#scum loanshark daddy

[daeva-agas]

This novel must be old, like 2015s old or something. The heroine is so fluffy. Not even heroines from smutty TL manga are like this these days. Or... maybe novels just have a different trend.

Brad is just deadpan working as usual, while Aira is feeling sad that he doesn’t seem to care at all. She’s starting to feel worthless and stuff. Even if it’s a contract marriage she’s hoping to, you know, at least get along with the husband. Just ignoring each other with nothing to do is just awkward as hell.

Ack. Yeah, this is another thing that drives me nuts. This girl has no female friends, so there’s just drama after drama with her husband and his associates.

Her hobby is studying chess, but this doesn’t really translate to having good strategizing skills yet so far. She can sew and do embroidery, but all she’s doing with it thus far is just helping the duchess’s charity sewing thing. I’m so bored because the MC is not doing anything except angst about her husband. 

And then finally something happened at least. The maid comes running in panic saying that Brad has been attacked and hospitalised. When Aira asked where the secretary guy is, the maid said he must be with the master.

... I’m torn. On the one hand I’m like “Aha! He’s involved in some big government thing and he’s targeted for national affairs!” On the other hand, knowing the Meddling Maids (TM) trope, I also suspect that nothing happened and the maid and the secretary were in cahoots to get Brad and Aira to talk properly and not just endlessly angst like idiots. 

Okay, time to read on and see which one is right. 

[daeva-agas]

Haha, of course he saves her. 

What I’m a bit ???? is that while her “friend” was going nuts, before Brad arrived, out of nowhere Aira was like “I actually love my husband”. And I’m just like how??? Why??? What’d he do??? 

My God, this romance makes no sense at all. I am trash for ojisan titles, but I still have standards.

I’m going to consider my payment to be for the nice pictures, I guess, because the writing is very ????

[daeva-agas]

Man, what is this story even about other than “two idiots fall in love and uwu”. 

There’s no bigger overarching plot that I can see. All the hints that I thought was pointing towards a bigger scheme hasn’t really progressed. Like there was a mention or two of some financial drama, but there’s no further build up for it.

We had what looked like the husband still being floozy after marriage, but it was nothing in the end. We have some shady shit, but it’s just the heroine’s former suitor going insane. 

If some really crazy stuff suddenly pops up now, I’m not going to be satisfied :/

Brad saves Aira and basically was just like “Kid, you’re really stupid, ain’t ya?” at the friend, Hans.

Hans was like “My debt was already paid, so get off my case”. 

So to backtrack a bit. Hans had taken out loans to buy a house for his crazy dream to marry Aira and I guess start a jockeying business, but the business fell apart because the horse died and he just went in debt. He fobbed the debt off to his parents, which made Aira really go “WTF dude, you’re insane”. 

Hans flew into a rage and hit her, and then attacked her some more. That’s when Brad showed up to save her. 

And yeah, so Hans’s father the baron or whatever his rank was, had to sell off a lot of property to pay the debt. As Brad takes Aira away, Hans grabbed a musket and tried to shoot. The bullet only grazed Brad’s arm, and Hans was in a shock both from the recoil and I guess the “Oh shit I shot someone” realisation. 

It was then that Aira finally admits that she’d fallen in love with Brad and she wants to be a proper wife to him, not just a contract one. And he also tells her that he likes her too. So he wasn’t upset at her tsun reactions, he knew what was up and just thinks it’s cute.

[daeva-agas]

The butler showed up with the police, and was like “Get a room, man, this is not the time and place for uwu”.

The police gets the creep, and Brad tells the police to treat the kid nicely. I’m not sure if this is sarcasm or genuine, but I guess he really was being lenient for the sake of the kid’s family. A noble son being put in jail would be scandalous and bad or whatever.

They get home and a doctor is already waiting. Brad wants Aira to be treated first, but she just has a bruise from being hit, so Aira and the doctor says to get Brad treated. 

