Chapter 18: The Maid Wants to Be Spoiled by Her Master

“It’s over…!”

“Hm? Sayaka, what’s over?”

A few hours after the Maritsuji mother and daughter left the Kiyomiya Family Old Manor──I was in my room, sitting on the bed. In the center of the room, Sayaka, in her maid outfit, was pacing back and forth restlessly.

“We’re talking about your faction-building, Keiji-kun! Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten!?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten. But it’s not over yet, is it?”

“Getting Maritsuji-san on our side was the entire premise. Without her, the Kiyomiya faction is just a bunch of nobodies!”

“That’s a harsh thing to say, considering you’re one of them.”

I couldn’t help but give a wry smile. Well, she had a point──there was me, still a long way from shedding my loser reputation; Sayaka, top of the class but from a family whose status was out of the question; and Maki, from a low-status family who was also a shady information broker. Even if the three of us formed a faction, we probably wouldn’t have any real influence at school.

“From now on, I’ll be going after Fujikawa, whether it’s with grades or at school events. Besides──”

“Besides?”

“It’s not like I’ve given up on Maritsuji. I’m still planning to ask for her cooperation.”

“Wh-what…? After you completely wrecked the marriage talks, there’s no way she’d cooperate with you, Keiji-kun! Just how much of a pushover do you think she is!?”

“I know she’s no pushover.”

Still, it was rare for Sayaka to be this furious. It was a fresh sight, and honestly, a little amusing.

“The marriage talks probably aren’t wrecked.”

“Huh?”

“This isn’t just about me and Maritsuji. It’s an arrangement that’s been discussed between the Kiyomiya and Maritsuji families. No matter who I like, something like that isn’t enough to break it off.”

“I-Is… that really how it works?”

“To put it bluntly, our feelings don’t matter. A marriage between Kiyomiya and Maritsuji isn’t on that level. It’s more like a merger between major corporations. If the pros and cons align for both sides, the talks will move forward regardless of ‘feelings’.”

“Th-then, maybe you didn’t need to tell Maritsuji-san and the others all that stuff?”

“Maybe so.”

But I didn’t dislike Maritsuji Anri. And I wasn’t that dense; I knew she had feelings for me, to some extent. In that case, responding properly to those feelings was just common courtesy, right?

“…So, Keiji-kun, what about it?”

“What about what?”

“Th-that thing you said… about… l-liking me. I need you to be clear…”

“Ah, right. I’m in love with you, Sayaka.”

“D-Don’t be so blunt about it!”

“You keep changing your tune.”

“Jeez!” Bang! Sayaka slammed her hand on my desk. As expected of a desk furnished in the Kiyomiya Family Old Manor, it was completely unfazed.

“You should just treat your maid as a target for your lust!”

“Of course you’re a target for my lust, too. I’m a high school guy, you know. It comes as a set with romantic feelings.”

“N-No way! A target for your lust… that means you’d do perverted things to me!”

“Well, eventually, yeah.”

“Eventually!?”

Now that I’d confessed, there was no point in hiding anything. Saying I loved you but had no intention of doing anything erotic would be a massive lie.

“N-No, absolutely not! I’m a maid, and only a maid. That’s not going to change.”

“That’s fine. There’s no rule that says you can’t fall in love with a maid. And even if there was, I wouldn’t give a damn.”

“Y-You’re coming on way too strong, don’t you think…?”

Sayaka still couldn’t seem to calm her nerves. I stood up from the bed, walked over to her, and pulled her into a tight hug.

“S-Stop it… If it’s as a maid, you can already hug me or do whatever you want…”

“That’s a bold thing to say.”

“S-so don’t talk about love or anything. That was never part of my plan…”

Even as Sayaka said that, she didn’t try to pull away from my arms. Of course, I had no intention of making a move on her right now. As long as she insisted she was only a maid, I couldn’t. I couldn’t stoop so low as to use my position as her master to force a relationship on her.

“Sayaka.”

I let go of Sayaka and gently took her hand.

“This is also──a way to solve the issue of us being swapped at birth.”

“Huh?”

Sayaka looked up at me, her face still bright red.

“If we went back to our original positions, that in itself would be a huge problem, right?”

“It would be… a huge problem. Not that I have any intention of going back.”

It turns out the heir wasn’t just an illegitimate child, but was actually swapped with a servant’s child──if that got out, it would cause a massive scandal. Would it even be some kind of crime──or not? Either way, the Kiyomiya family, me, and Sayaka wouldn’t get off scot-free.

“But now that I know the truth, I can’t just go on pretending I don’t.”

