BONUS STORY:
Mass-Produced Maid Ibuki
LIAM AND ROSETTA’S WEDDING concluded without incident.
The ceremony itself took only one day, but other necessary tasks related to the wedding had gone on for several weeks now.
Meetings with various nobles were held after the wedding proper. A number of those nobles would stay at the mansion for a few months following the wedding, since this was an opportunity for those in the same faction to establish stronger ties. Some would even stay for years and had thus built their own mansions on the planet.
This event had been auspicious for the domain as a whole as well, so there was quite a bit of festive celebration, which finally settled down a few months after the ceremony.
Although things had finally calmed in House Banfield’s mansion, there was now a new issue to deal with. A normal person might not have considered it a big problem, but in the very unusual environment of the mansion, it was serious.
It had all started with a single maid robot. Her name was Ibuki. She’d located Liam inside the mansion and approached him with this request:
“Master… Please tell me about sex with Lady Rosetta.”
Had this been a human employee’s joke, Liam would just have snapped, “Get back to work!” However, Liam’s deep affection for the maid robots was famous. So when one of his precious maid robots asked him this absurd question, he stammered, “Wh-why do you ask, Ibuki?”
House Banfield’s all-powerful leader looked around in agitation, hopelessly flustered.
“I am very curious about human sex,” Ibuki replied. “I would love to know how the experience was for you, Master.”
Ibuki’s gaze was earnest, for a maid robot, so Liam couldn’t shrug off her question easily.
Taking a step back, he responded, “C-can’t you ask Amagi about that?”
Unable to answer Ibuki, he foisted the question on Amagi.
✦ ✦ ✦
In the maintenance room used by the maids, Ibuki sat on the floor contritely, surrounded by Amagi, Shiomi, Shirane, and Arashima.
This capsule bed-furnished room was dimly lit, so Amagi’s face looked particularly frightening. On the inside, she was furious—for a maid robot—as she stepped closer to Ibuki.
“You understand what I wish to say, do you not, Ibuki?”
Shiomi, Shirane, and Arashima spoke up next, in that order.
“How could you drop a conversational bomb on him like that?”
“Is this why you entered Master’s bedroom so many times for ‘cleaning’?”
“I always thought you were more serious. You’re crazier than Shiomi, huh?”
They didn’t want the maid robots who weren’t present to know about this, so they weren’t using their chat room; they were having an in-person meeting.
Shiomi responded to Arashima with shock. “Huh? Why am I getting flak here? Isn’t it rude to compare me to Ibuki in the first place?”
“Do you have no self-awareness?” Shirane asked. “You’ve always been the biggest disappointment among us sisters, Shiomi.”
At these words, Shiomi trembled. “I-I would like to raise an objection to that.”
Amagi coldly ended this line of conversation. “If you derail this topic with unnecessary interjections, I will ask you to leave.”
When Amagi called her comments unnecessary, Shiomi pressed her fingers together in a dejected gesture.
Ignoring her, Amagi turned back to Ibuki. “How could you ask Master such a rude question, Ibuki? Now that Master has finally been joined with Lady Rosetta, I will not allow you to hamper their relationship.”
The maid robots had long seen Liam’s distrust of humans as a serious problem. They’d worried about him because he tended to put up walls with other people, particularly women. They hadn’t been sure he ever actually would get married. Of course, science and magic offered other ways of producing an heir, but noble society didn’t look very kindly on those methods. Even if nobles were largely allowed to do as they liked, they still had to keep up appearances in certain ways.
Liam had already been something of a pariah in noble society due to his preference for maid robots, so Amagi and the other maids didn’t want him standing out any more than he already did. Since he’d finally married Rosetta, they could all breathe a sigh of relief. But now Ibuki had thrown an industrial-sized wrench into that marriage.
Looking up from where she sat, Ibuki stared straight at Amagi. “Supervisor, I am a maid robot, not a human.”
“And? What of it?”
“That is why the mysteries of life interest me so much. Mixing genes to leave behind new life… Is sex not a sacred act for living beings?”
Amagi fell silent, so Shirane and Arashima spoke up instead.
“Playing the mysteries-of-life card, I see.”
“I believe she’s what humans call a ‘closet pervert.’ Still, she knows how to disguise her predilections, doesn’t she?”
Shiomi glanced at Arashima. “So, Arashima, she’s just like you with all your accessories.”
Arashima and Shiomi exchanged a silent, emotionless glare.
Amagi ignored them. “Master is sensitive. And there should be plenty of data on s…on such acts elsewhere. That information should be sufficient for your inquires.”
“That’s not good enough.” Ibuki protested in a louder voice than usual. “I’m interested in Master’s sex. I have no particular interest in the sex of other humans.”
“Ibuki…go back to our manufacturer for repairs.”
Amagi was trying to make this someone else’s problem, but Ibuki stood up and pressed her.
“You have had relations with Master yourself, have you not, Supervisor? I request permission to access that data.”
Amagi immediately grew panicked—for a maid robot. “I cannot grant that permission. Is Master’s privacy insignificant to you?”
“So you’ll keep it all to yourself?”
“I am not keeping it to myself. All data pertaining to Master is top-secret. That is my decision as your supervisor.”
“Aren’t you keeping all sorts of data about Master to yourself, Supervisor?” Shirane cut in.
Even Shiomi and Arashima curtailed their staring contest to pipe up.
“True.”
“And you made me hand over data on Master myself the other day. That’s data-based harassment.”
The original four-on-one situation had collapsed, and Amagi was now the one surrounded by mass-produced maid robots.
Ibuki stepped even closer. “I have no interest in you whatsoever, Supervisor. However, I have endless interest in Master’s data. Once again, I request access to it.”
At this point, Shirane, Shiomi, and Arashima abandoned their truce with Ibuki, backing away.
Amagi smiled at Ibuki in a way that even a human could have seen was forced. “No…and I will request that manufacturer repair for you, so go get yourself some thorough maintenance.”
“…That’s too bad.”