Civil Servants Don't Have Vacations - 1
His Highness the Crown Prince—the empire's next sun, noble beyond all measure—had personally rebuked those foolish royals, and while I was genuinely moved that he'd said the things I never could, nothing actually changed in any dramatic way.
It was already funny enough that the Crown Prince had come out to greet them and deliver a welcome address only for them to turn around and leave the very next day. And if those three kingdoms' lot had been the sort of people whose internal triangles still functioned properly after a Crown Prince roasted them, they never would have come to the Imperial Capital in the first place.
Those creatures were a new breed of humanity for whom intelligence, social awareness, and conscience could all be temporarily detached whenever anything involved Luise. The Crown Prince's thorough dressing-down? One ear in, the other ear out. The empire had accepted the royals with a show of magnanimity and composure; the Crown Prince could hardly turn around and expel them now.
Bastards, every last one of them.
No matter how tiresome it got, the ruling classes—imperial kin and foreign royalty alike—tended to cut each other quiet little breaks. If a royal from one nation slighted a royal from another and their own nobles started thinking, Huh, royalty isn't so special after all, that was a red light for their entire rule. They might look down on a foreign royal today, but there was no law saying that contempt wouldn't spread to their own house tomorrow.
Which was exactly why those three kingdoms' pests were still living it up on their thrilling vacation in the empire. Real bastards. Status was just legalized thuggery.
"Master, you mustn't move."
"Ah. Right."
I let out a quiet sigh, and a young voice answered from behind me. I straightened my slightly bowed head again, and felt careful hands working through my hair.
I could have just left, honestly, but she was taking forever. It would get mussed the moment I started sparring with the department heads anyway.
"You can ease up a little."
"I can't. If Master's hair looks strange, I get scolded."
I'm the one who looks fine with it.
But from this kid's perspective, the butler and the senior servants she lived with every day were probably far more terrifying than a master who only showed up once in a while.
And I couldn't very well shove away a child who grumbled yet poured her whole heart into the job by telling her it was unnecessary and she should leave at once. No help for it—there was still time before I had to be at work.
"Master, you don't usually take care of this, do you?"
"Do people have to manage their hair?"
"I asked a pointless question, didn't I."
Apparently my answer fell inside the generous bounds of her sense of humor; she let out a small laugh. Children laughed at the smallest things, after all.
I stared blankly into the mirror in front of me until the brown hair of the maid working on my head caught my eye. A young maid with brown hair meant Yuris or Sophia, and the two of them usually stuck together. Was this one Sophia?
"Sophia."
"Ah, Sophia was given other work by the butler."
So you're Yuris. Sorry—you two look too much alike and I got mixed up.
Fortunately she seemed to think I was looking for the absent Sophia rather than addressing her by the wrong name, so I got away with it lightly. I'd come a hair's breadth from becoming the wicked employer who declared, From today, your name is Sophia.
"By the way, Master, what's that?"
"That?"
I closed my mouth, a little embarrassed, and Yuris struck up conversation first. I slid my gaze in the direction she was looking and found a single flowerpot. Ah. That.
"Hawthorn. I received it as a gift."
If I'd left it in the clubroom over break, I was half-convinced the withered hawthorn's vengeful spirit would attach itself to me, so I'd brought it home. And every time I dropped by the clubroom, Irina would stare so fixedly at the pot that I couldn't bring myself to neglect it either.
Hearing the word "gift," Yuris looked at the hawthorn for a moment, then broke into a shy little smile.
"It's pretty. Who gave it to you?"
"One of the girls who came with me—the blonde one."
"Ah. That lady."
Yuris murmured as if she understood, finished with my hair at some point, and stepped back. She kept nodding with a proud face, looking for all the world like she'd just produced the masterpiece of her life by her own standards.
"You can get up now!"
"Right. Thanks."
I patted Yuris's shoulder a few times in thanks; she stared at me blankly. When I carefully shifted my hand to her head instead, her expression finally softened and she grinned.
The other servants tended to freeze up around me, but she and Sophia were so young they were pure sunshine. The first time I saw them they'd been full of scars; they'd grown up well. Keep growing just like this.
I kept stroking her hair for quite a while before I could finally pull my hand away. Every time I tried, she looked up at me with those round little eyes—how was I supposed to ignore that?
"Ah, Master."
"I really have to go now."
"It's not that. There's something I wanted to tell you."
At the sudden remark I turned back to Yuris with the door right in front of my nose. She shouldn't have had anything personal to say to me. When something came up, the butler delivered it himself; he didn't use maids as messengers.
Not being able to guess what she wanted only made me more uneasy. Had some headache I didn't know about already exploded?
"Do you know the flower language of the hawthorn, by any chance?"
Ah. Nothing serious.
"It means tolerance and forgiveness. Since you received it as a gift, I thought you ought to know."
"Thanks for telling me."
"Not at all."
I smiled a little at the sight of Yuris bowing politely as she saw me off. Tolerance and forgiveness, huh.
That was a big gift.
