Appendix — The Lord and Maids’ Mutual Aid

The working conditions of the maids in the Capuan inner palace were, on the whole, fairly pleasant.

While it was true that there were few maids given the size of the palace, they only had to care for Zenjirou and Aura, so the actual amount of work was relatively low for each of them. Yes, as of late, they had a third royal to care for in the form of Carlos Zenkichi, and he required a lot of attention, the bulk of it handled by the wet nurse, Cassandra. But the maids were nothing more than assistants to her, so their workload hadn’t increased much, relatively speaking.

At lunchtime, Aura was almost never present in the inner palace, and Zenjirou was a strange example of a noble considering he preferred to be left alone rather than fawned over, so there was rarely any unexpected work being added to their pile.

Of course, there were still the meals to prepare, all the rooms to clean, the bath to scrub and heat, the gardening, and a whole assortment of other daily jobs. Still, it was far less than what one would ordinarily expect when working for a noble’s or royal’s estate, so it would be fair to call it “easy.”

Yet it was not all sunshine and daisies. There were most definitely disadvantages to working for someone from another world like Zenjirou. The easiest disadvantage to understand was the idea of “active hours.”

Zenjirou had been brought up where it was the norm to be able to flick a switch and light up a room, so he stayed up rather late. Obviously, he was always one to be considerate of his surroundings, so he made sure that he didn’t just stay up whiling away the time later than necessary. However, he’d brought a domestic generator with him, along with several lamps, so he hadn’t kicked the habit of staying up into the night (although in reality, he was actually only up until around ten or eleven).

Inevitably, that had an impact on some of the maids. However much he avoided calling on them, they couldn’t simply retire to bed without considering their still-awake master. Several of them remained up late on a rotation, just in case he were to call on them before he went to sleep.

In this way, Zenjirou’s bad habit of staying up late was passed on to the maids. Naturally, the three problem children, Faye, Dolores, and Letti, were no exception.

The hour, by the standards of Capua, was late, but on Earth, it would have caused an argument if one had told a preteen to go to bed by then.

The three maids’ room was filled with faint light and quiet sounds. The only areas of the inner palace that had electricity were the rooms where Zenjirou lived: the living room and bedroom. Therefore, the main source of light in the room was a tall oil lamp in the corner.

The flickering flame wasn’t exactly reliable as a form of illumination, but the room wasn’t particularly big, so it could at least reveal the shape of the chamber as a whole.

“All right, three holes left. If I can get a birdie here, I might beat Sir Zenjirou’s score!”

A slight woman with short, curled hair—Faye—was lying on a wooden bed, staring intently at a game console. She was kicking her legs around as she lay sprawled out, but her entire focus was on the game.

That said, she was snacking on banana chips from a wooden bowl at the side of the bed while she played, so whether or not you could call her truly focused was up for debate.

The console she was using at the moment only had one screen. It was a different one than they had played the block drop and cart racing games on before. It wasn’t that they had gone out of their way to borrow another one—their supplier, Sir Zenjirou, had offered it instead.

Apparently, it had something to do with them getting good at the games too quickly and his snack stock being in danger. He could have simply stopped offering prizes, but the fact that he didn’t was perhaps the strongest evidence that he was enjoying the competition with them.

The foods with relatively short best-by dates had already been eaten by either the royal couple or the troublemakers themselves, so there were no more of the chocolate snacks or cookies. At the moment, Zenjirou was using up his rations of chocolate and canned biscuits, which he’d had on hand in case of anything unforeseen, and once they were finished, he would have no snacks left from his homeworld.

Faye wasn’t aware of any of that, simply spurred on by competitiveness and gluttony as she tried to beat his score.

The light from the screen dimly outlined the contours of her face from below. Her large, dark eyes gleamed in the light, and her small lips were pursed in concentration as she picked her moment to press the button.

“Argh, I missed! Why? No way! The wind?”

The huge miss and out-of-bounds shot right when it mattered the most had her kicking her legs and yelling, forgetting the late hour. Her behavior prompted one of her roommates, a tall maid named Dolores, to scold her.

“Faye, quiet down! Do you want to get complaints?!”

The neighboring rooms were home to the other maids, and inviting their ire would put their own trio in a much weaker position. Staying up so late was not exactly praiseworthy, and the others would likely have retired for the night already.

“I’m sorry, but I had to. Argh, if I’d gotten a birdie, I might have been able to beat Sir Zenjirou,” Faye apologized immediately, lowering her voice but still complaining.

