Chapter 14
Bang-!
I flinched at the sudden loud noise.
It was obvious that the young lady had smashed something inside her room, and there was a chance that the next thing to be smashed would be me, but… I couldn’t back down anymore.
‘Since things have come this far, I have to see it through.’
The setting that I was completely head over heels for the young lady!
“You, you, you’re spouting that nonsense again!”
“It’s not nonsense. I’m serious!”
“What kind of ridiculous!”
“Why do you think it’s ridiculous? Think about it, young lady. Haven’t there been even a single person who courted you all this time? I mean, hasn’t there been anyone who fell for you after seeing your magnificent appearance?”
“……”
The young lady couldn’t say anything. I guess there really had been a lot.
I spoke in as heartfelt a voice as possible.
“I… I’m the same. Just like them, I… fell for you, young lady. Actually, I wasn’t going to tell you this either…”
“……”
“But you kept trying to drive me away. When I thought I might never be able to see you again, I couldn’t help myself… I’m sorry. For someone as lowly as me to harbor feelings like these…”
I deliberately let the rest of my words trail off as though I were bitter about it. Then, as if I had suddenly remembered something, I hurriedly continued.
“Ah, but you don’t have to do anything for me! I didn’t confess because I expected anything great from you. You can just act as you normally do. If you’re offended, you can curse at me or even hit me. I don’t mind. Just…”
“……”
“…Please let me stay by your side. As long as I can watch you live happily by your side, young lady, I don’t want anything else…”
“……”
“Please give me just one chance.”
Only then did the young lady react.
“A chance?”
I immediately answered.
“Give me a month. Just one month.”
“……”
“Ah, no, no, I said that wrong. Three months. Give me three months. I’ll prove to you just how sincere I am about you during those three months.”
“……”
“If, if even after that, you still can’t possibly believe me, if someone as lowly as me still makes you feel uncomfortable…”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Then… I’ll leave on my own.”
“……”
“I really mean it.”
The young lady said nothing.
I stayed still with my eyes closed. My heart was pounding like crazy.
‘Damn it, is three months too short? Should I have said six months, or even a year? But if I did, she’d probably yell at me, asking if I was playing around with her. I have no intention of leaving, either…’
I could only swallow nervously.
How much time had passed?
A small sound came from behind the door.
And when I opened my eyes… The young lady’s gentle voice reached me.
“Get lost.”
***
…That was what she said, but surprisingly, the young lady granted my wish.
She really gave me three months.
Actually, from the young lady’s perspective, it seemed she had set the deadline at one month rather than three, but still, I thought, ‘I’ll take what I can get.’
On top of that, perhaps because she had decided to genuinely give me a chance, she didn’t complain even when I freely went in and out of her room. Of course, little interjections like “Get lost,” “Go away,” and “Shut up” remained as usual, but…
‘At least she isn’t throwing things anymore.’
She wasn’t hitting me anymore!
I was so shocked when I realized that. After seeing the young lady behaving relatively calmly for several days, I couldn’t help but realize:
‘Did I actually do a good job confessing?’
At the time, I’d blurted it out just to buy myself some time. But at the same time, another thought occurred to me.
‘What if I actually manage to win the young lady over? What if she really starts developing feelings for me?’
Of course, I didn’t think the young lady would fall head over heels for me. But if I could slowly seep into her heart, like clothes getting wet in a drizzle, and she eventually stopped trying to drive me away…
‘That’s it.’
I’ll begin… The project to win over the young lady!
And so, the first method I devised to win her over.
“Young laaady-!”
Greet her with a smile every day.
“Good morning, young lady!”
“Get lost.”
“How are you feeling today? The weather is especially sunny today, you know?”
“I said get lost.”
“It’s a shame the sunlight doesn’t reach in here. It’s so warm and pleasant outside… Ah, would you like to take a walk with me? Not far, just right outside for a little while…!”
“I said get lost! Are you deaf?”
“Of course not! I always listen carefully to everything you say. If you don’t want to, I can’t help it. Actually, I think it might be a little difficult for me too. Just thinking about going on a walk with you makes my heart pound like crazy, so I can hardly calm down–”
“Hey!”
Of course, the young lady wasn’t an easy opponent. No matter how much I greeted her with a smile or tried to strike up a conversation, she would either get angry or ignore me every single time. There was even a time when I felt hurt by it, but I quickly changed my mind.
‘Right. She’s lived as a shut-in in her room for such a long time. Of course she’d have trouble suddenly interacting with people. I’ll understand because I’m someone with lots of friends!’
