A Jewel of a Young Master
"Haa... I really don't wanna do this shit..."
Once the grueling housework was finished, I let out a heavy sigh and collapsed onto the bed. The same day, over and over.
I rose before the sun to prepare breakfast, swept the dust from the corridors and the study, gathered the laundry, washed it clean, and hung it on the line. Then I prepared another meal, and whatever time was left I took up a broom and swept the garden ground.
Keep at chores like that and bedtime arrives before you know it. I washed, ironed the maid uniform, and turned in later than anyone else in the estate, only to get up earliest of all and start the work again. That was the routine. A month of it, and even this had grown familiar.
Ruina, fresh from the communal bath, hauled me upright with worried eyes.
"...Aris! You have to wash before you lie down! If you don't bathe, or if your uniform's wrinkled, the Head Maid will scold you again...!"
"I don't feel like washing today..."
"Oh, honestly... Then at least take the uniform off. I'll iron it for you, just for today."
"Ehehe... Ruina, you angel... and your tits are huge, too..."
I crawled over to her and buried my face in her chest. It reminded me of my mother, so I nuzzled my cheek against her out of habit.
Just then the door flew open and Kali came in, dressed in something thin, a kiss mark standing out on her neck and an expensive-looking jeweled bracelet jingling at her wrist.
"Hehe... Aris. Heard you got scolded by the Head Maid again today?"
"You were in the second young master's room again?"
"No, he just kept calling for me... I'm telling you, it's such a pain."
She went on about how tiresome it was, but the corners of her mouth were curled up.
"Look at this! The young master gave it to me as a gift. Pretty, isn't it? He said it's worth at least one gold, no less!"
Kali shrugged as if she were showing it off. From the moment she'd arrived, she had set out to catch his eye on purpose, flashing her legs, undoing buttons so her cleavage showed, anything to draw the young master's attention.
"What's the second young master like? He doesn't talk down to you, or push you around...?"
Ruina looked at Kali with worried eyes. She'd come from the house next door and arrived already knowing more about this family's affairs, which only seemed to make her worry worse.
"Well... honestly, I'm not all that into him... but he's a noble, right? And I don't have to do any hard work. I just smile beside him all day, so it's easy, isn't it?"
Kali unclasped the bracelet from her wrist, tucked it deep into her drawer, and smiled.
"And it's pocket money, too."
"Haa... Do this damn laundry every single day and it still keeps piling up..."
I was walking with both arms full of washing when I caught sight of Kali and the young master far off in the garden.
"What, Kali, you don't like the bracelet I gave you yesterday? Want me to buy you a different one?"
A sleazy-looking man sat on the garden bench, carrying himself like some cheap thug. Oliver de Arbana, twenty this year. Blond hair, purple eyes, and yet his front teeth jutted out until he looked like a rodent, and those narrow, slit eyes made the whole face mean and sly. The second young master of this estate.
"Oh, you mean it?! I love that! Our young master is the best...!"
At Oliver's promise of a new bracelet, Kali bounced in place and planted kiss after kiss on his cheek. Oliver grabbed her ass with one hand and laughed, loud and pleased with himself. He kneaded her without a care for whether anyone was watching, and my face twisted on its own.
A man like that would fall for a vixen's tricks like Kali's without a second thought. How many men in the full flush of twenty would turn away a woman clinging to them, calling them the best, telling them she loved them? And Oliver was a noble, on top of that. For someone like him, the sweet temptation of a young, pretty maid named Kali would be hard to refuse.
"He looks so fucking weird..."
The average face in this world was better-looking than in my previous life, so an ugly bastard like Oliver was the first I'd seen since I started living here. I'd never studied physiognomy, but by my half-assed face-reading, Oliver had the sort of face you were meant to stay well away from.
I swallowed a wave of nausea at the sight of Kali kissing him over and over, and went on to do the laundry.
Another month passed.
"Haa..."
Before bed, Kali sat in the room heaving sigh after sigh.
"What's wrong? Something happen with Young Master Oliver?"
At that, she launched in as if she'd been waiting.
"No... I don't think Young Master Oliver's been looking for me lately... He used to call me every day and give me gifts all the time, but recently he hasn't even given me a single coin..."
Oliver, to put it bluntly, was a wastrel of a noble. Even while he was seeing Kali, rumors had reached me that he'd put his hands on plenty of other maids. Kali had done her best to ignore them.
