‘It’s all ruined now.’
I fell into despair as I looked at Kashar standing there blankly.
All my plans to show my feelings a bit and then confess romantically while carving a steak had come to nothing.
As I was sinking into despair,
He suddenly came over to me, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me.
“Kashar?”
“Since when have you liked me?”
His red eyes were fixed on me.
‘Why is he looking at me like he’s going to devour me?’
I couldn’t understand why he was reacting this way.
Hesitating, I decided to be honest.
“That… I’m not sure.”
I answered this way partly because it was embarrassing, but also because I truly didn’t know.
I couldn’t pinpoint when I had started to have feelings for Kashar.
But those feelings were real.
At this, Frigia, who was watching us, clicked her tongue with an ‘I told you so’ expression.
“You weren’t in a relationship before, right? Miss Eileen, let’s go out together…”
“Shut your mouth.”
“Mmph…!”
At Kashar’s words, Frigia’s mouth snapped shut.
The air around us was thinning.
Kashar, descended from dragon blood, wasn’t a magician, but he was using the ambient mana to seal Frigia’s mouth.
“Eileen just said she likes me.”
Kashar warned as if annoyed, but he didn’t take his eyes off me.
My heart was pounding so hard it was almost scary.
Seeing him, Frigia frowned deeply and summoned a green light to clean her mouth.
“Phew, what a nasty duke you are. I won’t do anything, so stop glaring at me like that. How can you control mana better than a magician?”
Frigia surrendered, raising both hands.
But Kashar didn’t even spare her a glance.
“Say it again.”
Kashar was urging me to express my feelings.
If not now, would I ever get another chance?
I closed my eyes tight and confessed.
“…I like you. Really.”
That I had started to desire you at some point.
My voice trembled slightly as I confessed.
Kashar didn’t answer right away.
After my confession, Frigia, seeming to realize something was going wrong, sighed.
“Mihail, shall we go have some tea?”
It was a signal to escape from here, no matter what.
“…Alright.”
Mihail, who was devoted to Frigia, couldn’t refuse.
The two left the reception room amicably, leaving only me and Kashar in the empty space.
With just the two of us, it became even more awkward.
I tried to head towards the door with an awkward smile.
“I should be going too…!”
“We need to have our own conversation.”
In an instant, my vision flipped and I saw the ceiling.
Kashar, who had laid me down on the sofa, was straddling me.
Looking down at me with dark eyes, Kashar mumbled.
“Why do you keep lifting me up and dropping me like this.”
Somehow, I felt a surge of anger.
From my perspective, it was Kashar who had been jerking me around.
“You’re the one who’s been playing with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“…You said you kept me around because I was funny.”
He frowned, then burst into a hollow laugh.
“Listen carefully. You’re the one holding the knife handle.”
Kashar gently stroked my forehead.
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
I couldn’t help but widen my eyes.
What he said was exactly the same as his line in the original work.
Kashar used to have very dangerous and secret fantasies about Elcius.
He was that much more dangerous and cold-hearted a man.
Perhaps I had fallen for Kashar even when I was just a reader.
Right now, Kashar was showing the same face he had shown Elcius.
‘Maybe.’
Could it be that I had a chance too?
Kashar gathered my brown hair and kissed it, just as he had done with the female lead.
The next line should definitely be…
‘I like you, Elcius.’
“I like you, Eileen.”
It was a confession that drew a clear line on my uncertain conviction.
At this moment, I was his female lead.
‘This is driving me crazy.’
My heart fluttered at this first confession I had ever received.
Feeling like I might cry, I grabbed his collar and met his gaze.
“Really… you can’t cheat on me.”
“You’re already thinking about that?”
Kashar laughed as if he found it ridiculous.
His words, whispered as he gently kissed my cheek, were quite something.
“You should know, anyone you have an affair with will lose their limbs.”
Kashar smiled kindly.
He was pushing me into the middle of romance and thriller.
‘I think there was a similar line in the original work…’
[Know that I’ll gouge out the eyes of anyone who looks at you.]In reality, Kashar had gouged out the eyes of several servants and knights.
That meant those words were serious.
‘…Right, he was always this kind of person.’
But since that’s why I came to like him, I had nothing to say.
“I won’t cheat!”
“Me neither.”
“Really.”
“Of course.”
Kashar was stroking my cheek as if it was only natural.
It felt so good to be the only one in his gaze.
I called his name once more.
“Kashar.”
His lips were close.
The words ‘I like you’ were swallowed as our lips finally met.
It was a soft and sweet first kiss for both of us.
[This is the timeline separator]Three days after Frigia’s visit.
The castle was in the midst of demolition work for the Mein-style interior.
It wasn’t that noisy thanks to the noise-canceling magic.
Rather than the construction, it was my heart that was more tumultuous.
After confessing to Kashar, I kept grinning whenever I had the chance.
Worried about me, Emma cautiously asked.
“…Lady Eileen, are you alright?”
“Of course, I just have too much love.”
My happiness was at its peak, to the point where I felt like I would have flown far away if I had wings.
However.
