Maid Training
After uploading the post, I skimmed through a few of the comments before crawling into bed.
It was already creeping toward two in the morning, and I needed to be ready for tomorrow. Proper commission details wouldn’t appear until the next day anyway, so there was no point waiting around any longer. More importantly, I still needed the administrator’s response.
No matter how thoroughly I used my hacking skills to block post deletions or thrash about in resistance, using Leviathan’s services ultimately required the admin’s cooperation. In other words, I had to persuade them.
That was why I had left a separate message, though I was already starting to regret it a little. Hacking a site and then politely asking for understanding? Unless the admin side was some kind of living saint—or had an agenda of their own—there was no way they would simply leave me alone.
If things go south, I’ll just jump to another site.
And if I revealed there that I was the one who had hacked Leviathan, that alone could build me a decent reputation.
With those future plans swirling in my head, I closed my eyes—and suddenly it was morning.
“Huh…?”
Six forty-five a.m., to be exact. Breakfast ran until seven. After that came the newly scheduled one-on-one session with the head maid. In short, I was screwed.
Drawing on the quick movements drilled into me during military service, I changed clothes, washed up, and bolted for the kitchen. Half a dozen maids were already washing the leftover dishes.
“Hah… hah…”
“Oh my, you’re finally here?”
“What should we do? Breakfast time is already over.”
Only five minutes remained. There was no time left to cook anything.
“Um… where is the head maid?”
“The head maid? She’s probably in the first-floor night-duty room.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. You’re working so hard first thing in the morning. At your age I was still clinging to my mother and acting spoiled…”
“Haha…”
Leaving the dishwashing maids behind, I opened the door to the night-duty room. The fragrant aroma of coffee immediately teased my nose. Following the scent, I found a bespectacled woman sitting ramrod-straight, reading a book.
“Um… excuse me…?”
“Six fifty-nine and thirty-seven seconds. Right on time. If you’d been late on the very first day, I would have given you a severe punishment.”
She closed her book, set her glasses on top of it, and rose from her seat.
“My name is Isabella. I serve as head maid of the Wittelsbach family, and from this moment on I will also be the one in charge of your education.”
“Education…”
“First, put this on. You have three minutes.”
“Huh? What?!”
Startled by the sudden order to change, I checked the bag she handed me. Inside was a single outfit of unknown design; I had no idea what purpose it was meant to serve.
“Two minutes left. Are you just going to stand there?”
“I’ll change right away and come out.”
I hurried into the changing room attached to the night-duty quarters.
“Are you finished?”
“…”
“If you’re done, why are you still in there? Come out at once.”
“Uuuugh…”
With careful hands I opened the door and stepped outside.
“Hmm. Not bad for a first attempt.”
It was clearly meant as praise, yet I couldn’t bring myself to feel pure joy. Because the clothes I was wearing were the kind of maid uniform I had only ever seen in fiction.
This… this feels way too weird…
Black fabric accented with white frills and an apron. If someone had shown my previous-life self this sight and claimed it was my future, I never would have believed them.
“Why… why am I wearing this…?”
“Starting today you will learn the proper conduct and household skills expected of a maid. The schedule will be demanding, but appropriate compensation has been arranged, so give it your best.”
“Compensation?”
Isabella flipped open a notebook and showed me the newly drafted contract details.
“The master of the house has declared that your hourly wage will be doubled for the duration of the training.”
Double pay. Training ran from seven in the morning until one in the afternoon—six hours total. At sixty thousand won a day, that came to an extra 1.8 million won a month. No reason to refuse.
“If that explanation is sufficient, follow me. We will begin with the simple tasks.”
“I’ll do my best!”
The head maid nodded in apparent satisfaction at my answer.
“…Where did you learn household work?”
“Pardon? Well… I spent a lot of days alone, so I had no choice but to pick it up.”
Isabella stared at the perfectly folded laundry as if doubting her own eyes. Even among seasoned maids, those who could fold laundry this quickly and flawlessly were rare—yet here was a child who had barely turned five doing it as naturally as breathing.
