The Trouble with Women
"Bad man!"
Tia suddenly pointed her finger and shouted.
It was a fact everyone already knew, so there was hardly any need to announce it at the top of her lungs.
Anyway, that bad man, paying no more attention to Tia's glare than to a passing breeze, removed his hat and stepped into the shop.
The sheer gall of him, acting like this place was his own home, left me so flabbergasted that no suitable words came to mind.
Of all days, it had to be one when the Tavern Boss was running late, so there was no man around to handle the situation.
......Not that the Boss could have stopped the Hero even if he'd been here.
"We haven't opened yet, sir. Business starts at five, so if you could step outside for the moment......"
"I came to talk to Yulia privately. Move, please."
"......"
Sasha thrust her horn at Leopard, growling low in her throat.
She hadn't been working the day he'd shown up and wrecked the place, which must have been why she was acting so remarkably confident.
If she'd seen that bastard casually fling a glass and shatter a chair, she wouldn't have dared act like that.
Irina, who had witnessed Leopard's rampage with her own two eyes, kept her gaze carefully lowered—her demeanor the polar opposite of Sasha's.
"Would you please leave?"
"Once my business is done, I'll leave quietly, miss. So if you'd kindly step aside, I'd be much obliged."
"Huh?! N-no way!"
With a smooth swish, Leopard slipped effortlessly past the inside of Sasha's horn.
Of course, she hadn't actually been aiming to impale him—and with the Hero's extraordinary physical abilities, it was only natural.
In an instant her only weapon was neutralized, and Sasha, flustered, fumbled about with no idea what to do.
Leopard held her horn for a moment and met Sasha's eyes.
Sasha, who had zero immunity to attractive men, felt the world spin around her and collapsed in a heap, and Leopard casually stepped past her and approached me.
Through it all, Irina remained frozen in place, quietly terrified.
"Yulia. We still have things left to talk about, don't we?"
"......"
"Ladies, could you give us a moment?"
"No. We'll talk here."
The decision was made.
Whether I intended it or not, as long as I was occupying the Saintess's body, Leopard the Hero's bullshit was something I couldn't avoid.
So it was better to have this conversation somewhere with people watching.
Of course, whether that was a good judgment call was entirely beyond my ability to predict.
That Hero bastard was one slippery, unpredictable son of a bitch.
"Here? Well, if that's what you want."
"......"
His surprised expression lasted only a moment.
Before long, he was smiling at me again and answering.
The moment I saw that greasy smile, bile surged up my throat.
How could a man produce a smile that girlish?
If the world ever held a crossdressing championship, I could guarantee that bastard would take first place by a landslide.
"About an hour until opening, right? That's plenty."
He strode over to the table in that corner, dragged out a chair, and plopped himself down.
The sheer audacity of it left me speechless.
I quietly scooped up Tia and carried her toward him.
Leopard acted awkward around Tia, so I figured holding her right in front of him might make him uncomfortable—that was my whole reasoning.
Oof. Heavy.
Like lugging around a sack of rice.
I regretted it almost immediately.
"Talk."
"......"
He looked up at me as if I'd lost my mind.
I supposed I looked rather ridiculous, straining to hold a huge toddler in my arms.
Tia, apparently unable to grasp the situation either, kept glancing back and forth between me and Leopard.
I wasn't expecting anything from Tia, really.
I simply prayed she'd function as a suppressor for that gloomy old-man Hero.
"Isn't she heavy? Why don't you just put her down?"
"She's not heavy."
"Really? Your arms are shaking."
"Ugh, fine. She's heavy. I can't hold out any longer."
"Mnyaah?!"
I ended up dropping Tia onto the floor.
She looked like she was about to land flat on her back—then spun half a turn like a cat and settled down stably on all fours.
A resentful gaze turned toward me.
But when I sat down and patted my thigh, Tia's eyes wavered for only an instant before she crept over and climbed onto my lap.
She was just as heavy there, but these thick, fatty thighs of mine were more than enough to distribute her weight.
Feeling guilty for having dropped her, I gently stroked the bump on the back of her head again and again.
Mama's hands are a magic remedy, so it'll feel better soon.
Sure enough, the bump began to sink away in no time.
"So you threw away the kid you had and adopted a new one, huh?"
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"She looks about twice as big as when I last saw her......"
Hm. Is that so?
Tia twisted her head around to face me.
Maybe because I saw her every day, she didn't look all that different to me.
"Don't you have something to say to me?"
"Like what?"
"I came all the way here to see you. I figured there'd be something you wanted to ask."
"......"
He shows up out of nowhere and I'm the one who has something to say?
I was so dumbfounded my throat seized up.
How could anyone be this shameless?
There was nothing I wanted from him, so I was just about to tell him to get lost since we had to prepare for opening—
when the thing I'd forgotten came back to me.
Tia's schooling......
It would be so good if Tia could go to school—somewhere she could meet kids her own age and actually learn things.
With the Hero's connections, getting her enrolled would be trivial.
But bringing that up with this sinister bastard was a whole different problem.
He was bound to demand a monstrous price......
To him, I was the loathsome creature who stole the body of the Saintess he loved.
Thinking about how he was probably gleefully agonizing over the best way to cook and devour me made my vision swim.
"No. Nothing."
"Really?"
"That's right. Nothing. So if you have no other business, I'd appreciate it if you'd leave—we need to prepare for opening."
