Risou no Himo Seikatsu Vol 2 Epilogue

Epilogue: The Prince is Born

Time passed by.

These three months would be “summer”, if the seasons of Japan were to be enforced here. In the last of them, temperatures of over forty degrees during the day continued naturally, not even dropping below thirty-five degrees at night. Zenjirou experienced this harsh season for the second time.

“…..”

“Zenjirou-sama, your sweat…”

“Ah… Right.”

Considering his usual behaviour, the brusque attitude of not even thanking her was rather “untypical” of him, but the waiting maid knew the circumstances behind it and actually gave her master a sympathetic look.

Not only that, one of the young maids called out to him worried, even while knowing that this act was a taboo, considering their social positions.

In the very moment Zenjirou was about to reply consenting.

The voice of his beloved wife “during childbirth” sounded loudly from the bedroom.

He unconsciously flinched and swallowed his breath. Then he shook his sweating head and denied.

Queen Aura was giving birth today.
Just like the majority of fathers, Zenjirou could do nothing but worry to no end, so he simply continued to wander from place to place inside the room without any leeway in his mind to notice the room temperature of over forty degrees.

“Excuse me, I brought the hot water!”

The waiting maids, carrying a large steaming pot and a bunch of clean cloths, disappeared into the bedroom with swift steps.

A cool breeze flowed into the living room through the opened door of the bedroom.

It was often said that a pregnant woman should not cast a chill on her body, but it was still better for the body than a room with a temperature over forty degrees.

Besides, the ventilator on the highest speed didn’t lower the temperature to an extreme to begin with. Down to thirty degrees at best.

“Shit, what a blunder. I have to figure out a way to install the air conditioning in the bedroom until the next delivery.”

Considering the unsuited bedroom size of around fifty square metre and the lack of air sealing due to windows and door, which was nowhere near the air sealing in houses in modern Japan, the temperature might not get lowered as much as hoped-for, but it was still better than nothing.

In his daily lessons, Zenjirou had already succeed at activating a simple magic numerous times, but it was obvious that it would still take time until he could use the “teleportation” magic as freely as Aura.

His only role was to order that the “Imbued Stone of Cure” was used on Aura, if she and the child should get into a life-threatening condition, but that was something he didn’t want to happen, if possible.

He leaked a sigh for the nth time.

As he kept sweating, a waiting maid worried about him, took a jar with water from the refrigerator, poured some into a glass and held it out to him.

Zenjirou downed the chilled water in one gulp and felt how he started to sweat all over his body again. After wiping the sweat on his face and neck with the towel he had gotten from a waiting maid earlier, and regaining a bit of his presence of mind, he now called out to the waiting maids considerately, as he suddenly thought of it.

“Yes, thank you very much.”

For the first time today, he had uttered caring words towards the maids. The waiting maids smiled naturally, but he still wasn’t composed enough yet to notice that.

Scratched his head unconsciously.

Then started to walk around again.

“Aw, damn. Is it not time yet…?”
In the end, his emotionally instable behaviour continued until the moment when the healthy “first cry” of the baby resounded from the bedroom.

Queen Aura safely gave birth to her first child.

With Doctor Michelle’s permission, Zenjirou entered the bedroom, where his beloved wife Aura showed the brightest smile ever on her exhausted face from atop the bed.

Doctor Michelle or the assisting waiting maids wouldn’t be able to lend a hand if Aura was on the giant bed and they stood at the side of it, so they took it upon themselves to perform the delivery on this bed instead.

“Oh, Zenjirou…”

“Stay as you are. No need to force yourself to look at me.”

“Yeah, okay. But it is alright. Look, the child and I are well.”

The clean-limbed waiting maid pressed the baby wrapped in a fine red cloth to her breast.

“Yes. My— our child.”

Zenjirou timidly peeked at the face of the baby in the arms of the clean-limbed maid.

“Take a look, Zenjirou-sama. It is a healthy boy.”

