Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons novel Chapter 1023

Chapter 1023: Chapter 1023 - Taming Impossible Puzzles - 7

"Did you ever think about anyone else besides Mom?"

Reed looked at the door.

Then at the other door.

Then at the window, as though Fern might also be at the window.

His father was going into mental overdrive, Ren could see it happening in real time, the look of someone who had never faced this particular category of problem and was trying to find solid ground to stand on.

Reed had found Fern by the luck of proximity and shared circumstances, the two of them growing up close enough in the poorest part of the district that the options had been what they were. They were both reasonably good-looking, which had helped, and being poor had never left room for the kind of thinking that involved maintaining more than one household, not when your own wife was helping cover expenses and you were barely managing that.

"No... Honestly we were to focused on having someone like you that all our young years were gone when we realized."

"Because of your isolated situation and mom’s situation," Ren continued, with the careful delicacy he had when he was touching something he thought might be slightly disrespectful, "Not at all, right? Now that I’m thinking about how you two are, asking someone like you this question feels wrong and..."

The past in which Fern had had trouble conceiving was one in which the issue of feeling less and talking about other partners had existed, but that story had ended in mutual support so as not to destroy the value of what they had.

But Reed realized that this was not helping his son in any useful way, so he left most of that out:

"No," he said. "But not because other girls didn’t appeal to me. Being young and living where we lived..." he ran a hand over his head and scratched the side apologetically, "...your mother appealed to me considerably more than anyone else. It just wasn’t a hard choice for me."

Ren nodded.

Thought for a moment.

"If you had needed to choose between two girls who were her equals," he said, "who you liked practically the same amount, both of whom you knew well, both of whom had done a great deal for you, both of whom cared about you... How would you choose?" 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

Reed swallowed.

The question settled into the space between them and stayed there with the weight of questions that don’t have answers, not because nobody has thought about them hard enough, but because they weren’t designed to have answers. They were designed to make you sit with the discomfort of not having one.

Reed thought about it.

Not quickly. With the honesty of someone who understood that his son needed something real, not something comforting.

"Being poor," he said at last, in the voice of someone finding the right words in the right order, "honestly, you can’t think about more than one wife without thinking about starving. So I never thought about it that way. I’m sorry, that’s just the truth."

A pause... Ren started to open his mouth but Reed kept going.

"But I understand what you’re asking. It’s natural for men to find women attractive. Nobody I know is outside that. Nobody." He looked at his son directly. "What I can tell you with certainty, and this is the most serious thing I’ve said to you in a long time: life with a partner is not all love and it is not easy. If you multiply that more than once..." a pause that carried its own weight, "...you’ve been warned about the consequences."

Ren swallowed.

"You’re right," he said. "I need to think about this very carefully."

"Yes," said Reed. And for the first time in the conversation he sounded like the father of someone who was about to make a potentially very costly mistake. "Yes, so you need to tell them..."

The door opened.

Reed jumped out of the chair with the reflex of someone who had been responding to that specific sound in that specific way for decades.

Fern was in the doorway.

She didn’t have the face Reed had been mentally preparing for during the last several minutes. No crossed arms. No temperature in her eyes. Not the particular quality of stillness that in Fern preceded things one preferred she not precede.

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