Dolores got up from her own bed and moved over to take a look. “Oh, you got that good a score? Hang on, you’re still using that fat guy? His shots always swing wide; he hasn’t got the fine control. I told you that you should use that blonde woman instead.”

“But he hits the farthest... Ughhh...”

The two of them were really into the game. The short-haired, smaller maid and the longer-haired, tall maid discussed it at length.

“You’re always too focused on the high score,” Dolores told her. “You need to play it safer on the courses with hazards or out-of-bounds zones to the sides. You can be more aggressive on safer holes, then you’d be more consistent.”

“No matter how carefully I play, I mess up a shot and lose the score at the same time. If I play the first half safe and then screw up in the second, I can’t get back on course. So I’ve got to go all-in from the start.”

“That’s because you’re only putting importance on the distance, and you chose an inaccurate character,” Dolores said tiredly to her impatient companion.

Dolores had actually been influenced by the culture from Zenjirou’s world through the games in a number of ways and hadn’t noticed it either. Golf’s scoring was strange to begin with: a “par” was zero, a “bogie” was plus one, and a “birdie” was minus one. Whoever had the lowest number at the end was the winner.

The game automatically calculated the scores, of course, but with the joy and sorrow of getting a better score and then a worse one, the three had more or less come to understand how the system worked. Through that, they had come to more or less understand the concept of zero and negative numbers.

Unsurprisingly, the three had no real idea of how valuable such knowledge was.

“Argh, I knew it. Damn, I was so close. If I hadn’t made that mistake, I might have managed it!” Faye despaired as the game came to an end and buried her face in the pillow even as she held onto the console.

“Oh, you’re done?”

“Mhmm, I’m done...” she replied, her defeated voice muffled by the pillow.

“Then turn off the electrishidy so we don’t waste it. Letti isn’t back yet.”

“Ah, right, Letti’s up next,” she said before turning her head to face her roommate. “Hey, Doloooores?”

Her syrupy voice let her friend know exactly what she wanted, and Dolores immediately took the console from her hands.

“No, wait your turn.”

“Huh? Eh, it doesn’t matter, I’ll hand it over as soon as Letti gets back.”

Dolores slapped Faye’s hands down as she reached stubbornly across the bed.

“No, I know what will happen if I let you. You’ll just say, ‘wait a minute, just one more hole and I’ll be done,’ and then you’ll end up playing the whole course. Letti’s the kind of person to let you off with a smile as well.”

As the two spoke, it was almost like the conversation was a signal, and a strained but still somehow relaxed voice came from the other side of the door.

“Fayye, Doloores, let me in; my hands are full.”

“She... She’s back.”

“Fine. Wait a minute, Letti; we’ll get the door.”

The two hurried from their beds and trotted over to greet their other roommate.

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

“Phew, that was heavy. Thank you both.”

Relieved of her burden by the other two, the large-chested, droopy-eyed maid—Letti—sat on her own bed.

“It’s fine,” Dolores answered, “you must be tired from the extra shift.”

“Oh, wow! Presents! There’s our Vanessa. Hey, hey, Letti? Can I have some too?”

Having placed the metal jug of alcohol and the wooden bowl on a small side table, she had immediately lifted the lid from the bowl.

“Faye! That’s rude!”

“Aha ha, it’s fine, let’s all eat it together. Ah, Dolores, that jug has some of Sir Zenjirou’s alcohol in it. He wanted us to taste it and let him know what we thought.”

Despite Dolores’s rebuke, Letti had her usual soft smile on her lips. The maids usually worked and finished their shifts in groups of three, but Letti had been working later because Vanessa needed the extra help. The younger maids currently working in the kitchen were not too skilled, and unfortunately, their turn there had lined up with a rather elaborate meal for the next day that required extra preparation that night.

As a result, Vanessa had hurriedly scouted out Letti—who was the best at cooking among the younger women—for some urgent assistance. Capua didn’t yet have the concept of overtime pay, so it was effectively unpaid, but when it was in the kitchen, they got to bring snacks back, so it was better than helping out at the other posts.

“Oh? Alcohol from Sir Zenjirou?”

Among the three of them, Dolores had the strongest taste for alcohol, and the statement made her turn around in excitement.

“Yeah, it’s freshly made, though, so it might be no good. He told us to stop drinking right away if it tastes strange. Oh, he also wants to hear what we thought of it later.”