He went around the bed, moving to the side of the maid with the baby. Then he took another look at his own child in the arms of the waiting maid.

“Yes. But he got the mouth of Zenjirou-sama, if I had to choose.”

Aura and the middle-aged maid, holding the baby, were saying all that, but to be honest, Zenjirou couldn’t approve of it at all.

And above all, his “eyes” were currently focused on something else than the outward characteristics.

(Wow. His magic power’s above Aura’s. Maybe twice as much as mine?)

After diligently taking magic lessons from Lady Octavia for around one year, Zenjirou had now awakened the basic of basics for a magician, namely the “ability to detect magic power”. His eyes captured the dazzlingly overwhelming magic power coming from the body of his son.

He timidly reached out his hand for the child in the arms of the waiting maid.

“!? Uwah, he squeezed me!”

Did he felt so deeply moved from that simple action because this small hand belonged to his own flesh and blood?

“It would be scary if he had not. Fingers are not something that grow later on after all.”

Queen Aura, still laying on the bed, smiled in response to the almost childish reaction of her husband towards his newborn child.

“…Yeah, quite so. The cutest in the world.”

“Aa, Daa, Aa!”

As to comfort the baby, who started to cry, the middle-aged maid quickly dandled him gently.

“Zenjirou-sama, let me congratulate you first of all. As you can see, both Her Highness and the prince are safe and sound.”

“Yes, thank you, Doctor Michelle. It is thanks to you that Aura and my child got through the delivery without problems. I cannot thank you enough.”

“Your words are wasted on me.”

“Nevertheless, the delivery was quite exhausting for Her Highness Aura. I recommend to stay in bed for today. Have at least two waiting maids accompany you for relieving yourself.”

Queen Aura shortly affirmed the words of the royal physician from atop her bed.
While his wife and the doctor exchanged such a post-delivery conversation, Zenjirou nervously called out to the elderly waiting maid holding the baby.

“Uh- Uhm, I would like to hold him, too… Can I?”

The waiting maid widened her eyes in surprise for a moment upon the words from the new father, but in the next moment, she smiled sweetly and nodded firmly.

“Yeah, okay. Oof, like this?”

“Uwah…”

“Fufu, how nice. Papa is already holding you.”
The Queen threw her husband a smile from the bed as he held their child awkwardly, raised her sweaty head a bit and looked at the waiting maids standing at attention left and right.

“I want to sit up. Help me.”

“Very well. Ah, but, Michelle-sama?”

“Should be alright. I will allow to sit on the bed for a short while at least.”

“Excuse us then, Your Highness.”

“Allow me to reach behind you. I will place a cushion there, so please leaned against the headboard afterwards.”
Two waiting maids skilfully sat Aura up on the bed while another waiting maid placed a big pillow at the headboard of the bed.

“Fuh…”

Aura was sat up by the waiting maids like a doll and leaned against the pillow at the headboard, leaking a big sigh.

“Your Highness, I will wipe your body.”

As the young waiting maid diligently wiped her royal body with a cold towel, Aura narrowed her eyes to slits like a cat tickled under the chin and thanked her.

Zenjirou said down in a chair next to the bed with the utmost care as to prevent anything from happen to the child in his arms.

“…All done and dusted.”

Her husband suddenly broached a topic, whereat Aura turned to him after having her sweat wiped, and nodded curt.

A conversation between the wife, accomplishing the delivery just now, and the husband, holding their newborn child in his arms.

“…..”

Whether the Queen realized their thoughtfulness or not, she kept talking in a manner as if their family of three were the only ones here.

Aura’s gaze was fixated on the small, sleeping baby in her husband’s arms while she muttered that.

The Queen and the Prince Consort. The couple was supposed to be all lovey-dovey, but now the two of them had only eyes for their newborn child, not even looking each other in the face.

“Yes, adorably so. Now I truly regret the absolute necessary to raise a prince amongst foster siblings by a wet nurse.”