“Come on, don’t yell like that. You’ll only make yourself feel worse.”
“Who do you think is making me yell? Do you really have no shame? I know you’re ignorant because you have no education, but shouldn’t you at least have some shame? Unless you’re worse than an animal!”
Seeing the young lady become talkative again, I pouted.
The young lady was usually quiet, but every once in a while, she would suddenly become very talkative. That was when she was insulting me.
Even in the original story, she had constantly hurled what were practically curses at the protagonist, but those were relatively polite, refined insults. For some reason, with me, she didn’t hold back words like ‘this bastard, that bastard, beastly bastard,’ and so on.
Honestly, I felt a little wronged at first, but… I was a professional servant. By now, enough time had passed that none of it bothered me anymore.
And thus, the second method for winning over the young lady: Listen well to what she says.
“No, perhaps I could even say you’re worse than an animal. At least animals recognize and obey the master who feeds them, but you don’t even know who’s feeding you and keep trying to challenge me, don’t you?”
— “It hurts my feelings when you don’t listen to me!”
“Know your place, will you? What do you have, anyway, that you think you can act so insolently? People like you, ignorant fools, bring about their own deaths by sticking their noses into things unnecessarily, understand?”
— “Should I behave myself because you’re worried about me?”
“Well, if you understood, you would’ve bowed your head long ago. Would you still be stubbornly holding out like this? You’re stupid, you don’t understand what people say, you have no sense of tact, and now you don’t even know your own place. What use are you, exactly?”
— “You are actually quite useful. Got it?”
“Yes, I understand.”
I’d even reached the point where, from hearing it so often, my ears automatically filtered out what she was really saying.
With a faint smile, I thought:
‘She’s getting some good mouth exercise today.’
But I couldn’t let the young lady do all the talking forever. Not because my feelings were hurt… but because if I kept pretending not to hear her, she’d eventually sulk.
Once, I ignored her, and it took an incredibly long time before the young lady finally started talking to me again after getting sulky.
Therefore, the third method for winning over the young lady: Respond appropriately.
“Even a parasite that does nothing but eat food and occupy a spot would be better than you. What can you even do?!”
“Of course there are things I can do.”
“What?”
“That would be…”
I shyly cupped my cheeks and said:
“Your love slave♥”
The young lady was impressed.
“Get out right now!”
Crash!
In the end, the young lady snapped and overturned the table, forcing me to dash out of the room.
Ever since the young lady started sparing me, she had changed the way she vented her anger. Instead of hitting me, she had started overturning tables and smashing things, leaving the room a complete mess.
‘I’m the one who has to clean all that up anyway.’
I wondered whether this was really her way of going easy on me, or some new form of bullying, but I clicked my tongue and decided to think positively.
And so, after several days of persistently throwing myself at the young lady…
‘Surprisingly.’
There were absolutely no results…
How could this be? I’d been putting my heart and soul into trying to win the young lady over, and yet it wasn’t having any effect at all?
If anything, it seemed like the young lady was getting angrier by the day. At this rate, I was worried that she wouldn’t die from her illness, but from high blood pressure…
‘This won’t do.’
I needed some special trick.
A big finishing move that would make the young lady’s heart flutter!
‘What could it be? What do I need to do to make her interested? What can I do to make her like–’
At that moment, a certain piece of writing flashed through my mind…
[How to Make an Older Woman Fall for a Younger Man.]
It was something I’d seen on the internet.
It was a humorous post I’d briefly looked at for fun a long time ago and moved on from, so why was I remembering it so vividly now?
[Younger men tend to have a cute image, but if you show off your masculinity every once in a while, older women absolutely melt. But they don’t like it if you push your boundaries too much, so you need to give them a moderate contrast in charm…]
The name of that skill was…
[Use semi-formal speech once in a while.]
The heart-fluttering semi-formal speech skill!
The method was simple.
Formal speech first, informal speech afterward. Apparently, all you had to do was follow that rule.
‘Will this work?’
At first, I was a little skeptical, but soon I changed my mind.
Come to think of it, this was a skill that often appeared in romance novels too!
‘The young lady might like it too, right?’
It was definitely worth a try!
Having found a new method, I hurried over to the young lady. More confident than ever, I kept muttering the method to myself.
‘Formal first, informal later! Formal first, informal later!’
And so, when I opened the young lady’s door and walked inside… I fired.
“Young lady, I’m here!”
“You again…”
“How have you been?”
“……?”
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