The Childhood Friend's Personal Maid

It's so unfair.

It's not like I wanted to dump tea all over Derek's hand.

Much less did I want to ruin the whole gathering.

Muffled sounds drifted in now and then from the next room.

A personal maid who'd caused a scene and been kicked out of her master's side.

Of course, when we were alone, I didn't treat him like my master at all. I'd call him hey, you, or dude—whatever came to mind. But in public, I was supposed to play the part that made my master look good.

“Phew…”

I sighed and looked at the mirror hanging on the wall.

A maid of perfect beauty met my gaze.

Neatly combed silver hair, pale purple eyes, and features that looked somehow melancholy.

Though her figure was somewhat slender, a bust cushion jutted out beneath her elegant maid uniform, proudly announcing its presence.

I'd been living in this body for four years now.

So after being more or less forced into maid life, I couldn't help but take it somewhat seriously by now.

Besides, my master was my friend, after all.

The most precious friend I had in this place, in this world.

For his sake, my goal was to show the public as much of the image expected of me as possible, so I wouldn't become a stain on his reputation.

The problem was, it never went the way I wanted.

My thoughts turned to Derek, and I looked at the door leading to the next room.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

Exactly three seconds later, the door opened, and the person I'd been thinking of appeared.

I slowly opened my mouth and offered some words of encouragement, telling him he'd worked hard through a difficult task and had it even harder because of me.

“You're back, punk. Big bro's sorry I spilled tea on you at such an important meeting. You're tough as hell, so I doubt you got burned. Cover for me when people start talking shit later, okay?”

As always when he heard something like that, Derek's expression twisted into something bizarre.

What? Isn't that something any real man could say? No?

*************************

Yuria von Lloyd.

Age: 18.

The only daughter of Count Erne von Lloyd, chief steward of the Grand Duchy of Eckhart, and the childhood friend and maid of Derek von Eckhart, the Grand Duke's eldest son.

…That was the identity I'd been playing for four years.

Four years.

I woke up one day in the body of a fourteen-year-old girl. After enduring every humiliation and indignity to my masculinity, I spent four years in another world trying to turn back into a man…

I just became an eighteen-year-old lady.

And in a profession where I had to play a role more feminine than anyone else's.

“Phew, fuck…”

“That was a short sigh. Looks like Pattern Four today.”

“What the hell is Pattern Four? More to the point, you have four of them?”

“Of course I know you. ‘I’m suffering because I stupidly said I’d be a maid,’ right? For the record, I’ve counted twenty-four variations.”

I roughly pulled off my hair ornament and tossed it aside.

Of course, that meant yes.

“Hey, you get your dick cut off and try working in a full maid getup like me. See if you don't start wondering what the hell you're doing with your life. This is seriously not something a man can do.”

“There you go again. You were just blaming yourself for not doing your job properly as a maid.”

He knew me frighteningly well.

The time we'd spent together every day for four years hadn't been for nothing.

As a perfectly normal man, I can say with certainty that playing the maid is a scourge that inflicts massive psychological trauma.

But that's beside the point. I still have to do my job properly.

If I screw up, I'll get criticized, but my friend will too. I don't want that.

In this place, in this world, he's the most precious and important connection I have.

If wearing a short skirt, garter belt, over-the-knee socks, and frilly lace all the time were causing me enough mental anguish to get my friend criticized, that'd be one thing—but that wasn't the problem.

I—or rather, Yuria—had a slight… defect.

Derek came over and poked my right shoulder.

In just 0.1 seconds, an intense electric jolt spread through my upper arm, elbow, forearm, wrist, palm, and fingertips.

“Ugh, hey, what are you doing?”

“See? I told you not to push yourself. Is it acting up again?”

“Calling it an attack makes it sound way too dramatic. It's just a spasm, a spasm.”

For reasons I couldn't understand, Yuria's body had been in terrible shape even before I possessed her.

This is just my guess, but the original Yuria must have died before I possessed her.

Right after I possessed her, I was in so much pain I thought it would kill me.

Fortunately, maybe because it had sucked up the life force of a healthy 185-centimeter-tall, twenty-five-year-old man, Yuria's body recovered at an astonishing pace.