Zenjirou looked into her eyes after she confessed that and snorted with laughter.

He would have never imagined that having a child was something so precious.

“Mh? Aren’t you going to give him one, Aura? I don’t know much about the names here.”

“Yes, of course I am going to give him one. However, our country has a custom, where the child is given one name from each country when the parents origin from different ones. Although it is quite rare to have a royalty with two names, due to issues with a leak of bloodline magic.“

“Oho, I see. Then I’ll think of a name, too.”

As Aura had perceived her husband’s intention, she giggled from atop her pillow.

But since she was laughing and speaking at the same time, her voice became a bit cracked at the end of the sentence and she coughed. Hearing that, Zenjirou looked worried at his beloved wife.

The aged doctor, standing in the back, expressed his agreement by nodding to his words. Due to their social standing, the waiting maids weren’t saying anything, but they looked pretty worried at her, too.

“Fine, I get it. But a little bit, just a little bit longer should be alright, no? I want to look at him a bit longer, so that I will still see him in my dream once I fall asleep…”

Zenjirou could relate to her feelings better than anyone, so he allowed it with a wry smile.

The Queen replied commendable with a smile, nodding obediently.
In the end however, she couldn’t keep her promise.

The father held the child and the mother watched the two from atop the bed. Without getting tired of it, she continued to watch her newborn child until Doctor Michelle, overseeing everything, finally intervened.

Extra Chapter: The Collaboration between the Waiting Maids and their Master

Vanessa was a waiting maid working in the inner palace of the Carpa Kingdom.

As a woman of middle age, her waist and bottom had put on an impressive plump weight.

Starting with the supervisory maid Amanda through to each department head, all of them were expert in their respective fields through years of experience.

“Head of the cooking department in the inner palace”. That was her current position.

The official royal cooks were the men working in the palace and the food for Queen Aura and Zenjirou, living in the inner palace, was basically made by them.

Therefore, the royal cook were in charge of staple food like bread or upscale main dishes, while Vanessa and her girls often prepared simple dishes in the kitchen of the inner palace.

In spite of that, Vanessa had no chance to become a royal cook as a woman, since the cooking sector was no exception to the customs of the patriarchal Carpa Kingdom.
For all these circumstances, Vanessa, a waiting maid in the inner palace and the “head of the cooking department”, was working as the practical head chef every day.

“Okay, girls, it’s time to make the sweets you love so much. Let’s give it our all!”

With both her hands on her plump hips, Vanessa raised a loud voice, whereupon the three young waiting maids on cooking duty today replied energetically all together.

This was done, so that the young waiting maid evenly learned the maid skills and could be send out to support other departments when there were sudden absentees or when a certain department needed help on a special occasion (in fact, tasks like the monthly “great cleaning of the bath” or the “throughout cultivation of the garden after the rainy season” were done by all waiting maids of the inner palace together).

“Good. Then let’s get started!”

Of course she acted in a gracious manner, which you would never expect from her plump body, in front of Zenjirou and Aura, but when she was working behind closed doors, where no higher-ups saw her, like today, she was just like an old lady from a tavern in downtown.

However, the three maids assigned to the kitchen today were hardly concerned about that.
Fay, Dolores and Rethe were on cooking duty today. The so-called “three troublemakers”.

Vanessa gave the young waiting maids instructions with a clear voice.

“Yes!”

“Yes, understood.”

“Ui, I got the toughest job.”

Sieved wheat flour, egg yolk whipped foamy and meringue (meaning egg white whipped until it stood up in stiff peaks). As well as baking soda grinded to powder. Apart from that, there were brown sugar and vegetable oil of fine quality provided on the table.
One might be able to guess what they were going to make from these ingredients.

They were making a “sponge cake” right now.

Needless to say, the sweet called “sponge cake” originally didn’t exist in the Carpa Kingdom, so the recipe obviously came from Zenjirou.

