Chapter 18
In the bathroom filled with rising steam, I felt as though I were dreaming.
A stunningly beautiful girl with a cool, icy image—the kind who would have been the center of an idol group in my previous life—entered the bathroom wearing nothing but a single towel to cover herself.
Although the towel covered her private parts, all of Rana's incredible figure was plainly visible to me.
Her breasts, as large and full as Noah's and Sharen's, and her artfully sculpted, curving buttocks,
and her supple thighs, seemingly trained for her secret work as an assassin, were all on full display.
I was genuinely, utterly flustered—more so than I had ever been in my previous life—and shouted like a child.
“Ra! Rana!? What are you doing all of a sudden!?”
“As I just said, I came to scrub your back, my lord.”
“I can do it myself!!”
I enjoyed my baths alone and at my leisure, at least.
In a lord's life, where people were always around me, I wanted to have some time to myself, at least here.
At my words, Rana looked at me expressionlessly, then casually said:
“To be honest, I came here under Her Highness the Princess's orders to seduce you, my lord.”
She actually said that!?
Rana's blunt honesty left me speechless.
What should I do!?
If this continued, I felt as though Rana would devour me.
No, honestly, I'd have no complaints about being eaten by a super-beautiful girl like Rana, but then I'd fall into the princess's schemes, suffer like hell, and for some reason I could see a future where Noah and Sharen killed me.
As I backed away to put some distance between us, Rana tilted her head and spoke with a puzzled expression:
“Could it be… that you find me suspicious, my lord?”
From my reaction, Rana seemed to think I wasn't falling for her advances because I suspected her.
Just as I was about to say yes in response, Rana answered first.
“Please don't worry. I am a virgin, and I am ready to offer my body for you at any time, my lord.”
“That's not the problem!!”
She'd turned me into a scumbag who only wanted virgins!
Rana's mental assault shattered my composure, and I ended up shouting.
At my reaction, Rana looked at me with an even more baffled expression.
Then, after thinking for a moment, she opened her mouth again.
“If that isn't it… surely… do you prefer men, my lord?”
“Of course not!! I am a 100-percent heterosexual who likes women!!”
I lost my composure again and shouted in a burst of emotion.
No! I am a beloved lord. I can't let my poker face crack over something like this!!
Just as I was feeling self-loathing over having shouted twice, the bathroom door suddenly opened again, and the guards rushed in.
“My lord! What happened!?”
“We came running when we heard a loud noise!!!”
In an instant, the bathroom was packed with me, Rana, and the guards.
It was the moment my precious private time was utterly destroyed.
* * *
After sending the guards away and getting dressed, I went to the reception room with Rana, who had dressed as well.
Rana still wore her cool, expressionless face, but perhaps she was a little flustered herself, because her face was slightly red.
“I'm sorry for startling you, my lord. Actual practice is different from the academy, after all.”
“Do they teach things like that at the academy?”
Does the academy teach techniques for washing one's master's back and seducing him?
Rana answered my question without hesitation.
“Yes, they do. I learned them in the Servant Studies Department seven months ago. They brought in a professional prostitute from the capital as a practical instructor and had her demonstrate them for us.”
“Ah… I see.”
I had learned something I really hadn't wanted to know.
Was it really all right for the academy to teach things like that?
Just as I was thinking of all the things I wanted to say, Rana spoke to me with an extremely worried expression:
“Could it be that I'm not your type, my lord? If I'm not your type, I'll tell Lady Lumiel and request another girl.”
“No! You are my type!”
This time, I answered Rana without hesitation.
Rana was exactly my type.
She was the only character I'd ever obtained by hitting the pity ceiling, despite how little I'd spent in my previous life.
At my firm answer, Rana blushed and said, seeming both flustered and pleased:
“Thank you for telling me so clearly. My… self-esteem has recovered a little.”
Now that things seemed somewhat calmer, I told Rana plainly.
To become a beloved lord—and because of personal circumstances from my previous life—I had never forced my servants to perform such sexual acts.
“Let me make this clear first, Rana. I don't make my servants do things like that.”
“I'm sorry, but I don't quite understand, my lord.”
Rana genuinely seemed unable to understand what I meant.
She looked at me seriously and said:
“You are my master, my lord. Her Highness the Princess granted you the right to do anything to me.”
“No, I wasn't given anything like that by the princess. I merely hired a maid with extremely impressive abilities.”
Just as it had been in World Archive—and perhaps as was typical of servants in this era—I did not think of her as a tool.
