I Picked Up the Trash Others Threw Away - Chapter 1.2

Chapter 1.2

Fortunately, thanks to the many heroines who were possessed beforehand, I was able to come up with several measures. This is why people should read romance fantasy stories.

First, running away from home.

I had nowhere to go, and no money to leave the house immediately and take care of lodging.

Second, dying.

There was an option to either ‘kill’ or to ‘die’, but the latter seemed to be better as it wouldn’t cause any damage. Even if I killed someone, I would also die.

This was a novel, so if I died, wouldn’t I be able to go back to reality or regress for a chance to live a new life?

However, this also had a disadvantage. If I couldn’t get back to reality or didn’t regress, I would just die, and everything would be over. It was a bad ending.

Third, proposing a contract marriage.

This was a method that heroines who were in a predicament or who had no family or status used as a plea. A ‘contract’.

Not only in works where the heroine gets into a contract marriage and ends up falling in love, but also in routes that replace an ex-lover with a new one in the process.

It was also a realistic option among the three methods. The problem was that I needed a marriage partner, and most of the male characters were already married in the original story.

Fortunately, among the men the heroine met in the original work, there was a candidate who was abandoned without being able to interfere with the flow.

It was a guy who appeared once at the beginning and then disappeared, but it was a character that the author described as being equally handsome as the other candidates.

The son of a count, a ruffian with a scumbag personality, a flirt who only looked at pretty women and was treated like a nuisance at home because he often went gambling and drinking. Trish Malekiah.

His role was to try to get attention from the pretty heroine and leave after being trampled by the male protagonist.

In the original work, he only had one expression and was handsome, so it would be easy to find him. Pass.

The original work had an ending in which he was greatly hurt by the heroine and the other noble young ladies, so he would still be single. Pass.

Even if someone who was an outcast in his own family met a young lady of a baron family that was financially struggling, it wouldn’t be given any attention. Pass.

Of course, there was no guarantee that he would accept my confession, but he would choose to marry me under a contract anyway.

Because I had a secret method to fascinate him in the game he liked to play.

I sat at my desk all night and drew a mysterious picture on a piece of paper. It remained clear in my head, so it was not difficult to draw it.

Looking at the finally finished drawing, I muttered with a smile on my lips, “Now, where shall I go to flirt with the person who will become the male protagonist?”

***

What does a gambling bastard need most? Money.

Even though I didn’t have the money, I could show him how to make money.

I was going to use this as bait to propose a contract marriage.

If I could get away from my father’s schemes to control me through an arranged marriage with Viscount Lowell, I’d be able to have a full life after that.

The evening after deciding to flirt with Trish, I grabbed my secret weapon and headed to the gambling house in the capital’s back alley.

That man was always portrayed as being in a gambling house in the back alley, so it was not difficult to find him.

Although my outfit was modest, I received suspicious glances from passers-by who thought this was no place for a noble young lady, but I tried hard to ignore them and entered the alley that had a rotting smell.

The backstreets of the casinos that the nobles mainly visited were very well organized, and the colorful lights shone at night, but the real backstreets where ordinary gamblers lived were different.

Not only did the streets look ugly, but they were so narrow and dark that there was no sunlight even during the day. The people living there couldn’t even distinguish the day from the night and enjoyed drinking and gambling.

Those who had been accustomed to living in these alleys for a long time could be distinguished just from their appearance. Even if they couldn’t, a noble lady walking into a back alley would obviously stand out.

“Young Lady, what brings you to this place?”

“Can I help you if you’re looking for someone?”

I walked quickly, ignoring the drunk passers-by who were talking to me.

No matter how modestly dressed she was, if a woman walked alone at night, she would inevitably get attention.

I looked around the entrance of the gambling house and bar and left a couple of times before being noticed by the owner.

A wooden table full of soup stains and knife marks that might have been from someone being stabbed. Those who sat at that table in a circle held the cards in their hands as if they were precious money.

Among the filthy, smelly, or overly dishonest humans, there was only one shining jewel.

The strong smell of cigarettes stung the tip of my nose. The atmosphere was foggy because they were smoking indoors, but even then, I could see his lightly scattered shiny golden hair.

A man with one leg crossed over his thigh, wearing a slightly loosened tunic shirt, leather pants that looked good but were modest in their own way, and boots that went all the way up to his calves.

A nobleman with a pretty bad personality—but he was handsome so that kind of arrogance could be forgiven—and who would have grown beautifully by anyone’s eyes, was caught between the gambling cards that reeked of cigarettes.