“Sir, please pay attention to the ledger, not the girls.”
With that, Mia shut the door, and I was left in a staring contest with the ledger before me. I passed my gaze over the wall of numbers as the sound of two girls chatting leaked out from the adjacent room.
Right now, in that very room, the princess was getting changed. I felt like I was about to imagine what was beneath that white dress of hers, and buried my face into the ledger. And at that moment, I heard the door opening.
“U-Um, Ricardo? How do I look?”
I timidly raised my face from the ledger, and found a girl standing there with an entirely different sort of destructive power from before.
At a glance, it was the simple dark gray dress that employees of most any mercantile house wore. The skirt was a little shorter than what she had on before, and she wore a white apron over top of it. The apron had small frills on its contours, but overall it was a completely normal outfit.
The gap from her usual attire is already pretty dangerous, and yet she also milled about in confusion at the clothes she wasn’t used to wearing. Her blue eyes shook with a lack of confidence, and she picked at her skirt idly while looking down at her chest.
“What’s the matter, sir?”
Mia was standing there wearing a matching outfit, questioning me even though it was clear as day that she knew the answer. But I’m not some stupid kid who would blurt, “Hey, you’re streaking!” at the naked king. Sometimes the truth is cruel. And the truth spoken by the weak isn’t only sometimes cruel, it pretty much always is. To the speaker, at least.
“...It suits you very well.”
But I guess in this case, flattery and the truth happen to be the same thing.
“I’m glad you think so.”
Even though it should have been tremendously rude to say that a commoner’s outfit suits her, Alfina put her hands to her cheek and smiled.
“So once more, please do take care of me, umm... Master Ricardo?”
““Just Ricardo is fine.””
Both Mia and I replied instantly. Any bigger a gap will be a matter of life and death for me.
✦ ✦ ✦
Three days have passed since we got our new part-time worker. According to Mia, she’s more thorough at her work than I am, apparently.
I stood in the kitchen while cutting some bread and took a look at how the two of them were doing. The princess was currently wiping down a shelf with a cloth under Mia’s supervision. It was a scene that made a cold shiver run down my spine. If this was a horror movie, I’d be running away barefoot. Fortunately, ever since that one time, a poltergeist-like phenomenon had yet to occur.
Anyway, I’ve really gotten used to seeing her after three days. She’s going by the name Fina while working here, just like she did in Reylia. And seeing how she was at work, nobody would even believe me if I joked around and said she was actually Princess Alfina. Once accustomed to it, humans are capable of growing used to being around danger.
I’m especially worried about Mia’s future though, after watching her pass her finger over the cleaned shelf and saying, “It’s still dirty.” I really felt like labeling her as a naggy sister-in-law, but somehow managed to stop myself. That sort of character stereotype exists here as well, so it’s pretty obvious what kind of hell I’d be in for if she heard me.
Setting that aside, there’s a need for me to participate in Alfina’s education starting today. What I’m cooking up is the visual material I’ll be using for just that purpose. This is my trump card for regaining my dignity as the senior employee.
Back when I was a student, I fell in love with this stuff just eating it cold. I would always pick some up at the convenience store while getting anything else I needed during my job hunting. And here, I have a special recipe for making it, even with the equipment and ingredients widely available in this world.
“Setting aside the milk and eggs, you’re also using honey...? Won’t it be too sweet, sir?”
And as I got to work with what equipment we had in the kitchen, which was, far and beyond, magnitudes more inconvenient than what I had in my tiny one-room apartment, Mia came over next to me and stared at what I was doing. She was supposed to be supervising Alfina, but it seemed she’d grown curious.
“We managed to get the fresh milk and eggs from your friend, and we’ve got more than enough honey to sell. You like sweets too, don’t you?”
“Whatever.”
Mia huffed and looked to the side, then went back to supervising her junior.
“I’m sure her mood will improve after eating this.”
The smell of butter being heated in the frying pan began drifting in the air. I picked up the elliptical frying pan, now caked in yellow. I had freshly baked bread from our neighbors, still hot from the oven, cut up into thick pieces next to me. After poking a few holes in it with a fork, I dipped it into the liquid seasoning. I cast the bread into the frying pan, and the pleasant sound of crackling filled the air, along with the irresistible scent of honey and butter. The chatting of the two girls behind me came to an immediate stop.
“It’s about time we took a break.”
“A break? What manner of work is that?”
For some reason, the princess was saying something that an exploited employee of a sweatshop would probably say.
“A break is preparations we make for the toils to come... Just kidding. Unusually enough, Ricardo looks like he’s getting ready to reward his employees. It seems to be some sort of special confection I haven’t seen before.”
“Oh my, I’m looking forward to it.”
My dear secretary raised the hurdle for this snack I was making just so we could have a break. Anyway, I’ll prove to her that the Weinder Company isn’t a sweatshop.