“Miss.”
“Haahmm. Emily, you’re back?”
She finished stretching and felt the last of the heaviness dissolve from her body.
Outside the window, everything was dark. The sun had long since gone — only the moon remained.
“Oh, it’s night again already. Why am I always so impossibly sleepy.”
Every time she came back from Kael’s, she was useless for at least half a day, completely knocked senseless by exhaustion. The strange thing was that as thorough and bone-deep as the fatigue always was, once she slept through it she woke feeling genuinely refreshed. Like a slate wiped clean.
“Miss. That isn’t what matters right now. I watched a woman get broken up with in two minutes today.”
“What? ‘How?'”
“Sit down first.”
She bolted to the table by the window. Emily settled into the seat across from her a moment later.
“Before we get into the main point — you are absolutely determined to get out of this engagement, Miss. Correct?”
“Yes! Completely!”
“Good. But from here on, you need to be prepared to accept a greater degree of risk.”
“A greater degree of risk?”
She frowned at the ominous phrasing.
“What I mean is that when our methods don’t work — as they haven’t been working — there’s a chance of things backfiring worse than simply failing. You need to keep that in mind.”
“Backfiring…”
“The man I observed today was ordinary, so being broken up with was the outcome. But as you know, the Duke is somewhat dangerous. You need to be aware that there could be personal consequences for you.”
What Emily was carefully dancing around, in her roundabout way, was that attacking Kael might result in a counterattack twice as bad.
Better to take the risk than spend her entire life alongside a villain.
“Right. Understood. I’ll keep that in mind. I think trying anything is better than doing nothing at this point.”
Emily retrieved a small notepad and a quill from her uniform pocket, then tapped the nib against the tabletop — ‘tick, tick’ — before she spoke.
“This is different from the clinginess approach we tried before. This time we’re taking a more sophisticated angle.”
That steady, unhesitating voice. That calm, unshakeable delivery.
Confidence built in her chest almost automatically. Emily really was the best.
“I’m listening! I trust you, Emily!”
“Cling to him relentlessly. The difference is this: clinginess is rooted in desire for the other person’s affection, but what we’re going for now is rooted in ‘neediness’ — in inner deficiency. Since you don’t actually feel any real need for the Duke, you’ll have to manufacture that deficiency through imagination.”
She didn’t quite follow it all at once.
After the third-person speech disaster, she needed concrete examples before she committed to anything.
“Emily. Give me some examples. I’ll write them down.”
She reached over and plucked the quill and notepad from Emily’s hands.
“Ask him to do everything for you. For instance, when eating — ask to be fed. When walking — say you can’t manage and ask to be carried on his back. Just ask for things, one after another, endlessly.”
Why on earth would a grown adult ask to be fed?
She needed more specifics.
“Why, though? Are you saying I should act like a child?”
“Yes. Exactly that. And mixing in whining and — how shall I put it — childish coaxing would make it considerably more effective.”
“Childish coaxing? And what does whining actually look like?”
“Watch carefully, Miss.”
“All right.”
At her question, Emily balled both hands into tight fists — exactly as she had before.
“Eeenh~!”
“…?”
“Hiing. Carry me on your baaack!”
“…What on earth, all of a sudden.”
A reverent silence fell.
Emily reached into the paper bag she’d brought and set the macaron box on the table. She picked one up and arranged her face into an expression of guileless, gap-toothed innocence.
“Miss~ Open wide!”
“What are you doing.”
“Aww. Just try one bite. It’s so yummy!”
“Emily. I’m being completely serious right now.”
Emily dropped the act immediately. She set the macaron back in the box.
“But Miss, I wanna eat that~”
“Hmm?”
“And this one too, and this one too! Feed me!”
“Emily. What are you actually doing right now?”
“Hiing. Miss, are you mad at me? Then I’m gonna sulk!”
She furrowed her brows, and Emily added in her normal voice:
“That’s the demonstration.”
“Oh — so basically, I should act like my tongue’s been cut out?”
“Exactly. I really do have to credit you, Miss — you have a way of distilling things to their essence in one sentence. That’s precisely what the woman I saw today was doing when she got broken up with in two minutes.”
Incredible.
‘Perfect.’ She wrote down the examples as fast as she could.
“One more thing to keep firmly in mind, Miss. Never let it look like obsession. Clinginess and neediness — those two things must be kept strictly separate.”
“Hmm?”
“Meaning: none of last time’s lines. Nothing like ‘I’m going to stay right by your side! I get anxious when we’re apart!’ Absolutely none of that.”
“Right. No obsession.”
— ‘Obsession: strictly forbidden.’
She noted the first rule.
“And put away the third-person speech entirely.”
“I figured as much.”
“Yes. Absolutely. That approach simply will not work on a person like him.”
“Understood. I’m never using it again.”
— ‘Third-person speech: absolutely NOT.’
She noted the second rule, equally faithfully.
When she’d finished, she looked up at Emily.
“One more thing — drive the nail in with tears.”
“Tears?”
“Yes. When the moment calls for it, simply cry. Make him so uncomfortable that he wants to escape the situation immediately.”
— ‘Drive the nail in with tears.’
She wrote the last line out in careful, clear strokes.
“That’s all you need to remember. Cry and throw tantrums. Understood?”
“Perfect. This time is for real.”
She reviewed Kael’s work-status report for the day in short order, then went to bed early to rest up for tomorrow’s great undertaking.
But she wasn’t the slightest bit sleepy.
Of course she wasn’t. She’d slept away nearly half a day after coming back from his estate.
That supposedly busy man, for some unfathomable reason, behaved as though tomorrow didn’t exist whenever they were together. She had tried to count how many times today, but lost track somewhere after five.
“Honestly — someone that busy should at least get irritated when I keep bothering him, shouldn’t he? He hasn’t raised his voice at me even once. How am I ever supposed to get broken up with at this rate.”
Was he suppressing his emotions because of his psychopathic tendencies? How did he manage not to get annoyed even once?
‘Either way. I will shatter that patience of yours tomorrow, Your Grace.’
* * *
Right.
Cry and whine and throw tantrums. Be an absolute nuisance.
This time she was absolutely going to get broken up with.
‘Bang—!’
True to the spirit of her new operation, she didn’t bother knocking. She threw the study door open without ceremony.
‘Ivelina, you are a nuisance.’
‘Ivelina, you are a crybaby.’
‘Ivelina, you are a little whiner.’
She chanted the self-affirmations on a continuous loop inside her head.
Oddly, it felt easier than when she’d steeled herself for the third-person speech. Pretending to have her tongue cut out — pretending to be a seven-year-old — actually felt manageable.
‘Ha. Now you are really, truly going to find me unbearable, Your Grace.’
But she hit a wall immediately.
She had expected Kael to flinch in surprise. Instead, he looked entirely unhurried — as though he’d been expecting her.
‘…What?’
“Ah. You’re here.”
Oh. Right. Of course.
He was a man of narrow emotional range, a man whose feelings ran shallow by nature. The kind who only noticed the world when the heroine — his fixation — was in it. Of course he wouldn’t startle.
She launched into her prepared lines.
“I’m hungry! Food first, please!”
‘Demand food as though he’s personally responsible for feeding you. Like a child who starts whining and pestering the moment mealtimes arrive.’
“I already had a meal prepared in advance.”
“…What?”
* * *