He doesn’t want to remove his shirt because ~reasons~ and tells the doctor to just cut off his shirt’s sleeve to see the injury. Aira asked him if there’s any reason to not remove the shirt, and he finally took it off. There’s big scars on his body and he says he doesn’t really like it being seen because it’s horrible. 

............ Okay? What’s with shoujo stories treating scars like it’s such a grotesque thing to see? Like, this is pretty common to see in shoujo romances where the love interests has scars on his body and he’s like “oh no I’m ugly”, and... like... why? 

If it’s a fresh bleeding wound it might be a bit uncomfortable to see, but old healed scars?? And I could also kind of get if it’s a really terrible scar on the face, it’s not unreasonable that you might have this kneejerk “yikes” reaction to it, but scars on the body tho...?? 

[daeva-agas]

Meh, of course the weird creepy letter is from him. 

I’m disappointed. I thought there’d be like some government conspiracy, and Brad is actually some intel agent or secretly the king’s prime minister or whatever. So far everything is just very mundane drama. 

I mean, I don’t actually like a seemingly-commoner love interest randomly turns out to be the prince or whatever, but this dude is shady to all heck and I never like it when stories go out of its way to cover shit up from me. It only drives me to cook up wild conspiracies. 

The more things are hidden, the more I expect the reveal to be big and dramatic. Otherwise like... if you make things all secretive, but then it’s actually much ado about nothing, I would be so pissed.

[daeva-agas]

The friend’s going psycho because he’d borrowed money from Brad, and is unable to return the interests. And he’s having a meltdown about marrying her.

I’m honestly confused, LOL. Well, I guess this friend at the opening of the novel kind of vaguely expressed an interest in marrying her. It’s just that he said her family has a bad reputation and stuff, and he can’t help much.

Why’s he turning psycho all out of a sudden? Did the author just have no better ideas to get Brad to stop being a tsundere old man or something?  

I guess I need to buy more Japanese novel to compare plot pacing, because this is so forced and dumb. I feel like author could’ve had inserted some scenes of Aira going to some more balls, this time as “Madam Grandville” (what is Brad’s nobility rank anyway???), and then she meets her old friends again.

Then her friends can maybe act super weird with her, and/or the guy from before can drop hints, like “I actually wanted to marry you but I was hoping to earn more money first, so even if my parents disapprove I’m already independent.” Then have Aira herself say “Well my parents need the money”, thus giving the friend the impression that she’s in need of “rescuing” from a forced marriage, and justify this kidnapping.

It would’ve made better scenes than her just moping around all day.

Like. This novel according to the table of contents only has 7 chapters. This is chapter 5. Half of this novel so far is Nothing Happening. I’m so frustrated.

[daeva-agas]

It’s been a while since I post more live-read reacts from the “WTF loanshark ojisan” novel. The narration feels a bit dull, I dunno, maybe Japanese light novels are just like this. I hardly ever read novels. The heroine is also a bit airhead-y and annoying. I imagine it would be less bad in manga form, but ugh, in narration she kinda of annoys me.

Moving on from wherever we last left.

Aira is starting to feel stung because Brad is keeping a polite distance because Contract Marriage, but is too tsundere to say so and just maintained a daily routing of minding her own business. Brad was starting to be curious of Aira, but is just shit at communicating sincerely. Whenever she kind of brings up how he’s always busy working, he just occasionally jokingly ask her “What, you miss me?”.

One day Aira’s parents show up to ask for money, very openly saying it’s for horse racing bets. Brad does say “you can’t spend money like water like this, I gave you one month’s worth of money not too long ago”, but he still gave them the cash anyway.

Aira was the one who got livid and yelled at them. The parents just shamelessly waltzed off with the money, disregarding Aira’s protests. She then tries to tell Brad to not give them free money, and instead give her brother capital to run a business (which he visibly has zero interest in). 

I’m seriously already run out of patience and I want to smack this heroine, because I dunno why she can’t get it in her head that the only person who cares about earning money is her. Her brother and parents just spend and spend and have no interest in doing business.

