Mushoku Tensei (LN) - Volume SS - Chapter 24

Short Story:

The Knight’s Attendant’s First Job

AT PAUL’S FUNERAL, everyone brought something that carried a memory of him to the feast. For Lilia, this was a cake made with dried fruit.

She wouldn’t explain why she had brought the one food Paul hated—it wasn’t a story for other people’s ears.

You hated this cake, didn’t you? she thought, recalling something that happened not long after she had first become the maid to the Greyrat household.

Lilia made the cake on the day Rudeus was born. While the plan was to hold a proper celebration later, she thought a cake would be a nice way to enjoy the happy occasion in the meantime.

That night, Paul ate dinner alone. 

“Heh heh. A son, eh… He hardly cries, dunno what that’s about…but a son…” He started drinking, muttering, “A son…” over and over and grinning. He was over the moon at Rudeus’s birth. 

“Ahh…” He took another swig, then he saw the cake and frowned. “And this is?”

“It’s to celebrate Master Rudeus’s birthday.”

“Um, right…” Paul poked at his slice of cake with his fork, but didn’t take a bite. Instead, he went on sipping his drink. 

Perhaps he didn’t like it. If so, perhaps she had done a bad thing.

Just as Lilia started thinking this way, Paul suddenly said, “Why’d you become our maid, anyway?”

“Why, sir?”

“Yeah, I want to know why. The reason.”

“Didn’t I explain that when you hired me?”

“No, I get your situation. But you didn’t have to come to my house, did you?”

“Well, I don’t know…”

At the time, she had been at risk of being assassinated for political reasons. As such, she had needed the least noticeable place she could find and someone who would protect her. Finding such a place was hard enough; finding such a person was near impossible. First of all, there was no one who would shelter her once they found out the servants of the Asuran royal family were after her. Paul, though, had owed Lilia a debt. She’d thought if she played her cards right, there was a good chance he would protect her even if the assassins came for her.

She didn’t know if Paul had understood all that or not. He had hired her just like that with barely any negotiation.

“If anything, I wondered why you were willing to hire me,” she said.

“Well, there’s hardly anyone willing to come to a backwater like this…” Paul fell silent for a moment and looked at Lilia. “I mean, that’s part of it, but also, when I saw your name, I thought, there’s something I need to say to her. Only I was worried you might not like me dredging up the past, so I never managed to do it.”

When Paul said ‘the past,’ Lilia remembered her first time. A far greater number of terrible things had happened afterward, while she was a guard-maid at the Asura palace, so the impact had faded, but she couldn’t forget it, and it was not a good memory.

“But today, what with my kid being born, I made up my mind,” Paul said. “What I did back then was wrong. I know an apology isn’t going to make it right…but I hope you’ll forgive me.”

Lilia was shocked. The Paul she knew had been a rascal through and through. The sort who did bad things without thinking twice, who thought he was better than everyone else in the world. That was why, when Lilia had applied for the job, she had planned on ­using the past as a bargaining chip. Now he was married, she thought, he wouldn’t want it exposed to his wife. He played dirty, so she had meant to do the same.

“Oh…” And yet, after this sudden apology, Lilia was at a loss for what to say. It wasn’t a question of whether to forgive him. For her, what had happened was water under the bridge. In which case, if she were to consider her future, the correct response would be to tell him it didn’t bother her.

“All right, then please eat that whole cake.” The words were out of her mouth before she realized it. Paul looked a little taken aback—but then he nodded slowly and began to eat. 

He definitely didn’t like it. In fact, he must have hated it, ­because he retched and choked a few times as he ate. But even as tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, he ate the whole thing without spitting anything out.

When she thought back on it, Lilia wasn’t sure why she had said what she did. But she did know one thing. That had been the ­moment she had truly forgiven him, and the moment she had fallen in love with him.