His Lordship Count Erne, the chief steward, had sent his precious only daughter, who'd been frail since childhood, somewhere with clean air and water to recuperate. But the moment she started improving, he promptly dumped her at his workplace without giving her a chance to say a word.

Simply because, in the childhood I can't remember, Yuria and Derek had been childhood friends.

That's the background to why my precious masculinity has been under attack for years.

And as part of my desperate struggle to salvage even a shred of my manhood—which, given the reason I'd have been rated Class 6 for military service, couldn't be rescued through alternative service—I tried to treat the guy I'd been introduced to as my childhood friend as much like a real man as possible.

And that's how we ended up like this.

To other people, we were the perfect heir to the Grand Duchy, close since childhood and accomplished in both letters and arms, and an elegant, lovely maid from a count's family.

But when it was just the two of us, we were like childhood buddies who'd go to a PC café, bomb their League ranked promotion matches, then head out for jokbal and soju.

Of course, sometimes, due to unavoidable physical circumstances… our relationship could get a little ambiguous.

“Ow! Damn, don't press so hard!”

Derek pressed hard on the spot just above my collarbone, the most sensitive part.

Right where the nerves ran.

A jolt of electricity shot down my arm, as if I'd slipped a disc.

At the same time, my right arm jerked up and gave one violent twitch without me realizing it.

“See? If you're not feeling well, you should rest.”

“Hey, even so, how can your big bro take a day off work? I told you, I don't care if they badmouth me, but I hate it when they badmouth you. And it's not just you they're insulting, right? They'll talk shit about our dad too.”

Even though I'd gotten a lot healthier than when I first became Yuria, there were still a few places that hurt and gave me trouble.

The biggest problem was my right shoulder.

Something was wrong with the nerves. It went numb and trembled, so I couldn't use it properly.

Since I'm right-handed and my right arm sometimes refuses to cooperate, I caused enough accidents to earn the nickname ‘Klutz.’

There were already tons of people eyeing the position I occupied: Derek's personal maid.

Derek wouldn't let me go because of our incredibly close friendship, but if I kept causing accidents and failing to do my job, it was obvious they'd talk shit behind my back.

Thanks to memories of my previous life, I hated gossip so much it could give me PTSD. I couldn't avoid it altogether, but it was in my nature to try to cut it down as much as possible.

So even if my arm spasmed now and then and I broke things or spilled stuff everywhere like today, I still needed to handle the basic duties of a maid.

In other words, I did what was expected of a woman when necessary.

But not right now.

“Hey, you bastard, have you lost your mind? Why's your hand creeping down there?”

“Who was it that kept asking me for a massage whenever your shoulder acted up?”

“Fuck, if you seriously think groping a woman's breasts counts as a massage, you might as well jump headfirst out that window and die.”

“I wouldn't die even if I did that.”

Yeah, you're amazing. How's a guy supposed to live with himself when he's not the youngest Swordmaster in imperial history?

Even after living in it for four years, I had to admit Yuria's face and proportions were fantastic. The only drawback was how short she was.

So, well, even if that bastard Derek was my ride-or-die buddy and accepted my masculinity without reservations, I couldn't exactly say I didn't understand why Yuria's body itself was so damn sexy.

Though it made me feel disgusting.

“Hey, man. If I massaged your dick and called it a massage, would you like that? To me, it's basically the same thing.”

“……I think I'd like it a lot?”

“No, fuck, you want another guy doing that to you? Did you trade heads one-for-one with a goblin you ran into on the last subjugation?”

“But you just said you were a woman.”

“I mean my body's a woman's right now. I'm a man, but somehow I'm in a woman's body at the moment, okay? If you're going to talk nonsense, go train.”

Derek muttered, ‘Pattern One, finally,’ then started massaging my shoulder properly again.

The usual troublesome line running from my neck to my trapezius and shoulder.

It was already a spot bound to cause problems, thanks to my large chest for my frame.

His rough yet gentle hands worked out the knots.

The sensation whenever his hand brushed my nape was as refreshing as ever.

“Hnh, hnnngh… haaah…”

“Could you not make noises like that?”

“Why? It feels good, so the sound just comes out.”

“……It's because I can't concentrate when you make those noises while I'm massaging your neck.”

How finicky.

Do you know how rare a treat it is to get to fondle a woman's body like mine?