Hiya– It’s Me, The Runaway Female Lead - Chapter 9

‘Is this what you call a meal? Are you kidding me? The arrangement’s a mess.’

‘If you’re going to care for leather gloves like this, you should have just told me you wanted to die, Ayla.’

‘At this rate, maybe I should just rip off your idiot head and hang it up as a decoration.’

Just to be clear, I’m not that stupid. To be honest, Claude’s nitpicking was just that—finding fault for the sake of it.

Instructions changed at all hours, and even things I’d never heard before became facts if he insisted on it.

Whenever he drove people to their limits and his temper flared, the young master would throw every object in the room.

His barbs rose regardless of time or place. Sometimes, I’d be scolded so harshly, with all the servants watching, that it brought me to tears.

He was so fierce and relentless in his rebukes that even the maids who witnessed it were always on edge.

There were times when even the Duke himself happened to witness the scene. Instead of kicking me out, he would simply click his tongue or shake his head in disapproval.

The funny thing was, the young master never once brought up the idea of dismissing me. If I displeased him so much, he could have just thrown me out. Or, true to his infamous reputation, he could have disposed of me quietly.

Was he waiting for me to be the first to say I’d quit?

One day, I couldn’t help but wonder that.

Hadn’t it been said that before I arrived, the number of maids and servants who had been replaced could fill three carriages?

Perhaps even the Duke, worn out by his son’s finicky ways, had tried to assign him a servant personally, calling it a ‘playmate’.

So maybe, since he couldn’t dismiss me with his own hands, his aim was to torment me like this, driving me to give up and walk away myself.

The moment I realized that, a twisted sense of competitiveness flared up inside my young heart.

The more he harassed me, the more I wanted to show him the grit of a maid who’d survived all sorts of trials as a country girl.

It was a strange thing. Looking back, maybe from that point on, I was already dancing in the palm of Claude’s hand.

He really did push me just up to the limit of what I could endure. Right to the edge, just so that I’d resolve never to get swept up in that troublemaking young master’s antics.

Before I knew it, the servants in the house started making bets about me. They’d wager on how long this personal maid girl would last under the young master’s tyranny.

Guesses ranged from a week to half a year, but on one thing, everyone agreed: I wouldn’t last a year.

Under the young master’s relentless bullying and the servants’ keen interest, a day, two days, three months, half a year slipped by almost without notice.

A year went by, then two. By the time my time with him entered its third year, everyone had no choice but to acknowledge me.

Ah, so Ayla Bell was just as much of a tough nut as the young master!

I was strangely proud of that assessment, though in a way it almost sounded like an insult.

Even the Duke himself called me in to confirm my face again, so I felt prouder than ever of my first real achievement in life.

“You’re a child with admirable tenacity. I’ve heard Claude’s tantrums have lessened quite a bit lately, haven’t they? Excellent. My son needed someone just like you at his side.”

With the face of a seemingly affectionate father, the Duke said that to me.

To a fourteen-year-old girl, the praise of someone so high up was a sweet carrot, never knowing it might turn into a whip that would drive me to death.

And so, until I came of age, I firmly established myself as the young master of Clausewitz’s close attendant.

By then, I’d become something of a celebrity in the mansion. After all, to be the sole personal maid tolerated by the fierce young master, and it made me an irreplaceable, high-level asset. As a maid in a noble house, I enjoyed a position of power, almost the highest you could have, and my life was honestly not bad.

My relationship with Claude was always about the same. No matter how many years we spent together, there was never any miracle of the young master becoming kinder to me.

Instead, as time passed, the occasions where he ground me down like a mouse became less and less frequent.

He was generally indifferent to me, sometimes annoyed me, and other times put me in a difficult spot.

Days that were similar yet different slipped by in a rush. As that routine repeated for years, I completely adapted to the lifestyle, to the point I thought maybe I could live like this forever, a lazy complacency setting in.

But as with everything in this world, peace was never everlasting.