Mornings are early for maids.
Waking up before her master was a fundamental part of being a maid.
“Good morning, Alicia.”
“Good morning, Ariana.”
Hearing the voices of her fellow maids, Catherine got out of bed a little later than usual and carefully made her way to the door, feeling the stares of her fellow maids as if they were waiting for her.
“Wow, Catherine, are you coming to work now too?”
“Uh, yeah….”
“It must have been nice to get a good night’s sleep after so long.”
“Eh, what….”
In reality, she didn’t get a good night’s sleep. She had a strange feeling of guilt in the pit of her stomach over the events of last night.
Lilith, the junior maid, had been transferred to the kitchen with them as of today.
The thought that she had participated in setting her up, albeit against her will, had caused Catherine to toss and turn uncomfortably throughout the night. Even though she had arrived at work two hours later than usual, there was a strange weariness in her eyes instead of the pleasure of a good night’s sleep.
“You are such a good girl, Catherine. I didn’t think you’d be coming to work early because you were haunted by your conscience~.”
“Oh, no… I wasn’t … of the sort….”
“Yes, that’s right. Unless you don’t want to go back to your older self.”
Maids have early mornings.
However, even among those maids who had early mornings, there was one who woke up earlier than the rest.
That would be Catherine Lane, the Ostracized Maid.
A year ago, she had tried and failed to uncover the disloyalty of her fellow maid, Ariana.
When she tried to accuse Ariana of stealing valuables from Master Ethan’s room while he was passed out due to the curse, the cunning woman’s maneuvering led to Catherine being framed for the crime herself. She lost the trust of her master and maids in the mansion, forcing her to live as Ariana’s servant for the past year.
The past year has been almost a living hell for her, as she has been forced to do all the dirty work with her companions, Ariana and Alicia. It’s an understatement to say she’s been overworked far more than the other maids.
“Don’t do anything crazy again, and stay quiet. I’ll at least treat you like a pet if you listen to me.”
“Ugh, yeah.”
“Okay, don’t show off, and don’t return to your older self. There’s no need to be embarrassed amongst our peers when we have our own subordinates now, right?”
“…Yeah.”
It wasn’t hard for Catherine to figure out the two people they were referring to.
She is a junior maid who entered with a year’s worth of experience behind the two.
This meant that they had only recently been released from their apprenticeship and had just begun their official duties as junior maids. Ariana’s attention would now shift to them, not to her.
Them, of course, being Isabel and Lilith.
“Isabel’s a fast learner; I think she could be useful in many ways. What do you think, Catherine?”
“Huh…. Eh, Ariana, I think you’re right….”
“As for Lilith, however, that bitch is a bit dumb, isn’t she? She was pretty quick to believe the whole 4 a.m. to work thing.”
“Her stupidity makes her easier to exploit, so whatever.”
Part of her wanted to defend Lilith, but it was obvious that if she did, arrows from her former coworkers would be flying at her.
Despite her guilt, she couldn’t help but go along with the absurdity of it all.
Already discredited by the theft of a year ago and the enormous debts she had incurred, Catherine was bound by a contract of servitude to House Blackwood and was ordered to accompany Ariana on any duty as a watchman.
She no longer had the strength or will left to help anyone else.
“Lilith’s been preparing for two hours by herself, so she should have at least finished a sack or two of potatoes, right?”
“Well, whatever. Catherine can help if her work feels a little slow, yes?”
“Yeah, well, she’s the expert among us when it comes to working.”
“Yeah…. and if she can’t do it all, I can help her out….”
In the end, Catherine realized that her position wouldn’t change much if another victim were brought in, but she had no means to resist Ariana anyway.
Still relatively small compared to the two, she shuffled along, feeling the pressure from both sides and joined them in the kitchen to prepare breakfast, which would begin in three hours.
“Lilith, are you in there?”
“Uh, sorry~. I forgot and slept in a bit. It’s been hard working without us, hasn’t it?”
“…….”
The two of them casually walked into the dining room with their blatant lies.
Catherine followed silently behind them, her shoulders slumped, and Lilith’s voice, which she expected to hear from inside the kitchen, somehow wasn’t heard.
“Why is no one answering?”
“Maybe she realized you were lying and didn’t come to work?”
“…That foolish-looking bitch?”
“…….”
The three of them walked together to the back of the prep room, and the seriousness of the conversation dissipated as soon as they saw that the light in the back kitchen was on.
“What? I’m working here.”
Creak.
“Lilith, when your senior calls you, you have to answer. I don’t know what the hell you’ve been doing that you can’t even respond….”
“Huh……?”
“…….”
The sheer volume of vegetables greeted them as they walked through the kitchen door.
The sight of hundreds of potatoes, onions, and carrots, all perfectly peeled, had the three of them mesmerized for a moment, and they couldn’t help but stare at the sight.
This delayed their reaction to spotting Lilith sitting on the kitchen floor with a blank expression.
“Lilith?”
“……ah.”
Hearing Catherine’s voice, Lilith stood up, keeping a straight face.
Her nonchalant demeanor made the three of them stare at each other, unsure of what to say. Lilith just calmly conveyed what she had to say as if she didn’t care about their reactions.
“I’ve prepared all the vegetables in the kitchen, seniors.”
“Wait, all of them…?”