Tolerance and forgiveness, offered to the man who had nearly destroyed her house on a false charge. I had received a truly enormous gift. So that was why Irina had kept testing the waters with presents.
If Yuris hadn't told me, I never would have known. This called for a gift for Yuris as well. She liked desserts, so if I mentioned it to the butler he'd pick out something nice—and if I had him include something for Sophia, who was always glued to her side, she'd like it even more.
Still, I'd never even imagined flower language. I barely knew the names of flowers; how was I supposed to know what they meant? Irina had wildly overestimated my knowledge.
At the sound of Master opening the door and leaving, I straightened up from my bow. So this was what people meant when they said the higher the hope, the deeper the disappointment.
I thought it was Big Sister.
At first I'd been sure the one who'd given him the hawthorn was Penelia. Looking at how she usually was, it was out of the question—but right now Big Sister was wandering around in a maid uniform, calling Master "Master." That alone was enough to let a little hope take root.
But it had only been my private delusion. Right. Of course. There was no way that Penelia would ever make a move that bold.
Idiot.
The feelings Big Sister had carried alone for two whole years. In reality every single person around her except Master had already noticed, yet she still kept them like a secret all by herself. She was such a gallant, wonderful older sister—why did she have to be like this about this?
By contrast, the noble young lady who'd known Master for less than half a year had been aggressively proactive. Good heavens, expressing her heart through flower language. Compared to a certain someone who'd been observing a vow of silence for two years, it was an astonishingly bold step.
One and only love.
My face heated up for no good reason. It might be less embarrassing than saying it out loud, but any way of putting that sort of thing into words was still awkward and mortifying.
I'd almost told Master the real meaning. Courageous love like that made you want to cheer it on. Master, of course, would never have noticed such a careful, shy confession on his own—and in fact he hadn't.
In the end the reason I'd given him a different flower language was that Penelia still weighed on my mind right up to the last second.
I'm sorry.
I offered an apology that would never reach the noble young lady with the pretty blonde hair and blue eyes. I just wanted our Big Sister to end up with Master.
The young lady of House Varenti was already hopelessly head over heels for him, so Big Sister becoming first wife was impossible. No matter that she'd met him first, the difference in status was far too extreme.
If nothing else, if Master had bound himself to Big Sister before the duke's daughter, his personality would have made him put Big Sister first—but that hadn't happened either. And now, in that situation, another noblewoman appeared? Exactly how far back was Big Sister going to be pushed?
I'm really sorry.
So it still wasn't allowed. If Master figured it out on his own there was nothing I could do, but I at least could not increase his competitors with my own mouth. Once Big Sister had her own fruit first, she wouldn't even care whether rivals showed up after that.
The guilt sprouting and growing left me unsettled. No. No, this wasn't my fault. Who told her to give a flower that ambiguous? If the only flower language had been love, I never would have been able to invent another one.
It only happened because she gave him a flower that had other meanings. And Master hadn't even known what flower language was until I told him. Yeah. Not my fault. If anything, it was Master's fault.
I did my best to shake off the guilt and wandered down the corridor. Sophia came out of the kitchen, arms full of sweets, having been helping the chef.
"Master said we should eat these!"
Come to think of it, Master probably wasn't at fault either.
The Crown Prince had said I didn't need to report to the Audit Department every single day, but I should at least show my face once in a while. Yesterday had been all plaza tours and ceremony and general chaos, so I hadn't made it, but today I was going to clear the backlog of approvals and go home. No point putting it off until the fire was already on my foot.
"Congratulations on your vacation!"
Fuck.
Should I just turn around and leave?
The moment I opened the office door I found the First Department Head holding a cake. Why congratulate me on a vacation? Since when did people like us get vacations?
"Congratulations on the first vacation of your entire life!"
A hollow laugh slipped out at the Second Department Head's voice, which put strange emphasis on particular words. Under the one-two punch from the First and Second Department Heads, my resolution not to put off work crumbled in an instant.
I glanced down at the cake. Six candles stood in it, and only one of them was lit. What even was this? A rootless celebration, so of course the candles were rootless too.
Catching my look, the Second Department Head cackled and spoke.
"This is your first vacation, isn't it? From now on we plan to light one more candle with every break."
Was this son of a bitch teabagging me like that?
"When all six are lit, Director, you'll graduate!"
"Hey, the Director never even enrolled."
"Whoops!"
While I clenched and unclenched my fist, trying to calm myself, I spotted the Third Department Head wedged into a corner, avoiding everyone's eyes. Even by the standards of one of the three lunatics, this situation must have looked like a bad idea.
The Deputy Director and the Fifth Department Head weren't even in the office to begin with. The tactic of running away the moment persuasion failed was always valid.
"Third Department Head, wait outside."
"Th-thank you..."
I watched the Third Department Head scuttle out, bowing and scraping, then snatched the cake out of the First Department Head's hands.
That was the day I learned that the cake's whipped cream looked a lot like the First Department Head's white hair, and the sponge looked a lot like the Second Department Head's blond.
