Investing In My Four Crippled Yandere Wives Get 1000x Returns
Chapter 4|A Little Stronger, A Little Closer

Chapter 4: 4|A Little Stronger, A Little Closer

Allen felt it that night, lying on the couch that was quickly becoming his permanent bed — a strange warmth threading through his veins, faint but unmistakable, like sunlight soaking into skin.

[Reward Manifestation: Ability Upgrade]

[Common — Throw → Unique — Precision Throw]

[Effect: Thrown objects now travel with enhanced accuracy, speed, and minor kinetic force amplification.]

He sat up slowly in the dark, turning his hand over in front of his face as if he might see the change with his own eyes. Nothing looked different. But when he concentrated, he could feel it — a subtle awareness of trajectory and weight that hadn’t been there before, like some instinct had been quietly rewritten inside him.

’From Common to Unique. Just from a bowl of stew.’

He let out a slow breath, equal parts disbelief and something dangerously close to hope. It wasn’t a bloodline. It wasn’t a Mythic-grade weapon. But it was proof — real, tangible proof — that the life he’d been discarded into wasn’t the dead end everyone assumed it was.

’If a meal is worth this much... what happens when I actually start figuring out how to reach them?’

He lay back down, staring at the ceiling, mind turning over the day’s events. The wives had eaten without protest. Myria had even asked if there was more. Small things, maybe, to anyone watching from the outside. But Allen had learned a long time ago that small things were usually the only kind that mattered.

He was almost asleep when he heard it — the soft, careful creak of footsteps in the hallway, followed by a familiar knock of silence that could only belong to Vivian.

He sat up. "Can’t sleep?"

She stood in the doorway, purple eyes fixed somewhere just past his shoulder, cane in hand though she clearly didn’t need it to navigate a house she’d already begun to memorize. "You’re still awake too," she said simply, tone light, almost teasing. "Guess neither of us adjusts well to new places."

"Something like that." Allen shifted, making space on the edge of the couch without quite offering it outright. "You can sit, if you want. I don’t bite."

Vivian huffed a quiet laugh and made her way over, movements sure and unhesitant despite her blindness, settling onto the armrest rather than beside him — close, but not too close. Calculated, Allen noted. Everything about her seemed calculated, even now.

"The stew was good," she said after a moment. "Better than good, actually. I wasn’t expecting that."

"High praise from a former assassin, I take it."

"Former ’elite’ assassin," she corrected, a note of dry humor slipping into her voice. "There’s a difference."

Allen huffed a quiet laugh of his own, and for a moment, the silence between them didn’t feel quite so heavy.

"Can I ask you something?" he said finally, choosing his words carefully. "You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to."

Vivian tilted her head slightly, waiting.

"Why won’t any of you let me help you? With anything. The wheelchair, walking, even just... small things." He hesitated. "It’s not that I think you owe me an explanation. I just want to understand."

The silence that followed stretched long enough that Allen thought she might not answer at all. When she finally spoke, her voice had lost some of its earlier lightness.

"It’s not because we dislike you," she said slowly. "It’s the opposite, actually. That’s the problem."

Allen frowned. "I don’t follow."

Vivian’s fingers tightened slightly around the cane in her lap. "We were the top four Hunters in this country, Allen. Myria commanded ice storms that could level a city block. Irene’s flames could melt steel from a hundred meters away. Everlyn could grow a forest out of solid concrete in minutes. And me — I killed men twice my rank without ever being seen." She paused. "And now look at us. Paralyzed. Blind. Deaf. Mute. Stripped of everything that made us who we were, married off to a man who never asked for any of this either, dumped in the one part of the city nobody bothers to remember exists."

"That’s not your fault," Allen said quietly. "None of it is."

"I know that." Her voice hardened, just slightly. "But knowing something doesn’t make it easier to accept help from someone who has every reason to resent us for the situation he’s been forced into. You didn’t choose this marriage any more than we did. So when you try to help — when you try to take care of us — some part of every one of us wonders if it’s because you actually want to, or because you feel obligated." She exhaled slowly. "It’s easier to refuse the help than to find out the answer is the second one."

Allen sat with that for a long moment, the weight of her words settling somewhere deep in his chest.

’They’re not pushing me away because they hate me. They’re pushing me away because they’re scared of finding out I don’t actually want to be here.’

"For what it’s worth," he said finally, "I didn’t cook that meal out of obligation. I cooked it because watching four people who used to run this entire industry sit in a house falling apart at the seams, refusing to eat properly out of pride, felt like something worth fixing. That’s all it was."

Vivian was quiet for a long moment. Then, slowly, she reached out — not quite toward him, but close, fingers brushing against the edge of the couch cushion beside his hand.

"...Noted," she said softly, and though her expression didn’t change much, there was something different in her voice now. Something a little less guarded.

[Investment Detected: Act of Honesty — "Sharing genuine intent with a distressed dependent."]

[Sincerity: High. Emotional Impact: High.]

[Reward Generated: +80 Investment Points.]

Allen barely registered the notification this time, too focused on the small, careful way Vivian had leaned just slightly closer, close enough now that he could feel the warmth radiating off her.

"You should get some sleep," he said quietly. "Tomorrow’s a new day."

"Mm." Vivian rose from the armrest, cane finding its familiar rhythm against the floor as she made her way back toward the hallway. She paused in the doorway, back still to him. "Allen?"

"Yeah?"

"...Thank you. For the stew." A beat. "And for not lying to me just now."

She disappeared down the hallway before he could respond, leaving him alone in the dark once more — but for the first time since arriving in Hegeville, the silence didn’t feel quite so cold.