SFO CH 10

The Young Man Wants to Talk

When I got home, my mind was still going in circles.

If I were to accept the aide’s offer, I would not be able to handle my duties as a marchioness no matter how hard I tried. Then, my husband would have to find a second wife who could do those duties in earnest.

If he wants to have a child, this second wife would need to be younger than me, but if he wants someone who can take care of the duties of a marchioness, they should be someone more competent, even if that means being a little older. And above all, they should be a simple and honest person that can make my husband turn around to look at them, someone like Noah…

I would have to talk to my husband first, but considering how he’s behaved over the past three years, I think it’s too much to hope for a baby just because we shared a kiss. He might have said that he doesn’t hate me, but even yesterday it was obvious that he was trying not to look at me too much.

While I was thinking about this during dinner, my husband called out to me,

“…ahem. Fi—Finn.”

“—! Yes, husband?”

I was thinking in a daze, so I was so surprised that my shoulders jumped up. Quite unbecoming of a nobleman.

“Um… Are you all right?”

“Huh?”

“You are still not feeling well, are you? It looks like you got quite intoxicated after that glass of brandy last night.”

“No, no! That’s not true!”

“Is that so?”

My husband was looking at me worriedly. I wish he had pretended he didn’t see me getting so drunk on brandy. I wanted to dig a hole and bury myself in it.

Since yesterday, I’ve been feeling as if my husband has been trying hard to have a conversation with me, although it’s a little awkward. Perhaps Sebas or Edna said something to him about me being done making efforts towards this relationship. But he hasn’t been looking at me all that much, so perhaps I’m wrong about my husband’s intentions.

“Well, if you have any concerns, you might not want to talk to me about them or ask me for advice, but I can at least listen.”

I think this is quite a bit of progress. Until now, I’ve been mostly ignored no matter how much I tried to talk to him, but now, my husband seems genuinely concerned about my condition and willing to listen to me.

But if he’s forcing himself to talk to me because everyone else is telling him to, I wish he’d stop doing that. Relationships in which one of us is overwhelmed don’t last long. I didn’t stop trying to make an effort with my husband to encourage him to force himself to start trying. I stopped trying because I wanted both of us to be able to be natural with each other.

“Umm, husband. Are you forcing yourself…?”

“Forcing myself?”

“You don’t like talking to me much, do you? Are you forcing yourself to talk to me because of something maybe Sebas or Edna said to you?

“That’s not true—!”

“That’s not true, Madam!”

Sebas and Edna replied in unison, almost as if singing in canon to my husband’s answer.

I almost wanted to praise them for their brilliant performance. What an amazingly perfect harmony and synchronized voices!

“What makes you think that, Madam…?! It is true that we’ve been disappointed with the young Master, and while we might have been applying silent pressure and making his after-meal tea a little bitter, we have never directly told him to do or say anything at all!! And to think that, to make things worse, our young master has been dawdling indecisively all this time! Oh, how regrettable!!”

“Madam, of course we don’t have that much of a say in the matter. The reason why I called out to you last night was because the young Master was all flustered because he couldn’t talk to you anymore, and that he had used up all of his courage trying to…”

“Both of you! Stop it!”

My husband got up from the chair, his cheeks red like a tomato, trying to stop them. But it was no use against the two people who have raised him since he was little.

“No, young Master!! If we don’t clear up the misunderstanding here, we’ll be in a situation where it wouldn’t be strange if your talented and lovely wife, who is a treasure of this household and the Marquess family, ends up leaving us!”

“That’s right, young Master! You can’t keep dawdling forever! Confess like a man!”

Thus my husband plopped down on the table. It was almost as if his HP had finally reached zero.

Yeah, I suppose the people who have raised you since you were little will at times not be afraid of making some extremely embarrassing revelations. I feel a little sorry for my husband.

“Umm, what do you mean…? You mean that my husband said he wanted to talk of his own volition…?”

“Correct, Madam. Well, it would seem that he was a little too focused on your sex appeal to actually have a conversation after all…”

Now it was my face’s turn to become intensely red.

“Umm, then… if you’re not forcing yourself to talk to me, husband… There’s something I’d like to discuss with you. May I come to your room after this?”

“—Oh, yes, of course! Ah, please come to my office instead…”

“…? Yes, understood.”

Just as I thought that my husband had finally straightened up, he said that while trying to avoid making eye contact with me. Since we’ll be meeting at his office instead of his bedroom, I suppose he still has work left to do…?

After eating dessert, I headed to the office with my husband. A tray with recently brewed tea was waiting for us inside. We each sat facing each other on a sofa with a table in between.

“Did you really get enough rest? Are you feeling alright…?”

“Yes, I slept almost the entire day during my last day off.”

“Um, I’m sorry I never realized that you hadn’t been taking days off because you were worried about me. If only I had just said something to you, you wouldn’t have had to work so hard…”

“No, it’s not like that! That was something I decided on my own…”

“No, but not only that… Um, I’m really, really sorry for the terrible attitude I’ve had towards you since the day we got married.”

Saying this, my husband bowed his head deeply in apology.

I rushed over to him and straightened him up.

“Husband!!! You shouldn’t be bowing down to someone like me!!”

“No, I honestly feel that my behavior was foolish. So I want to show you my sincerity.”

“I am not mad at you! Please hold your head up!!”

“Will you… forgive me…?”

“I forgive you! I forgive you so please raise your head!!”

