191 - Aurelia's Recent Circumstances
Please assume that dialogue in 『』 is spoken in English.
Tina has started studying, so we are graduating from machine-dependent translation.
This is the second time I have headed from Grenore city to Waiyakku Valley. It is the third time going to the valley itself. It is my first time visiting during the snowy season, having come at the end of winter and in spring before, but the valley floor spreading beyond that mysterious fog was unchanged regardless of the season. Outside the valley, snow covered everything I could see, but once through the fog, the valley floor not only had no snow, it even felt slightly warmer compared to outside the valley. Though it was not really warm, just that the lack of snow made the cold feel more bearable.
When the carriage stopped in front of Aurelia's house, I waited for the step to be prepared and then jumped out first. Really, Leonardo should have been first, but I could not wait any longer, so it could not be helped. There is no one here to scold me about acting ladylike. A little indulgence should be fine.
"Aurelia-san, came. Tina is here."
I knocked on the door and called into the house so I would not get scolded like last time. Since I still could not use English fluently during my studies, I ended up speaking in a way similar to before. Because I was speaking while thinking, it was close to the halting speech from when I could not speak this world's language well.
"Hello!"
The front door opened, and Aurelia, showing her face from inside, widened her eyes slightly in surprise when our eyes met. She was probably surprised that I was using English, even if poorly. Even I never thought I would actively try to speak English in my past life.
"Oh my. Look who has come wandering in. A black cat got lost here."
Saying that, Aurelia touched the black cat ears attached to my head. I had been told to wear an animal costume during winter, especially now around the Divine King Festival, so I would not be taken by the spirits again. I did not know if this custom, which was widespread in the city, would make sense to Aurelia, but she did not seem angry or say I was wearing something silly.
...Well, a little girl's cat ears are cute, are they not?
I did not know if Aurelia held a unique sense of justice that "cute is righteous," but I was sure she liked cute things. Since I had the opportunity, I turned around on the spot and showed off the black cat tail attached at my waist.
"...Your lisp is the same as ever, but you have managed to start speaking English, have you not."
Whether she was curious about the craftsmanship, Aurelia praised me while fiddling with my tail. Happy, I puffed out my flat chest proudly.
"I tried hard. Aurelia-san, speak. Studying."
I wished I could speak more fluently, but this was great progress for me. It felt like three steps forward and two steps back, but now I should be able to talk with Aurelia even in places with other people around.
"Kalisa, came. Together, okay?"
I pulled Aurelia over to Kalisa, who was unloading a bag of my clothes from the carriage, and introduced her. Kalisa was usually shy around strangers, but she showed a composed nursemaid presence in front of Aurelia, whom she was meeting for the first time. Her voice did not get quiet, and she greeted Aurelia properly.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Wise Woman Aurelia-sama. I am Kalisa, nursemaid to Tina-sama. For the duration of the young lady's stay in Waiyakku Valley, I would like to be permitted to stay as well to attend to her. Would that be acceptable?"
"I have heard about it in letters. I hear you can cook. If you will be useful, I do not mind you staying."
She asked if I had permission from the Sedovara Church, so I nodded firmly. I had already obtained permission from the Sedovara Church in advance for my stay and Kalisa's in Waiyakku Valley. I was told many times that outsiders were normally not allowed entry, but I would like to learn Alf's negotiation skills that overturned that "normally" someday. When I praised Alf for wresting out the permission and asked him for the secret in my excitement, Leonardo made a face like he did not want me to imitate it at all. Maybe it was not a very honorable method.
"The witch of the valley has mellowed quite a bit. Is it Tina's influence?"
Leonardo, who had been lagging in greetings, approached while also unloading luggage from the carriage. He came closer, and his unnecessary remark must have touched a nerve. Aurelia's staff came down on Leonardo's shoulder.
...Wait, is that her way of hiding embarrassment?
I had heard that Aurelia chases Black Knights around with her staff, so this sight was not particularly surprising. Leonardo would be chased around until Aurelia was satisfied, so in the meantime I unloaded the sewing box Hermine had given me from the carriage. In it were packed the tools I had learned from Aurelia for lace-making.
"The annex... those kids are using it now. You are small, so you can just sleep with me."
