“Heehee?”
Ignite tilted his head back. ‘How absolutely absurd.’
Oh, no? I’m glad that’s not the case.
‘Even it looks like he cares for you, I couldn’t tell how he really feels, so I was worried that if it’s an animal that can’t speak, he might secretly abuse you…’
My heart was in my mouth, but my head still felt complicated.
Then, what? Animals should be happy, but humans were none of his business? I could kind of understand that feeling, though.
But no matter how much I understood it, I couldn’t understand the crazy psychology of trying to really step on a person, and kill them because of a misunderstanding.
What made me even more upset was the reaction he showed even though he knew it was a misunderstanding.
Sorry? Just sorry, that one word?
Without soul or sincerity, he threw it out like a macroed answer and disappeared like the wind.
Wasn’t it the personality of any saint, not just me, to wield a monkey spanner?
“Hey, does your master do that often? Like yesterday, where he asked you to step on me. Or would you try to do something like that on your own.”
“Pururu.”
“No? Think harder. Has this never happened to you before?”
I asked persistently, but Ignite kept shaking his head.
Now the number of question marks in my head has increased from a hundred to a thousand.
Oh, my head. His father always does this to me. At this point, I think it’s a characteristic of the Bastion family.
I rubbed my forehead on Ignite’s face, and made pained noises.
‘It’s hard to describe how it feels to meet a psycho when you were just looking for a cure to a time-limited life.’
The correct answer was still ‘attachment’. That was it.
I got used to all kinds of misfortunes. I may seem c*cky, but I wasn’t. I only realized that there was no limit to unhappiness.
Also, the fact that I wasn’t going to just sit around and give up was also in my bones.
“…I declare here.”
“Puru?”
“Watch closely.”
‘What?’ I smiled at the three pairs of black eyes asking like that.
“The way your master will desperately regret his actions.”
***
As I came back from chatting with Queensbury’s family, I encountered a dazzling light in the hall of the mansion.
It was Vivi’s face.
It was spectacular to see the face with a hundred fluorescent lamps turn off as soon as she saw me.
“What are you looking at?”
“I was staring because you look so beautiful.”
“What, beautiful…?”
Vivi, who’d been glaring harshly, backed away with a blushing face.
Surprise, bewilderment, and soon a wary look came over her face.
It was a look full of suspicion. ‘What kind of thing was this child imagining now?’
I shrugged.
I just said the truth without any meaning behind it.
She’d always had a beautiful face, but a girl who’d fallen in love for the first time glimmered in a special way.
As I stared at the face full of emotions that she wouldn’t feel otherwise than at this moment, I suddenly apologized.
“I’m sorry, Vivi.”
“…You’re going to say something weird again.”
“Don’t be too sad. They say that first loves don’t always come true.”
Vivi, who had to buffer for a while after those scathing words, frowned at my calculated comment.
“You, you…! I knew you would do that!”
Vivi, who was quick-witted and understood words well, even pointed her finger at my voice and jumped around.
“Hmm.”
I just kept my arms crossed, and looked at her with a smirk.
I mean, things were the way they were. She was still young, but she was obviously smart and ambitious.
‘It would be nice to be closer, if only you could cool your temper.’
She was a child who could grow up to do anything, if only she could vent her energy in the right direction.
One thing was for sure, Vivi didn’t fit into the role of maid at all.
I didn’t like to use the word ‘obedient’, but the reality was that as long as you were a servant to someone of rank, you had to be a little closer to that kind of personality.
Vivi was not that type at all. On the contrary, she was more like the kind of person who would ignore commands.
‘You’ve chosen the wrong job, Vivi. I think there’s a job that suits you better than being a maid.’
Pretty appearance, bold and ambitious personality, not caring about other people’s criticism, and doing things her way.
If she had a job that fits that background, then…
“Big Sister Vivi, Big Sister Vivi.”
“What!”
“The eldest young master is passing by.”
With a sound effect of ‘Shalala’, Vivi transformed from a demoness into a pure and lovely girl.
Behind her back, there was a flower hanging against the backdrop.
‘Oh, you look like an actress!’
As I watched, half laughing, half amazed, Vivi’s face turned steely again as she realized that I was lying.
“That’s really…”
“Big Sister Vivi, Big Sister Vivi.”
“I won’t fall for it anymore!”
“Why do you like the eldest young master?”
When I asked seriously, Vivi’s cheeks turned red. I thought it was a terrible first love.
I didn’t know that Levi’s personality was broken before, but Vivi liked him even though she knew it.
‘Is there a special reason? Like in a regular romance novel?’
