At the man’s brawny strength she unknowingly hit his hand.
“… !”
His hand fell off easily, as if he didn’t want to hurt her.
“Now, the baby is sleeping! Be quiet…!”
“Baby…?”
As she whispered as lowly as she could, her eyes looked at the violent blond man sleeping in the middle of the lobby, then at the unknown man again.
“… did you give him the medicine? No, I guess not… But no matter how drugged…”
With a confused and gibberish voice he continued.
“Medicine… Where did you find it?”
“What medicine? Anyway, go out first, then we will talk.”
She pushed him away, but the man didn’t budge.
Soon after, the blonde-haired man who fell asleep whimpered and went outside.
“Who is that?”
“Are you acting?”
“Yes?”
“You’re the one who must go out, spy”
“A potato?”*
“Are you pretending to be stupid because you’re going to get caught? I said ‘spy’, no potato.”
The man looked at her with a tired face.
Spy? She couldn’t hide her embarrassment.
She didn’t know who those people were, and she couldn’t escape from there on her own. Why were they calling her spy?
“Am I a spy?”
“Or an assassin.”
“Why am I an assassin!?”, she jumped up in surprise.
To be an assassin, what a scary job…
In the first place, if she were an assassin, whoever her target was, she would have already finished it. Either that guy or the guy sleeping inside.
“Leone-sama is not the kind of person who sleeps so meekly in front of others, even if he uses medicine. At least four doses must be used at once to make him sleep. Did you enter my study? How did you find the medicine? Surely, you didn’t use it after finding something strange that you don’t know what it was?”
His face, which had been talking to himself, turned white.
What could she tell from the pouring words of that puppy… No, wolf… No, anyway, the blond man’s name was Leone, and he was the most powerful person in that place.
It looked like he couldn’t speak properly, but that’s her employer…
What nonsense was that?
“What drug is it? Is it poison?”
Was he called Leone? It was a name she had heard somewhere.
But no specific memories came to her mind. She was just strangely used to it now.
“Shit. Somehow, it seemed different from what I had heard about, so it was a spy.”
Background investigation? Was a background investigation something to do to find a worker?
She was puzzled, but for now an explanation came first. She opened her mouth.
“I really don’t know what you mean but I was so scared. I was sitting with the door locked and suddenly he tried to attack me.”
“But how can you be fine?”
“Because I comforted him.”
“Now even lies… ”
As if all the confusion hadn’t been sorted out, the man’s face was full of disbelief and irritation. He came over and grabbed his arms with brute force.
No matter how strong and intimidating of a knight he was, where was the chivalry…!
His grasped arm was very painful. If she made a mistake, she would only be framed and wouldn’t be able to run away.
It reminded her of all sorts of novels in which nobles fought each other and only extras died. And the spy was the first extra to die among them.
Her imagination branched out to see herself spending her years behind bars or being executed in the middle of a square.
‘Wow. Think about it, Trixie. Think about how to explain it.’
“Calm down and listen to me first.”
“What do we need to talk about? Did the Archduke send you? What was the drug? You will be sued by Imperial law.”
“No, think about it! What is the probability that I can give medicine to ‘that’ Leone with my small body? Just for the sake of it, let’s say I’m an assassin! So shouldn’t I be at least trained? Does it look like there’s a muscle in my arm? I look almost dead”
“A spy doesn’t need brute force unconditionally. You can get poison in your victim’s meal.”
“Then this is even weirder! Where does such a lame spy exist? Does a spy get caught as soon as it walks in? And how can I know what he eats?”
The man seemed to ponder her words for a moment, then he let go of her arm.
No matter how she tried to camouflage the force she didn’t have in her body, he as a knight should know she was telling the truth. Beatrice’s body was really… It looked like it would break if someone hit it.
“… You are not wrong.”
“Yes.”
She touched her tingling arm and glanced at him. Of course when he was not looking at her. As soon as she touched her skin, which was already bruised, the pain rushed in.
“Then. Are you saying you really faced Sir Leone without getting hurt? Did Sir Leone fall asleep in front of you?”
“I was about to get hurt. By the way, he already looked unwell.”
“If you think about time… Maybe you ran into it the moment the drug worked. You must have been lucky.”
‘Am I lucky?’
She was so dumbfounded that almost burst out laughing. Ever since she fell into that world, she had never experienced anything that could be labeled as ‘lucky’.
She didn’t know if she was rather an icon of bad luck.
“Please follow me in.”
The man played drums and then went back into the mansion.
She turned her head and took a look at Gourden, who was sweating profusely in leather clothes. He was smiling awkwardly through his tired face.
“… You have a lot of trouble.”
“Haha… ”
We formed an unspoken consensus.
