Temporary Maid (Former Hero) (2)
Eve’s first duty as the temporary maid of the Termin household was preparing breakfast.
Breakfast was the engine that let a person start the day. Back when she had helped her parents tend the flocks, Eve had learned that lesson well. Even during her years as the Hero, when nights spent under the open sky were common, she had always made sure to eat something in the morning. The actual cooking, of course, had been left to the other party members.
“W-will it really be all right if I… if I cook?”
The reason Eve had never cooked for the Hero’s party was simple: she was catastrophically bad at it. The party had been a gathering of the absolute best in their fields, people who had never known failure, whose talents shone so brilliantly they seemed almost divine. That was the Hero’s party.
And the first cosmic horror those peerless geniuses ever encountered was the Hero’s cooking.
One bite of her food and the mage had foamed at the mouth and collapsed on the spot. The archer’s arms had gone completely numb for three days, rendering her unable to draw a bow. The Saintess had, for a single horrified moment, questioned the existence of the god who had bestowed the Holy Sword upon someone capable of producing such a meal. The only one who managed to stay upright was Gid, the warrior and Eve’s younger brother—he had been exposed to her cooking since childhood. Watching him survive, the archer had seriously wondered whether Gid’s monstrously sturdy body had evolved solely so he could endure Eve’s cooking and live.
Even he, however, had gone deathly pale. The Hero’s cooking possessed a destructive power that defied all reason. After that single attempt, a cooking ban had been issued against the Hero, and the rule had been enforced with iron discipline until the day the party disbanded.
And now, in this small, precious baronial house of Termin, that ban had been lifted.
“N-no. I can do this. R-right now I’m a maid. The only person who can cook in this mansion… is me.”
Eve had zero confidence in her culinary skills, yet she refused to give up. She was wearing a maid uniform, after all. People who wore maid uniforms were people who could cook. Of course, the truth was the opposite—maids wore the uniform because they already knew how to cook. Putting one on did not magically grant skill. But that sort of fact meant nothing to Eve. What mattered was that Offen, the man who had saved her life, had entrusted her with a maid’s duties.
“A-and look—there’s a cookbook right here. If I just follow it… th-there won’t be any problem at all.”
She was dressed as a maid, and in her hands she held the cookbook left behind by the previous head maid.
“L-let’s do this! The reason it failed last time was because the ingredients were monster meat…! Th-this time I’m using ordinary ingredients…!”
The ingredients waiting for her were nothing more than common vegetables and eggs—utterly ordinary, utterly safe. There was no reason she should fail as spectacularly as she had the first time she cooked for the Hero’s party. Confidence surged through her.
“H-here I go…!”
Just as she had once drawn the Holy Sword to vanquish evil, Eve gripped a kitchen knife and began to cook.
“······.”
“What… is this?”
“I-it’s breakfast.”
“Ah… I see. That explains why it’s sitting on a plate. And this pitch-black thing?”
“A-an omelet….”
“An omelet······.”
Offen stared down at the “omelet” resting on the desk of the family head’s office and sank into deep thought. An omelet was supposed to be yellow and soft. The object before him was black, hard… no, it looked distinctly spiky.
Skreeeeech!
When he carefully scraped one of the jagged edges with a spoon, sparks flew and the spoon turned black.
“Hmm.”
As if reaching some private decision, Offen nodded, then looked at Eve.
“Lady Eve, I’ll take my time eating this. Please go about your other duties.”
It was a firm dismissal.
“Y-yesss······.”
“Ah, and one more thing. I’ll make the porridge for Rina myself. You don’t need to bother.”
“······Y-yes. I-I’m so sorry······.”
From the moment she had carried the plate of “omelet” into the office until now, Eve had been unable to lift her head. She answered in a voice that barely escaped her throat. Even as she left, she kept her gaze fixed on the floor.
Her first duty—cooking—had been a complete disaster.
Eve’s second duty as temporary maid was cleaning.
Thoroughly cleaning every corner of the mansion was a task that even Rina, the head maid, found exhausting. Under normal circumstances Rina limited herself to mopping, sweeping, and dusting; that was enough to keep the place presentable. Eve, however, had no intention of settling for “enough.”
“C-cleaning… cleaning, at least… I have to do properly.”
Her first task had failed so spectacularly, so utterly, that she was determined to make up for it. She would clean the Termin mansion until not a single speck of dust remained.
“Here I go······.”
