WEEKLY POWER GOALS 💎🔥 30→2ch | 60→5ch | 100→8ch | 200→15ch | 400→25ch⏰ Resets Monday!
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My first meeting with Muzan was unpleasant. Well, that's just how I saw it.
In reality, he merely glanced at me, found nothing worth criticizing, and gave a casual nod.
I replaced Oume and stayed in his quarters.
Back then, he wasn't yet the universally despised demon of ultimate evil. He even had a nice-sounding name... But I don't want his traces left in this world, so I'll just call him the Young Master.
The Young Master was the only son of the main Tachibana family. The head of the Tachibana Clan doted on him immensely.
The maids only dared whisper behind closed doors that when he was born, he'd been stillborn. Just as they were about to bury him, he suddenly came back to life.
But narrowly escaping death's grasp brought no good fortune. The Young Master's health deteriorated year after year. He was bedridden constantly, falling ill at the slightest disturbance. Naturally, his temper was terrible.
Maids in the Young Master's quarters rotated at a rate measured in months—sometimes years.
This also explained why someone of my lowly peasant origins, who should've been doing menial labor, somehow became a senior attendant and got transferred to the Young Master's quarters.
I ate bitterness on my very first day.
The Young Master's health was so poor, his living habits differed from everyone else's. It was as if even air was poisonous to him.
At night, he slept fitfully, coughing from time to time and calling for someone to bring him water.
I quickly grabbed the kettle from the stove, poured a cup of lukewarm water, and carried it into his room.
Another maid, Okoto, deftly helped him sit up. For once in my life, I was clever—seeing how he didn't even lift his hand, I figured he wanted me to feed him.
I hurried to kneel beside the Young Master, carefully holding the cup to his lips, terrified of moving too abruptly and making him choke.
His lips touched the water. A shadow flashed across his face. Then he grabbed the cup and hurled it at my head.
Those hands—so thin you could see every vein—were weak. The cup hitting my head didn't hurt much... But that lukewarm water splashing across my face drove away every trace of drowsiness.
I had no idea what I'd done wrong, but my body reacted faster. I immediately prostrated myself and apologized.
Perhaps my attitude was good enough. He didn't order me dragged out and beaten to death. He just spat out two words: "Get out."
I scrambled out efficiently.
He didn't call me back in for the rest of the night. I just heard him suppressing his voice, coughing dully from time to time until dawn broke.
When daylight came, another maid arrived to relieve me. After a night of taut nerves, I walked back to the servants' quarters trembling—and saw Ohagi standing at the door waiting for me.
Tears suddenly fell. I ran over and threw myself into her arms, sobbing with muffled sounds.
Ohagi wasn't angry. Wasn't surprised either. One hand held my back. The other gently stroked my hair.
Her palm was as warm as a mother's.
No matter how terrified I was, I couldn't escape... Unless the Young Master ordered me beaten to death, or I lasted until I was old and decrepit enough to be replaced, I had no hope of getting out of this job.
I didn't want to die. This work was bitter, yes, but I still held onto a dream—to save up enough money to buy a tiny house in the city.
Only one path lay before me: work hard and survive until the Young Master found me too old and had me transferred away.
Honestly, it was a perilous challenge.
I started keeping my eyes wide open, hiding in corners every day to carefully observe the Young Master, trying desperately to figure out his temperament.
Ohagi had spent three months teaching me how to read people's expressions without success. The Young Master made me grasp it in one day.
Goes to show—human potential gets forced out.
I also realized that day he'd thrown the cup at me because he found the water too cold.
As for what temperature was appropriate for him? Well, that was truly hard to say.
It depended on the Young Master's mood. Whenever he was in a bad mood, even if I served him the divine nectar Ohagi said only heavenly gods were worthy of drinking, he'd still throw the cup at me.
So my efforts shifted toward keeping the Young Master's mood stable—preventing it from souring so easily.
That... was also pretty hard.
Doctors frequently visited the estate. All of them were renowned physicians from various regions, summoned by the head of the household at great expense to treat the Young Master.
Whenever this happened, all of us servants in the quarters braced ourselves like we were facing a great enemy.
Once the doctors finished their examinations and declared themselves powerless, the Young Master would become extremely, extremely, extremely irritable.
Okoto whispered to me that this was peak maid turnover season.
Behind every departing doctor lay several corpses dragged away.
It got to the point where the moment I saw a doctor walk into the room, I'd stare daggers at the back of their skull.
Wishing I could grab a vase and bash their heads in to stop them from saying things like, "This humble one is incompetent and cannot cure this strange illness. You should seek someone more skilled."
If you can't cure him, fine. After all these years, the Young Master was probably used to it.
But couldn't they at least phrase it more nicely?!
The new doctor summoned by the head of the household was a white-bearded old man. Judging by his age, his medical skills should've been superb... But he still crashed and burned before the mountain that was the Young Master.
Mm, I've been studying really well lately. I can even use such difficult phrases now. I'm amazing.
Anyway, I'm getting off track. The point is, I watched the white-bearded doctor come take the Young Master's pulse every day, his expression growing more somber by the day. The Young Master's mood also worsened by the day.
Just as the Young Master was about to randomly select an unlucky soul to drag out and beat to death, evil suddenly sprouted in my gut. I decided that if I was going to die, I'd take someone down with me.
I secretly added rhubarb to the doctor's meal.
Ohagi had taught me this—it caused diarrhea.
But if Ohagi knew what I'd done with the rhubarb she'd given me, she'd probably regret teaching me about medicinal herbs.
After eating the meal laced with rhubarb, the doctor's complexion indeed turned ugly.
He was even in the middle of examining the Young Master when his face suddenly changed. He stammered an apology and hurried out.
But the doctor was a skilled doctor. My little trick couldn't fool him. He caught me red-handed and furiously went to tattle to the Young Master.
My life is over.
I lay listlessly on the floor, listening to him tearfully denounce my wicked deeds. My heart felt nothing. I just regretted not being able to say goodbye to Ohagi.
Whether he tattled or not, I was destined to be beaten to death by the Young Master's order sooner or later anyway. Whatever.
The Young Master listened silently to my crimes, then said in a leisurely tone, "Lift your head."
What, he wanted to see what a maid about to be beaten to death looked like?
I raised my utterly unremarkable face and saw his red plum-blossom eyes examining me with interest, a trace of a smile at the corners of his lips.
Based on my observations of the Young Master during this time, he didn't seem angry at all. In fact, he seemed to be in a pretty good mood.
He studied me for a while, then said, "Didn't expect you to have such guts."
The white-bearded doctor's eyes widened in confusion. "You..."
"Useless." The Young Master's voice turned icy—but he wasn't talking to me. He was talking to the doctor. "Get out."
I stared blankly as the doctor got dragged out in my place.
The Young Master, in quite a good mood, asked me, "What's your name?"