching the ridiculous comedy film flicker unwatched on the television screen, ’I thought this kind of life was something other people got to have. People who weren’t discarded, disowned, or broken.’

’Turns out, we get to have it too. We just had to build it ourselves.’

No system notification chimed. No dramatic reward manifested. Just an ordinary Sunday evening, wrapped in the quiet, unremarkable comfort of a family that had chosen each other, again and again, despite every reason the world had given them not to.

It was, Allen decided, exactly the kind of moment worth protecting above everything else.