The tailor's shop is a really big and open space. Along the front wall there are a bunch of windows letting a bunch of light in. There’s a desk by the front entrance, a door right at the back and rows upon rows of all sorts of different clothes hanging right next to the walls.

I walk into the shop with Azariah. I asked Aubrey for permission to go clothes shopping, he said yes, and Azariah asked to come with me. I obviously wouldn’t turn down Azariah like that.

“Hello, sir, ma’am. What can I do for you today?” There’s only one person waiting in the store. She’s a bit shorter than me and Azariah, but she looks friendly at least.

“Oh, we just wanted to buy a few outfits. The things we have on now are the only things we have to wear after all.” She seems kind of upset when I say that.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything here that particularly interests you two? I’d love to help.”

“I want something that makes me look really cool and dangerous. I also want to try and bring out my eyes, so maybe a bit of red and white? Oh, it’s spring so it should be getting warmer soon, so I want something that’s cool to wear.”

“Anything black…” Azariah says, really quietly.

“Well, I think I can do that for you two. Come here.”

She leads us through the shop, showing us various fantasy looking clothes. Azariah basically picks up anything black she can find. It’s supposed to be getting warmer soon, but she says that she doesn’t care. I also pick out some darker stuff, but I make sure to try and get a lot of white stuff as well. I think it would look good on me.

“I really wasn’t expecting you to care this much about clothes, Kiaran…” Azariah says to me. She’s as unexpressive as always, but I think she’s impressed?

“Oh, well since it’s all fantasy stuff, I can’t really help myself. If it was normal clothes, my mom would still be having to pick them out for me.” Azariah doesn’t laugh at that attempt at a joke. I’ve never heard her laugh before. The only times I’ve ever even seen her happy was three times during our very first day here.

“So, do you two already have everything you want picked out?” The shop lady says.

“Oh, no, I still want to pick some stuff out.”

“We’re on a budget, Kiaran. We shouldn’t get anymore clothes.”

“Oh come on, this is like three new outfits for the two of us? If we’re all out I can just run over to Aubrey to ask for some more money.”

“We shouldn’t ask for anymore. I agree with Aubrey, this is all we need for now.”

“But we’re getting new jobs soon. We should be making money soon.”

“Soon isn’t now. We need to save money, not spend it on stuff like this, no matter how fun it is.”

“Aww, this is adorable,” the shop lady replies. “Normally it’s the girlfriend who tries and spends all of their money on clothes and the boyfriend who tries to rein them in. But with you two it’s the other way around.”

I’m a bit confused by this. “Huh? But Azariah’s not my girlfriend?”

“Really? She isn’t? Sorry, my mistake. You’d make a really cute couple, though.”

While we were having that little conversation, Azariah’s face went red, and she buried it into the clothes that she was carrying.

“See? Look what you did. Apologize to her.” I say. Azariah makes an mmmmm sound, so I think I might have just made it worse.

After a bit Azariah calms down, and I agree to just settle for the clothes that we’re buying now. So I start taking my shirt off to start trying my new clothes on, Azariah stares right at me with her hands over her mouth, blushing.

“Azariah?”

“What is it?”

“I was just changing shirts, but if it makes you that uncomfortable, I can change somewhere else…”

She doesn’t say anything, and continues to look all over my chest, stomach, arms, and shoulders. Like seriously, her eyes are going all over the place. “Azariah?”

“Yes, please leave, sorry.” She sputters out.

“Don’t worry about it.”

After that we both try on all of our respective clothes and then pay for it. All of Azariah’s stuff was black, which I complimented her for. She also seemed to have liked all of my new outfits. Although I did notice the more skin an outfit showed off the more she seemed to like it… I have no idea how she’d react if I pointed that out so I never mentioned anything, and we just left after paying.

I also noticed she was eyeing up some of the more revealing female clothing, but she got all red and kept saying she didn’t realize just how skimpy they were even though it was kind of obvious. Yeah, I think it would probably be better of me if I just forgot I saw that.

><><><><

First day as a servant boy! This mansion is huge and there’s a bunch of staff, so first order of business is walking through every single hallway and room, talking to everybody until I figure out the layout, and all the names and faces of everybody here.