I was looking forward to it a little, but Vivi replied with a dazed look in her eyes.
“He’s handsome.”
She said it like it was normal.
His face, okay. I’ll admit that.
“Isn’t his personality a little different? What about the youngest master?”
As I whispered softly, Vivi shook her head firmly.
“The youngest master is handsome, but he’s not my cup of tea because he’s prettier than me. Honestly, the youngest master has a formidable personality…”
Vivi, who was babbling without realizing it, turned her head away.
Eh, I failed in getting her to give up her secret.
I’d lost my appetite, when suddenly a low voice fell over my head.
“Truancy.”
“Oh my god!”
Vivi and I screamed, and hugged each other.
No, there’d been no sign of anyone!
Wolfgang, who’d appeared out of nowhere like a ghost, was looking down at me with an unhappy expression on his face.
“What, what’s wrong!”
“Not doing what you should be doing is slacking off.”
What do I have to do… Ah.
“Did you wait?”
“….”
“Oh, you’re upset because I didn’t go to feed you cookies. You were lonely. I understand.”
Then, when I poked the side of Duke Wolfgang, he furrowed his brow as if I’d said something useless.
I laughed like a raccoon, and even Vivi looked fed up as she pulled away from me.
You guys weren’t being honest. You couldn’t resist me anymore.
Wolfgang and Vivi quickly dispersed in different directions, leaving me grinning as if I understood everything.
I was thinking about which one to follow first and hug, but suddenly the top of my head stung.
Huh? When I looked up at the stairs down the hall, I met dark red eyes as I’d expected.
“…Hello.”
Levi was there, but he wasn’t.
When I bowed and lifted my head, the Levi standing on the second floor suddenly disappeared.
Ha. I didn’t expect you to greet me kindly, but this again?
‘I’m slowly getting angry.’
What scared me was what scared me, and what angered me was what angered me.
I’d made eye contact with the kid who’d almost killed me, but he had a curt attitude. You’re still amazing.
‘I’m going to get married quickly, then run off with Queensbury.’
Suddenly, Benjamin’s advice about asking Hugo for more details came to mind.
Yeah, it wasn’t Wolfgang or Vivi that I would chase right now.
I took a combative step toward the house where Hugo was.
After I knocked and got permission to enter, I opened the door vigorously.
“My Lady? What brings you here?”
“I have a question.”
Hugo welcomed me, then guided me to a chair despite my sudden visit.
As expected, he was a good person. But my husband was a bad person.
As I barely controlled my emotions by hopping up and down, Huge asked me affectionately.
“So, what are you curious about?”
“So, I was talking to Benjamin. No, actually, before that… It was early in the morning.”
As I tried to explain, I somehow ended up confiding to him one thing after another as if I were confessing.
He was still unaware of what had happened around dawn, and was surprised to hear me say that I was almost trampled to death.
“Oh, my. I thought it was just a little noisy because the eldest young master had returned early. Are you sure you’re okay? Did you get hurt anywhere?”
“Yes, except for Aisha’s heart.”
While I was whining, Hugo’s hand gently patted my shoulder, which almost brought me to tears.
The smell of common sense! It’s been so long since I’ve smelled this.
I continued, thinking that Hugo was the only person I could lean on in the Bastion mansion.
“So, I was looking into the eldest young master. I heard the Duke was also like that when he was young. Mr. Benjamin told me to ask Grandpa Hugo because he wasn’t sure about the rumors he’d heard.”
At the end of my long explanation, Hugo nodded and rubbed his chin. He seemed to be thinking about where to start.
“I don’t know exactly what rumors Mr. Cooper heard, but the Master’s childhood was normal.”
“Oh, really? How was it?”
“It was similar to the eldest young master.”
Hey, you said it was normal! Since when was psychopath style normal!
Hugo, who reeked of common sense, laughed as if he understood my foul expression.
“In terms of a ‘Bastion’, it was normal.”
So, it’s based on the standard of a ‘Demon Duke’.
There must be a psychopathic tradition here.
The laughter spontaneously broke out. It wasn’t a laughing matter, but still, there was a fortunate point in Hugo’s words.
“Even so, the Duke has been educated in his own way, right? Something like that?”
Please say yes, common sense.
When I put my hands together and looked at him with desperate eyes, Huge gladly affirmed and said.
“By all means. In the past, he would’ve cut someone’s arm off for making a mistake, so it’s a huge improvement.”
It boiled down to this.
There was no hope here, and there seemed to be no common sense either.
It was time to seriously think about whether I should pack up and run.
Hugo added with a face mixed with pride and longing.