Thankfully Brad is sensible, and asks her what business is the brother intending to run. She can’t answer and just gave vague answers. To that Brad says “This isn’t going to work”, because nobody would be willing to lend a capital for a startup business with no clear plans. He continues telling her that she had to face that her family is utter crap at this, and she should just stop going around trying to get that “capital”. The brother is obviously not going to build the business properly even if the capital was given.

FINALLY. Ugh.

Aira then starts crying an apologised. Brad’s reaction was like “don’t be sorry, it’s not you”, but is pretty meh about it and just kept working. Aira doesn’t particularly want him to be uwu at her, but is still a bit hurt he doesn’t care. 

OI. 

As she was leaving she sees a black envelope with a red seal. Brad hurriedly took it away and says it’s none of her business. She was surprised, and he asks her if it bothers her. She says no, while thinking if it might be some more floozy love letter. He says “Oh, I thought you might be jealous”. 

Girl. It obviously looks really shady. Even if the man is also a floozy, I personally would’ve thought it’s some blackmail shit. He did also have a reputation of being a scum loanshark, even if it may not be true.

[daeva-agas]

... This is more of a general language thing, but...

This is a word I’ve not seen before, so it’s news to me: 嬲り

Naburi, which means “tease” or “ridicule”, is written with a compound kanji that looks like this if you stretch it out: 男女男

It’s “woman” sandwiched between two “man” kanji.

China/Japan, whichever of you created this kanji, I HAVE QUESTIONS

I’m calling it for the day I guess, yeesh... 

I’m kind of just skimming the smut scene and just looking at the dialogue brackets just to see if they say anything important LMAO

[daeva-agas]

In another news, this is the first time I’m reading fake Europe nobility stuff in Japanese, so I’m a bit blindsided by the thug-like love interest using “watashi”.

It sounds so damn polite, compared to all the times I see the Ikesen and Tenka boys using “ore”. Like, I was amazed to no end when KENNYO used watashi, ok??? Like, maybe this is actually normal, but I don’t usually read stuff like this.

When I read manga, I kind of pay more attention to the pictures than the text so I never really noticed what words do the character use. But since this is a novel and it’s all text, I’m now paying more attention to the words.

Anyway. Okay, woohoo is starting. I got no more to say for a bit, I guess LMAO.

This is so embarrassing to look at. I mean. Manga smut does this too, but I’m always so cringe when the man talks so damn much during woohoo scenes. Please stop talking and focus on what you’re doing, thanks.

Is this normal in trashy romances? I usually skip woohoo scenes in otome because I don’t like it, so I never really pay attention to how smut is described in prose. 

You can do this, agas, you’ve read worse smut.

[daeva-agas]

Oh, I spoke too soon. Of course it’s for drama. 

One of the Mean Wives asked her “Your husband is saying something interesting, aren’t you going to listen?”

Brad was too busy talking to notice, and in kind of a panic Aira honestly says that she doesn’t understand, and she would be listening if it’s something easier to understand, like profits and losses and money and stuff. 

The men starts laughing at that, and the ladies starts clutching pearls, making Aira embarrassed. But the guys were actually trying to bail her out, saying things like “Sir Grandville, how nice to have such a bold and honest wife” or “Business IS about profits and losses, you’re not wrong”.

Aira still feels awkward, and shrinks, saying “I’m sorry, I will work harder to learn”. 

... Okay, now I feel bad. Sorry, Aira, I forgot you’re just a teenager. We all say dumb things sometimes at that age. 

Since now attention is being focused on her, Brad does realize, and quietly touches her to calm her down. Regaining confidence, Aira shoots back “Wow, ma’am, it’s so amazing that you can understand all of this business stuff. Please teach me”

Aha, see, this was precisely what I thought when the Mean Lady tries to heckle Aira. Like “Oh, and you know so much about business and steam technology?" Author had the same thought, they were just saving it until after Brad does a thing.

Now the Mean Wife is the one who is startled and flustered, and her husband says “Oh I never tell her anything either LOL”. 