“All of them? No way….”
“The potatoes, onions, carrots, garlic, and other vegetables for breakfast, lunch, and dinner have all been prepped, seniors, so all you have to do is tell the chefs at the mansion that the ingredients are ready.”
“…….”
“I’m tired, so I’m going to head out first. Good day, seniors.”
Amongst the women gazing at the sight of the mountain of trimmed vegetables, only Catherine noticed the subtle acrid smell wafting past her.
It’s the second day after my duties changed from hospitality to the kitchen.
Once again, I arrived in the kitchen at 4 a.m. and looked at the pile of work that was waiting for me.
‘Oh, I want to die….’
The pile of work was almost as big as the pile of vegetables I had chopped yesterday while chewing garlic in the kitchen.
This many veggies to trim meant I had to pop almost as much garlic in my mouth as yesterday.
Naturally, the memory of eating garlic for almost an hour and a half at dawn yesterday while holding back nausea came to mind.
I could still taste the garlic in my mouth even though I had rinsed my mouth thoroughly with Clean over and over again.
The only silver lining was that my maximum mana had grown noticeably compared to yesterday.
『Current Mana: 202 / 202』
The growth alone was ridiculous; I went from 21 mana max to almost 10 times that amount.
I was only level 2, and my maximum mana was already in the triple digits.
Even in my previous life, when I played Luminor Academy, I had never experienced such an insane growth rate.
In other words, I had been grinding the whole day yesterday with the pain of my guts being twisted.
I don’t even know how many cloves of garlic I ate. I stopped counting after about a hundred cloves.
Eventually, I ran out of things to use Clean on, namely untrimmed vegetables, so I had to stop.
All things considered, the growth was definitely warranted.
I’m probably going to do the same thing that I did yesterday.
“Haa….”
The problem was that as the mana cap increased, I wouldn’t see the same growth as yesterday.
It would take at least four cloves of garlic to get a full 202 mana, so I would start from a different level than yesterday when half a clove of garlic was enough to refill my mana.
Of course, the decreased growth efficiency didn’t stop me from eating those cloves.
The problem was that I had already prepped all the vegetables for dinner.
The senior maids, who had seen me chop over a thousand vegetables for three meals in two hours, had come to expect that I would do the same today. If I didn’t do it as perfectly as yesterday, they would certainly be suspicious about the first day’s chopping.
If I do it wrong, the suspicion might even extend to the part where I used magic to trim the vegetables.
At only level 2, it would be a disaster if it was discovered that I could use magic. I only had one spell I could use right now, Clean. Even if I maxed out my mana, I couldn’t put it to good use for anything right now, so I still had to hide the fact that I could use magic somehow.
Luckily, the senior maids just assumed that I was quick with my hands and had gotten the job done and didn’t seem to realize that I was using magic to clean the vegetables.
…Although one of the seniors, the shortest of the three, did give me quite the look.
Still, I wouldn’t have been caught dead, and even if they had guessed that I could use magic, it was impossible to imagine that I would have used it to chop vegetables in the kitchen for over an hour.
All the while forcing myself to chew on poisonous garlic whenever I ran out of mana.
I didn’t have to worry about getting caught because I was doing something completely out of character. That is, as long as it doesn’t arouse the suspicions of the Blackwoods.
“It really sucks that I’ll have to do this again and again, haha….”
I’d picked up the trick of simultaneous casting during my early morning magic training yesterday, so the time it would take me to do it wasn’t a big deal.
It’s just the fact that I have to cram almost the exact same amount of garlic into my mouth as yesterday that’s bothering me.
Still, I couldn’t let these vegetables stay as is, so I pulled a bunch of garlic out and started by using Clean to replenish my energies…
Rustle.
“……?”
I thought I heard something just now.
I stopped what I was doing, not wanting anyone to see me using magic, and quietly listened in the direction of the sound.
A moment later, a slightly louder sound came from the kitchen’s storeroom.
*Thud.*
“…….”
The sound of something heavy falling to the floor.
Since the sound was coming from the storeroom in the back of the kitchen, it was obvious that someone was in there. I had to check it out at least once before training to increase my mana.
There was no way I would use my magic on the vegetables if someone else was watching.
“Fuuckk…. What the hell….?”
Carefully holding the kitchen’s magic lamp in one hand and a sword in the other, I entered the storeroom.
Just in case any thieves or thugs broke into the pantry.
As soon as I opened the door to the storeroom, I shone the light inward, pushed the sword I was holding aside, and shouted warningly at the round silhouette created by the lamp.
“Coward, put your hands up! If you move, I’ll shoot…stab!”
As soon as it heard my voice, the ball-shaped thing started moving nervously in the darkness, and two short rods flashed into the air above the sizeable spherical silhouette.
“Oh, no, I-I didn’t do anything!”
Ah, shit.
Why is this asshole here…
“Well, I just came in because I was hungry…. and suddenly the door opened, and someone came in, so I thought….”
“…….”
“So, put that thing down in your hand… Wait, you’re my maid, right?! Oh, I am so telling Daddy!”
As soon as I saw the scrawny bastard’s face in the darkness, illuminated by the lamp, a string of expletives began to form in my head.
Ethan Richard Blackwood. Nicknamed Ethan the Lout Prince.
It was my first proper encounter with the fucking abomination.