When I said that, my husband finally raised his body.

I raised my head and my eyes met my husbands… T-too close!!

I was desperately pushing up both of my shoulders from below in an attempt to raise my body, and when my husband raised his own body, we ended up in a position where it looked like I was clinging to his chest.

I don’t know what my husband was thinking, but he wrapped his arms around my waist and made us into a position where we were hugging each other.

“H-husband???”

“A-and… There’s also what Sebas said…”

“What Sebas…?”

Um, what did Sebas say? If I remember correctly… Something about how my husband mustered up all of his courage to invite me to his room last night, and also that he should confess…

Confess?!

“Um, you might think it tasteless of me to ask you this, but… Will you… listen to me?”

“Y-yes…”

A confession?! What should I do? My heart is racing… He’s hugging me so loosely that I’m sure he can’t feel my heart beating, but still..

“As you may have noticed, I didn’t think well of you right after we got married.”

“…Yes.”

“But after six months, things were different. I spent six months reflecting on the past and regretting enormously how I had behaved toward you.”

“Uh… Then why…”

Why didn’t you even look at me after those six months?

Perhaps reading my thoughts through my face, my husband continued talking with a tearful look on his face.

“I feel pathetic about telling you this, but… Of course, I thought about apologizing to you right away. But once I started to look at you, waiting for an opportunity to talk…”

Wow, you were actually looking at me that much? I hadn’t noticed at all. Six months into our marriage, I was still struggling to get along with the people in the mansion.

“…I realized I had fallen in love with you.”

“—!”

“I didn’t want to make an even worse impression on you than I already had, so I couldn’t bring myself to answer properly to you whenever you spoke to me… I couldn’t even look at you out of fear that my gaze would make you feel uncomfortable… And even when you worked yourself so hard at the mansion, I couldn’t find the way to tell you to take a break, that I could take some duties off your shoulders… And I just… Did nothing. I let you do that to yourself without saying a word.”

“Ah…”

So that’s why he wouldn’t look at me. That’s why his responses were so weak whenever I would speak to him.

“And because of my pathetic behavior, I forced you to push yourself so hard for so long, so much that you’ve ended up deciding that you would stop making efforts. I really regret having dwelled on it until this point…”

He was about to bow his head again and say ‘I’m sorry,’ but I reached for his cheek to stop him.

“I’m sorry too, husband. I’m sorry for not realizing how you felt. I was so focused on trying to get along with the people in the mansion that I couldn’t even look at you properly, thinking that you disliked me—”

“I cannot blame you for that. That can’t be helped when someone is acting like they’re almost ignoring you.”

“Still, I’m the older one here. I’m sorry that I couldn’t realize that you were in love with me, and for deciding to stop talking to you all of a sudden.”

“You have nothing to apologize for, Finn. I—”

My husband tightened his grip on my waist, looked into my eyes, and said,

“I love you.”

S-such tremendous power…! Unable to look at him directly, I vigorously buried my face into his chest.

I’m so embarrassed. Because the most handsome man in the history of my life is hugging me tightly and confessing his love to me. It’s like being in a dream.

But, whether I love him or not, I don’t…

—I don’t know.

I really don’t know how I feel about him. Since I am already married, I am prepared to spend the rest of my life together, and I am almost ready to have children.

However, that’s because I have a strong sense of duty as a member of the nobility, but if you ask me if I like my husband on a personal level…

‘I don’t know,’ would be, I think, the most accurate way to put it.

In the first place, if I were to simply put my preferences into perspective, I think someone more like that junior from the student council was more of my type. Whenever I would seek a partner for the night, I would be more likely to look for someone with big, round eyes and a cute appearance. Since I tend to be the one doing the hugging, my objects of romantic interests have always been men and women who wanted to be hugged.

The student council president was an exception, but I was in love with him on the inside to begin with, and he was an androgynous, handsome guy with a slender body like mine. He had, how should I say it… not as much of a manly appearance as my husband, so it was still very hard for me to resist him.

The bottom line is that, at this moment, I was on the receiving end of an ideal confession, and the fact that it was from a type of person of the same sex I had never considered an object of romantic interest before was extremely perplexing.

“Finn…?”

“Ah, um… We’re married, and of course I’m ready to be with you, husband, and… I feel affection for you too, but… Well, I guess you could say I’m a hugger by nature, so I haven’t had much experience being hugged myself…”

“Oh…?”

My husband patiently listened to my incoherent story with a strange look on his face. Also, since it was going to be a long story, we both sat back on each of our sofas.

“I see. It’s your first time being with a man like me, a big-bodied hugger. So you’re not sure if you can see me as an object of romantic interest, is that right?”

“That’s right…”

“Hmmm. Then, how about a trial period?”

“A… trial period…?

“From now on, I will do my best to seduce you. If I manage to do so, then that’s that, right? And if it does indeed turn out to be that you’re not interested, I’ll consider adopting a child or getting a second wife.”

“B-but I am bound by duty to make a baby…”

“No, as a gentleman, I cannot bring myself to force someone else into having a baby with me if they don’t want to. If it doesn’t work between us, then it doesn’t. There are other ways for us to fulfill our duties. But I will do my best to make sure you can’t say it doesn’t work between us. Because I really love you, Finn.”

Uhh… Please, stop catching me off guard like that…

Now you’re talking like an ideal man, aren’t you, husband? I think I might be falling for you already.