“It’s all because he met Kathryn.”
“Kathryn…?”
“That’s the Duchess’ name.”
Hugo’s wrinkled eyes folded beautifully as he recalled an old memory.
“Like the Young Lady, the Master picked her up, no, brought her home one day.”
“What?”
Hugo quickly changed his words, but I heard him clearly.
He picked her up. The Duchess. Like me!
I quickly asked with my eyes and mouth wide open at the completely unexpected information.
“Oh, from where?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Oh, I guess it was ‘when you’re older’.
It wasn’t a roulette wheel, but my mind kept spinning for an answer.
But it’s kind of weird to talk about where someone else picked up their wife.
I nodded, and said I fully understood what Hugo meant, even as he apologized.
Then again, Wolfgang was also…
“He doesn’t look like it, but I guess picking up people is his hobby.”
He picked up his wife, and his daughter-in-law. How could he do that all the time?
I didn’t think he was the type to pick up all the poor girls he saw just because he was so warm-hearted.
When I frowned, Hugo smiled happily and said.
“It must be fate. The noble fate of House Bastion, which has been passed down from generation to generation.”
Picking up people?
I nodded my head at Hugo’s words, which sounded somewhat exaggerated, but I soon realized that he must be right.
Surely if the Duke was a fated person, then he was fated to pick up his wife and daughter-in-law.
That wasn’t the only thing Hugo seemed to mean by his words, but he didn’t seem ready to divulge it all yet, so I moved on.
“Anyway, thanks to you… I think I’ve realized the answer I ultimately wanted to know.”
“What is that?”
“It was love.”
I put my hand on my chest as if I was deeply moved.
Yes, I’d forgotten the essence of this world for a while. Wasn’t this literally a romance novel?
So, I could either go crazy, or I could be a boss and grab everything!
“Sigh. How refreshing.”
I thought I’d almost died, so my emotions intensified for a while.
I wiped off my moist eyes, and reflected on my great enlightenment.
“It was the fateful love of the Duchess that educated the Duke…!”
“She whipped him into shape.”
“What?”
“You said they don’t feel emotions, but they do feel pain. The wife is always like this…”
Hugo was suddenly hit with a vision of Wolfgang getting slapped on the back.
I was impressed by the achievements of my predecessor.
“Heehee?”
Ignite tilted his head back. ‘How absolutely absurd.’
Oh, no? I’m glad that’s not the case.
‘Even it looks like he cares for you, I couldn’t tell how he really feels, so I was worried that if it’s an animal that can’t speak, he might secretly abuse you…’
My heart was in my mouth, but my head still felt complicated.
Then, what? Animals should be happy, but humans were none of his business? I could kind of understand that feeling, though.
But no matter how much I understood it, I couldn’t understand the crazy psychology of trying to really step on a person, and kill them because of a misunderstanding.
What made me even more upset was the reaction he showed even though he knew it was a misunderstanding.
Sorry? Just sorry, that one word?
Without soul or sincerity, he threw it out like a macroed answer and disappeared like the wind.
Wasn’t it the personality of any saint, not just me, to wield a monkey spanner?
“Hey, does your master do that often? Like yesterday, where he asked you to step on me. Or would you try to do something like that on your own.”
“Pururu.”
“No? Think harder. Has this never happened to you before?”
I asked persistently, but Ignite kept shaking his head.
Now the number of question marks in my head has increased from a hundred to a thousand.
Oh, my head. His father always does this to me. At this point, I think it’s a characteristic of the Bastion family.
I rubbed my forehead on Ignite’s face, and made pained noises.
‘It’s hard to describe how it feels to meet a psycho when you were just looking for a cure to a time-limited life.’
The correct answer was still ‘attachment’. That was it.
I got used to all kinds of misfortunes. I may seem c*cky, but I wasn’t. I only realized that there was no limit to unhappiness.
Also, the fact that I wasn’t going to just sit around and give up was also in my bones.
“…I declare here.”
“Puru?”
“Watch closely.”
‘What?’ I smiled at the three pairs of black eyes asking like that.
“The way your master will desperately regret his actions.”
***
As I came back from chatting with Queensbury’s family, I encountered a dazzling light in the hall of the mansion.
It was Vivi’s face.
It was spectacular to see the face with a hundred fluorescent lamps turn off as soon as she saw me.
“What are you looking at?”
“I was staring because you look so beautiful.”
“What, beautiful…?”
Vivi, who’d been glaring harshly, backed away with a blushing face.
Surprise, bewilderment, and soon a wary look came over her face.
