“What the hell, morning hobbies!”
It had been only four days since I became a maid of the 1st Prince’s palace, and I was struggling with severe sleep deprivation. The cause was none other than the overly diligent prince.
Cahillen, who had been watching the training knights, inadvertently smiled at me when our eyes met.
Compared to my eyes, which were sunken with fatigue, his face was full of vitality. Forced to smile, I looked up at the sky, which was just starting to turn red.
“Seeing the sunrise again today. Ugh…”
I pressed my fingers against the dark circles under my eyes, convinced that they must have deepened another layer.
Being a maid in the 1st Prince’s palace was more hectic than I anticipated. Cahillen was unexpectedly diligent and led a disciplined life.
He would wake up at 4 in the morning and engage in morning hobbies such as horseback riding, walking, exercising, or sword practice, and each time, he insisted I join him.
Even when he was reading, he would grab the same book and sit beside me for hours without moving. If I nodded off,
“How can you sleep when your favorite man is right next to you?”
To avoid his gaze, I had to keep my eyes wide open while sticking to the excuse of “I liked everything about you.”
After the absurd morning hobbies were over, Cahillen immediately took a bath. Fortunately, he didn’t go as far as receiving a bath service. Seeing that he didn’t even seek help from other maids, he seemed to have been doing it alone even before.
“Then he must have washed his face alone too?”
Why bother asking me to do it?
But if I frowned,
“The gaze of looking at a beloved man is quite affectionate.”
Hearing that remark, I could only release the tension from my eyes.
After the bath, we had breakfast in the dining room, where I sat across from him.
Although carrots appeared on Cahillen’s dining table every day, he didn’t seem to mind my unimpressed expression. I became curious about the audacious chef’s face.
Afterward, Cahillen spent the entire morning in his office, dealing with piles of documents.
When he was a guard named Karl, he was a somewhat lazy and carefree man, but as Cahillen, he was so dedicated to his work that he seemed like a different person. However,
“Do I really look that good? Your gaze is so intense that I can’t concentrate at all.”
To avoid making a disgusted expression, I had to pinch my thigh.
After a simple lunch in the office, the afternoon was reserved for the knights’ training.
Cahillen was the commander of the 2nd Knights Unit, Black Tiger. Just like the numerous battlefields he had been through, all the knights, including him, were quite imposing, and discipline was well maintained.
When the knights put their energy into their maneuvers, the ground seemed to shake.
I was formally introduced to the red-haired waitress and the gray-haired man.
“I am Marchi Greedun, the deputy commander and vice-captain of the Black Tiger, serving the 1st Prince.”
“Deputy Commander Rendolse Hian here.”
Like Cahillen, these two individuals showed the same unchanged attitude, clearly knowing why I came to the 1st Prince’s palace.
However, their gazes looking at me strangely sparkled, which was quite uncomfortable.
As I sat on one side of the training ground watching the knights’ training, Cahillen approached and asked, “By the way, when did you start liking me?”
I don’t know when he plans to stop this annoying teasing.
After the training, we had dinner in the dining room, just like in the morning. Every time Cahillen asked how his life in the 1st Prince’s palace was, I endured the urge to retort that it was like hell.
After dinner, we took a walk in the garden. It was somewhat surprising that a tall man adjusted his stride to match mine. Of course, any gratitude disappeared completely whenever he opened his mouth.
‘When will this long, long day end?’ When I was about to collapse from exhaustion, applying toner to Cahillen’s face after he came out of the bath was the last task.
“If you’re not satisfied, you can stay longer.”
“I’ll take my leave now.”
Politely rejecting Cahillen’s smiling offer, I returned to my room, and it was 9 o’clock in the evening. If I washed up and went to bed, it would be 10 o’clock. Even if I fell asleep right away, it was an inhuman routine that allowed only six hours of sleep.
After spending four days like this, it was natural for dark circles to appear under my eyes.
‘Why is that man so perfectly fine?’
Even when I silently screamed for liberation and left the room, Cahillen’s hands were busy with documents.
Next morning, seeing the scattered documents on the bed, it was evident that I had examined them late into the night.
I couldn’t figure out when he slept. Yet, he seemed more energetic than anyone else. It was quite astonishing.
‘Maybe teasing me is his way to relieve stress?’
It was a plausible deduction. Unlike me, who couldn’t relax all day due to the tension, Cahillen seemed to find joy in sparkling gazes.
Male lead is a Divorced Husband
She said to him: “Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change it!”
Liu Changning transmigrated into a female cannon fodder character in a female-dominant novel.
After reading the first half of the novel’s plot, the first thing she did upon transmigration was to divorce the Pan Jinlian-style male protagonist she had just married.
She indulged herself, pretending to be ugly and poor.
But as time passed, the way that man looked at her became more and more unusual…
Liu Changning was dumbfounded: Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!
――
This lifetime, Pei Yuanshao was rejected by the same woman twice!
The first time, she drove him away. Forced by the situation, he endured the waves of anger in his heart, yielding and humbling himself.
That person lay slanted on a rocking chair, her sallow face emotionless: “If you don’t want a divorce, go cook!”
Pei Yuanshao’s face was dark and gloomy: “You!”
The second time, after the crisis in Jinling City was resolved, the new emperor sent someone to pick him up. He turned around, stammering: “I… I have to go. If you keep me…”
That person lay on the kang bed, her back to him, as if she had long anticipated this day, crisp and clear: “Goodbye!”
Pei Yuanshao was so angry his fingers trembled: “You… you!”
The mission of family and country made him restrain himself, averting his eyes and turning to leave this broken household.
Two years later, they met again. Seeing her ethereal face, his body shook like a sieve.
“She was originally a ‘she’!”
At the Qionglin Banquet, the top scholar of the imperial examination, a talented person with exceptional speech and conduct, all the unmarried young gentlemen from aristocratic families looked at her with shy and timid eyes.
The peerless imperial official Pei Yuanshao felt the anger in his heart erupt. He pointed at the woman surrounded by the crowd at the Qionglin Banquet, his thin lips slightly curled: “Little sister, I wants that person to be the wife-master of my Mingde Prince Manor.”
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