Chapter 3: The Debut – Part 2 (4)
Two years had passed since the debut. I had turned fifteen, and I was living in the territory as usual.
However, since we had become adults, my underlings and I were no longer at the age where all our mischief would be dismissed with an, “Oh, they’re just kids.” In the first place, once commoners reach adulthood, they become very busy as they become full-time employees with their own occupations, so they no longer can fool around like when they were kids. My underlings and I didn’t hang out as much anymore.
As such, I became really bored.
I typically went to the forest and hunted all the time. Of course, this was part of my job — selling hide, meat, and fangs made decent money, but Papa is a baron who receives a salary from Father for governing the territory on his behalf. We lived frugally, but we weren’t in a financial situation where if I didn’t marry off, my parents would be put in a bad situation. Rather, anything I made was my allowance, so my job felt more like a half-job, half-play gig.
And by that time, since the forest was near where I lived, I had gone there so often that it was like a backyard to me and I had hunted most of its prey. Papa didn’t allow me to do overnight hunting. He said that if I hunted too recklessly, it’ll make the forest’s ecosystem unbalanced and cause serious consequences, so it was forbidden for a huntsman to overhunt. Basically, I wasn’t able to hunt to my heart’s content anymore. Hunting the great red bear was like child’s play to me at this point, so hunting wasn’t fun anymore anyway. It doesn’t excite me.
Since it can’t be helped, I helped out Papa with his governing duties a little. I had learned reading and writing from Papa a while ago, and since I had played throughout the territory when I was younger, I was familiar with the territory’s inner workings. I organized files, served as a messenger to the local magnates, helped out when there were any incidents, and when the harvest season came, I reviewed the harvests and made sure they matched with the submitted documents.
However, since Papa was able to continue his gardening while doing his governing duty, there really wasn’t much to help out with in the first place. I had learned how to maintain the marquis residence’s gardens and also the residence itself, but doing that was also not a lot of work either. I also volunteered and did all of our family’s cooking, washing, and cleaning, but those also get done in a blink of an eye.
There’s nothing to do. I’m stuck in a rut. Basically, the situation I hate being in the most. I’m so bored.
I was yearning for change. Since the territory was in the countryside, change was very rare. It dislikes change. Ten years is like a single day. Whenever I proposed change, it would always be rejected by the commoners. Since the water mill was so old and inefficient, I had proposed introducing the latest water mill I had heard from a merchant, but it only resulted in them saying, “We don’t want to learn how to use the new one, so we don’t wish for the water mill to be replaced.” In a place like this, there’s no way I’ll stumble upon the dramatic change I’ve been wishing for.
Speaking of change, since I had officially become an adult, there were some talks of my marriage. It seemed like all the sons of the local magnates who were around my age were the candidates. However, the territory was a small world. There was essentially no one who hadn’t heard of my slightly bad reputation. When an influential farmer was asked, he rejected the offer, saying, “No way do we want that barbaric daughter”; when the son of the huntsman guildmaster heard my name, he apparently trembled and respectfully forfeited his candidacy.
However, for the sake of my honor, let me tell you, there were quite a few who wanted my hand in marriage. Mainly from people who were slightly older than me. They apparently didn’t know the things I did when I was younger, and many of them fell in love when they saw me come as the representative of Father and saw me conduct my job relatively well. I’ve been told things like “I have never seen a lady as beautiful as you” and “I fell in love with you at first sight.” Apparently, I am pretty good-looking. But, the offers usually came from people who were a little bit too older than me or had some circumstances like they were looking for their second wife after getting divorced or widowed, so Father never gave his approval.
It seemed that Father hadn’t figured out what to do with me just yet, so whenever he came to visit for his twice-a-year visits, he never pushed me to get married or engaged. Even though I grew up in the territory so I could marry into a local magnate’s family, Father appeared to be a little indecisive. He would only ask, “What do you think of this man and family?” As for Mother, she would bring a lot of clothes and accessories for me, and after enjoying herself making me her dress-up doll, would only say, “It’s too regrettable to send you off to get married just yet.” Hm… Truth be told, by this time, all my sisters had been married off and the marquisate’s financial situation had gotten slightly better, apparently. Of course, some nieces and nephews had already been born, but there were only two, so Father and Mother were debating whether they might have enough finances to marry me off to a noble family instead. Putting my personality, etiquette, and actions aside, I had grown up to be quite beautiful. So, they apparently thought that it would be a shame to marry me off to a commoner’s family.
With my marriage being up in the air, I spent every day afflicted with severe boredom. To tell the truth, I just wanted to get married off so I could get some much-wanted change in my everyday life.
These boring days unexpectedly came to an end on an autumn day, near my sixteenth birthday.
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