The Senior Is a House Fairy Brownie
Karem was a reincarnator who had spent ten years living as a serf on the estate.
One day, out of nowhere, he became the personal attendant and exclusive chef of a female mage who had reached the rank of sage, and found himself working at Winterhome.
Naturally, almost no one looked kindly on a mere serf who wasn’t even a low-ranking noble—or a noble’s bastard, or even a commoner—so Karem fully expected to become the target of vicious bullying!
That never happened.
“Phew. I was worried about something, but nothing like what I imagined actually came up.”
Karem himself had braced for harsh hazing and kept his guard up. After all, wherever people gathered in numbers, pointless office politics always thrived. The moment three people came together, they started drawing lines and picking sides—no matter their social class.
Yet there was no such territorial nonsense. Even on the days when Karem visited the main castle every few days, people glanced at him and showed no emotion at all.
After several days of mulling it over, Karem figured out a few reasons.
Catherine’s prestige was far greater than he had assumed. Politics—and competition—were usually reserved for people of matching or higher rank. Most of all, Catherine rarely left the tower she lived in; you could count those outings on one hand. That meant Karem himself had almost no reason to wander the castle either.
As a result, Karem’s only real duty was to take full responsibility for his employer’s three meals a day plus snacks. Freed even from the work of a personal attendant, he spent his free time doing what he loved and pursuing hobbies, living a life every bit as fulfilling as his previous one. Right now he was filling the kitchen with mouth-watering aromas.
Breakfast was seafood chowder—essentially the familiar clam chowder with fish meat added.
He melted butter in a pot, finely chopped celery and onion, and sautéed them until translucent. Then he added diced carrot and parsnip, continuing to cook while seasoning. He poured in the spices he had only dreamed of before—pepper—along with stock for the first boil, then flour and cream for the second. After that he dumped in generous amounts of fish flesh, clam meat, and parsley. Once the protein was cooked through, it was done.
“Man, this might actually taste better than anything I had in my past life.”
But serving only that felt a little plain, so Karem immediately fried up eggs, toasted bread, and sizzled some loin bacon and sausages until they looked irresistible, then added them as well. The balance tipped heavily toward protein, but there were vegetables in the chowder, so it was fine.
He loaded a tray with far more food than one person could eat—easily three servings—and headed for the dining room.
The place where Karem stayed after following Catherine was the Mage’s Tower, the traditional residence of mages employed by the dukes of Iceland. Though it was technically a shared space, right now only three people lived there: Karem, Catherine, and one other.
He nudged open the door of the elegant dining room with his foot. Catherine, lounging on the sofa in a casual linen dress, greeted him brightly.
“Oh, finally. Breakfast is here.”
Correction: she was welcoming the tray of food more than Karem himself.
“You’re slow.”
The woman seated beside her complained.
“My legs are short, so it can’t be helped.”
“Then grow up quickly so your arms and legs get longer.”
“Impossible.”
“Tsk. That’s humans for you.”
Karem gave a salt-level response to the woman—no, the brownie—he had grown used to over the past few days, set the tray in front of Catherine, and sat across from her.
The brownie’s outfit, as if declaring that food itself was blameless, consisted of a black dress that barely revealed her calves and ankles, a white apron that completely covered her shoulders and front, and a white cap. The moment she finished setting the table she began attending to Catherine, while Karem immediately lifted his spoon and dug into the chowder.
Chewy clam meat, tender fish, vegetables soaked in cream, and the thick white broth of the chowder clearly pleased Catherine; she wore a satisfied smile.
“Haah… thick like a stew yet light like a soup—this flavor…”
“Clams came in yesterday so I tried it. Do you like it?”
“Yes. Now I understand why nobles spend so much money hiring chefs.”
Watching them, Mary fixed Karem with an envious glare.
At first Karem had found it unpleasant. Being suddenly hit with jealousy, envy, and verbal abuse for no reason was not something anyone short of a masochist would enjoy. Once he learned the reason, however, the irritation vanished quickly.
She was a fairy—a brownie. A being who loved housework so much she practically adored it, for whom housework was the very meaning of existence.
Outwardly it didn’t show, so until Catherine explained, Karem had simply mistaken her for a maid.
“Kh… After ten years I finally thought I’d gotten a hopeless contractor worth looking after—”
“And who exactly is that hopeless contractor?”
“I never imagined such a powerful rival would appear so soon, even if only in one field—”
“Hey. Are you ignoring your master’s words?”
“And of all things, a little human who hasn’t even come of age!”
Looking at it from her perspective: she had been enjoying a thoroughly satisfying work-and-leisure life when her superior suddenly parachuted someone in. Even if the parachute did the job well, she wasn’t going to look at him kindly.
“Junior Karem. I ask again just in case—you didn’t tidy the kitchen, did you?”
“I only cooked and left, so don’t worry.”
“Are the pots and dishes still exactly where they were?”
“Still covered in food. I didn’t clean a single thing.”