The content of the jug was a liqueur that Zenjirou had come up with recently. The base was the distilled spirits he made with the electric, thermostatic still he had brought with him. The still meant that the actual distillation process went relatively well, but it just resulted in strong alcohol that wasn’t really enjoyable to drink.

To that end, he had added things like fruit juice or other alcoholic drinks to it to create more cocktails, but this was a new development. Back in Japan, there were a fair few people who made liqueurs like plum brandy. It wasn’t particularly difficult to do. You took a high-proof spirit, added fruits and sugar, and then sealed it and left it somewhere cool and dark for at least a month. At that point, you were pretty much done.

Most recipes used shochu, Japanese apricots, and rock sugar, but that obviously wasn’t an option in this world, so he used his home-distilled liquor, a lime-like fruit, and brown sugar instead.

Of course, his bringing the still in the first place made it clear that he was planning to make alcohol in this world, and he had downloaded several pages from the internet as an introductory guide for making liqueur.

However, he wasn’t sure of how alcoholic his base was (he hadn’t actually brought a hydrometer with him), so it was still trial and error. Regardless, he had sterilized all the containers by way of boiling along with washing and preserving the other ingredients to make things as safe as he could, microbiologically, but there was no guarantee.

The sampling the maids did was akin to poison testing, considering the still-experimental nature of it, but there were a lot of them, starting with Dolores, who rather enjoyed the job. While she ordinarily followed along in the troublemaking, Dolores was currently at the forefront of things.

“All right, Faye, we need to shift the table, so move the food and drink off it for a minute.”

The room they had was by no means a big one for three people.

“Sure, got it!”

“Are you okay, Dolores? Shall I help?” Letti offered, moving to stand, but Dolores waved her off.

“I’m fine. The room’s dark and small, so it’s better to do it on my own.”

As she said that, she moved the table with practiced movements so that it was between the beds. Given how dark the room was, it was done half by feel, but Dolores knew how the entire space was laid out, so she managed to get the transfer done quickly and safely.

“Great, that should work. Faye, you can put the food and drink back; I’ll go get cups.”

“Sure thing. Oh, I still have some banana chips left, so I’ll add them too.”

“That’ll be nice... Hang on, have you been eating in bed again?! I keep telling you to stop that because of the crumbs in the sheets.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Faye apologized without a hint of remorse on her face as she leaped onto the bed and started brushing it off.

“Don’t do that! What’ll you do if it gets on the floor?! We’ll get rats!”

“Dolores, you’re too loud,” Letti told her, her speech slightly quicker than usual.

Her roommate’s yells had been rather loud, but fortunately, no one turned up from the neighboring rooms to shout at them.

When their preparations were complete, the three used their beds as chairs and began helping themselves to the food and drink on offer.

“Hmm...it doesn’t smell strange, at least,” Dolores said as she poured the liqueur into a cup and took a careful sniff.

Considering the drink they were about to partake in could have been a failure, her caution was valid. Following her statement, she raised it to her lips and poked out her tongue, dipping the tip into the liquid.

“Hmmm...”

“What do you think?”

“Does it taste off to you?”

Faye and Letti worriedly checked in as Dolores frowned slightly.

“No, I don’t think it’s a failure,” she said after a silent shake of her head, then went on to give a frank opinion. “It certainly doesn’t taste off, but it is exceedingly sweet. There’s still some bitterness to it, so it’s drinkable, but it’s nothing like what I like.”

“Oh, right, you prefer your drinks to be harsher.”

“Let’s have a taste...” Faye said, taking a sip of her own after Dolores’s review. “Wow, it’s great. I love this. It’s definitely the best drink I’ve ever had.” Faye’s face, on the other hand, had lit up with joy.

“Well, you like your sweets. Take care, though; it’s amazingly strong.”

“It’s fine, all good,” Faye insisted.

“And...you’ve already drunk the lot.”

Unlike Dolores, the drink seemed to have met Faye’s standards...and her sweet tooth. Having already finished a cup, she immediately reached out and poured a second. Meanwhile, Dolores and Letti were using it to wet their throats before reaching out for the food.

“Are these pickled leaves?” Dolores asked. “They go rather well with the sweetness of the drink.”

“Yeah, and these are meat and vegetable skewers. I used the leftovers from the ingredients for tomorrow and added spice and salt before I cooked them. They’re tasty.”

