“I see, so you’re...Nina, was it? The one from the agency?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“You know this is a mercenary company?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Some of them are rough folk. Then there’s others like the captain and Pearly Cloud and Morning Star who live like nobles.”
That evening, a new maid knocked on the door of the Dark Frost Mercenaries’ estate. She was let in through the back entrance and interviewed by the housekeeper, a plump and kindly woman.
“I understand, ma’am! I worked in a noble’s household in the past.”
“My, my. Did you really? May I see your reference letter?”
“Erm, well... The thing is, erm...”
Faced with the housekeeper’s questioning stare, Nina blurted out, “M-M-M-My things were all stolen on the way to Thundergard! T-Truly, they were! I wasn’t cast out for breaking a vase, nothing like that! And I was framed for that, anyway!”
This was where Emily would have rolled her eyes and said, “Wow, you suck at lying.” But alas, Emily was not there.
The housekeeper looked a little stunned. “Oh dear, you poor thing... Now, are you quite sure you know what you’re getting into working here?”
She was surprisingly easily convinced. Of course, there was a reason for that.
“So long as you work hard, I’d be more than happy to write a reference for a maid of your caliber when you move on. After all—”
This maid had come along with a letter of recommendation—straight from the agency.
“—they said you’re the most exceptional maid they’ve ever encountered!”
Nina laughed nervously.
Unable to give up on the idea of infiltrating the Dark Frost Mercenaries, she’d set off for the agency that assigned work to maids. As she didn’t have a reference letter from her former employee, they had not been welcoming.
Nina, however, desperately pleaded to be given a chance to prove herself.
Under normal circumstances, Nina would have wanted to avoid being a nuisance and so not pushed as hard, but this time was different—these might be Tien’s parents. She remembered how Tien had been back in Izumi, suffering and barely able to walk straight. She ended up that way as a result of being separated from her parents. Nina wanted more than anything to see them reunited as soon as possible.
That was why she had ignored Emily and the others when they told her “no.” She had to take matters into her own hands.
To the agency, though, Nina was an annoyance they wanted to get rid of, so they set her a devilishly difficult task: cleaning out the storage area in the agency’s attic. Neglected for years, it was buried in dust and infested with bugs. The agency gave her an estimate for how long it would take, assuming she wouldn’t finish.
Nina got it done in half that time—but there was more to it than that. The agency staff never had any intention of giving Nina the job, no matter how quickly she finished. Securing a referral for a major client like the Dark Frost Mercenaries would not be so easy.
There was a trap in the task they set her. Cleaning the attic caused it to shake, making dust fall from upstairs into the room below. This would be both a disruption for the staff and outrageously rude to the clients. As soon as the moment came, they planned to storm up the stairs and tell Nina that she’d failed.
But not a speck of dust appeared. Nina came back down in half her allotted time, her uniform spotless. The staff member thought she must have given up—until they went upstairs and their jaws gaped. The floor gleamed, the boxes were all ordered, and the sun shone in through the windows for the first time in years. It looked like a different room entirely.
Oh dear, I hope I didn’t overdo it... Nina felt a momentary pang of regret—but she had a goal, and it was to infiltrate the mercenary company.
It took the dumbfounded staff member five minutes to come back to their senses, at which point they immediately wrote a letter to the Dark Frost Mercenaries, adding that they’d happily refer her anywhere she liked. The agency, rigorously meritocratic as it was, was, in a way, egalitarian.
Unaware of all this, the housekeeper carried on with assessing Nina as usual.
“This is a very large household, so there’s lots of work. The laundry maids are particularly short of hands...” She briefly looked Nina over. Washing, drying, and bringing in massive piles of laundry was heavy labor, and she clearly didn’t think the tiny girl in front of her was up to it.
“I’ve worked as a laundry maid before, ma’am!” Nina said.
“You have...?” the housekeeper said doubtfully. “Oh, well, let’s see how you fare.”
“I’ll do my best, ma’am!” Nina said, bowing deeply.
And with that, she joined the maids of the Dark Frost Mercenaries.
✦ ✦ ✦
“NINAAAAAAA!”
When Emily returned to the inn and read the note left there, she yelled at the top of her lungs.
The note, written in Nina’s handwriting, said, In the end, I still believe that the best course of action is for me to infiltrate the Dark Frost Mercenaries as a maid.
“Chi will go and bring her back.”
“Hold on!” Astrid called out to Tien, who was about to rush off then and there. “Listen... What if we let Nina handle this?”
“Astrid!” Emily exclaimed. “Are you crazy?! It’s too dangerous!”
“She only got hired as a maid. There’s nothing dangerous about that. Well, not usually. Yes, she’s on a mission to learn more about Pearly Cloud and Morning Star, but even that I wouldn’t call dangerous.”
“Well, maybe, but still...”
“Chi does not want to cause hardship for Nina,” Tien muttered.
“That’s kind of you,” Astrid said, “but let me ask you this. If Nina were in danger, what would you do?”
“That is obvious. Chi would go and help her.”
“Even if it meant risking your life?”
“Of course!”
“In that case, you shouldn’t oppose Nina’s undercover investigation—the one she’s doing it for is you.”
Tien’s eyes widened, and she clamped her mouth shut.
“I admit I’m a little glad to see Nina doing what she wants without any regard for us,” Astrid said with a crooked smile. “You know how she’s practically the embodiment of consideration for others. She definitely knows we’ll worry, but she decided to go in there anyway. That’s because she believes in our party. She believes that we’re family. And she believes that we’ll accept her decision.”
“Hrmm...” Even Emily felt like this made sense. “Okay, but Astrid, are you really not worried? About Nina...getting into trouble?”
“Oh, I’m worried out of my mind. That’s why we’ve got to be ready to go to her rescue the moment anything happens.”
“Wanna give me some specifics?”
Astrid raised her index finger. “First, we shift our lodgings to somewhere close to the mansion. We can look for a place we can observe them from. Next...”
Emily was shocked at the speed Astrid drew up such a meticulous plan. She said as much to Astrid, only for her to reply:
“Well, I guessed something like this might happen.”