It had been one week since the day of the Spirit Festival, and we were coming home in the early afternoon after a shopping trip. We had bought two carpets made in a foreign style, three tapestries embroidered with botanical imagery, five belts, four bottles of wine, and a set of quill pens that came housed in a birdcage complete with intricately carved wooden birds inside. It had been a while since I’d been able to so completely satisfy my desire to collect.
“I’m grateful for your help! Thanks to you two, I had a great time shopping today,” I said. Since I wasn’t able to carry everything alone, Oltea and Frieze were lending a hand. Originally, the plan had just been to go out and buy some wine, but the two of them had assisted me in purchasing all the rest without once showing a hint of displeasure or annoyance.
“Of course! We like seeing how happy you get while shopping,” Oltea said.
“I’m pretty happy myself that we found wine! I hope we can drink some soon...” said Frieze.
“Hold on, shouldn’t we let it age some?” I said.
“Of course, that’s the plan. I’ll always remember the taste of that vintage we had at Clié’s,” Frieze said.
“If anything, the taste of that vintage is probably all you remember from Clié’s.”
The setting of the sun had officially drawn the curtain on the Spirit Festival, but Oltea and Frieze had enjoyed the occasion until the small hours of the morning and had ended up sleeping at Clié’s. When they finally woke up the next day, both of them had been white as a sheet. I’d used Cure Beam to fix them and Clié up, but their memory of the night had already vanished. Still, they’d been able to recall that they’d had a great time—and, it seemed, able to recall the taste of at least the first few rounds. Unable to shake the thought of that delicious flavor, we had been looking since morning for a bottle of wine to buy for ourselves.
“That’s exactly why I’ll be patient. How about we let it sit for a week or so?” Frieze suggested.
“Will just one week be enough for it to mature, though?” I asked.
“I’m no expert on wine, but I’m not confident I’d be able to wait much longer than that. What do you think, Oltea?”
“I’d love to drink it as soon as possible too, but... Well, what do you think, Kaito?”
“Well, to be honest,” I said, “I’m not sure one week will be long enough.” I didn’t know much about wine, but I at least knew a good bottle needed more than seven days to age. That being said, the two were clearly more than a little eager to drink it as soon as possible. The shopkeeper had enthusiastically recommended the bottle, saying, “That’s an absolutely delicious wine.” Perhaps the proprietor’s praise alone could create some sort of placebo effect that would make us feel as though it had aged longer.
“Well, anyways, I look forward to the day we’re able to try it,” said Frieze.
“Me too! Should we prepare by buying some good cheese to go with it?” Oltea suggested.
“Mm-hmm! By the way, Kaito, where should we set all this stuff down?”
“In my room, please,” I said. The three of us went to my room, set everything down, and then stopped for a breather. This load alone would have made my previous room cramped, but in this house, there was no shortage of space. In addition to the storage available in my room, up a nearby set of stairs was an attic where everything I had accumulated until now was being stored.
“Good work, you two. I’ll handle getting this stuff into the attic,” I said. “Actually, do you want to use one of these carpets?”
“Would that be all right?” asked Oltea.
“Sure. We bought two, after all.”
“Well, if you say so, I don’t see why not! We’ll have to clean up a little bit first, though.”
“Is your room messy or something?”
“You could say that. It’s a little dusty. I keep the window with the castle view clean, but other than that it’s pretty much the same as when we bought it.”
“Have you been cleaning yours, Kaito?” Frieze asked.
“Not really, as you can see,” I said. Unlike back home in Japan, it wasn’t customary in this world to remove one’s shoes inside. For that reason, dust and grime was wont to gather on the floor. The windows accumulated filth and spiderwebs gathered in the corners of the ceiling. The smell of the bed and the stains in the wall had been easy enough to handle, but the dust couldn’t be removed. Dust had its origin in the bits of fiber that came off of clothing, and if Clean Beam could erase fibers, then it would erase clothing too.
“Shall we give the place a good cleaning, then?” I suggested. We’d be living here for a long time to come, and a well-kept home was more pleasant in the long run. Without the occasional clean, even the best home can grow pitiful. “Obviously if you’re too tired we can do it tomorrow, but—”
“No, I’m good to go. It’ll make for good exercise,” said Oltea.
“Same here! But...do we even have cleaning supplies?” Frieze asked.
“When we moved in, there was cooking gear that’d been left behind in the kitchen, so there’s probably cleaning stuff around here somewhere.”
We’d already confirmed that the reception room had nothing but a sofa and a table in it. If there was anything to find, it would likely be in the kitchen. We’d been in it when we bought the place and took a tour, plus I went there daily to get water and such, but none of us had thoroughly explored every corner. Perhaps some cleaning supplies hid in one of the room’s yet unseen nooks. We went to the kitchen to check. Sure enough, a tall door a ways in marked the location of a closet in which were stored a broom, some cleaning cloth, a bucket, and an assortment of other things for cleaning.
I didn’t love the idea of using such old, worn items to tidy the place up, but a little attention from Clean Beam made them good as new.
“Well, that solves one problem! That just leaves the cleaning itself to do. If we work up a good sweat, the beer afterward will taste even better than usual!” I said.
Frieze’s look of enthusiastic determination stood in stark contrast to Oltea’s apprehensive expression.
“But can we really clean this whole place up in one day with just three people?” she asked.
“True, this place is huge...” Frieze said.
Back in Japan, it wasn’t uncommon for senior citizens entering retirement to lease out their homes and move elsewhere, one of the reasons being the burden of keeping up with cleaning and maintenance in one’s old age. Perhaps the previous owner of this place had left for a similar reason.
“Are you pretty good at cleaning and whatnot, Frieze?” Oltea asked.
“Do I look like a woman with that kind of skill set?”
“Not really, no. You even fold your pajamas messily. It seems like a weak point of yours, actually.”
Frieze was quiet for a moment before responding.
“To be honest, that’s kind of disheartening to hear. What about you, Kaito?”
“Not much of a strength of mine either,” I said. In my previous life, I had entrusted my room’s cleanliness to a little robotic vacuum cleaner. I hadn’t held a broom since graduating high school. On top of that, the broom we’d found was the old-school type, like a witch would ride: a rare sight in Japan. I’d need extra time to get accustomed to using such a relic.
“We might not be able to finish all of this today...” I said.
“Yeah... Well, either way, we may as well get started. It’s not like we have a maid to rely on or anything,” Oltea said.
“A maid, huh...?”
“Huh. That might not be a bad idea, actually.”
“You think so?”
“We should hire one,” I said. After all, none of us knew the first thing about cleaning. We had money to spare after our living expenses were taken care of each month, and hiring someone would certainly make things simpler.
“If we do, it should be a hybrid!” Oltea said. “Thanks to you, the city’s got that distribution program up and running, but there are still a lot of people struggling through unemployment.”
“If it’s okay with you, Kaito, it might be easiest if they just lived with us too,” Frieze said.
“True, having them stay with us might be best,” I said. It would be nice for the maid to draw a continuous income, and after all, it wasn’t as though cleaning this place would be a one-and-done task. With a skilled maid to keep the place tidy, we’d be able to lead a pleasant life here.
With our course of action decided, it was time to go to Hybrid Town.
“We’ll clean up a bit and wait for you here,” Oltea said.
“You two don’t want to come with me?”
“It wouldn’t do to leave all of this work to someone else. We’d like to lighten the load at least a little bit first.”
“I see. In that case, I’ll leave it to you.”
With that, I entrusted the task to Oltea and Frieze and headed for Hybrid Town alone.