That said, about eighty percent of these recipes couldn’t be carried out in this world. The reason was extremely simple: Most of the western confectionery from his world required dairy products like milk or butter.

After all, the people of the Carpa Kingdom had managed hundreds of years without dairy products. They would surely meet butter or cheese with reluctance at first. In fact, Aura had tilted her head with a rather averse expression, saying “eating the milk of animals…?”, when Zenjirou had told her about it.

And one sweet without dairy products was the “sponge cake”, which Vanessa and the other girls were making right now.

Eggs, bread flour, sugar and salad oil. These were the only ingredients listed on the recipe.

They had no refined oil such as salad oil, so they substituted it with an vegetable oil as indistinctive as possible, but even so, the smell of the oil was rather strong, so they added a little bit of the brandy Zenjirou had brought along, as flavouring.

These alternations ultimately manifested in the taste and appearance, resulting in something “different” from the recipe.

“Dum Di Dum~♪“

She was used to “whipping the eggs”, since that cooking method was known here, too.

“Hey, we can fold in the meringue any moment now. Are you done, Rethe?”

“Okay~ I’m done in a bit~”

Unlike the egg yolk, which only had to be whipped until it slightly foamed, the egg white had to be whipped until stiff peaks stood up— Making the meringue was a stiff job.

Rethe stirred the whisk with trembling movements of her whole body and praiseworthy fulfilled her task regardless.

“Looking good. Ready at any time!”

“Good. Then let’s get started for real. Dolores, I take it you’re done with sieving the flour? Good, then oil the tin and choose what to add to the base.”

In response to Vanessa’s instruction, the tall maid happily straightened her usual slant-eyes and showed a bright smile.

Basically, Dolores was entrusted with the most important task, namely deciding the flavour of the sponge cake. Unsurprisingly, she was thrilled.

“Dolores-chan, choose the granulated sugar. That’s the best!”

After all, the waiting maids of the kitchen were allowed to “appropriately dispose” of whatever remained after Zenjirou and Aura got the good pieces of the baked sweets, so that matter concerned them as well.

“Hey! Enough with the ruckus. Focus on your job. Dolores, pick one already. It will be a disgrace for us when the sweets for our masters are delayed because you were hesitant.”

“Ye~s!”

“So~rry.”
The three troublemakers shrugged her shoulders together towards the scolding of their supervisor.

Approximately one hour later.

Needless to say, this fragrance came from the freshly baked sponge cake.

The troublemaking trio intently watched her while leaning over the table from their chairs.

“…..”

Undaunted by the pressuring looks of the trio, resembling the eyes of a carnivorous dragon that found some prey after three days without food, on the cake, Vanessa neatly cut the sponge cake in three equal pieces.

She chose the best parts from the cut cake and apportioned them onto silver plates.

With her carefree slant-eyes, Rethe watched how Vanessa portioned Zenjirou’s share on the silver plate and remarked with a serious tone, which was rarely heard from her under normal circumstances.

The sponge cake in question was the “piece with the most granulated sugar”.

“Vanessa-sama, please take a close look. This piece has small flour lumps on it. As a waiting maid in charge of the kitchen, I cannot allow this to be brought to Zenjirou-sama.”

“Vanessa-sama, Vanessa-sama, the piece on the side! It’s cut a bit skewed! I’ll take responsibility and dispose of it myself!”

“…..”

By the time the girls thought “uh oh, not good”, it was already too late.

Vanessa, still not saying anything, hotly breathed on her tightly clenched fist and

“Agh!”

“Hyahn!?”
swung the heated fist down on the heads of the troublemakers one by one.

Afterwards, Fay, Dolores and Rethe delivered the best pieces of the sponge cake to Zenjirou in the living room and returned to the kitchen.

“We’ve served the sponge cake to Zenjirou-sama.”

The damage from Vanessa’s fist was no longer visible in their energetic behaviour as they called out.