I walk through one hallway until I find a little girl in a super fancy dress leaning against the wall looking all annoyed. Her hair’s yellow orangish, and it’s done up in a really fancy way. Her eyes look a similar color.

“Huh? What’s a girl as young as you doing looking so angry like that? That expression doesn’t work for you, you know.” The girl looks up at me, confused.

“What? Why is a lowly servant boy talking to me?”

“Ah! That pierced right through my heart, little girl! You aren’t going to make any friends acting like that. Well, I guess you probably don’t want me calling you a little girl… so, what’s your name?”

“Hm? Are you new here?”

“Yep! First day! I’m walking around in circles like an idiot, trying to figure out where everything is right now. I’m also introducing myself to everybody and trying to memorize everybody’s names. So if you don’t mind…”

“It’s Noelle.”

“Noelle, huh? That’s a nice name, you really look like a Noelle.” Noelle looks at me, her confusion growing. She then starts laughing.

“You’re actually calling me Noelle…”

“Well yeah, that’s what you said your name was right? I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong.” She starts laughing even more.

“Ahahaha! You’re clueless! Absolutely clueless! Hilarious!”

“I really don’t understand what I’ve done to make you laugh like this. Well, see you around Noelle.”

“Hey! I didn’t get to hear your name!”

“Oh… it’s Kiaran.”

“Keep calling me Noelle, OK Kiaran? Don’t change, OK?”

“Don’t worry, I have a knack for being so stubborn I get yelled at. Well, these hallways aren’t going to memorize themselves. See you, Noelle.”

“See you! Kiaran!”

><><><><

Cleaning the dust under the table is really annoying. It hurts your knees and it’s really hard to tell that you got everything. I will try my best though. After a couple of minutes I think I finally cleaned all the dust in this dingy closet nobody ever uses.

“Huuh? You're still working, Kiaran?” 

“There’s dust everywhere in here! No one’s used this closet in the past 800 years!” 

“Now you’re exaggerating. That would mean this closet was here when the Archons were still walking the earth, right?” The maid bothering me now is Heather. A 12 year old girl with short, black hair.

“It’s a figure of speech, Heather. Why are you even here?” 

“No need to get so annoyed, I was just checking up on you, making sure you didn’t break anything…” 

“I haven’t broken anything though.” 

“That’s good. Say, you're almost done?” 

“It should only take me a couple more minutes, why?” 

“I was just thinking, if you didn’t have any work after this, we could hang out for a bit.”

I’ve been getting along well with all the maids and butlers here. I’ve gotten along with Heather more than most, though. She’s also been a literal goldmine of information. For her age, she knows a lot of history. She’s absolutely obsessed with it, and she loves to talk about it for hours on end. Since I know next to nothing about this world’s history, and she loves teaching it so much, our relationship has been really helpful for the both of us.

“Yeah, sure, I’m free after this. You mind telling me a bit more about the eastern culture exchange with Meccaria, about a century ago?” Heather looks at me, a bit confused. 

“Really, Kiaran? I wouldn’t have thought you’d be interested in that kind of thing. I thought you just loved military history and back when the Earth God still ruled, that sort of stuff.”

That’s certainly true. The military history of this world has been really interesting to me. Also, the stories  of 800 years ago when the Earth God and all the Archons were still alive have kind of left me a bit obsessed. Azariah’s loved hearing about that stuff from me as well. It’s to the point where she’s been using being able to read those stories as a motivator to learn to read faster. But I have to put that aside for now, I have more important things to be learning about.

“Yeah, I do, but the eastern cultural exchange gave rise to a bunch of the customs Uclait nobles use today, right? I want to get better at being all butler-like, so I figured that might help.” 

“The eastern cultural exchange wasn’t as influential as you think it was. Most modern noble customs in Uclait came from the south, not the east.”

“Ah… really? That’s a shame then? Maybe you could teach me how that happened instead.” 

“I could, but Uclait’s a massive country. Those customs may apply to most of the country, but there’s still huge portions of it that kind of rejected those customs. Places like the Great Ulfur Forest, the Emednes Mountain range, the Elune domain… just keep where the people you’re talking to come from in mind, all right?” 

“All right.”