*sigh* Yeah, shoujo/Overly Uwu Josei stuff is hard to predict sometimes. Like occasionally the author is actually thinking in the same vein as I am, but it’s just being drawn out for drama/timing, so I’ve already lost patience and got mad. 

Other times... the airhead moment is an airhead moment and there’s no punchline, so I got left here being like “BUT WHY THO WHYYYY” because I don’t understand the logic of the scenario. 

[daeva-agas]

I’m making an effort to not just, like, read one page and then get distracted.

The Mean Girls Wives were interrupted by the hostess, the duke’s wife, announcing dinner. Bradford comes over and asked Aira if the ladies said bad things to her, but she says no. She doesn’t want to be like all boohoo whinging and crying about something minor.

He said “Your face is pale though”, but dropped the issue and they head to the dining room together.

At dinner, Brad was talking about how he’s investing in a steam ship, and the Mean Wives are ooh and aah-ing about how amazing he is.

Aira is like “Your husbands are right here, madams”, and aforementioned husbands were giving Aira sympathetic looks. Since this steam engine thing is beyond her, she just shrugs and keeps eating. 

See. Here’s something that’s been irking me. Aira is supposed to be smart and pretty witty, but still a typical innocent/clueless shoujo heroine in a lot of ways. This is an example of it. She's commented multiple times now that all this business and tech stuff is way over her head.

AND YET SHE STILL WON’T STOP MENTIONING WANTING TO SET UP HER BROTHER FOR BUSINESS.

Girl. He is 100% a moron. You’re smarter, but you’re not that much better yourself when it comes to business. THEN SHUT UP. Get a hint, and shut up about that damn business already. If you really want to help your family set up a business, actually try to listen to the men talk. If you don’t get it, and you don’t have any interest on learning, then give up! Stop talking about getting loans to start up a business. 

It’s not like the girl is actually super good at business but she was being prevented from doing it because Patriarchy (TM). This girl is seriously like eveyr other shoujo heroines who’s like “I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m going to Work Hard anyway”. Like, please, girl, no. This is like running fiercely into a dark and foggy place, not knowing if there’s gonna be a damn cliff in front of you.

Lord God in Heaven above. I don’t understand the logic of shoujo writers, I swear. Am I just too cold-hearted/too logic-minded? 

[daeva-agas]

Wow my reading progress is so sporadic

In the fancy party thingy Brad’s floozy admirers do the Typical Mean Girl thing and pester Aira.

When was this written, again? Either this is a bit on the older side (like 2015 or so), or “Mean Villainess” trope is really still not gonna go away in josei/shoujo stuff

One of the ladies has the same perfume that she caught smelling on her husband, and was basically claiming that Brad has been cheating with her. Random unnamed lady also made a comment about his body, and Aira herself thought that on their wedding night he refused to undress.

Heh, so that’s why the author made a point to bring this into attention. It’s for drama purposes. My romance novel experience tells me that it will later probably turn out that he usually never undresses when bedding women, and that this actually means that lady is lying. 

I think I mentioned this in one of the previous “episodes” of my read-a-long, but I’m rather curious what it is that he’s hiding anyway. A scar, like the one on his face? Maybe he used to be a knight of some sort? 

[daeva-agas]

After a long time I finally picked back up that loanshark ojisan novel LMAO

I’m so bad at reading novels these days... I have a pile of actual novels queued that I’m just :/ about

Anyway

Ah yeah, where was I. Dude was out all night, and only came back in the morning. Though Aira doesn’t particularly like her husband just yet, it’s still off-putting that he’s gone without explanation. 

She was really grumpy but like, refused to admit that she is (girl, why are you being tsun if you don’t like him). He also shrugs it off casually, though he’s like “Would be nice if you say you miss me”

... Well. 

I have a feeling that he’s actually genuinely upset by it, but he’s deflecting. BUT THAT’S WHY YOU SHOULD NOT BE ALL SECRETIVE DAMMIT.

They have been invited to a soiree(?) at some duke’s place, so he tells her to get ready later.

Aira: Why are you gone again, you just came home Brad: Work.