The first time, not knowing any better, he had cleaned up afterward and been met with a murderous stare that nearly gave him a heart attack. After that he decided he was more than happy to leave it alone. After all, the one thing every cook hated was cleanup. If someone offered to do it for him, who would refuse? Karem certainly welcomed it with open arms.
“Hmph. In the end I yielded the cooking, but I will never yield the cleanup.”
“Including the dishes?”
“Of course! Khh… If only my contractor hadn’t taken such a liking to your cooking!”
“Well, if my dishes are fresh and delicious, what’s an employee supposed to do? If I deliberately made them weird—”
“Then I’ll show you just how hard my laundry bat is.”
“See? That’s why I can’t half-ass it.”
“Khh… A mistake of bitter regret—”
Karem’s words weren’t wrong, but Mary saw it: that smug face of his that seemed to say, “If you’ve got a complaint, cook better than me,” while smiling right in her face! Of course that was purely Mary’s prejudice; Karem was simply pleased with the seafood chowder he had made.
“Mm. Crushing the crispy bacon and sprinkling it on top would make it even better.”
“Oh? Making a crumble with bacon?”
Karem nodded at Catherine’s words.
Beside the bowl of rich seafood chowder sat a plate of toast, sausages, and bacon. The bacon was not the long, rectangular kind but an oval slice the size of a palm—what people commonly called loin bacon.
“Not loin like this, but bacon made from pork belly.”
“Bacon from pork belly? Would that even be edible? I can’t picture it.”
“You have to cut it so some lean meat remains. Thin-sliced smoked bacon with a high fat ratio—you cook it a long time until it shatters like a cracker, then sprinkle the crumbs over this. Wouldn’t that taste even better?”
Bacon fried until shatteringly crisp and crumbled made everything better. Big grocery stores even sold powdered bacon separately, after all.
“Hmm. Listening to you, I think I’ve eaten something similar on the continent…”
“Contractor. Do you mean guanciale?”
“Yes, guanciale. The origin was the Kingdom of Serbianus, wasn’t it?”
Karem knew what guanciale was—a type of smoked bacon made from the pig’s jowl or head. Famous chefs insisted on using it for carbonara whenever possible; Romans went crazy for it, or so the stories went. He had never tasted it himself, though. He couldn’t let on that he knew. Catherine still believed he was simply a boy with genius talent for cooking who had lived as a serf for ten years. She had begun to grow a little suspicious, but only a little.
“If the fat and meat form layers and the fat is more than half, it would be pretty similar, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh? The soft texture alone was starting to feel a bit plain, but luckily we have the toast.”
“When the chance comes, shall I place an order with the butcher?”
“That sounds excellent.”
While they chatted, the plates and bowls that had been piled high emptied completely.
After finishing breakfast, Catherine headed straight for her laboratory without a backward glance. The moment Karem reached to clear the dishes, Mary snatched them up like a bird of prey seizing its meal.
“Grrrr! How dare you. This is my job!”
“Whoa, if you’re taking them, I’m grateful.”
“Hmph. Lead the way.”
“Yes.”
As he had said before, Karem had no complaints whatsoever. If someone else wanted to do the boring, annoying work, why refuse?
His reflexive attempt to tidy had simply been habit. His body was comfortable, but he still hadn’t fully adjusted, so it felt a little awkward.
The moment Karem opened the kitchen door, the exact scene he had left behind greeted him: flour scattered across floor and table, vegetable peels and roots left lying about, pans and pots still coated in food, dishes and utensils untouched.
Seeing it, Mary’s face brightened as if she had never been irritable at all, and she darted forward to start cleaning.
Of course Karem had no intention of simply watching.
“Miss Mary.”
“I was just about to enjoy my work. What is it all of a sudden?”
“Eat first, then finish.”
“There’s work right in front of me—food can wait—”
Without waiting for her answer, Karem took a large bowl from the shelf, ladled a generous scoop of still-warm seafood chowder from the pot, and set it on the table.
She pretended otherwise, but her body was honest. Even with Karem’s laughably weak strength she was pulled along as if she had no choice, and she sat right down in front of the bowl. Instinct was honest that way.
“Khh… But the dishes and the vegetable peels—”
“Oh. Since it boiled a bit more, both the flavor and the thickness have deepened. The seafood chowder.”
“Th-that thick!? Exactly how much cream did you put in!?”
“Here—bread and milk I milked fresh this morning. Eat them together.”
Karem’s hobbies were cooking and games. The moment he heard what she was, something had clicked.
Brownie. A house fairy who adored housework.
Trait: went crazy for cream, bread, and milk.
Fortunately, the knowledge from his past life and the common ground seemed to apply to the brownies here as well.
“Hwaaah… This rich cream, the clam stock, and the sharp kick of pepper—”
“Amazing, right?”
“…”
Whip!
When Karem spoke with the nuance of “admit defeat,” Mary turned her head away. Even so, the way she tore bread, dipped it in the soup, and drank the milk made her look exactly like a cat that was sulking yet still wanted the snack.
Attachment
— Chowder —
A picture drawn by ChatGPT.