With the same resolve she had once carried into the highest tower of the Demon King’s castle to face the Demon King alone, Eve began to clean. The duster clenched in her fist danced like the Holy Sword itself.
Thud.
“Haa… haa······.”
Eve dropped to one knee in the hallway, gasping for breath. Her entire body was soaked with sweat; strength had drained from her limbs until she could barely stay upright. Under ordinary circumstances a single round of cleaning would never have left her this exhausted. She wouldn’t even have broken a sweat. She was the Hero, a superhuman who had transcended ordinary limits.
Yet right now she was utterly spent. She had poured every last scrap of her power into the work—enough to leave even the Hero’s body and spirit this drained.
“I… I did it······.”
The result of that all-out effort was a mansion that looked brand-new. Not only the interior—every roof tile and every inch of the outer walls had been scrubbed free of stain or dust. The fruit of her total commitment was unmistakable.
Click.
“Hm? Lady Eve? What are you doing out here······.”
Offen, stepping outside for a breath of air, opened the door and found Eve kneeling in the corridor, still panting hard.
“Oh? Did… did you do all this, Lady Eve?”
Then he saw the interior of the mansion, cleaned to perfection. The windows gleamed so brightly a fly would have slipped right off them; the floors were polished dry without a single drop of moisture left behind. Everything in sight was flawless.
“Y-yeshee. I… I worked really hard······.”
Eve answered while Offen stood with his mouth half open, gazing around the hallway in open admiration.
“I see.”
He smiled softly and walked over to her.
“You did an outstanding job. Even our Rina couldn’t clean this thoroughly. Truly impressive, Lady Eve.”
With genuine praise he gently ruffled her golden hair.
“······Eh.”
The moment his soft hand stroked her head, Eve froze solid. Aside from her parents when she was little, no one had ever patted her hair. The Hero was an object of reverence and longing for all; she was the one who patted others, never the one who received it. The unexpected touch left her completely rigid with surprise.
“······Ah.”
Seeing her stiff reaction, Offen realized his mistake and hastily pulled his hand away.
“I-I’m sorry, Lady Eve. I did it out of habit—the same way I always do with Rina.”
He bowed his head in apology.
“Thank you so much for the cleaning. But from now on, please don’t push yourself this hard. Work is something you should do without wrecking your body. Well then, I… I-I’ll be going.”
He blurted the words in a rush and fled the scene. Eve stared blankly after him—this was the first time she had seen him flustered since arriving in Termin Territory—then couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Pfft.”
A small laugh escaped her. Offen Termin was, in every possible way, a strange and fascinating man.
After the spectacular cooking failure and the triumphant cleaning success, the rest of her duties passed without incident. Drawing on her old experience as a shepherdess, Eve handled the laundry with practiced ease. In the office there was almost nothing for her to do. The earlier head-patting incident left the atmosphere a little awkward, but watching Offen keep sneaking glances at her while he worked was surprisingly entertaining, and the hours slipped by quickly.
······It’s peaceful.
Termin Territory was an almost absurdly calm and comfortable place. It felt as though the territory had been cut off from the rest of the world that was sliding toward ruin because of the Great Rifts. That leisure existed solely because of the man sitting in front of her—Offen Termin. Whatever method he had used to destroy the Abyss of the Army, it had bought them this peace.
Baron Offen… he’s such a strange person.
Eve lifted her eyes from the book in her hands and looked at him. In the two days she had known him he had shown himself to be kind, unhurried, courageous, and seemingly flawless—yet full of unexpected gaps. The way he had ruffled her hair out of habit and then bolted in panic was funnier the more she thought about it.
In just two days I’ve already seen so many sides of him. If I stay here longer, I’ll get to see even more.
Offen was someone she wanted to keep learning about.
I wonder what he’ll show me next. I’m looking forward to it.
When he had first asked her to become a maid, she had wondered, Why a maid, of all things? Even now that question had not been fully answered. Employing one of humanity’s strongest Heroes as a mere maid was completely outside the bounds of common sense. But the unanswered question no longer carried any suspicion. Working as a maid of the Termin mansion—failing, succeeding, being praised—had not been bad at all. No, it had been very good.
I want to keep living like this.
Eve found herself thinking that life as a maid might not be so bad. Sitting quietly in the sunlit office with Offen, reading a book while birds occasionally sang outside—everything about the moment felt wonderfully gentle.
Three days passed that way.
And the exhausted head maid, Rina, finally recovered her strength.