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A year has passed and I am now eight years old.
I’ve been training under Albert-Oniisama’s Spartan-like guidance for the last year and have become able to swing my sword around with ease.
But that’s literally it.
He told me that I had to dedicate myself to hours of practice swinging my sword for a year in order to properly train my muscles, and so that’s what I did.It seems that once again, none of my brothers believed that I would be able to last for a full year, but to be fair, this time even I felt like I wanted to quit sometime during the middle of it.
I mean I literally did practice swings and nothing else for hours day after day….
It took every last ounce of mental fortitude that I had to keep going with that boring training for a whole year.
Since my goal is to become this world’s best villainess though, I was able to force myself to continue… but if it hadn’t been for that, I’m sure that I would have given up in a matter of days.1
When I had first started, I could only practice for around 15 minutes before I felt completely exhausted. After about half a year had gone by, I had greatly increased my stamina to allow me to train hard for a couple of hours before growing tired….. And now I’ve gotten to the point where I can do practice swings for a whole day through without needing a break.
I really want to praise myself for all my hard work: I’m amazing~ Good job, me!
I was so determined to succeed, that when I went too long without practicing I felt like I was wasting my time, so every night I would sneak out of my bedroom and head back to the garden for some secret, independent training.I really, really hate to lose after all. If I only have one redeeming quality, then that would be my iron will-power.
But I’m sure that the previous villainesses who were able to go down in history were putting forth even more effort than this meager amount.
I still have a long way to go before I can match up to them.
That being said, I have been doing my best for the past year. I’m definitely much stronger now, but you wouldn’t be able to tell just by looking at me…. which is rather unfortunate. It’s not like I want to look macho or anything like that, it’s just that I wouldn’t mind if you could see some of the results of my full year of effort.
Aside from all the muscle I’ve gained, I’ve also managed to read something like 4000 books over the last year.
I’m not really sure how many books a person would typically be able to read in a year’s worth of time, but I think that number seems to be a bit on the high side.
But even though I managed to read that many, not one of those books was about darkness magic. No matter how hard I looked, I wasn’t able to find a single book on the subject. At this point, I’m starting to doubt whether there even are any books in that library that talk about darkness magic.
Regardless, I actually feel pretty proud of having read that many books in just a year, but since I’ve been holing myself up in the library in secret this whole time, I don’t even have anyone that I can boast to about this feat. Plus, a true villainess wouldn’t sink so low as to brag about such things I’m sure….
By now, the whole residence knows that I’ve started to learn swordsmanship as well as the fact that I disappear for 10 hours each day, so it seems there are some crazy rumors going around about me, though I’m not sure what exactly they entail.
After hearing about them, Mother was merely surprised, but Father it seems was extremely concerned about my well-being so he would often talk of wanting to call for a doctor……. But of course I did everything that I could to prevent him from doing so.
As for my brothers, they all eventually got used to my new behavior.
And their beautiful friends started coming to visit more and more often over the last year.
When I asked Henry-Oniisama about why that might be, he said that they were coming to observe how I was doing.
…..Even though I’m not some side show. I wish they wouldn’t try to amuse themselves by watching me when I’m actually practicing seriously like this.
I could constantly feel their gazes on me. Honestly, I know that I’m just practice swinging, but I still tend to feel nervous if there’s always someone watching me.
Though, to be worthy of being called a villainess, I know that I need to be able to remain calm under all circumstances, so I took this as a special type of training as well and did my utmost to forget about them and concentrate on practicing……
Duke-Sama specifically wouldn’t say anything to the other boys, but would just watch me silently for the whole time that I was training.
I really wish he wouldn’t do that though. Having his gaze on me like that all the time really isn’t good for my heart. It would honestly be better if he would at least chat with the other guys…….
And whenever I would happen to meet his gaze, he would always have such a gentle expression on his face.
To be looked at by someone with that face and that expression would make anyone fall for him in an instant.
Except for me, of course. I’m still okay. I won’t fall for him since I know that one day he’ll end up falling in love with the heroine.
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T/N: No! Just give in to his charms~~ Even if it’s a little awkward that he stares at you for hours, I still ship it~ XD
1The term used here was 三日坊主ーみっかぼうずーmikka bouzu which is a word that has a story attached to it about a boy who could not persevere through anything. He tried to become a monk (among other things I believe), but each time he gave up after only three days. There is no good equivalent for this word in English that I know of, so I said that she would have given up in a matter of days, but I really like this word, so I wanted to at least leave a footnote about it.↩
