Chapter 4, Part 1: By a Twist of Fate, I’m Working as My Rival’s Maid
“YOU’RE shameless.”
Splash!
The instant the water from the vase was dumped on her head, Cesia closed her eyes. She could only stand there silently and submit to the irrational abuse. Being a maid is tough. Some things never change.
“I’m deeply sorry,” she apologized.
If she had been her old self, she would have fought to the bitter end against the person standing in front of her. Determined resistance—it was Cesia’s creed that had gotten her through life with nobody to rely on except for herself. She had graduated from the Academy and entered government service in the castle so she could survive on her own. But one thing led to another, and here she was again, bowing to someone she would never willingly bow to.
“Learn from this, and cease your silly little play at trying to defy me. I can easily ruin your pathetic life any time I want,” the arrogant voice spoke from above Cesia’s head.
A wave of tension spread among the other assembled maids, who were prostrating themselves on the floor to avoid incurring their mistress’s wrath. Cesia, with her head still bowed, mechanically repeated her previous apology.
“I’m deeply sorry, Princess Juliette.”
The beautiful woman with blue eyes and bright blonde hair was Juliette Lani Gwyllt, the second princess of the kingdom of Gwyllt and Marcus’s fiancée.
When Juliette left the room, taking the lady’s maids she had brought from her country, Cesia finally raised her head. The Emeroadian and lady’s maids that were supposed to be in the room were gone, too, leaving Cesia alone. She sighed once, then, with the tip of a finger, traced the water still on her, and like a video in reverse, the scattered droplets returned to the vase.
Cesia used to be bad at drying magic, but now she could easily cast it. The magic she had just used, however, was a different kind. It allowed the caster to return things to a condition they had been in just previously. It required an accurate grasp of the original state of things, and if too much time elapsed, the spell became impossible to use. Its requirements for casting were quite restrictive, but it was still a respectable, high-ranking magic.
According to Cesia’s magic teachers, what made a spell high-ranking was not that it required a massive amount of magical energy but the one casting it to be skilled at manipulating magic so that they could channel the appropriate amount of magical energy as efficiently as possible. Along those lines, Cesia could cast several high-ranking spells she ordinarily couldn’t, thanks to her ability to exercise proper control of her available magical energy, which was by no means large. Ultimately, she had chosen that spell out of laziness; it saved her the effort of fetching water to refill the vase.
Checking that all the water was back in the vase, Cesia picked up the scattered flowers and sloppily rearranged them. Seeing some of the broken flower stems, Cesia frowned slightly. The spell didn’t work on flowers—or people.
Cesia had been born under the unlucky star that doomed her to be cursed as “shameless” frequently, but there was a more specific reason why she was working as Juliette’s maid.
Currently, all of Emeroade was in a festive mood, celebrating the long-awaited birth of Crown Prince Reynold’s first child. Due to a lack of celebratory events in recent years and because the child was a boy, the people of Emeroade took this as an opportunity to indulge in the festivities. However, as neighboring countries sent more and more gifts, and as foreign envoys and messengers unceasingly flowed into the country, the regular duties of the government began to be hindered by the need to entertain all of them. So, to wrap everything together, one large, official festival would be held on the sixth month anniversary of young Ronald’s birthday. At the present moment, it was about a month away.
After the official announcement, the flow of envoys turned into a rush, jamming the castle to bursting with activity. So that none of the guests would feel even the slightest inconvenience, even Cesia, who normally worked as a civil servant, was conscripted as a maid for one of the visitors.
And, through some caprice of fate, she was assigned to Juliette. The externally beautiful princess acted the graceful lady in front of other nobles, but in her private quarters, she was the embodiment of arrogant audacity, constantly complaining to and harassing her maids and lady’s maids. The Emeroadian servants—Cesia among them—were shocked to see that Prince Marcus’s fiancée was such an unpleasant person.
Though Cesia was aware of her feelings for Marcus, she knew he would never be within her reach. But the thought of him marrying such a twisted woman filled Cesia with rage every time she saw her. That rage, which Cesia had most likely not completely suppressed, had probably caused Juliette to have it out for her. Day after day, she berated Cesia as shameless, and Juliette would pour water on her and throw trash at her.
Cesia chuckled. “No matter how noble they are, they all do the same things.”
She wasn’t proud of it, but Cesia had some experience with being bullied. She had turned nineteen in the spring, and in the last five years of her still-short life—four at the Academy and one in the castle—she had been the victim of one form of harassment or another for pretty much the entire time. She had often fruitlessly wondered whether, given the sheer amount of bullying, she was partially to blame, but as of the present, nobody had been so kind as to show her why. It was entirely possible she had been born under an unlucky star.
Now, on to her role as a pinch hitter for the castle’s worker shortage. That was only the public reason for her brief stint as a maid, and naturally, there was another reason why she had been assigned to the powerful, important princess of a neighboring country. In reality, it was part of her job as an enforcer.