After bringing in the luggage, I soon saw off Leonardo as he headed for Mail Fortress. I felt like he could have stayed at least one night, but maybe he was considering the bed situation at Aurelia's house.
During my previous stays in the valley, Leonardo and I had used the annex at Aurelia's house. The annex, originally prepared as living space for apprentices, only had one bed. Since I was a child, I could somehow manage to sleep with Leonardo, but now Aurelia had two apprentices. It seemed she had increased the number of beds to match the number of apprentices, but my and Kalisa's stay this time was normally impossible, so Aurelia's house had no guest beds. That meant I would be sleeping in the same bed as someone again. I had thought so, but I never expected Aurelia to give me permission to share her bed.
"Together, bed? Yay!"
Inside, I was delighted that when it was time to sleep, I could talk in something other than English. With the limited English I could currently use, there was a definite limit to what I could convey. Since I knew Aurelia could speak this world's language, that was better than English I could not master.
"In that case, I will sleep in the carriage."
Leonardo left the carriage he had ridden here in the valley, saying it would be easier to travel without it. He must have known from the start there were not enough beds. Leonardo knew the layout of Aurelia's house too.
"The attic in the annex should be free. There is no bed, but there is an old lounge chair."
Aurelia said she could sleep on the lounge chair with a blanket brought from the carriage. The attic of Aurelia's house was apparently filled with compounding tools and materials, but the attic of the annex where the still-training apprentices lived seemed to be free. With that, Kalisa's sleeping spot was secured.
"Meals, Kalisa and I, make. Permission?"
"Do as you like. Those girls can barely cook anyway."
Aurelia frankly let slip that she was looking forward to food made by a maid, so the two apprentices really must be bad at cooking. It is natural for those who look up to and learn from a master to take care of that master. With the apprentices who were supposed to take care of Aurelia being bad at cooking, there was no hope of improving Aurelia's skewed diet of just adding seasoning to her tasteless food.
"It is filthy!"
I followed Kalisa into the annex to check the kitchen, and was shocked. The kitchen, which had previously been neatly organized with various seasonings and spices, was now a wreck. Used pots and dishes were piled in the sink, giving off a strange odor. I really did not want to eat food made in this kitchen.
"How did it get like this?"
I caught Aurelia's apprentice Paula and demanded an explanation. I remembered Paula as a woman with a glib way of speaking, but she smiled sheepishly as if to brush things off, then started making vague excuses.
"Well... we are all bad at cooking..."
"I heard about that! But being bad at cooking alone would not cause this."
The two new apprentices were both enthusiastic about medicine arts, but when it came to cooking, they were of the "if it goes in your stomach, it is the same" school and the "dishes? Wash them when there are none left" school. Their personalities were complete opposites, but they got along in strange ways. And since Aurelia had long lived a life of basically eating seasonings, she apparently said nothing about the apprentices' cooking.
...You should discipline them properly there too, Aurelia-san!
I thought cooking and compounding were similar, but were these apprentices really okay being so sloppy? If foreign objects got mixed into the medicines they compounded and rendered them ineffective, that would be awful. This needed correction even before medicine arts.
I caught the other apprentice, Barbara, and made her and Paula clean the kitchen together. To Barbara, who made a bitter face saying cleaning was not a pharmacist's job, I drilled into her that she should think of it as the medicine preparation room, not the kitchen. If you think of what goes into people's mouths, medicine and cooking are not that different. The kitchen is not a place to let dirty things pile up.
I left the kitchen cleaning to the two and took Kalisa to show her around outside the house. The well and the garden were must-sees. I also showed her the food storage carved into the rock face and the livestock shed. There had been six chickens before, but now there were ten, probably because the household had grown. Thinking of the two apprentices who could not cook properly, I felt like even the precious fresh eggs were probably being wasted.
The cleaning of the kitchen, which had gotten filthy in the time it took to bring in ingredients, was nowhere near finished, so in the end Kalisa and I joined in to finish it. Kalisa was reluctant to have me, the young lady, do cleaning, but I pushed through by saying I wanted to. In terms of numbers, Kalisa alone could have managed cooking well enough, but even I wanted to work sometimes.
"...It has been a while."
I put eggs into flour and kneaded pasta dough. When I lived in Waiyakku Valley, I used to cook for myself almost every day. Back then I used a kitchen knife normally, but they would not let me use one now. Not so much because "you cannot have the young lady cooking," but simply because they thought it was dangerous for a child to handle a blade.