It was a look full of suspicion. ‘What kind of thing was this child imagining now?’
I shrugged.
I just said the truth without any meaning behind it.
She’d always had a beautiful face, but a girl who’d fallen in love for the first time glimmered in a special way.
As I stared at the face full of emotions that she wouldn’t feel otherwise than at this moment, I suddenly apologized.
“I’m sorry, Vivi.”
“…You’re going to say something weird again.”
“Don’t be too sad. They say that first loves don’t always come true.”
Vivi, who had to buffer for a while after those scathing words, frowned at my calculated comment.
“You, you…! I knew you would do that!”
Vivi, who was quick-witted and understood words well, even pointed her finger at my voice and jumped around.
“Hmm.”
I just kept my arms crossed, and looked at her with a smirk.
I mean, things were the way they were. She was still young, but she was obviously smart and ambitious.
‘It would be nice to be closer, if only you could cool your temper.’
She was a child who could grow up to do anything, if only she could vent her energy in the right direction.
One thing was for sure, Vivi didn’t fit into the role of maid at all.
I didn’t like to use the word ‘obedient’, but the reality was that as long as you were a servant to someone of rank, you had to be a little closer to that kind of personality.
Vivi was not that type at all. On the contrary, she was more like the kind of person who would ignore commands.
‘You’ve chosen the wrong job, Vivi. I think there’s a job that suits you better than being a maid.’
Pretty appearance, bold and ambitious personality, not caring about other people’s criticism, and doing things her way.
If she had a job that fits that background, then…
“Big Sister Vivi, Big Sister Vivi.”
“What!”
“The eldest young master is passing by.”
With a sound effect of ‘Shalala’, Vivi transformed from a demoness into a pure and lovely girl.
Behind her back, there was a flower hanging against the backdrop.
‘Oh, you look like an actress!’
As I watched, half laughing, half amazed, Vivi’s face turned steely again as she realized that I was lying.
“That’s really…”
“Big Sister Vivi, Big Sister Vivi.”
“I won’t fall for it anymore!”
“Why do you like the eldest young master?”
When I asked seriously, Vivi’s cheeks turned red. I thought it was a terrible first love.
I didn’t know that Levi’s personality was broken before, but Vivi liked him even though she knew it.
‘Is there a special reason? Like in a regular romance novel?’
I was looking forward to it a little, but Vivi replied with a dazed look in her eyes.
“He’s handsome.”
She said it like it was normal.
His face, okay. I’ll admit that.
“Isn’t his personality a little different? What about the youngest master?”
As I whispered softly, Vivi shook her head firmly.
“The youngest master is handsome, but he’s not my cup of tea because he’s prettier than me. Honestly, the youngest master has a formidable personality…”
Vivi, who was babbling without realizing it, turned her head away.
Eh, I failed in getting her to give up her secret.
I’d lost my appetite, when suddenly a low voice fell over my head.
“Truancy.”
“Oh my god!”
Vivi and I screamed, and hugged each other.
No, there’d been no sign of anyone!
Wolfgang, who’d appeared out of nowhere like a ghost, was looking down at me with an unhappy expression on his face.
“What, what’s wrong!”
“Not doing what you should be doing is slacking off.”
What do I have to do… Ah.
“Did you wait?”
“….”
“Oh, you’re upset because I didn’t go to feed you cookies. You were lonely. I understand.”
Then, when I poked the side of Duke Wolfgang, he furrowed his brow as if I’d said something useless.
I laughed like a raccoon, and even Vivi looked fed up as she pulled away from me.
You guys weren’t being honest. You couldn’t resist me anymore.
Wolfgang and Vivi quickly dispersed in different directions, leaving me grinning as if I understood everything.
I was thinking about which one to follow first and hug, but suddenly the top of my head stung.
Huh? When I looked up at the stairs down the hall, I met dark red eyes as I’d expected.
“…Hello.”
Levi was there, but he wasn’t.
When I bowed and lifted my head, the Levi standing on the second floor suddenly disappeared.
Ha. I didn’t expect you to greet me kindly, but this again?
‘I’m slowly getting angry.’
What scared me was what scared me, and what angered me was what angered me.
I’d made eye contact with the kid who’d almost killed me, but he had a curt attitude. You’re still amazing.
‘I’m going to get married quickly, then run off with Queensbury.’
Suddenly, Benjamin’s advice about asking Hugo for more details came to mind.
Yeah, it wasn’t Wolfgang or Vivi that I would chase right now.
I took a combative step toward the house where Hugo was.
After I knocked and got permission to enter, I opened the door vigorously.
