The Eldest Young Master's Personal Maid (2)
Skin lumpy and riddled with acne. His face and fingers were so swollen with fat they looked as if someone had stuffed tubes beneath the flesh—ugly enough that you had to wonder whether some sickness was truly to blame.
And yet his hair, at least, gleamed with a healthy luster, swaying at the slightest movement.
"Your hair... it's pretty, though..."
"Mm...? Hah—?! Y-you... you're... Aris?!"
Startled awake by the presence in the room, Damian met my eyes and scrambled up from where he sat, all fluster and panic.
"Good morning, Young Master Damian. From today on, I'll be your personal maid. My name is Aris."
I said it with a bright little smile.
So what if he was ugly. So what if he smelled a bit. He was the one who saved me.
At that smile, Damian flushed scarlet and whipped his head aside.
"You're the one who made me your personal maid, aren't you, Young Master Damian? That way Young Master Oliver can't lay a hand on me whenever he feels like it!"
"Y-yeah. That's right."
Damian nodded.
"..."
"..."
Silence settled over the room.
"Oh! Speaking of which, you use magic, don't you, Young Master Damian!"
I picked up the sheet of paper on the table—the one inscribed with a magic circle—and held it up as I spoke.
"...I can't use magic."
Damian ducked his head and snatched the paper from my hand.
"Ah... I'm sorry..."
At my apology he grew restless all over again, his hands fluttering uselessly in the air.
"I... I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to get angry. It's just... I'm pathetic..."
"The eldest son of the Arbana family? Pathetic?"
"...What good is being the eldest. I look disgusting... I can't even use magic..."
He crushed the paper in his fist.
Watching him, I couldn't bring myself to offer the usual comfort—that he wasn't disgusting, that he wasn't ugly. Because Damian really was ugly.
"...It's an illness. Me being fat, my skin being like this... even the disgusting smell. All of it is because of Mana Sickness."
Mana Sickness?
When I wore a look that said I'd never heard of it, Damian explained.
"I think I was born unable to release mana. Since I can't let it out, it doesn't circulate, and it rots... and the residue shows up on my body..."
"There's no way to cure it...? With the Arbana family's wealth and connections, I can't imagine there's an illness they couldn't fix..."
The Arbana family lived well away from the capital, but they distributed high-grade fabrics and garments across the whole country, the capital included, and their fortune and connections rivaled those of the highest nobility there. That was also why the slaves of Arbana were treated as well as they were.
"...I looked into it. But it's such a rare illness. There doesn't seem to be a way."
An illness even the Arbana family couldn't cure.
"...More importantly, could you get breakfast ready? I didn't get to eat dinner last night..."
"What? You didn't eat yesterday? Are you feeling unwell?"
"Y-yeah. That's right."
And so I went to fetch Damian's meal.
I pushed open the kitchen door and stepped inside to find the maids laughing and chattering among themselves.
"I need to see to Young Master Damian's meal. Is there anything already prepared?"
At that, the maids who had been talking tilted their heads, then snorted and answered.
"Damian...? Oh, the eldest young master? Why not just take him some scraps of bread and cold soup? He needs to lose weight anyway, heh."
With that, they went right back to laughing and gossiping among themselves.
For a moment I thought I'd misheard. I'd assumed the teasing and the bullying were aimed at me, but listening to them talk about Damian, it was clearly because of him.
"Have you all lost your minds?! What are you going to do if you get punished for this...!"
At my shout, the maids sneered as if it were nothing at all.
"Pfft...! That eldest young master? There's absolutely no way we'd get punished. We always serve him like that, so just take it. Or don't bother feeding him at all..."
"What...? Don't tell me you didn't even give him dinner yesterday...?"
So he hadn't eaten because there was no food. Not because he was sick.
"Well... nothing happens anyway. He just holes up in his room and doesn't do a thing, right? Word's already going around that the next head of the house is Young Master Oliver."
"Even so..."
"Why don't you grab the right rope while you still can? Young Master Damian's a rotten lifeline. Kehehe!"
Powerless or not, a noble was still a noble. The only reason those women were getting away with it wasn't that Damian lacked the power to punish them. It was that he was too kind to bother.
"Hmph. Like I care. Move!"
I shoved aside the maid planted there gossiping, loaded a cart with warm, appetizing dishes of every kind, and swept out of the kitchen.
"Ah...! That's Young Master Oliver's meal...! Hey, Aris!!"