"You must just be too shy to ask. Then let me make a counter-offer instead. I'll introduce you to House Dragonia—come work for them. As a maid, a housekeeper, whatever you like. As long as you don't have some fatal disqualifier that simply cannot be overlooked, they'll hire you without fail......"
"W-wait a moment!"
I wondered if I'd misheard.
Dragonia—the very marquisate sponsoring Leopard.
If the rumors were true, the family was so small it risked dying out, yet its accumulated wealth was staggering.
Light workloads, no lord laying hands on the maids—it was basically a dream job.
"Why all of a sudden?"
"You truly have a gift for saying thank you in the strangest ways. Cut the chatter and just go."
"And the price...... what is it......"
"Price? There isn't one. I simply want you to be happy, Yulia."
"......"
What a load of horseshit.
The instant I saw that greasy smile, a feeling of my organs twisting inside me set my whole body shivering.
It wouldn't be kindness without a price—he clearly intended to put me in his debt.
Nothing in the world was scarier than owing that bastard a favor.
Until the day I repaid it, I'd have to live trembling in fear of what kind of perverted thing he might show up grinning with.
It would be a life of far more stomach-churning anxiety than that time I opened a stock account knowing nothing and dumped my entire savings in—right at the peak, getting properly gutted.
"Not interested. I have a Citizen Card now, you know."
"Yeah, that's actually why I came—I checked on its issuance. Even with my recommendation, Dragonia doesn't hire anyone of unverified identity. You think a single flimsy Citizen Card lets you waltz into any establishment of your choosing? Hardly. The only nobles who'd hire you on the spot are perverts expecting night service. Getting a sense of your place yet?"
Oh, quit your yelling, you insufferable—
Irina and Sasha, who had been stealing glances at us from the side, now stood watching us like a pair of meerkats, sensing that something was going on.
He was roughly right, I had to admit.
But that aside, the Hero's attitude was so different from last time that I felt a strange dissonance.
No—or maybe it wasn't aside, after all.
"Now that I think about it, you're the one in a hurry here, aren't you?"
"What did you say?"
The Hero's face contorted at once.
Direct hit.
"If I don't go to Dragonia, it becomes a problem for you, doesn't it?"
"That's absurd——"
"Is it? Then it's no big deal if I refuse, right? I'm not going."
"......"
The corners of the Hero's eyes trembled.
He was clearly furious, all the way to the tips of his hair.
He tried to hold it in, but it didn't seem to be working—the armrest of the chair he was gripping was beginning to crack.
Must remember to bill him for the chair.
"Hey. Yulia. Are you insane? I hand you an opportunity and you kick it away with your own feet? A man extends his good will, and instead of carrying on with pointless pride, the decent thing to do is accept it gratefully?"
"I don't particularly want your good will. Kindness without strings attached, maybe—but not yours."
"Crazy woman. Fine. Have it your way."
Visibly seething, he pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from inside his coat.
It was a written oath.
A blank pledge form, already stamped with the seal of the Marquis of Dragonia.
He spread it out for all to see, then began filling in the blanks with his pen.
A short oath of just two lines.
Finally, he scrawled his name and signature beneath the stamped seal, crumpled the whole thing into a ball, and hurled it at the floor.
"Happy now?"
"......"
While I stood there dumbfounded, unable to find my voice, he huffed and puffed, unable to contain his agitation, then turned on his heel and stormed out of the shop.
There was no telling at what exact point he'd lost his temper.
"Did Tia make him mad......?"
"No. That man just has anger management issues. You did nothing wrong, Tia."
I set Tia down, then picked up the crumpled oath and smoothed it out to read.
This was what it said:
─ I, Leopard, hereby formally recommend Yulia into the service of House Dragonia.
─ I, Leopard, in exchange, shall demand nothing whatsoever of Yulia.
I wouldn't unfold this thing tomorrow and find every last word vanished, would I?
I'd have to trust that even he wouldn't stoop to something that petty.
Anyway, a respectable job had landed in my lap for free, so it was undoubtedly a win—and yet it left a distinctly sour taste in my mouth.
What on earth was the reason I had to join House Dragonia?
It was a mystery.
In a sparsely populated back alley.
Leopard the Hero walked with his hands jammed in his pockets, cursing under his breath again and again.
He'd still had plenty left to say, but he'd been too angry to stay seated—he simply couldn't hold himself back from storming out.
"Damn it. Damn it. Damn it......"
The Church was hunting the Saintess.
Because of that absurd divine oracle declaring the Saintess's firstborn to be the Seed of Calamity.
The problem was that the encirclement was steadily tightening.
Just recently, they had captured an apprentice priest who knew the Saintess's face.
Thankfully, he'd managed—through sheer force—to kill the man before the interrogation began, but there was no telling who might fall into the Church's hands next.
And the Church would never grant the Hero the right of first interrogation a second time.
"That reckless little......"
Seeing Yulia living her life in blissful ignorance of all this had been the first wave of anger; watching her brush off his offer of shelter under the wing of a powerful house, trotting out nothing but her shallow pride, had been the second.
A woman who valued her pride more than her own life.
This was why women were the way they were.
But what infuriated him most of all was......
"What the hell am I even doing......"
himself—for burning through the precious three oaths he'd been given by the Marquis, just because of that suffocating woman.
Her personality, her character—everything was different from the original Saintess. She was a woman cut out for nothing so much as playing hostess in a tavern.
Yet every time he laid eyes on her face, he found himself acting like a man bewitched—and hating himself for it, Leopard ground his teeth.