Where there is a happy person, there must also be an unhappy one.
I saw Frigia coming out of Kashar’s office.
When she spotted me, she smiled with a pale face.
“He…hello.”
It seemed the deal hadn’t gone well, as Frigia’s complexion looked quite poor.
‘…I feel really sorry.’
On the day of the confession, I had to honestly tell him about what happened with Frigia in the reception room.
‘I needed money for the future of the young princes.’
That’s why I was going to make a contract with Frigia, I said. He found it ridiculous.
‘Does my money look like paper to you?’
‘But I’m also the princes’ nanny, and as a nanny, I wanted to do something for them.’
With an incredulous expression, he got up and brought a stack of papers.
It was a business contract that far exceeded the conditions Frigia had offered.
When had he prepared something like this?
But I hesitated to sign it.
‘If it’s like this, you’ll have almost no shares, Kashar.’
It was more like supporting my business.
Kashar, resting his chin on his hand, stared at my hesitation and said this.
‘My money is my lover’s money anyway.’
This was another new, striking confession.
‘So use it as you like.’
The last thing Kashar handed over was the family head’s seal.
I nearly fainted at the words that I could use the ducal family’s assets as I pleased.
It seems we argued for a while.
But the possibility of me winning against him, either verbally or physically, was zero.
‘Ah, okay… okay!’
Struggling under him, I finally had to sign the contract in exchange for not receiving the seal.
‘…That’s right.’
Kissing, it turned out, was much more breathtaking than I had thought.
My face turned red again, but then stopped when I saw Frigia wilting before my eyes.
“Are you alright?”
“Honestly, I’m not… but I have to finish the job I took on. I’ll definitely charge triple for the interior design costs!”
Frigia’s face brightened with new ambition as she casually talked about ripping off Kashar in front of his lover.
‘I’m glad she recovered quickly.’
I thought she might be angry at me, but there was no sign of that at all.
Moreover, her professional spirit was truly admirable, taking responsibility for the interior design until the end.
“Oh right, about that concept…”
“Did you think of something?”
“Not everything, but how about changing part of it like this?”
I showed her the design I had drawn in advance. It was a semi-hanok style.
‘I heard they’re doing a lot of newlywed home construction like this these days.’
Ahem, not that I’m a newlywed or anything. Anyway.
It wasn’t a complete hanok, more of an imitation.
I thought it would give a similar feel if we opened up the ceiling of the central hall and used wood.
‘We could put a pavilion in the back garden. The kids would love a pond too.’
Without roof tiles, we could stack carved plaster to get a similar shape.
Frigia, who had been quietly examining my drawing, pointed to the bottom.
“…What’s this?”
“Oh, that’s an ondol.”
“Ondol?”
Frigia blinked at the unfamiliar word.
‘Winter will be here soon.’
The Cold Palace where I lived in spring was very cold.
I knew Kashar’s castle was much warmer than that place, but the presence or absence of ondol was still very important.
‘The essence of warmth is different.’
Laying thin magic stones on the floor and casting a heating spell.
As I was explaining ondol to Frigia,
Frigia, who had been listening silently, suddenly grabbed my hand again.
“Let’s do business with this!”
‘No, again?’
I was speechless, and Frigia’s eyes became moist.
“The duke took everything from me! Please! This will be a great business item. If you don’t make a contract with me… I’ll really cry!”
It was a strange threat.
But it worked very well on me, who was weak to beautiful women.
“Alright, calm down!”
“Really? Promise, promise!”
Frigia linked her pinky with mine several times.
Although I kept saying I understood, her suspicious gaze didn’t easily disappear.
She eventually won a ‘5-year exclusive rights to hanok and ondol design’ contract in the hallway.
‘Although I have the right to determine the ratio…’
Seeing her much more relaxed expression, it seemed satisfactory enough.
“I’ve already looked into the workers, so I’ll have to put in requests with the craftsmen. Please wait a little!”
Frigia disappeared from her seat, saying to just leave it to her.
Bright sunlight entered the corridor where all the black curtains had been removed.
It seemed the castle’s remodeling would proceed without a hitch.
‘Now it’s goodbye to the Demon King’s castle too.’
As I was pretending to wipe away tears with mixed feelings,
I saw blue hair in the opposite corridor.
‘Eshtra?’
It was definitely Eshtra. Strangely, she was covering her eyes with a black eye patch.
Surprised by this unfamiliar sight, I chased after Eshtra.
‘Why is she so fast?!’
I thought that, but my opponent was a Mein.
After a while, I was able to stop her.
“Huff, huff… Eshtra?”
“…Lady Hallen?”
Eshtra turned around, puzzled.
__________
Turns Out He’s Been Secretly in Love with Me (Female-dominant)
One-line summary: He acts like he doesn’t like her but is actually playing hard to get.
Synopsis:
Xu Muzhou like her. He has liked her for a very long time, and through repeated schemes, he finally closed the distance with her.
But this is still far from enough.
He wants to be the one who stands out among her many suitors, to fight for her attention, and to make her take the initiative to pursue him.