‘Eat and live, that’s fucking shit, right?’ **
* * *
The place he introduced as his office and study was a hidden space under the central staircase of the mansion.
When she went in and sat down on the sofa, two sheets of paper were handed out to her and she read what was written there.
Thanks to acquiring Beatrice’s knowledge, there was no problem in using the language, so it was easy to read.
“A contract and a confidentiality agreement?”
The content was simple. To not reveal anything she could have seen or heard in that house. In case of leakage, she would be expelled.
It was quite unusual to hand out a contract to a commoner of the lowest class like her. Was it an aristocratic house with a humanistic treatment?
“I haven’t let go of my doubts yet, but since the manpower is urgent, I will write a contract first. However, we will conduct a background investigation again just in case, and if any suspicion arises later, we will deal with it according to the contract. So if you’ve been hiding something, tell me now.”
Instead of answering, she nodded.
“We are all serving Sir Leone. He was docile before, but in fact, he often attacks people. So the existing workers only live in the annex. Even experienced people have a 31 hour work schedule. Twelve of those hours are spent sleeping, eating, and preparing for work.”
“Then is there no one in the main building but me?”
“Me and the zookeeper you saw earlier, Guruden, are taking care of Sir Leone, but… It’s already too much to handle Sir Leone, so the management of the mansion is messed up.”
“I thought 10 gold per day was big, but now I see it was for a reason.”
She said it kindly, but in the end it’s a risk allowance so a large reward was understandable.
“Actually, it doesn’t matter if we pay more than 10 gold. Everyone quits so it’s difficult to maintain a mansion even if we have money.”
“More than that?”
“It’s possible to get bonuses as much as you work.”
It’s still high pay, but what about incentives? She had already met ‘Leone’, the main reason why employees ran away, and even succeeded in communicating with him.
It was scary, but it seemed possible. She never thought that the mentality and experience of a 10-year-old dog owner trained would make a way for her to live.
’10 gold for every day you survive.’
That might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She straightened up and sat down.
‘Okay. As this man said, it’s a lucky situation. Maybe my bad luck will finally go away?’ Her heart skipped a beat.
“The longer the holding period, the higher we can reach an agreement as much as we want.”
The man’s speech accelerated, as if he thought she wanted to negotiate.
“How much?”
“I can give you whatever you ask. Your quality of life will also improve. First of all, we will assign a private room to you.”
“A private room?”
‘It’s a private room… ?’
What kind of crazy aristocrat would give a servant a private room?
“To the employee, that much… ”
“It is because we are desperate. Wouldn’t there be people who would endure only when welfare improves?”
The saliva went down. Following this, overflowing welfare programs such as cooking by top-notch chefs and providing high-quality fragrance oil followed. A really perfect job itself. It felt like a halo shone behind his head.
“Instead of compensating for the price of life, providing risk allowances, and securing welfare, couldn’t we commission a human trafficker to take them and use them and throw them away when they die?”
No matter how humanistic he was, it was very strange that he could be so moral in that world where human rights did not exist for ordinary people. So she couldn’t stand it and asked a question.
“… Does anyone do something like that?”
The man made a shocked face.
“Ah. Yep.”
The nobles prepared to say that it was easy, but they went in.
He had a serious face, as if he had been really hurt.
“Do something like that… You can’t. It’s not good for Sir Leone’s feelings either.”
‘How does it feel to be the father of a grown-up young man at such a young age?’
“I am not asking for much. You don’t even have to manage it perfectly. We need someone to do the dusting. Did you just see it? How serious the condition of this house is.”
“No. It wasn’t that serious.”
“It’s serious.”
“Yep.”
After the firm answer, she examined the document.
Considering how Leona and Deoksoon had been tamed, it didn’t seem impossible to escape safely like today. Although her body was slender and small, she was meticulous and had sharp hands, so she was quite suitable for the job of a servant.
Her employer’s expectations of her were low and her benefits high. In addition, the reward was a whopping 10 gold. She wondered if the money she had saved little by little for half a year, most of which had been taken away by Jamie, would be ten shillings.
“To be honest, I can’t guarantee that something like today won’t happen again.”
The man kept his eyes on her as if observing her reaction, and continued to add.
“So in that case…”
“I will accept.”
“Yes? The explanation is not over yet.”
“Without hearing anything more, I’ll do it. I’ll sign this thing.”
She couldn’t hear anything else. The word perfect was not enough. It’s heaven, there.
This was where her lifelong job will be.
—————————————————————
Translator Note:
* In that dialogue, ‘potato’ and ‘spy’ are writed in a very similar way.
** She mean ‘the things we do to be able to eat and live’
Hello there! This is RJR, thank you very much for reading!
I hope you liked this chapter. Next one will be relased on Monday December 19.