“My Lady? What brings you here?”
“I have a question.”
Hugo welcomed me, then guided me to a chair despite my sudden visit.
As expected, he was a good person. But my husband was a bad person.
As I barely controlled my emotions by hopping up and down, Huge asked me affectionately.
“So, what are you curious about?”
“So, I was talking to Benjamin. No, actually, before that… It was early in the morning.”
As I tried to explain, I somehow ended up confiding to him one thing after another as if I were confessing.
He was still unaware of what had happened around dawn, and was surprised to hear me say that I was almost trampled to death.
“Oh, my. I thought it was just a little noisy because the eldest young master had returned early. Are you sure you’re okay? Did you get hurt anywhere?”
“Yes, except for Aisha’s heart.”
While I was whining, Hugo’s hand gently patted my shoulder, which almost brought me to tears.
The smell of common sense! It’s been so long since I’ve smelled this.
I continued, thinking that Hugo was the only person I could lean on in the Bastion mansion.
“So, I was looking into the eldest young master. I heard the Duke was also like that when he was young. Mr. Benjamin told me to ask Grandpa Hugo because he wasn’t sure about the rumors he’d heard.”
At the end of my long explanation, Hugo nodded and rubbed his chin. He seemed to be thinking about where to start.
“I don’t know exactly what rumors Mr. Cooper heard, but the Master’s childhood was normal.”
“Oh, really? How was it?”
“It was similar to the eldest young master.”
Hey, you said it was normal! Since when was psychopath style normal!
Hugo, who reeked of common sense, laughed as if he understood my foul expression.
“In terms of a ‘Bastion’, it was normal.”
So, it’s based on the standard of a ‘Demon Duke’.
There must be a psychopathic tradition here.
The laughter spontaneously broke out. It wasn’t a laughing matter, but still, there was a fortunate point in Hugo’s words.
“Even so, the Duke has been educated in his own way, right? Something like that?”
Please say yes, common sense.
When I put my hands together and looked at him with desperate eyes, Huge gladly affirmed and said.
“By all means. In the past, he would’ve cut someone’s arm off for making a mistake, so it’s a huge improvement.”
It boiled down to this.
There was no hope here, and there seemed to be no common sense either.
It was time to seriously think about whether I should pack up and run.
Hugo added with a face mixed with pride and longing.
“It’s all because he met Kathryn.”
“Kathryn…?”
“That’s the Duchess’ name.”
Hugo’s wrinkled eyes folded beautifully as he recalled an old memory.
“Like the Young Lady, the Master picked her up, no, brought her home one day.”
“What?”
Hugo quickly changed his words, but I heard him clearly.
He picked her up. The Duchess. Like me!
I quickly asked with my eyes and mouth wide open at the completely unexpected information.
“Oh, from where?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
Oh, I guess it was ‘when you’re older’.
It wasn’t a roulette wheel, but my mind kept spinning for an answer.
But it’s kind of weird to talk about where someone else picked up their wife.
I nodded, and said I fully understood what Hugo meant, even as he apologized.
Then again, Wolfgang was also…
“He doesn’t look like it, but I guess picking up people is his hobby.”
He picked up his wife, and his daughter-in-law. How could he do that all the time?
I didn’t think he was the type to pick up all the poor girls he saw just because he was so warm-hearted.
When I frowned, Hugo smiled happily and said.
“It must be fate. The noble fate of House Bastion, which has been passed down from generation to generation.”
Picking up people?
I nodded my head at Hugo’s words, which sounded somewhat exaggerated, but I soon realized that he must be right.
Surely if the Duke was a fated person, then he was fated to pick up his wife and daughter-in-law.
That wasn’t the only thing Hugo seemed to mean by his words, but he didn’t seem ready to divulge it all yet, so I moved on.
“Anyway, thanks to you… I think I’ve realized the answer I ultimately wanted to know.”
“What is that?”
“It was love.”
I put my hand on my chest as if I was deeply moved.
Yes, I’d forgotten the essence of this world for a while. Wasn’t this literally a romance novel?
So, I could either go crazy, or I could be a boss and grab everything!
“Sigh. How refreshing.”
I thought I’d almost died, so my emotions intensified for a while.
I wiped off my moist eyes, and reflected on my great enlightenment.
“It was the fateful love of the Duchess that educated the Duke…!”
“She whipped him into shape.”
“What?”
“You said they don’t feel emotions, but they do feel pain. The wife is always like this…”
Hugo was suddenly hit with a vision of Wolfgang getting slapped on the back.
I was impressed by the achievements of my predecessor.