Remaining seated on the chair at the cooking table, Vanessa welcomed the young maids with a bright smile.

“Yahoo!”

“Yay! Let’s see, let’s see.”

Technically, there was plenty of the cake left, but the waiting maids working in the other departments would resent them if they didn’t share, so the girls could only have one slice each.

The plate for the cake and the cups for the tea were all made of wood. As this country didn’t know of glass or ceramics, the tableware was basically either made of silver or wood.

“Thank you, Vanessa-sama!”

“Wait a sec, Rethe. You finally get to eat some sponge cake, so when you put in so much sugar into your tea, you won’t notice the sweetness of the cake anymore.”

“Ehehe…”

Although they were in front of their superior Vanessa, Fay and the other two enjoyed the tea and cake without any tension. In a way, they had nerves of steel.

If anything, she rather liked an harmonious atmosphere like this.

“Come to think of it, Dolores, are the papers you brought the usual again?”

Having finished her own piece of the cake, Vanessa rinsed the sweetness in her mouth with the tea in the wooden cup and called out like that to the tall waiting maid, who was still eating the cake little by little across of her.

Upon her superior’s question, Dolores removed the wooden fork from her mouth and quickly swallowed the cake in her mouth, then responded.

Of course he had Aura check the translation before handing them to the maids, so there were no fatal mistakes that distorted the meaning.

Amongst all the many waiting maids, Rethe was probably the one, who was the most fascinated by the sweets from the other world. Her face with the drooping eyelids was slack to begin with, but a soft smile relaxed it even more and her consciousness was already focussed on the unknown sweet.

“We’re counting on you, Rethe.”

The tall waiting maid, holding a wooden cup in her left hand, gave her petite coworker, who openly spoke about relying upon others for her own goal, an elbow check with her right.

“Shuddap. As if you can talk, shorty!”

“Jeez, watch yourself, Fay-chan, Dolores-chan. We’re having a delicious cake here, so keep it quiet.”

She knew better than anyone that their fights were hardly genuine, but the ruckus during her favourite sweets time was definitely a bother.

“Well, keep it in moderation. My patience has its limit, too, you know. Anyway, when do you girls want to challenge that recipe?”

“Hmm…”

“We want to make it in three days. If I remember rightly, Her Highness Aura and Zenjirou-sama are away on business during the day and attend a party at night, so they’ll only eat breakfast in the inner palace.”

Even if the waiting maids were working in the inner palace, they had memorized the entire official schedule of their masters.

“That’s true. However, the head cook from the palace requested my help for that night party. Apparently Zenjioru-sama mentioned that I know his tastes the best.”

But the three troublemakers didn’t feel like smiling after being told that.

Fay raised an excessive surprised voice.

Dolores inclined her head to the side in worry to her words.

And Rethe made a sorrowful face, wrinkling the space between her eyebrows as if she was about to cry.

She didn’t hold a candle to Vanessa, whose “cooking skills went beyond the maid level”.

“Th- Then how about the noon in seven days? There won’t be a night party on that day, but Zenjirou-sama and Her Highness Aura will both be gone during the day. We would’ve less time than in three days, but still…”

“Well, if that’s alright with you, I don’t mind doing it in seven days. Shall I give the recipe to Karina then?”

The three girls came to a realization at the same time upon Vanessa’s interjection.

“Right, it’s too late in seven days. We’ve to do it before.”

The young waiting maids periodically changed departments.

In other words, they would still be in charge if they tried the new recipe in three days, but in seven days the waiting maids that relieved them of their kitchen duty would be in charge.

“What a shame. And I here I was planning to use my authority to reward the first team that pulled this new recipe off, with one month of exclusive usage of the refrigerator.”

The troublemaking trio became all excited from hearing these words.

The cold water and ice, let alone the chilled towels, couldn’t be taken by everyone as they pleased.

“…..!”

“…..”

“Vanessa-sama!”

