She always was fascinated with dresses and jewelry to make her look better. In order to finance that, wealth was a necessity.

The second condition for marriage: attractiveness!
If she were to only consider wealth, she would’ve already married some successful merchant as a second wife, but then she wouldn’t be content with her kids turning out ugly.
In order to bear better-looking kids than Luca, her husband had to be a good looker.
That’s why Judith’s shot at marriage got slimmer… but I totally agree with her terms.
And that was that.

On top of that, his personality needs to be good; his voice needs to sound nice; he can’t let himself loose and be lazy; and he can’t be too scrawny, since that’s not attractive.
Oh, and being tall is a must!

It was absurd to settle for less with that neverending list of conditions for marriage.
I snorted as I replied.

“You have quite the knack for saying stuff as if it didn’t pertain to you, huh? Don’t worry about me and focus on yourself, Thomas. You have high standards for liking me, so if you don’t lower your own expectations, you won’t get married?”

His face flushed red as I kept on arguing.
He didn’t work up the courage to talk back to me, so he grumbled something to himself and scampered away, his tail tucked between his legs.

I chortled.
He was trying to talk me down, thinking that he would have a chance with me, did you think I wasn’t aware of that?

Larissa and Luca were exceptionally beautiful, but Judith also was quite the beauty that turned heads, especially in this small rural village.

When I revisited Judith’s memory, Thomas never dared to talk to her when she was younger.
He didn’t have any courage back then, so why is he trying now?
He is trying because he’s getting older?
No, it looked like he assumed I lowered my standards.

Judith from back then and now, with the exception of age, didn’t change much.

On top of that, Thomas and I are the same age.

We are both considered old to get married, so it wasn’t even funny that he was trying me.

‘The pressure to get married by a suitable age was imposed on women more so than men…’
Unaware of how much I would get hounded by others about marriage, even in this world, I drowned in my own anger.

I barely peeled off Thomas from my side and since I didn’t want to face more guys like him, I hastened my pace.
Of course, since today was May Day, the streets were packed with people.
I tried my best to walk as fast as I could to avoid them.

But then, I collided with a large man who abruptly appeared out of nowhere.
He remained on his feet unaffected while I got flung backward.

“Ouch!”

Even though I fell towards the ground, people continued to walk past me.

I hurried to pick the scattered herbs back into my basket. If they got stepped on and crushed, it would have been bad news.

First a carriage, now a person.
There must be black ominous clouds following me today.

Dark clouds suddenly blocked the sun shining above me.
A little too late, I realized that it was the shadow of the man who I bumped into.

The man offered a hand toward me.
In front of my nose was a dark-patent-leather-gloved hand, twice the size of my own hand.

“Are you alright, My Lady?”

His deep sonorous voice was rather pleasant to my ears.
My eardrums were ringing due to his voice.
A lovely voice it was, but I needed to stay level-headed.

Along with a strange voice and the fact that he called me a lady, he was definitely not from around here.
Noticing the shiny toe caps of his dress shoes, I’m fairly certain that he must come from a wealthy family.

‘Getting off on the wrong foot with someone like him would definitely cause some trouble.’
With my own drabby looks, it would have been a grave mistake to tangle myself with someone like him, but with Judith’s beauty, she had no problem doing so.