Kalisa neatly cut the pasta dough I had kneaded into noodle strips. The stew pasta with that subtle taste I had made by intuition somehow became a wonderful soup pasta when Kalisa made it. Even though the ingredients were almost the same, the difference in results was a mystery. Was it a matter of experience?
"...I really want to learn how to cook too."
"Next time, Salisa is coming, so I think you should learn from her."
Of the three sisters working at the Mandez residence, the one good at cooking was Salisa. Kalisa said that since Salisa would be coming to the Grenore residence to swap with her, I should learn cooking from Salisa. As someone who planned to catch a commoner husband someday, I wanted to learn cooking as a must.
"...I feel like Leonardo-san will not let me hold a kitchen knife."
I could only imagine a future where Leonardo would take away any blade I touched, saying it was dangerous. I felt like this would not change even when I got a bit older. My goal was to live as a commoner even after adulthood, but Leonardo probably wanted me to keep living as a young lady like this. He wanted me to live comfortably without any household hardships.
...If I really became a child who could not do anything, that would be a problem too.
Thanks to my past life memories and my small experience helping with chores in this life, I could do the bare minimum. But at Aurelia's house, I had struggled and failed many times just making stew. Knowledge and experience with household chores were absolutely necessary for the future.
"...What if we asked for safe cooking tools for children?"
"I thought about that before, but what do you think?"
I felt like if I asked, Leonardo would easily prepare them, but when I actually tried to use them, he would stop me. Maybe I should just use the wages I had been gradually earning from embroidery work lately and buy my own.
After cleaning up from dinner, it was time to work on Hermine's homework under Kalisa's supervision. The homework of writing a diary in English was done by first taking a lesson from Kalisa using a writing board and chalk, then making a clean copy on paper.
...Even a maid knows English? Is it that maids serving Black Knights are amazing, or that Iridal's education is amazing? Which one?
I had heard it was essential education for nobles, but that was only up to reading and writing. They did not reach the level of being able to speak fluently with Aurelia like the Black Knights could. But Kalisa could converse with Aurelia as freely as Leonardo could, at the same level. For someone just to be a maid, she was too capable.
When homework was done, I saw off Kalisa as she headed to the attic of the annex. Cleaning the attic awaited her to secure her sleeping quarters starting tonight. I offered to help, but she politely declined. That left me wanting to have a private talk with Aurelia, but she was giving the two apprentices a lesson in medicine arts, so she would not come to the bedroom until that wrapped up.
By the time Aurelia finally showed her face in the bedroom, I was half-asleep, having lost to drowsiness. Thinking I could finally talk with her properly, I staggered toward Aurelia with my sleepy head, but she scolded me, saying that when it is time to sleep, one should sleep properly.
"But this is a rare chance for a private talk..."
I used this world's language freely since no one else was around. With no one nearby, I did not need to force myself to use English with Aurelia.
"You are planning to stay through the winter, right? There is no need to rush and talk about everything tonight. We will have plenty of time to talk."
She pushed my shoulders and guided me to the bed. It was true that I was planning to stay through the winter, so maybe I did not need to rush to talk about everything. Perhaps she was letting me stay in her bed precisely to make sure we had time to talk slowly. Thinking about it that way, I did not need to force myself to stay awake for a private talk.
"...I understand. But just one thing."
I told Aurelia about the transcription of Saint Yuuta Hiraga's research materials being done in Grenore city, since I wanted to share this as soon as possible. I had had the chance to read the research materials at the residence. I had learned how to make the medicine for Warts disease.
"So that is why you have been sending me those strange letters lately."
"When I came last time too, I wanted to tell you, but..."
Before I could finish saying "I could not write in English," Aurelia's hands grabbed my cheeks. She grabbed them with such force that a satisfying sound came from my cheeks, and my eyes snapped wide open.
...Huh?
Looking with my now-awake head, Aurelia's eyes were slightly fixed in a stare. I immediately knew this was a strange atmosphere. It seemed I had made Aurelia terribly angry.
"Go call your nursemaid. Right now."
Time is up.
Typos and omissions again another day. Fixed any typos and omissions I found. Also slight additions. Two or three lines.