No uneven edges, perfect angles… To reach this level of skill must have required no small amount of time…
She could not even begin to imagine what kind of environment this child had grown up in.
“Before you came here…”
“Yes?”
“Could you tell me what sort of work you did?”
“Oh, nothing special. Just… this and that…? The nature of the work made it a little awkward to talk about openly…”
Awkward to talk about openly. That almost certainly meant the work had been illegal.
Perhaps she worked the streets, or ran errands for the underworld?
Somehow the child looked pitiful. At an age when she should have been showered with love, she had been sold as a slave and was now living among complete strangers. Isabella could scarcely imagine the hardship.
I should treat her a little more kindly.
Looking back, she had handled the girl exactly the way she handled new adult maids. A young child and a grown adult were never the same, yet she had started straight in with household chores. There was no excuse; it had been a clear mistake.
“Come here.”
“Ah… yes.”
“Seo-hyun, was it?”
Isabella spread her arms and pulled the girl—who only now reached her waist—into an embrace.
“E-ehh—?”
“You already seem thoroughly familiar with household work, so instead I will teach you something more important. The master of the house intends to raise you as Lady Julia’s personal secretary, after all…”
Isabella gathered various documents and books from around the room. From basic arithmetic to history, languages, science, and even military studies—an overwhelming stack of volumes was soon arranged before Seo-hyun’s eyes. Finally Isabella plucked several writing implements from nearby and set them down with a serious expression.
“I will teach you your studies.”
“…Studies…”
“You have heard of heroes who save people from villains and magical beasts, have you not?”
“Yes.”
“Heroes do not simply appear out of nowhere. Of course there are exceptions, but most of them pass through a specialized curriculum at an academy before being reborn as true heroes.”
And among those academies, one stood alone at the absolute top of the world. Isabella paused there and glanced at the wall where the diplomas of successive family heads hung. Dozens of people had held the title of family head, yet every one of those who had done so within the last hundred years shared a single common point.
The blue star—the emblem of the elite, the place every aspiring hero longed to enter.
The logo of Sirius Academy.
“I will prepare you so that you can pass the entrance examination of Sirius Academy, the world’s foremost institution for training heroes. If you work hard enough, you might even become the first person of slave origin ever to be accepted.”
The day’s lessons ended earlier than expected. Partly because it was the first day, but mostly because my abilities far exceeded what Isabella had anticipated.
Still… I never imagined the ‘education’ would turn out to be maid training.
Household chores I finished easily enough, drawing on years of living alone and military life. To me it was nothing special, but in this world I was nothing more than a little girl, so the head maid had been thoroughly astonished. Naturally she had asked where I learned such skills; I was a bit flustered, yet telling the truth—more or less—got me through without trouble.
Well, of course I couldn’t say I worked for the National Intelligence Service. I simply told it like it was.
What truly surprised me was her sudden declaration that she would personally teach me academics. At first she had clearly intended to drill maid etiquette into me; I still didn’t understand why the plan had changed.
Well, it was something I needed anyway.
Math, science, Korean, English—those subjects barely differed from my original world, so I wasn’t worried. History and military studies, however, could have changed completely; I would have to learn them from scratch. The other subjects also needed continuous study so I wouldn’t lose my edge. In that sense I even felt a deep sense of gratitude toward Isabella.
“Hmm-hmm~ I wonder what’s for lunch today~”
For the record, my stomach was in a state of serious emptiness. Oversleeping had forced me to skip breakfast and head straight into training, so I had spent the entire morning thinking only of lunch.
Being a prestigious family has its perks—the food really is excellent.
Even the leftovers from the family’s meals, aside from having cooled a little, were no different from what you would find in a high-end restaurant.
After finishing lunch I had planned a peaceful afternoon nap… but unfortunately Julia spotted me, and so the afternoon was spent in her company as well.
“Wow! Seo-hyun! That outfit is so~ pretty!”
“I-is it?”
“Yeah! You look exactly like the big sisters who take care of our mansion!”
“Haha…”
She had been in lessons all morning—didn’t she ever get tired? Even as the thought crossed my mind, I threw myself wholeheartedly into her games.
Still…
Playing like this… was actually pretty fun.