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Volume 1 Chapter 4 Part 4

「What are you doing, seriously! If Nene isn’t there with you, Monkey-sama is going to be totally useless! Inuchiyo-dono, you are pampering Saru-sama way too much! 」

「I… I have to admit that Inuchiyo forgot about it as well. 」

As if worried, Inuchiyo started counting the days that passed by bending her fingers.

「Okay, after doing the counting, the time limit set by Nobuna-sama is… today’s evening. 」

(Holy hell! Isn’t it already past noon!? God damn it! If it’s her, then no matter how many gold coins I pile up, if I don’t have a single grain of rice to present to her, she’s going to behead me for sure!)

Yoshiharu stood up in a hurry and started running towards Nobuna’s rrom in the main citadel.

「Inuchiyo, have Goemon help and buy the rice with all the money immediately and come to me when you’re done! There’s no time, so don’t bother haggling about the price, and have it, transported to Nobuna’s place as soon as possible! Please! I beg you! 」

「Understood. 」

「Monkey-sama! Don’t make the princess angry! Earnestly kneel down on the ground and ask her to wait for the rice to arrive! 」

That’s probably going to be impossible, Yoshiharu thought to himself. That being said, if there was a sliver of a chance that it’d work, then he should at least try it…

「Y-Y-Y-You fool~! Idiot! Stupid monkey! 」

However, standing up from her seat after she saw Yoshiharu enter the room, Nobuna immediately directed her rage towards him. She then showered his face with a storm of kicks while he was prostrating himself on the ground before her.

Furthermore, she held Yoshiharu’s hair and dragged him around on the mat, and since he bent his waist thoughtlessly in order to kneel on the ground, he wasn’t able to avoid the demonic attack that he was now being subjected to.

「It hurts! You’re going to rip it out, my hair is going to be ripped out! 」

「I can’t believe you had the gall to say that you have forgotten about the deadline and started goofing around! A-A-And to think that I was starting to worry about you… you really are an idiot! A shitty fool! 」

「Wait, Wait Nobuna, don’t lose your temper! 」

「Shut up and don’t talk to me, you dimwit! Why are you here empty-handed? Why don’t you have even a single grain of rice on you? And what about the money that I gave you? The 3000 kan, where is it?! 」

「Hey…..I have been curious since before but…..What do you mean by fool? 」

「You don’t even know that? If you keep dividing the fields you inherited to your children, you’ll grow poor, and we call such people fools. I don’t want to become one of these fools, so I decided to immediately dismiss the incompetent retainers who just keep getting land for themselves but were not useful to me… wait, don’t try to fool me with that and change the subject! 」

「So I was found out, huh. 」

「As per the law, it’s beheading for the embezzlement of the 3000 kan that has been entrusted to you! 」

Nobuna unsheathed the sword she received from the servant, and came dangerously close to hitting the back of Yoshiharu’s neck with it.

「The sun has not set yet, please wait for just a bit more! 」
「Shut up! If you weren’t able to fulfill your master’s orders, then you should have just given up and returned back the moneyI gave you! You couldn’t have really used all of it in gambling and lost it all, right? RIGHT?!! 」

「Wrong, wrong, wrong! I even increased the amount of money diligently! 」

「How? 」

「That’s a trade secret, I’m afraid! 」

「You’re once again trying to deceive me by using your incomprehensible monkey language! Why can’t you speak normal words for once?!

「I am speaking normal words! This is just the language of the future! 」

「Hmph. If you really managed to increase the amount of money I gave you, there should have been a lot of rice bags piled around here by now, right? 」

「Since there were too many I couldn’t carry them by myself! Right now Inuchiyo and the men I hired for that purpose are carrying them! Please, believe me and wait! 」

「……I don’t want to believe you! But, if Inuchiyo is involved in it, then in deference to her I will wait till the time limit, and not a second longer! 」

While snorting with a ‘hmph’, she sheathed her sword, and once again sat back on her seat. She was so irritated with Yoshiharu right now that he felt like she could easily tear his chest apart and rip out all of its contents with her bare hands.

(Whenever she smiles, she’s a true beauty, but when she has a sour expression like the one I’m seeing right now… really, that’s such a waste.)

Yoshiharu thought.
For the time being, he was able to escape being beheaded. Or to put it more accurately, it’s just that the beheading time got postponed. However, Nobuna kept glaring at him as time passed.

「She isn’t coming. 」

「O-Of course she won’t come immediately. Rather, since there is a lot of it to be carried…. 」

1 minute passed…..2 minutes…….3 minutes… Yoshiharu could only hope that Nobuna’s patience didn’t last as long as a cup ramen’s cooking time.

「I am bored. If I get too bored, I might just behead you to entertain myself and to make sure that any dieseses that you are carrying won’t spread around. 」

「Aren’t you getting bored to fast? And what was that about diseases?! 」

「And now I feel like being in the mood for hearing the agony of a monkey’s death scream. 」

「H-How about spending some time chatting instead? 」

「I don’t want to hear anything from a monkey who completely spent away 3000 kan and didn’t even buy a single grain of rice. 」

She removed her facade, and started imitating a monkey’s voice by adding 「Kiii」in between her sentences.

(She seriously isn’t cute at all. And what a face she’s making!)

Yoshiharu got annoyed.

「Kiii! If you really want to talk, Monkey, then you do the talking, kiii. 」
Nobuna turned her head sideways and looked up at the sky. Beyond the sliding screen door, the blue sky started reddening bit by bit.

(It’s painful for me to say it,but if she closes her mouth, she is pretty after all.)

Yoshiharu thought, and then he inadvertently let out a sigh.

(N-No, it’s not what you think!! I have not fallen for her! I haven’t fallen for her at all!)

Nobuna was staring at Yoshiharu, who had become red in the face and was swaying his arms around while sitting as if she was looking at something utterly disgusting.

「Besides, you wouldn’t be interested in my stories anyways, so you might as well just sit quietly and wait for your head to fall to the ground. 」

「It’s not that I am not interested in them. Buying Arquebuses, a globe that you must’ve obtained from the barbarian merchants, using phrases such as 「conquering all of Japan! 」and 「The World」… with ambitions as big as yours, I really don’t understand how did you end up being called 「The Fool of Owari」. I would like to hear about that, for future reference. 」

「That nickname has been with me ever since I was born. I don’t remember anything like that, but it seems that I used to bite the nipples of my wet nurse like crazy from the moment I came into the world. 」

「That’s strange. Babies don’t have teeth, right? Yeah, they don’t, so It’s a made up story. 」

「I thought so too at first, but since I heard it from my mother, I have no doubts that it is true. 」

「Your mother, the same one who is staying over at Nobukatsu’s place instead of yours, huh? 」

「Why do you know about that? From Nonukatsu?」
An unpleasant look appeared on her face, and she started throwing hard candy at Yoshiharu, who nimbly dodged them all while sitting cross-legged.

「Every day, Nobukatsu comes with the guys from his faction to my tenement, and spurts hateful words directed towards you. It seems like he wants to hinder my job. 」

「I see. Although it’s what my ill-natured brother perpetrated, I won’t apologize on his behalf. 」

「It’s fine. If you were the one to apologize, it’d feel unpleasant for me. 」