“Hmm, they are on their own, but they’re a bit at odds with the sweetness of the drink. I prefer the pickles.”

“Mmm, that’s a shame. Something that complements the sweetness... I’ll have to think about it.”

Letti’s passion for cooking was in no way dampened by her colleague’s poor review, and she immediately began thinking of what her next creation would be while she ate from her skewers.

“Huh, give one here too,” Faye said, trying one of the skewers. “They’re great! Nicely done, Letti. Dolores just talks a good game even though she can’t make anything impressive.”

“Nor can you, Faye,” Dolores retorted.

“But unlike you, I don’t criticize things that others make. I like it all!”

“You just lack the palate for such things. It’s nothing to be proud of, although I guess it’s good for you.”

As ever, the two of them were arguing, but the tone of their voices was cheerful, and they were enjoying themselves.

Understanding that, Letti’s tone wasn’t truly harsh either. “Come on, both of you stop fighting and enjoy the food.”

“It’s fine, I am. Wait a minute! There’s already none left? I can’t really see. I know: Dolores, let me use that for a minute,” Faye said, her hand scrabbling around in the deep bowl of pickled leaves and finding nothing until she came up with an idea and climbed onto Dolores’ bed to take the console from where it lay near her pillow. “Great, now I can see.”

Using the backlight, she checked the bowl, earning a shocked look from Dolores.

“I’m sure you used the hand you weren’t eating with, didn’t you? We’re only borrowing that—it’s Sir Zenjirou’s.”

“Obviously, I only ate with my right hand, and I’m only using my left to hold this.”

While she might act outrageously, Faye was a full-fledged maid of the inner palace, and she maintained at least a minimum standard of behavior. Even while she was playing on the console before Letti got back, she was using a damp cloth at the side of her bed to wipe her fingers each time she ate before gripping the console again.

“Hmm, yup, all gone. That’s a shame.”

“Well, there are three of us eating,” Dolores replied.

“Aha ha, well it’s probably better if we don’t eat too much before bed,” Letti added.

“That reminds me: we should probably head to sleep soon. What time is it, Faye?”

Faye used her left hand to quickly look through the console. “Give me a second. Umm, it’s three minutes past nine,” she answered, easily reading the numerals on the screen to tell the time.

At some point, the three of them had learned how the twenty-four-hour clock worked. It was probably just a matter of time before they started using phrases like “five more minutes” in the morning.

“Ack, we definitely need to go to sleep soon. Let’s get tidied up and do so; we’re moving to the gardens tomorrow,” Dolores said, getting up from her bed.

“Argh, I forgot,” Letti whined. “I hate working in the gardens.”

The maids in the inner palace rotated between cleaning, cooking, bathroom duty, and the gardens, but naturally, they all had their specializations and weaknesses.

Letti was blessed with the strongest culinary skills of their group, but in exchange, she was terrible at gardening. Or perhaps it would be better to say that, considering her slowness, she wasn’t particularly capable of most of the work in spite of being exceptionally skilled in the kitchen.

“Don’t worry, I’ll work hard for your part too,” Faye promised easily, immediately starting to tidy up while Letti slumped tearfully on the bed and squashed her large chest against it.

In fact, despite her small stature, Faye had the stamina and energy to not worry too much about working in the gardens.

“I’ll help if I can,” Dolores added. Outside of cooking, she was fairly au fait with most of the work and didn’t struggle with the gardening like Letti did, but she did dislike it. The fact that she left herself the escape route of “if I can” for the work she didn’t want to do if she could avoid it showed her feelings on the matter.

“Yeah, thanks. I’ll do more when we’re on cooking duty in exchange,” Letti said happily, unaware of her roommate’s ulterior motive.

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

Working in the gardens was a duty that was seen in both extremes by the maids of the inner palace. It was usually either their favorite or least favorite job amongst the many they rotated through. Those who considered it their least favorite outnumbered those who liked it the most.

The reason the majority disliked the task was simple: it was far more demanding than anything else they had to do. It got hot dealing with the pans and oven in the kitchen, but it was even more stifling at the height of the season while cutting the grass. The baths were tedious to clean due to their size, but there was no comparison to the size of the gardens.

Overall, the work was much more physically demanding. So why did some of the maids enjoy it the most? The reason for that was similarly simple: because the amount of time they worked there was the shortest.