So far this is just a chaotic disaster, the only reason why I’m not pissed is because this is written as highly comedic from the start. Uuuuunlike a lot of manhwas where it’s depicted as a comedy, but the premise is so horrifying I just like “why are you telling me to laugh at this” :/ 

Later that day when Aira gets ready for the event, the dress is too open at the chest. When she asked Brad about it he says "Isn’t this what you like?” because when he first saw her at the other ball her dress was open too.

Actually it’s because a button had fallen off (she’s poor-ish, so her dress is old and unravelling), but she was too embarrassed to correct the misunderstanding.

I may think this is funny, but at some point too much misunderstnading is going to drive me insane too. Please, author don’t make this too derpy. 

Duke Allston, the person hosting the event, is some big important person and Aira is amazed that her husband can get invited to this. They still haven’t clarified what rank IS Brad. He’s tiered lower than a duke, but I don’t know what. 

[daeva-agas]

You know, when the maid said that Brad went ~somewhere~ my initial assumption is that he had some Secret Agent business that he had to deal with, but he came back in the morning "smelling of women's perfume" so I guess not?

Aira was being pouty and huffy about it, and Brad is being so overly casual like nothing is wrong. Oh boy, is this another misunderstanding?

I'm not sure what's worse, TBH... If he actually went and cheated for real because he thought Aira doesn't like him anyway, or if he didn't do anything and this is all a lie/misunderstanding... I feel like both options are equally distasteful.

Does he maybe get rich from running brothels? I vaguely remember there's a slimey rich dude in Game of Thrones who owns brothels, so maybe this guy is like that too. I dunno. We'll see.

[daeva-agas]

Where was I last in this stupid book? 

Oh yes, Aira wants to do her usual daily chess challenge from the paper. This feels rather out of place, but then again I never looked up when were newspapers invented or whether chess is an important enough subject to waste space and ink for in papers.

Hugo brings her to some sort of “recreation room” where there’s even a billiards table. What? Really, now. 

Okay, this one I’m gonna Google when it’s invented. Since the 1400s. Okay, fine, fair enough.

Out of curiousity Aira asked just what it is that Hugo does, and it’s the typical fantasy-verse “everything butler”. Is there actually such a thing in real life? I know in manga and stuff people really love having this “everything butler” who follows the lord around and they do the job of everything from valet to secretary to pageboys to actual butlering, and those are technically completely different professions with different duties in Super Fancy Rich Households.

Maybe lower-tier rich households have everything-butlers because they can’t afford an entire army of staff? 

Anyway, Aira does her chess thing and before she realized it was dinnertime. The maid tells her that Brad was busy doing something and won’t be home ‘til late so she can go ahead and rest early if she wants to. When asked where it is that he went to, the maid makes a very visibly uncomfortable face while replying “I don’t know.”

Remembering the floozy notes and messages from his admirers, she immediately thinks something is afoot. Aira lowkey gets jealous.

Ah yes, the usual. 

The next morning she’s having breakfast. Coffee and yoghurt... *checks* Circa 1600s. Okay, fine, fair enough. I know it’s fantasy but there’s something in me that is like instinctively gets really suspicious if anything has modern vibes. There’s so many fake Europe isekai where things are randomly very modern just for the lolz, and it’s making me very bitter about it.

[daeva-agas]

Aiiyeee, I’m curious if the digital format preserves the pagination properly. 

See, I had wanted to make sure if I saw the table of contents right and I was. There’s really only 7 chapters + Epilogue in this book. It’s chapter 4 right now and not much is happening. I don’t know if there’s meant to be plot at all. I mean there’s all that tax and bankruptcy drama, so that might be the plot later on, but...

Also yeah, so. According to the table of contents, chapter 3 was 85 pages long. If the digital pagination is true to that, 60 pages of that chapter is the smut. 

To be fair 1 page here is like... maybe only contains 10ish sentences total? Plus a couple of dialogues and MC’s mental remarks. BUT THAT’S STILL A LOT THO. NO WONDER IT KEPT GOING ON AND ON AND NEVER ENDS!!!