"Lately it seems like he's seeing other girls besides me..."
She said it with tears welling in her eyes.
"Young Master Oliver... he even said he'd marry me next year..."
Watching Kali, always so sure of herself, spill tears didn't feel good.
"Young Master Oliver's always been a piece of trash, though..."
"What do you even know about Young Master Oliver to talk like that...?! A maid, and you say that kind of thing about the young master...!"
Kali glared at me, seething.
I take that back. Seeing Kali cry felt good. No. It felt satisfying. Every time I'd had to listen to stories about Oliver I didn't want to hear, or about the gifts, it had been nothing but noise. So this was just fine.
"Hmph... Ignoring me, is he...? Then he can feel exactly what that's like...! Starting tomorrow, I'm not going to him either!"
And so, the next day, Kali didn't attend Oliver in the morning the way she always had. Of course, not going to him didn't mean she actually did any work.
"Hey... if you're not attending him, shouldn't you at least be working?"
I said it to Kali, who stood with her arms folded, watching the rest of us work.
"Yeah...! And you're a maid, same as us..."
At my words, the maids who had only been glancing at Kali nodded in agreement.
"Ha! You think I'm the same as ordinary maids like you? I'm the one who's going to be the mistress of this estate!"
At that, the maids dropped their eyes and went back to work. Oliver was the second son, but everyone assumed he would be the next head of the house. There was a first young master, yet he spent every day shut in his room doing nothing but read, so even the maids had never laid eyes on him. Worse, according to the maids who had gone to his room to deliver his meals, he was ugly, fat, and reeked... Even I, two months into working at the estate, had never seen the first young master.
"What. Kali, you were in here?"
Just then the door banged open and Oliver came in. The rest of us stopped what we were doing, rose, and bowed our heads, but Kali kept her arms crossed and whipped her face away.
"Kali. You mad? Sulking because I haven't been paying you any attention lately?"
"Hmph. I wouldn't know."
"Kali, I couldn't even get up properly this morning with you not there... Come on, don't be mad, yeah? Here. I got this because I thought you'd like it."
Deciding words wouldn't be enough, Oliver drew an expensive-looking necklace from inside his coat and stepped toward her. Kali kept up the act of being angry, but she stole a sideways glance at the necklace resting in his hand, then subtly leaned his way.
"Kehehe. Cute, I'll give you that..."
Oliver pulled her into his arms and groped her ass.
"Aahng! Young maaaster...!"
She pretended she hated it even as she nestled into his embrace.
"From tomorrow, you come in the morning again. Got it? Hm? Without you there..."
Oliver, kissing Kali and coaxing her, met my eyes, then grinned and kept blowing kisses my way. A chill crawled over my skin.
"Well... I've got something to do in the study tonight, so I won't be able to sleep with you, Kali..."
I knew exactly what he meant. Tonight. Spend the night in the study. Kali, held against him, didn't catch it, but Oliver had been staring straight into my eyes for a while now, licking his lips.
"...Shall we go, pretty thing? I'm done with my business here... let's go eat some sweet cookies!"
And with that, Oliver left the room with Kali in his arms.
"...Fuck."
I dropped to the floor and despaired.
A noble's order. Ignore a command from Oliver, second son of this estate's master, and a mere maid like me would be rolled up in a carpet, beaten, and thrown out of the house. Even if I was lucky enough to keep my life, the flogging could pulp my ass until I leaked piss and shit for the rest of my days, or leave me hobbling forever.
Was this how I was going to lose my virginity?
To a wastrel young master, no less.
No. I don't want it. I really, really don't.
Held by a man...
For a moment I wondered if taking the beating would be better, but no matter how I turned it over, a life of leaking shit or limping along was exhausting just to imagine.
"...I have to find a way."
A way for a maid like me to defy a noble's order and still survive. There was only one.
I excused myself, saying I wasn't feeling well, and slipped away. Then I went into the Back Garden, where no one ever came, so neglected that the weeds grew thick, and looked for a large stone. A chunk of rock the size of my head.
"Hoo... hoo... I can do this..."
I set one foot on the bench and stretched the leg out straight. Then I hoisted the great stone up over my head.
"Fuck... fuck..."
Even a wastrel young master wouldn't take a maid to bed with a shattered leg.