“We’ll somehow pull off this recipe with just the three of us in three days!”
they declared reassuring all in one breath.

Three days later at noon.

Needless to say, they were dressed ready to cook: A long apron over their maid clothes.

Fay and the other two had declared that they would somehow pull of the recipe by themselves.

The face of their supervisor had shown an “all-according-to-plan” smile as she answered them with “okay. Give it your all. I’ll arrange for the ingredients, so use anything you need”.

For Vanessa, who was functioning as an teacher as well, it was a welcome outcome when the young waiting maid improved their cooking skills through this.

Rethe clapped her hands in front of her voluptuous breasts and proclaimed the kick-off.

“We’re counting on you, Leader!”

“Yeah, I’ll do my best. I hope you two memorized the recipe.”

In reaction to Rethe’s inquiry, Dolores waved with the couple of copy papers, which had gotten a bit more worn out, dirtied and buckled compared to three days ago, and answered.

Fay’s answer remained a bit doubtful, since it ended with a question mark, but it was too late to do anything about it now.

Rethe puckered her lips on a rare occasion and said that, then reached out for the ingredients on the worktop herself as the vanguard.

The new recipe from Zenjirou was a “puff pastry pie”, just like one could imagine from the term “puff pastry”.

The recipe Zenjirou had translated this time was a “low-calorie pastry”, which included vegetable oil instead of butter.

“Uhn, uhn…”

The three of them each attempted to make their own puff pastry, since they expected to fail at the first try anyway.

However, it was obvious that Rethe was more skilful from watching their techniques.

“Eh? No way? Mine’s already tough?”

While continuing her own work, Rethe still had the leisure to point out the failure of her co-worker. That showed how advanced her cooking skills were.

“Roger!”

Dolores said so with a sigh while she wiped the sweat from her forehead with the hand towel prepared at the side.

“We need to stop the sweat.”

“Or it’ll turn out salty.”
The three maids eagerly wrapped a cloth around their head to collect the sweat and resumed the kneading with regained vigour.

Several minutes later.

“Good, all done. Now we only have to decide what to put in. I favour candied apricots.”

“Hmm, I like it simple, so I will go with desert bananas, I guess?”

Dolores and Fay likewise mused about what to put into their own puff pastry.

“Okay, done!”

“Ah, but for how long do we bake them? Vanessa-sama usually takes care of that.”

Rethe’s cooking skills were considered top class amongst the young waiting maids, but she still couldn’t do this.

“Fufuhn~ I got that covered. Here, I borrowed it from Zenjirou-sama yesterday!”

Recently, she had spent her breaks with an addiction to the portable console, so she now opened and operated the game console with smooth movements.

The girls had mastered the reading of the Latin alphabet at some point while playing with the game console and even understood the division of time, twenty-four hours – sixty minutes – sixty seconds, from the other world (apparently they learned it through the time attack in a racing game).

Throwing out her small chest, Dolores claimed proudly, whereupon Rethe clapped with a soft smile.

“Uhh…”

“Jeez, got it covered, my foot! That’s so typical of you, Dolores.”

Dolores objected to Fay’s teasing with a flushed face, but she actually was by no means wrong.

Besides, it was much easier to try again with a clock when they failed the first time.

It should be easily imaginable how difficult that was.

Rethe puffed up her full cheeks and showed an angry expression that wasn’t the least bit scary.

Forty minutes later.

Yes, “pseudo pastries”, not real “pastries”. At least it would be an insult to all pastry cooks, who had shaped the history of sweets, by calling these black something a “pastry”.

“Pitch-black…”

She roughly cut up the still steaming mass, skilfully scrapping off the burned parts with the tip of the knife.

“Let’s taste it for now.”

“It takes quite some courage to eat the first one.”

“…..”

“…..”

“Dolores, the one you made has not the slightest sweetness of the bananas. It’s really tough to swallow.”

“Fay-chan’s is too hard in the first place. Forget about chewing, I can barely break it with my hands!”