While on kitchen duty, they had to be there for all three meals of the day. On bath duty, they had to wash the chamber in the morning and then keep the baths at an appropriate temperature throughout the afternoon and evening. While the actual cleaning could be done relatively quickly, they also had to be ready until late at night for any urgent requests from their master.

It was only natural that they spent far less time overall when they were on shift in the gardens. The harsh sun in Capua was not something one could simply work through with guts and willpower, and they couldn’t do everything that was needed after the sun had set. Therefore, the norm was to work from dawn until the sun had risen, and from dusk until the sun had set—a relatively small number of hours.

While it called for an early start, it also led to a very long break, and they finished early. If focusing strictly on the number of hours worked, it was a real blessing.

However, some of the maids hated the job more than any other, so it was easy to imagine how heavy their burden was. Incidentally, as far as the three troublemakers went, Dolores and Letti went with the majority opinion, and Faye was one of the minority who enjoyed it.

“The grass has grown considerably here, so we will focus on the mowing today,” echoed Emilia’s—the head gardener’s—voice over the just-lit greenery.

“Right!”

“Understood!”

“Got it!”

Faye, Dolores, and Letti all answered in turn, much louder than they usually spoke. That was Emilia’s aim. She was a middle-aged woman the likes of which were seen throughout Capuan nobility. She had long black hair and tanned skin, and her stomach was slightly rounded as one often saw in older people. However, the word “fat” didn’t quite fit. The phrase “solidly built” suited her better.

Speaking bluntly, one could call her a stocky middle-aged woman; however, her movements were far quicker than one would expect.

Her right hand was covered in a thick mitt and held a small, single-handed sickle. She crouched down and showed the three younger maids how to mow down the grass. The girls all hurriedly took their own sickles and followed suit.

As they began to cut the grass, the sun was already beating down on them and casting their shadows far across the lawn.

About an hour passed.

“Phew...no more.” Letti unsurprisingly gave in as the heat rose rapidly with the sun.

Still crouched on the grass, she straightened up from her cutting and drove her fist into her back several times. In response to her back bending, the sweat on her forehead dripped down her face and onto her chest. They were all wearing thick veils to protect against the heat of the sun, but it was barely better than nothing.

“You’re no good with the sickle even though you’re great with a knife,” Faye commented.

“Faye, it’s nothing to do with how good I am with the tool...” she replied with exhaustion to her smaller, energetic coworker as the latter continued cutting away in the area Letti had been assigned.

It wasn’t a lack of skill that was Letti’s problem; it was a lack of stamina. Letti wasn’t particularly flexible to begin with, so crouching down for an extended period was difficult for her. On top of her issues with physical work, her larger breasts threw off her balance and meant that on a lot of her swings, she lost her stability. She was also slightly heavier than the other young maids, so kneeling hurt her knees more as well.

Altogether, she and the garden work were essentially natural enemies, given how incompatible the two were.

“What a sight. And to think you are the daughter of a warrior,” Emilia said harshly, still facing away from Letti and continuing her own work.

“A-Ah, my apologies, Miss Emilia!”

Shaking, Letti hurriedly moved to pick up her sickle, but before she could resume, still out of breath, Emilia spoke again.

“Wait, Letti. Were you being lazy, or were you at the end of your stamina?”

“Ah, what?”

“Answer.”

Letti wrenched her tongue from where it had dried against the roof of her mouth and answered.

“I-I wasn’t being lazy. I really am at my limit.”

“Then move to the trees and recover yourself. Sloth is unthinkable, and a lack of ability is a huge issue. But pushing yourself beyond what you are capable of is absolutely forbidden. Someone pushing themselves beyond their capabilities and collapsing is far more of an impediment.”

Emilia’s stance as a superior was, for better or worse, for those under her to work to the best of their abilities. She would show no mercy to those shirking work and would require effort from someone unskilled to improve themselves. She would also ask for the utmost to be done with those poor skills while remonstrating those who tried to work beyond their means.

It might have sounded good, but the people who struggled couldn’t bear it. Emilia would scold them for making a mistake and scold them all the more if they tried to take it back, so the weak-willed withered before her.

Of course, Letti was not so fragile.

“I will. Thank you, Ma’am,” she answered with a beaming smile to the harsh order before practically crawling over to the shade.

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

“The sun is getting to a climbing height. We will leave things here for the morning.”

The statement was met with universal agreement. With that said, there was a difference in tone between the three.

“Okay...we’re finally done,” Letti managed.

“Ah, that was definitely tough,” was Dolores’s contribution.

