Knock knock.
Knock knock.
The knocks on the thick wooden door echoed through the room with a dry sound.
“…Sieglinde. Lady Sieglinde. Are you awake?”
The stiff way she spoke contrasted with her youthful sounding voice, but that sound reached Sieglinde Floyd’s ears and awoke her. She wasn’t a morning person, but that was nothing new.
(…)
Sieglinde’s mind was still in a daze as she sat up. She then spoke to the person on the other side of the door, feeling a little guilty as she did every morning.
“…I’m up. You can go.”
It had been ten years since she graduated from magic school. She was twenty eight.
“Good morning, Lady Sieglinde.”
A voice as sweet and sour as freshly picked fruit roused Sieglinde from the other side of the door. The more Sieglinde heard her trying to speak as politely as possible despite it not suiting her, the more she felt her months and days weighing on her.
She didn’t know the maids well enough to tell them apart by voice alone, as too many maids worked in the Floyd home to remember them all unless one really tried. Still, she knew the maid talking to her was a lot younger than her.
Why? The duty of waking her was always delegated to the new maids. It was something the head maid came up with to help Lady Sieglinde remember their voices and faces.
(…Does she give off that feeling because she’s not used to it?)
Sieglinde couldn’t help but be embarrassed by being woken up by someone younger. It didn’t feel right, and even being called lady prickled her. Still, even if she said no, the maids had to fulfill their duties.
If Sieglinde said she didn’t need it, but ended up not waking up on time, the maid responsible for waking her up that day would be fired.
The young assistant to the chief of the ministry of magic knew very well she was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
And so, Sieglinde woke up slightly uncomfortable every day, but didn’t try to change it. The maids also knew she felt iffy about this whole thing, and would leave right away after their job was done.
That was a normal morning in the Floyd house, but not that day.
“I apologize for waking you so early, Lady Sieglinde, but you have a guest waiting for you in the reception room.”
“Guest…?”
Sieglinde was still half asleep, but what the maid said cleared her mind completely.
She crawled out of her luxurious bed with a canopy, and switched into work mode as she imagined who it could be that was there to see her.
Her first thought was work, but it was actually her day off. There shouldn’t be any business urgent enough that someone would come to see her early in the morning of her day off.
The second possibility was that it was related to the Floyd family, but there weren’t any plans to receive guests.
That left the final option, a personal visit… Which sadly wasn’t worth considering.
Sieglinde’s circle of friends was barren, save for one person, Weiss. But she didn’t think he would come to see her.
After all, they had been friends since their school days, but he never once went to her house, although Sieglinde went to his several times.
“Who is it?”
In the end, she couldn’t think of anyone who would visit her so early, and threw the question to the other side of the thick door while feeling a little nervous.
If it was something trivial, she would scold the maids that acted as intermediaries.
But as these thoughts passed through her head, her mind went blank.
“It is Mister Weiss, along with Ririi and a monster I believe is their pet?”
“Weiss!?”
This caught Sieglinde completely off guard, and she unconsciously jumped up and held her slender body.
But she quickly got a hold of herself, and ran to a full-length mirror to check her whole body.
There she saw the hazy face of someone who just woke up. Obviously, there was no way she was going to appear in front of the person she loved looking like that.
Sieglinde rushed to speak to the other side of the door again. Her sleepiness was completely gone by now.
“H-hey! Don’t let him come in here! Lock him in the reception room!”
“Very well. It will tell him you will see him in a moment.”
“Please!”
After hearing this, the young maid turned around and left.
◇
As she made her way to the reception room, the young maid thought about a bit of gossip told to her by the head maid.
It went…
‘The lady has been in love with someone since her schooldays, and even after ten years, those feelings haven’t gone away. She is cute in some ways, isn’t she?’
She was told this as a way to make her less nervous after being assigned for Sieglinde’s wake-up calls, so she took it with a grain of salt. This maid wasn’t even twenty yet, so she felt it was impossible for someone to be stuck in a one-sided love affair for half her life.
…However…
“…So that was true.”
She could tell even through the door.
The way the lady was flustered, was without a doubt the behavior of a woman in love.
“…Fufu…”
She never understood why the other maids who had been there longer saw the cold Sieglinde with affection, but now she felt she sort of got it.
At first glance, she was cold, but deep down inside her heart burned a passion that could make even a lady groan.
Once the maid discovered this, she saw her usual cold attitude as a clumsy display of affection.
The maid smiled as she knocked on the door to the reception room.
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