It would be a good ten minutes before she felt satisfied. After fully savoring the sensation, she crawled out of Renya’s bed, made a half-hearted attempt to straighten out her clothes, and left the room.
The first thing Frau had to do was go to all the non-occupied rooms in the house and open all the curtains. This allowed the light outside to enter, functioning as a signal for all those things that lurked in dark crevices and shadowy corners of the house. It told them that their job was done, at which point they would wearily retreat back into the basement after a good night’s work.
Frau had instructed them not to be seen by the house’s residents. To drive the point home, she appended a clause: she would see to it that those who were seen would face swift and absolute annihilation. Normally, fairies couldn’t do things like that. Frau wasn’t sure why she could. She vaguely figured it probably had something to do with the fact that she had been gobbling up half-materialized evil spirits and the like before Renya showed up. Maybe that had altered her nature as a fairy. It didn’t bother her, though. Whatever the reason, if it allowed her to be of use to Renya, Shion, and Rona, then it was fine.
Next, she went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Renya took turns with her making lunch and dinner, but she usually handled all the breakfasts. Today’s menu consisted of soft, fluffy bread and crisp, crunchy bacon with a side of fried eggs. The bread was made in-house, using a method that involved yeast she had learned from Renya. Bread normally sold in bakeries was stiff and not to Renya’s liking.
She then took leafy greens, dried and resoaked in water, and mixed them with thin slices of forest octopus arms to make a salad. Then, she took a sour dressing of primarily vinegar and added it to a mashed paste made by steaming a round vegetable Renya called “the potato-y thing.” Finally, there was the usual meat and vegetable stew, seasoned with salt and well-boiled. To this, she added milk, making a thick, creamy soup that rounded off their breakfast. Recipes were all courtesy of Renya.
At times, she had tried asking Shion and Rona for recipes, only to be shown a most uninspired collection of either roasted or boiled items. Seasoning was binary: either salt or sugar. Frau soon decided that she’d rather not use the recipes from the girls.
Once breakfast was ready, her next job was to wake up the residents. Renya was easy. She only needed to glance at him a little threateningly to make him fly hysterically out of bed.
“Hey, uh… Can we talk about how you wake me up every day? This isn’t good for my nerves…”
“Frau is really sorry, but this is the easiest way. It works like a charm every time,” she said with a quick bow, leaving Renya with no choice but to scratch his head in concession.
Once she told Renya that breakfast was ready, she produced a small piece of ice in her hand and moved to Shion’s room. After opening the door, she walked over to Shion’s bed, where she lay sleeping. The usual knot at the back of her head was gone, and her lustrous black hair spread freely across the bed. The knot must have gotten in the way when she slept.
Shion did not rise easily. Frau pulled down Shion’s blanket a little, revealing the nightwear around her chest. She slipped the piece of ice right into the cleft and left the room without a second glance. Behind her, the screaming began. She paid no attention; it was a daily occurrence.
One room remained. Frau found that she wasn’t very fond of dealing with the voluptuous beauty inside. She entered to find Rona sprawled carelessly on the bed wearing a translucent nightgown. Her blanket was entirely displaced. The temperature in the house was usually controlled through magecraft, so it was never so cold that a blanket was necessary for slumber. Frau was in charge of keeping each room comfortable, but there were times when she felt a strong urge to drop the temperature a few dozen degrees in this room.
Rona’s extravagant proportions might give off the impression that she was a tad plump, but that would be untrue. She was better described as “full.” There was a certain part of her body that was fuller than most others, and every time Frau saw them, she secretly uttered a curse for them to get ripped off. Once, she cursed a little too seriously and one of things in the basement actually showed up to carry out her command. Ever since then, she had tempered the strength of her cursing. She still cursed, though. Who could look at those and not?
“Miss Rona, rise and shine!”
Compared to the other two, Rona was a good riser. She woke up as soon as Frau spoke. That was one thing Frau appreciated.
“Mmm… Haa…”
Rona yawned as she opened her eyes. It was needlessly seductive. More secret cursing ensued as Frau maintained a perfectly charming smile. Words such as “fall off” and “sag” never left her lips.
“Miss Rona, it’s morning.”
“Mmm… Good morning, Frau. I’m getting some chills… Did you lower the temperature?”
“Nn-nn, it’s the same as always. Miss Rona is just wearing too little.”
Make them fall off? Make them sag? asked the basement things. She would if she could, but she had to say no. Renya would chop her to bits.
“Breakfast is ready.”
“Thanks. I’ll be there soon,” answered Rona before she murmured something about “chills” and “weird.” Frau left her alone with her thoughts and moved on to the next task.
Laundry was done in the bathroom. All of the residents’ clothes needed to be washed. For Frau, though, this was a trivial matter. By using the Control spell, the process was nearly automatic. The process of doing laundry for her was more or less subconscious, so she could go clean up the kitchen in the meantime. By the time she returned all the dishes to the cupboard, all the clothes had already found their place on the racks in the garden, hanging beside a number of blankets and mattress covers that Frau had stripped away from the beds.
Renya and the girls were rarely home during the day. They were usually doing guild missions, involving such trifling matters as collecting raw materials and hunting weak monsters. Their period of absence, however, was also when Frau got down to business. This was her serious time.