“Yay, we’re done! We can play around until evening now!” Faye cheered, jumping around in contrast to her companions as they slumped. “Oh, right, Sir Zenjirou said we could use his soccer ball when we were free. Want to play, you two?”

Faye’s smile seemed to imply it was a great idea, but her coworkers merely glanced at their friend as they rolled into the shade and sat amid the greenery.

“I’m fine,” Dolores answered faintly. “Play on your own.”

Letti couldn’t even muster the energy to reply and merely gave a silent shake of her head.

“More time for me, then. Yahoo!” Faye cried as she ran off into the building to fetch the ball.

“She’s inhuman. She must be at least half drake,” Dolores gasped.

“Aha ha... I can’t exactly disagree,” the other replied with a wry smile, finally regaining the energy to speak.

Drakes were cold-blooded, like large reptiles, and grew more active as the temperature rose. Of course, as organic life-forms, they had an upper limit, but such a limit was at the very least far higher than the highest temperatures reached on the Southern Continent. It was no surprise that they were the dominant life-form on the continent. Humanity was nothing more than an introduced species, not able to adapt to the environment in anywhere near the same way.

The sight of Faye out there in her miniskirt playing with the soccer ball was bizarre enough that one could definitely call it “inhuman” and say that she had drake blood in her veins.

“One, two, three, four! Hiyahh!”

“Ahh! Faye, we can see your panties,” Letti warned.

“It’s not at all erotic, though,” Dolores added as the two of them watched, exhausted, when her game became more like jumping kicks.

“Now, now, what a shame. I won’t tell you to follow her example, but you should act your age a little more,” Emilia told them kindly, a reluctant smile on her face.

Completely contrary to her behavior while they were working, her tone was kind and thoughtful. Emilia was the one who had the most difference between her personal time and work personalities.

Of course, the maids all lived where they worked, so even their breaks and sleeping hours weren’t, strictly speaking, “personal time,” so it would be better worded as her being as kind as she could while not giving them instructions for work.

Regardless, she was known among the younger maids for that clear difference. She was extremely strict while they were working, but no matter how harshly she spoke, it made no difference to her kindness while they were resting.

“You won’t recover just sitting around like that. Here, have a drink,” she said, offering a pitcher she had fetched from the fridge along with several wooden cups.

The pitcher contained water mixed with sugar and sour fruit juices. It replenished both the calories and water they used while working, and the sourness made it easier to drink, so it was perfect for the situation. It was like a primitive sports drink.

“Aaah! You’re great, Miss Emilia! You can say that again!”

Standing there holding out her cup expectantly was Faye, who had just been playing around with the ball not a moment before.

“When did you get here?” Dolores demanded, glaring at her small coworker with heavily lidded eyes.

“Now now,” Emilia said. “There’s enough for all of you. Wait your turn. There’s an order to this,” she said, softly tapping Faye’s forehead with her index finger before adjusting her skirt and sitting down in the shade.

“Here, make sure to take it slowly so you don’t choke,” she told them, tipping the pitcher to fill each of their cups.

“Phew...”

“Hah...”

“I needed that.”

The three of them let out sounds of relief in turn, each downing their drinks in a single draft. The cold water of under ten degrees, only attainable in the inner palace, soothed their parched throats in the hot air.

“That was great! Seconds!” Faye exclaimed, thrusting her cup forward.

“Here you go,” Emilia answered with a smile, refilling it.

“May I have another cup too?” Dolores asked.

“I’d like another as well,” added Letti.

“Yes, yes, here you go. Make sure you don’t give yourselves stomachaches,” she told them, happily sitting in the greenery and playing the role of waitress to the young maids.

Before they knew it, the jug was empty, and its contents had even Letti recovering her smile. Of course, the three of them were sweating buckets due to drinking so much fluid after baking in the sun, so they were practically drenched.

Emilia glanced at their sweat-laden hair and now darker uniforms. “Once you’ve calmed down, go inside and eat. Make sure you wash and change your clothes first, though. Ines will scold you if you head in just like that,” she reminded them with a smile.

Bathing in the middle of their work and changing to clean their clothes might sound like a luxury beyond their station, but it was actually more of a responsibility than a privilege. While Zenjirou was open-minded about nearly all things, his focus on hygiene and cleanliness was rather abnormal by the general standards of Capua.