Principally, one didn’t evaluate his own cooking, because a self-evaluation was never objective, regardless of the outcome.

When she finished the brief tasting of the “pseudo pastry”, Rethe declared that with an energetic voice without giving her stomach time to rest.

“I would like to make something a bit more appetizing next…”

Experimenting, baking, tasting. That procedure repeated over and over again until the sun set.
And thus it was that today’s day drew to a close for the “three troublemakers”.

Afternoon on the next day.

As lunch had just been served to Zenjirou, the kitchen now had some leeway.

“Yes!”

While Fay regulated the fire of the stove, Rethe kneaded the puff pastry. At the same time, Dolores positioned the portable game console in such a way that the clock was visible and then prepared a special sweet icing for the pastry by mixing high quality brown sugar with cinnamon.

Yesterday, they hadn’t been able to succeed in making a pastry with a filling like the typical apple pie or pumpkin pie.

In the end, they had finally decided upon the kind they were making right now: A simple puff pastry pie without any filling in a rectangle shape and as long as two forefinger in a row.

Unlike yesterday, Zenjirou was taking all three meals in the inner palace today, so they hadn’t much spare time. Only enough for one try.

“Looking good on my end, too. We can bake it any time!”

Vanessa watched the young waiting maids, preparing the sweet with all their might, with a gentle and soft smile like watching over a small child.

“Roger, forty minutes from now on! Fay!”

A sweet and aromatic fragrance from the stove wasn’t long in the coming.

“…..”

“…..”

“Hmm, it seems quite different from how it was written on the recipe.”

Vanessa stopped Dolores, who reflexively tried to make excuses, with just a glance and continued.

Saying so, she opened her mouth widely and bit into square pie.

Only the munching sound of her jaws, chewing the freshly baked pastry, resounded through the otherwise silent kitchen.

“Yeah, not bad. I didn’t expect any less from you, Rethe. It’s well done.”

Rethe and the other two made joyful looks upon the praise, but Vanessa stiffened her expression, ready to spoil that joy.

To begin with, you’re baking it after smearing it with oil and sprinkling sugar over it, but wouldn’t it taste even better when you fry it in oil at first and only add the sugar and cinnamon afterwards? At least we can’t serve it to Her Highness Aura and Zenjirou-sama as it is.”

The girls hung their heads and dropped their shoulders dejected.

Sometimes hard work didn’t pay off in the world of work.

“Ehh!? Th- Then the reward…!”

Fay unconsciously raised an angry voice. Dolores, standing next to her, stopped her with her hand, but Fay’s anger didn’t vanish from her face.

Vanessa gave the petite maid, who showed a sulky expression that could get her in trouble with her superior, a wry smile while she

said that and patted Fay’s small head with the palm of her stout hand like a mother did with her child.

Crying in one moment, smiling in the next. That was applicable to Fay now as she instantly flashed a smile, whereat Vanessa said.

Therefore, when Karina’s group gets the recipe done to a level, where it can be served to Zenjirou-sama, then I’ll give the exclusive usage of the refrigerator for one month to all six of you. What do you say?”

“Yes!!”

The smiling three girls responded in unison.

“Good. Then that’s settled. I’ll head over to Zenjirou-sama now and ask if he has any requests for today’s sweet. In the meantime, you clean up here and get everything ready for later.”

“Very well.”

Vanessa left the kitchen after she emphasised that with a smile.

Left-behind, the troublemaking trio cleaned the dirtied tools and worktop like they were told to while chatting happily.

Fay suggested that to her two roommates as she cleaned the floury worktop with a small broom.

“Yeah, that might be better. I’ll show them how to read the time from this machine. In the end, they’ll surely have to rely on their own senses for the baking time, but having a clock at first makes it easier.”

Wiping the scattered flour on the ground with a large broom, Rethe also approved of it.

“Good. In that case, let’s get our work

Chapter end