“Myusel, what happened to your finger?”
One finger of the hand holding the broom was wrapped in a small white cloth. It didn’t look like some kind of fashion statement. In fact, something red was seeping through the cloth.
“What? Oh, when I was doing the dishes earlier, I broke a plate, I’m afraid...” She shrugged a little, but then added, “Um, I’m very sorry...”
“No, don’t worry about it.” I shook my head with a half-smile. “We’ve got plenty of dishes. But what about you? Did you hurt yourself?”
“I-I’m all right, sir. It’s just a shallow cut.”
“That’s good,” I said with relief.
Myusel could be very serious, or at least very hard on herself. So sometimes she kept pushing herself even when she was really tired, or tried to continue working despite an injury. If I didn’t check up on her to make sure she was doing all right, she certainly wouldn’t come to me herself to say she was in pain or something.
A little cut, though, was probably all right. Again, for better or for worse, she was very serious, and I didn’t think she would lie about something like how bad her injury was. But there was one thing I wanted to ask...
“Myusel, aren’t you being a bit of a workaholic?”
She’d already lugged all those boxes inside, and now she was launching right into housework without so much as a break. First she had carried around all those heavy boxes, then washed all our dishes, now she was cleaning, and then she was going to do the laundry. I know, I know, it was her job to do the housework, but even so, it seemed like a lot to ask.
And this was after her individual workload had decreased when Cerise had joined us.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen much of Cerise working around the house recently. Was something going on? She always showed up at mealtimes, so I hadn’t thought much about it. She, like Myusel, was pretty straitlaced, so I didn’t suspect her of slacking off, but I was worried that maybe she wasn’t feeling well. I wasn’t an expert on lizardman health—you couldn’t exactly take their temperatures or check their complexion—but she had Brooke with her in the evenings, and I thought he would have mentioned to me if anything was wrong.
“If you don’t mind, Myusel, I’d be happy to clean up the yard.”
It was just a passing thought.
“What...?” Myusel’s eyes went wide, and for a moment it was like she didn’t understand what I was saying. But the moment it registered, she shook her head, hard. “N-No, I could never! I couldn’t make you do something like that, Shinichi-sama!”
“Aw, I was the one who suddenly added carting boxes around to your list of chores earlier. And we don’t have school today, anyway; I’ve got time to kill. I’d love to do something other than organize merchandise.”
Then I plucked the broom out of Myusel’s grip.
Her bandaged finger brushed my hand.
“I’m worried about that injury, too,” I added. “If you have to move your fingers too much, the wound won’t stay closed.”
“B-But...”
“I really appreciate all the work you do around here, Myusel. Think of this as just a little token of my thanks. Okay?” As I talked, I relieved Myusel of the other items she was holding. (I didn’t have to pry too hard.) She looked at me, confused, for a moment. As her master, whatever I said was effectively an order. I tried not to take advantage of that, but it was still the case that she couldn’t object.
“Listen, uh,” I went on, scratching my cheek. This was sort of—well, embarrassing. “This is an order from your master. Don’t do any more housework. Go back to your room and rest for a bit. Got that?”
I smiled at her as I spoke, and Myusel—whether because she finally accepted what I said, or because she was just resigned to it—nodded hesitantly. “Thank you, sir.” She looked at the ground, blushing just a little.
Arrgh, what is with this girl’s killer cuteness?!
“Shinichi-sama, you sound just like Brooke-san.”
“Huh? Brooke?” There was a name I hadn’t expected to hear just now. “Did he say something to you?”
“Oh, no, not to me. To Cerise-san.” Myusel continued to stare at the ground. “I heard him tell her, ‘You don’t need to do the housework.’ He said he would take care of it for her, and that she should go to her room and rest.”
“Oh, I see.” I did remember him saying he would do Cerise’s share of the box-carrying. So maybe she was feeling a little under the weather?
“I thought, the way he cares for her like it’s the most natural thing in the world, it’s just... very husbandly. They’re such a sweet couple. And to hear you say the same thing to me, Shinichi-sama...” Then she suddenly seemed to realize where she seemed to be going with this, and quickly looked up. “Oh, no, I don’t mean—I didn’t mean to imply—”
Uh, I think there was only one thing you could have been implying, talking like that. And I think she knew it, too, considering her ears were even redder than before.
Husbandly... A sweet couple... Huh.
For me personally, those words evoked first and foremost a mental picture of my mom and dad.
I was struck by an image: Myusel, wearing an apron like a loving young housewife. It quickly turned into an image of Myusel wearing nothing but an apron, and I chased the wayward thought out of my head as quickly as I could.
“Well, uh, I’m gonna get cleaning,” I said.
“Th-Thank you again, sir,” Myusel replied, still sounding awkward. And there we parted. I started down the hallway towards the yard, but then I glanced back, and found Myusel still standing where she had been behind me, her head respectfully bowed.
“Cleaning the yard” sounds like a lot of work, but I didn’t actually have to handle a very large area. It was normally Brooke, the groundskeeper, who would