It wasn’t just limited to his own person either—the stench of sweat from the maids in the inner palace was something he disliked, and he disliked the perfumed oils all the more, so it led to even greater hassle.

Of course, he never said anything about it, and he did his best not to show his displeasure, but the maids around him were professionals. Spending as long as they did around him, they noticed his efforts to cover his feelings. As a result, every time the maids worked up a sweat, they would bathe and change into clean clothes.

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

After the trio’s afternoon of bathing, changing, eating, and napping, their work began anew once the sun started to set.

“This will do for the mowing. Now gather up the cuttings and dispose of them. Afterwards, water the grass. Understood?” Emilia instructed, her strictness returning like a switch had been thrown.

“Yes!”

“Yes.”

“Yesss.”

Faye, Dolores, and Letti answered her in turn, each using the same word but with their own characteristics. Faye’s response was energetic, while Dolores spoke in a calm, measured voice, and Letti let the syllable drag a little.

The personalities showing in each of their tones also showed in how they set about their work. While Faye raced off with a rake as tall as she was to collect the cuttings from the morning, Dolores fetched the cart and bags to move the grass, that being the easiest job.

“Uuhh...” On the other hand, Letti lagged behind a little as she looked around.

“What are you doing, Letti?” Emilia demanded. “If you have the time to stand around gawping, you have time to pick up a rake and gather the grass. And to think you call yourself a warrior’s daughter!”

“Oh, my apologies,” Letti answered the scolding, rushing off a little late.

Incidentally, the majority of noble families in Capua were those of warriors, but that didn’t mean that they all were. Letti’s family was one such exception, but there was no point in announcing that now. If she tried to tell Emilia, the response would probably be something like, “If you have time to make excuses, you have time to work. And to think you call yourself a warrior’s daughter!”

“Ah, handle the back, please, Letti.”

“Yeah, got it.”

Faye and Letti both set about raking the grass up. It was surprisingly tiring work, but Emilia was doing the same while watching them like a hawk, so slacking would have been suicide.

They had to put the right amount of force behind the rake to actually move the grass but also avoid digging it into the ground, so it worked up a sweat in mere moments.

It was then that Dolores returned with a cart carrying several large sacks. “I’ve got them. Let’s clean up that mound,” she said, picking up armfuls of the grass with gloved hands and stuffing them into the sacks. Once she had three full sacks, she put them on the cart. “I’ll go get rid of this,” she declared.

“Do it quickly,” Emilia told her. “I expect you back soon.”

“Right,” Dolores answered shortly, taking the cart to a corner of the garden.

The cart was originally Zenjirou’s and was something he’d brought for transporting the generator. It was great for moving heavy or bulky things, but the prince consort had little need for physical labor here, so he had allowed the maids to use it on a day-to-day basis.

This was well appreciated by the maids, who had to perform all the labor with women alone. It was so effective that Amanda had spoken to their merchant to look into the possibility of mass-production. The cart wasn’t anything particularly complex, so even the local craftsman would be able to reproduce it.

After several trips with Dolores at its helm, the cart had moved all of the grass to the dump area, and the sun had truly started to set, bathing the area in the glow of twilight.

“Good work. Now to water the lawn. It will be harder once the sun has set, so let us hurry and finish it.”

“Right!”

“Understood.”

“All right.”

Faye showed no signs of tiring, Dolores made her exhaustion evident despite having taken the easiest job, and Letti’s recovery in the afternoon had completely faded away as the three of them answered with very different levels of energy.

The final job was to water the garden—a hard task that strained their tired bodies. After all, this world had no plumbing or hoses, or even watering cans. All they had were buckets filled with water and long-handled ladles. The single silver lining was that they could refill their buckets from the fountain in the middle of the garden, which at least meant that they didn’t need to walk long distances to a well.

“One, two, splash!” Faye yelled out.

“Hey! Faye! You’re getting me with that too!” Dolores complained, despite not really minding.

“Ah, sorry,” Faye apologized for her haphazard approach.

Despite the fact that it was evening, the air was still hot, and the water would soon dry. If anything, it was pleasant having the cold liquid on their bodies. There was a knack to getting a proper spread with the ladle, but the most important thing was arm strength.

“One, two, gooo,” Letti said, already reaching her limit. She was more spilling the water than actually spreading it.

“Letti, if you are tired, don’t rush. Instead, make sure you spread each swing as well as you can. Disgraceful! And to think you call yourself a warrior’s daughter...”