“You can… just pretend. Revealing the truth won’t do anyone any good.”

Though Sayaka might gain some benefits… Like inheriting the Kiyomiya fortune or something. But I already knew that was the last thing she wanted.

“We can return you to your rightful place, Sayaka, without revealing the swap and without anyone losing out.”

“…How?”

“If you become my wife, you’ll automatically become a part of the Kiyomiya family. Right?”

I personally wouldn’t mind taking the Hisaka name at all, but for our objective to work, I had no choice but to have Sayaka marry into the Kiyomiya family.

“F-For something like that…? N-No, wait a minute. We went from you liking me straight to us getting married! That’s a huge leap!”

“You caught on, huh…”

“You took advantage of my agitation to push the conversation forward!”

Sayaka shot me a sharp glare. For a high schooler like me to like a girl and already be talking about marriage was pretty far-fetched. But my relationship with Sayaka was far from ordinary. In that case, I needed to think several steps ahead.

“It’s not like I was thinking about this from the start. This is all based on the fact that I fell for you, Sayaka. And if that’s the case, we should use the situation to our full advantage, right?”

“…You’re a dangerously calculating person, you know that? First pretending to be a loser, and now this.”

“No sane person could shoulder the burden of a prestigious house like Kiyomiya, with all its traditions and assets.”

Even my father usually looked like a perfectly ordinary middle-aged man. And yet, he bore the weight of being the head of the Kiyomiya family and still managed to appear normal. He was a dangerously calculating man, too…

“Better yet, if you and I team up, couldn’t we make the Kiyomiya family even greater?”

“Keiji-kun, your ambition is showing…”

“Hmm, if you married into the family, Sayaka, I feel like Kiyomiya would automatically become yours anyway.”

“What do you take me for?”

Sayaka glared at me again, but I didn’t back down. This high-spec Sayaka could totally pull it off without even trying. Besides──

“Of course, I wouldn’t mind at all if you took over the family. It would just be Kiyomiya returning to its rightful owner.”

“I don’t have a single shred of ambition. I just──I just want to support you. I’m serious. I’ve made you bear the burden that I was supposed to carry. If you weren’t a Kiyomiya, you wouldn’t have had to pretend to be a loser. You wouldn’t have been looked down on by everyone, would you?”

“I honestly don’t care about any of that.”

“You don’t care!?”

Sayaka’s reactions had been so unlike her all day. But that side of her was cute, too.

“By the way, what about you?”

“What about me… what do you mean?”

“I told you I’m in love with you, Sayaka. If possible, I’d like to hear your answer, too.”

That wasn’t too much to ask, was it? Depending on her answer, it might change how she acted as a maid from now on──but I couldn’t worry about that right now.

“…I told you. I’m just a maid. That’s all there is to it.”

“………”

Sayaka said that, her face blushing, then this time, she was the one who hugged me. It was different from the many times she’d hugged her “master” before──a gentle, almost hesitant embrace. It was strange to think she’d been less hesitant when she hugged me as a maid, though.

“You idiot… Because you said all that weird stuff, now I’m acting weird, too.”

Chu. Sayaka kissed my cheek, then buried her face firmly against my chest. After staying like that for a moment──

“It took me a year after enrolling in Sōshūkan Academy’s middle school to come tumbling into this old manor. The trigger was my mother disappearing, but that wasn’t the only reason. It’s because for a whole year, I watched you in the same classroom. That’s why I wanted to come here.”

“What a coincidence. I was watching you that whole time, too.”

Ever since that day I first saw her under the cherry blossoms.

“You endured your life with the Kiyomiya family, always acting so carefree, and yet──you weren’t a loser at all. When I came to this mansion, you were kind to me. Even growing up in such a terrible situation, you stayed kind. That’s why.”

Chu, chu. Sayaka kissed my cheek twice in a row. And once──on the lips. No, right beside them, a light chu of a touch.

“Ah, that’s my limit! I’m not saying another word! What are you trying to make me say, you perv!”

“I’d like to do even more perverted things…”

“No!”

Sayaka pushed me away with a thump and took a step back. I meant it as a joke, but Sayaka seemed to have taken it seriously.

“Th-that kind of thing──is for after we’ve solved the Maritsuji problem!”

“In that case, I’ll just head over to the Maritsuji house right now and solve it.”

“You don’t need to be that proactive!”

For now, it seemed Sayaka didn’t dislike me as a guy, either. Just knowing that was more than enough.

The marriage talks with the Maritsuji family──I wondered how it would all turn out, but for me, it seemed to have ended on a pretty good note.