“You have my apologies. In my ignorance, I leapt over your carriage.”
“...You’re forgiven. You may lack manners, but you did apologize. If you’ve learned your lesson, be more respectful toward this crest in the future, and be sure to thank your child.”
The baby’s presence seemed to put her in a forgiving mood. I had expected something more, like a horse-whipping, but instead she appeared to be content with a simple apology.
“You have my thanks, ma’am.”
I couldn’t risk upsetting her now. I knelt in supplication, expressing gratitude for her forgiveness.
Seeing this, she let out an amused chuckle.
“Say, Blois. This uncouth barbarian...he might be entertaining if we dress him up and drag him around. At the very least, it appears he’s no fool...”
“But your ladyship, to bring this sort of ruffian to your...”
“Blois, I have made my decision.”
“...As you wish.”
She seems to think I’m a teenager, which fits with my apparent age. I don’t want to lie about that, really, but I doubt she’d believe me if I told her my true age. Best to just avoid the subject for now.
“You, your name?”
“Sansui Shirokuro, ma’am.”
“Sansui Shirukuro...an unusual name indeed. Let’s have you take a test, Sansui. You look like you’re not even sure where you’ll be sleeping tomorrow. If you come to my estate and pass the test I give you, I’ll hire you on the spot.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. After all, you’ve got a baby with you; I can’t very well just leave you here. Besides, you still have to pass. Please believe me when I say it won’t be easy.”
Still, that meeting gave me the opportunity to work for the daughter of a noble house. To be fair, the details of the work offered didn’t exactly promise an easy or peaceful job.
“If you are to serve our house, you’ll need to be able to handle any threats that may arise. There is no room for error, so do understand that the test will be harsh. Of course, if you succeed, you will be treated well. Don’t fear; if something were to happen to you, we’ll take appropriate care of your child.”
After arriving at the estate with her ladyship, her father and older brother, treating me as a potential suitor, decided to try to use the test to get rid of me. Specifically, the father instructed the older brother to kill me.
“Kill him before that child tries to stop you, got it? With a single blow. Don’t make him suffer.”
“Yes sir, I won’t provide this scum enough time to regret trying to sully our precious Douve...!”
After subduing them both, while doing my level best to avoid hurting them, they reluctantly accepted that I had the necessary skills and hired me as a bodyguard.
I adopted the baby as my daughter, naming her Lain. With the help of my employer, the noble House of Sepaeda, I’ve been able to give her a decent education, and have raised her for the first five years of her life without any hardships. Of course, in exchange, the work’s been pretty difficult on my end.
Protecting her ladyship is a daily challenge. To top it off, at the succession party, when the father passed the leadership of the family to the son, I fought the entire Royal Household Regiment in front of the King as part of the festivities.
Thanks to that, the Royal Family bears a grudge against me, and the people around me have started looking at me differently. I suppose I might have enjoyed the attention before I became an Immortal, but now I consider it to be less than ideal.
However, I suppose it can’t be helped. After all, that’s what it means to live in mortal society.
Life went on, and it’s been three years since my fight with the Royal Household Regiment, and five since I was hired. I’m still working for House Sepaeda.
Now that her ladyship is to attend Arcana Academy, I’ve been assigned to protect her during the move from the Sepaeda Fief to the Crown Lands, then serve as her bodyguard at school.
“Say, Sansui, do you think there will be rabble you can kill around here? Bandits or thieves or the like?”
Meet Lady Douve Sepaeda, my direct employer and the client I’m assigned to protect.
The remarks she murmured, while looking boredly out the window of the carriage, are a fairly accurate representation of her personality.
Over the five years I’ve known her, she’s grown from being a pretty girl to a beautiful young woman, while her personality has remained that of a stereotypical spoiled noblewoman. It’s not like this was a new development, of course. She was like that when I met her five years ago.
I can understand her boredom, of course. For someone like her ladyship, who is certainly not an avid reader, the languid pace of a carriage plodding along a peaceful country road must be pure torture. I would have agreed with her, prior to becoming an Immortal.
“Carriages rides are so dull. I can’t handle the lack of stimulation.”
Eliminating bandits and thieves with your own forces... It’s certainly an admirable thing for a noble to go about doing, but I had to feel a bit sorry for bandits who got targeted for elimination solely to relieve one teenage girl’s boredom.
“Milady, we’re currently scheduled to stay at an inn a little ways down the road. If we’re to divert from our path, I’m afraid you will have to spend the night in the carriage.”
Hurriedly trying to stop our employer is my colleague Blois. Formerly a beautiful young woman, now a beautiful woman forcibly dressed as a male valet.
Wielding the rapier she kept sheathed on her hip, Blois is a preternaturally gifted swordswoman and mage, serving as her ladyship’s bodyguard from childhood. Remarkably, before I was brought on, she’d handled caring for Lady Douve all on her own, an impressive feat by anyone’s standards.
“If we consider the worst possible scenario... I believe you should stay at the inn.”
“Don’t be silly. My two precious bodyguards are so very capable, after all.”