“Right, my apologies,” Letti answered, her arm visibly shaking as she held the full ladle, noticeable even from a distance.

While not to the same extent as Letti, Dolores was also reaching her limit. “I wonder if Sir Zenjirou has anything to make this easier...” she mumbled quietly.

However, while in “work mode,” Emilia didn’t let the comment pass. “Dolores, to think a warrior’s daughter would yearn for their master’s possessions to make their job easier. Disgraceful.”

“Ah, yes, Miss Emilia, my apologies,” she answered, reflexively hunching her shoulders. The dimming light meant that she couldn’t see Emilia’s face, but the older woman’s expression as she scolded them was much more thoughtful than angry.

There was a real need for the maids to build up their strength and get better at their roles, but Emilia was aware that her own area of work placed an unusually heavy burden on the young maids. If some sort of tool could reduce their workload, it bore consideration.

I will have to ask Sir Zenjirou if he has such an item, she decided as she swung her own ladle, watering the grass.

“Good work,” she said eventually, once the gardens were shrouded in darkness. “That will be all for the day.”

In truth, it was simply too dark to work effectively rather than them being finished. The sun had set enough that it was difficult to even make each other out, let alone any expressions on each of their faces.

“Right, thank you.”

“It’s...finally...over...”

So it was only when Dolores and Letti’s replies answered her, that Emilia realized she was one short. There was a tall figure, and a big-chested figure, but no slight figure.

“Where is Faye?” she asked, pivoting around to look.

“Yes, Miss Emilia? What is it?” answered a hysterical voice.

Emilia turned to see a short figure. Only her silhouette was discernible, but she could tell that the figure—Faye—was carrying a heavy bucket in each hand. She must have been refilling them when Emilia had said they could stop. What poor timing!

The older woman’s strict work mode had come to an end with her earlier declaration, and she apologized with a pitying laugh. “I’m sorry, Faye; we’re done for the day,” she told her kindly.

“What?!” Faye yelled out unhappily after blinking blankly at her superior for a moment. “Then what about this water!”

“Sorry, but could you deal with it? If it’s too much trouble to take it back to the fountain, just scatter it around here.”

“Ugh...”

Even the stamina freak herself didn’t want to deal with that level of effort and dropped the buckets with a saddened cry.

“If you will excuse me. Make sure you clean up. Good night,” Emilia told them before vanishing into the darkness.

“Right...” Faye managed dazedly. Unwilling to take the buckets all the way back, she decided to just sprinkle them around the area.

As she came to that conclusion, Dolores spoke up with a laugh. “What a shame. Work hard.”

Faye could see the smile in her voice, despite the darkness. She stuck the ladle into the bucket and changed her plans, flinging the water at the tall figure instead.

“Oh, I will!” she yelled.

“Gah?!”

The darkness meant that she hadn’t been able to see, but the screech told her she had hit her mark and struck Dolores with the water.

“Oh, I am sorry. Did I splash you with it? It’s just so dark, I couldn’t tell,” she said affectedly, earning silence from Dolores in return.

Then: “Why, you—” Dolores yelled.

“Too slow!” was Faye’s answer as she side-stepped, bucket in one hand and ladle in the other.

Faye hadn’t been Dolores’s target, though. Dolores took the other bucket Faye had dropped, scooping some water from it and throwing it back at her roommate.

“Take that!”

“Whoa!”

“Agh?! Jeez, Dolores, that’s cold!” Letti complained, apparently having been caught in the crossfire.

“Oh, sorry, Letti,” Dolores apologized, stopping briefly to say it, and Faye didn’t overlook the opening.

“Got you!”

The water was less cold and more painful as it splashed against Dolores’s face.

“Why, you! You’ve got me mad now! Take that, and that!”

“Whoops, missed! Over here!”

The two of them began an energetic water fight as if their earlier tiredness had been nothing. Dark though the sky may have been, it was still hot. And although they were wearing their uniforms, the water wasn’t unpleasant.

“Come on, you two. If we don’t hurry and tidy up, Miss Emilia will be mad,” Letti said worriedly. She had been splashed several times but showed no sign of moving, proving the point.

“You’re right, so I’ll stake everything on this last strike!” Faye cried dramatically.

“I accept your challenge!” Dolores replied as the pair of them hefted their now half-empty buckets.

“Rargh!”

“Why, you!”

The shortest and tallest of the maids simultaneously let fly with the last of their water, right at each other’s faces.