No person was a tool as long as they were alive.
But simply saying this wasn't enough for her to understand properly, so I decided to try another method.
“You said you could do anything for me, didn't you?”
“Yes, that's right, my lord.”
I stood up.
As I returned to my room, I said:
“Then let's turn in for tonight and go out together tomorrow. There's somewhere I want to go.“
“Understood. I'll prepare for the outing.”
I headed straight to my bedroom, and Rana politely bowed to me in her capacity as a maid.
I had a feeling tomorrow would be a busy day in many ways.
* * *
“My lord… where are we?”
“This is where you'll work during the day from now on.”
The next day, I took Rana there.
Upon seeing the place, Rana made the most flustered expression she'd shown so far… though, to be fair, she'd only been here for two days.
It was 『a school』.
“From now on, teach the children here at Kron School during the daytime on weekdays.”
In World Archive, there was a piece of content called 『Memorial』 that unlocked when you reached a Bond Ranking of 100.
It let me view a side story revealing the inner thoughts of someone whose Bond Ranking had reached 100; naturally, I had viewed Rana's story.
Beneath her cool expression and versatile abilities, Rana was an ordinary girl.
She had dreams of her own and things she wanted to do.
But House Ansus would not allow it.
According to the wishes of House Ansus, a prestigious family of servants, she was raised into the perfect maid and became a source of strength for countless lords across countless routes.
But in none of those routes did she have an ending of her own.
At least in the Memorial story, she revealed a little of her true feelings, and I could never forget it.
When she was young, she had wanted to become a 『teacher』.
“I can't. I have to serve you, my lord.”
She rejected my words outright.
I rejected that rejection.
“This is what it means to serve me.”
I looked toward the school.
I had expanded it a little with my investment, but it still had a long way to go.
The facilities were one thing, but what it lacked most of all was properly trained teachers.
“Kron currently doesn't have enough teachers. No matter how experienced the adults taking on the role are, they can't match teachers who have received a proper education.”
No matter how seasoned and experienced the elders we employed as teachers were, there were limits.
I had heard that they constantly went off on tangents during lessons about how successful they had been back in their day.
We needed someone who had received an advanced education.
“And as it happens, there's one intelligent teacher here who studied at the academy in the capital until recently.”
“My lord…”
“Do you need any further orders from me?”
At my words, Rana sighed as though she had no choice.
Then she looked into my eyes and said:
“Understood. However, I will return to the castle from the afternoon onward to serve you, my lord.”
“All right. So teach the children well from now on, Teacher Rana.”
“You don't need to worry.”
At my words, Rana gave a faint, self-assured smile.
Then, as we walked toward the school, she said to me:
“Because I'm a perfect maid.”
She was definitely smiling at that moment.
* * *
A week had passed since Rana came to Kron.
She felt more confused than ever in her life.
She had come to House Kron's territory in accordance with orders,
and, like her other siblings, she had expected to spend her life serving the lord designated as her master.
She had thought that the virginity she had carefully preserved would be taken from her on the first day, swept away by her lord's lust, just as Sister Ain had told her.
She had even prepared every possible method of contraception just in case, but what awaited her instead was a productive life as a teacher.
During the day, she went to school and taught the children, then returned to the castle in the afternoon and served her lord; that routine continued.
On some days, she spent more time working as a teacher than as a maid.
Even while thinking, ‘Is this really all right?’, she found herself enjoying the moments when she taught the children.
The fact that she could still enjoy something… was utterly astonishing.
‘My heart races when I think of Lord Calix. What could this mean?’
At the academy, she had heard many terrible stories about lords from her upperclassmen.
So she had been certain that if she entered the bathroom naked, Lord Calix would do all sorts of things to her.
She had been prepared for it, but even she couldn't feel good about having her first experience that way.
But Lord Calix had not done that.
He had not called her a tool, and he had allowed her to fulfill a dream from her past that had already begun to fade.
When Rana thought about Lord Calix, her heart fluttered, and for some reason she felt guilty about something she had done to him.
As she prepared for bed, thinking that she should apologize and give him a gift someday… she heard a sound.
Fwoom—
It was an extremely faint ripple of mana.
A mana ripple so faint that even a mage would have difficulty sensing it.
It was the ripple emitted by assassins when they were trying to conceal their mana.
Hiding the ice in her gaze, Rana quietly rose and got dressed.
Then she opened the door without a sound and stepped into the quiet corridor lit by moonlight.
It was time to welcome a guest.