A shout chased me from behind, but I paid it no mind, pushing the cart down the corridor.
"Here! Young Master, please eat!"
"Wh-what is all this..."
Damian stared down at the colorful spread of delicious-looking food laid across his table, eyes gone wide.
"Th-this is really my meal...?"
"Of course it is! Eat before it gets cold!"
I pressed the utensils into his hands as I spoke.
A meal any noble ought to receive as a matter of course, and he was astonished by that alone. How long had he been eating things that barely deserved to be called food?
From what I gathered once I heard the story from the head chef, the maids in charge of Damian's meals had been skimming his portions for themselves and serving him leftovers, or food meant to be thrown out.
"It's good...! It's so good, Aris...!"
That pitifully kind young master had no idea, and was wolfing the meal down in great hungry bites.
"You'll choke... Please eat slowly."
It felt a little like feeding a pet, and a fond smile tugged at my lips.
"I-if you watch me like that... I can't eat."
The moment Damian's eyes met mine, he flushed and stopped.
"All right. Then I'll step out for a bit. Call me if you need anything."
With that I left the room and leaned against the corridor wall.
"...Aris. Is waiting on Young Master Damian manageable...? He doesn't, like... pounce on you or anything, does he...?"
Once the day's work was done and I was lying in bed, Ruina perched on the edge of mine and looked at me with worried eyes.
"Ah, it's fine. Nothing like that... If anything, it's easier than the work I was doing before."
It really had gotten easier. Before, I'd been on my feet without a moment to breathe, but today I'd spent most of my time doing nothing at all. I ran Damian's little errands and brought him his meals, and the rest of the time I simply sat beside him, spacing out and staring out the window. He hadn't ordered me to do much of anything in the first place, and there was hardly anything worth Ruina's worry. He turned red and looked away the instant our eyes met—there was no way he'd do something like that. On top of it all, my pay had nearly doubled.
The work got easier, and they paid me more.
No wonder the maids all wanted to be someone's personal maid. But Damian had deliberately gone without one until I took the post this time. The reason was obvious enough without asking.
"So tomorrow you'll be waiting on Young Master Damian again..."
The next day.
And the day after that.
Damian stayed shut up in his room.
I wanted to throw the window open because of the stench, but he asked me not to, saying his papers would blow away. I wanted to step outside that very moment and breathe fresh air, but what could I do? A mere maid could hardly tell her master that he smelled.
But I couldn't stand it anymore. If I kept breathing this in, my nose was going to twist sideways.
"...outside."
"Hm? Aris, what did you say?"
"Let's go outside...!!"
I seized Damian's hand and bolted.
With no idea what was happening, he was dragged along in my grip and out of the room.
"A-Aris...! C-can't we go back in...? I was still in the middle of my magic research..."
"N-no!! Going back into that room...! I'll go insane— no!! You ought to get some fresh air too, Young Master!"
At my outburst, Damian started walking down the corridor.
"Whoa... is that the eldest young master...? Why'd he come out of his room?"
"He looks even fatter than before... Does he just sit in there and eat all day?"
As we walked, the servants who caught sight of Damian stared and whispered among themselves. If I could hear them, then so could he. Sure enough, Damian hung his head and looked ready to cry.
I walked all the more boldly and glared at the servants running their mouths. Under that look they made some ugly little noise and scurried off in a hurry.
"U-um... Aris, we really should go back to the room..."
Just then a familiar figure popped out from around the corner of the corridor.
"Huh? You're... from before..."
It was Oliver.
His arm was around the waist of a maid who wasn't Kali.
"Hm? What's that behind you... What! Isn't that the pig?! Why are you out here?"
Abuse, aimed straight at Damian. Even I was shaking with anger.
And the one actually being insulted just kept his head down and laughed like a fool.
"Ah... I was just... taking a walk—"
"Hey. You're that guy's personal maid, right?"
Oliver cut him off, took a step toward me, and spoke.
"Ha... So even a wretch like him wanted a woman at his side, since he calls himself a man too, huh?"
He lifted my chin and looked down at me. Then he flicked his tongue, as if savoring a taste.
"Personal maid or whatever. Come to my bedroom tonight. Or... don't tell me you've already done it with that pig?"
At those words, my fist clenched on its own.
"Well... even if you already have, you're worth it, so I'll make a special exception and take you in."
Saying so, Oliver slid an arm around my waist. Little by little, his face drew closer.
"Ngh...!"
In that instant, Damian stepped in front of me and blocked him.