“I’m sorry about our earlier interaction. Let’s start our negotiations again.”
The merchant and his “smooth-talking” collaborator who’d underestimated me because of my young age had approached me once more. Well, allow me to give you a taste of your own medicine. It behooves me as your senior in life to teach you that, for high-risk methods, you need to do your homework first.
“I’m terribly sorry, but I’ll have to ask that you return at another time,” I said.
“Wh-Why?!”
The surprise was palpable in Tom’s voice. He must not have thought that even he’d be denied the opportunity to buy from me.
“Didn’t the two of you say you had reservations about trading with a child like me?” I asked. “I understand your unease, and to be honest, I have doubts of my own. After all, who knows when you’ll pull out this reason again to suddenly cancel our business? I prefer to go for trades that come with a guarantee of stability.”
I left them with those words and then moved on to talk with the other merchants. As I did, the two of them backed away with bitter expressions.
After everyone had placed their orders, the duo approached me once more, apologized, and proposed a new contract that included large concessions. That’s why I decided to use their trick against them. I praised them for their magnanimity that allowed them to apologize to a child, and proposed further compromises on their end. Though both of their expressions soured, they most likely realized that since I’d given them a taste of their own medicine, I’d been reading their every move.
It’s okay. People learn from their mistakes. You two are still young. I’m sure this experience will nourish your growth. We wrapped up our negotiations, and now we were chatting after coming to an amicable-enough agreement.
“Of course, I plan on getting married. It’s absolutely necessary if one wants to obtain happiness,” I said.
“I think you might be wrong there. You don’t need to get married to be happy.”
“Tom’s right. There are a bunch of people who are unhappy after getting married.”
These two are still young, so they don’t know about the crushing loneliness that comes from living by yourself at an old age. As someone who used to be infamous in their area for being repulsive, I’d ended up being unable to marry and had lived as a lonely old man.
It was the same painful pattern of solitude everyday—eating by myself and then eventually sleeping without talking to anyone even once. I had no desire to experience that ever again.
My biggest failure in my past life was how I’d given up on marriage due to women being repulsed by me as if I’d been a bug. This time, though, I wouldn’t give up no matter what. I’d keep holding out for a miracle no matter how much women hated me. I will get married.
“For some reason, it seems that your stance on marriage is the one thing you won’t budge on.”
“It’s surprising how fixated you are despite being so young.”
The two men didn’t share the same opinion as me. I guess my desire to get married really might be greater than most people’s.
“At any rate, I plan to immediately register with a matchmaker as soon as I’m of age. With the advice of a professional, even I might be able to get married.”
“A matchmaker? So let me get this straight. On the one hand, you say you don’t want to give up on marriage, but on the other hand, you’ve given up on finding love on your own?”
Unfortunately, I had to excuse myself in the middle of our discussion when a servant from my household came to tell me that my father had summoned me immediately. It must be pretty urgent. I need to get back home pronto.
As I was leaving the venue, a number of young women started calling out to me.
“Would you like to have a cup of tea with me?” one asked.
“Oh, sorry, but there’s an urgent matter that I need to attend to at home,” I said quickly, practically fleeing back to my house.
My reaction to women’s unexpected attention had been like this for as long as I could remember. I’d get nervous, and then run if I could.
I had an abundance of life experience due to retaining my past life’s memories; that being said, I still had zero experience with women. They had found me repulsive in my past life, so I’d naturally distanced myself from them, and since I’d done that for so many decades, I reflexively ended up repeating my tendencies in this life as well. As a result, I’d had next to no personal conversations with women in this life either.
It was just like how, even though it might be common to assume that one would naturally become more open-minded and a better leader as one grew older, that was absolutely not the case. In actuality, the exceptional leadership of elders was usually a result of long, painstaking experience managing subordinates, and it was their continuous perseverance that made them flexible. There were simply some things one couldn’t learn without experience, no matter how many years you lived.
Fortunately for me, the necessity to interact with women while doing business was minimal, since this was a country where women were expected to stay home and men to go out and work. Since there weren’t many female merchants, I could continue working without having to flounder through interactions with women in a professional setting.