Surviving As A Maid

Chapter 5

“That’s exactly why this is happening,” Mina explained. “We did nothing at all.”

“Are you serious? Did the king expect us to pull out a red carpet for a man just standing outside without a word?” Pepe vented in frustration.

I briefly imagined a maid cheerfully greeting a concubine who had come to seek the queen she served unannounced. It would be pretty unusual for someone to do, and certainly not the sort of thing most would think to do, but I had a feeling it was what the king wanted for Yurigel.

Therefore, I did just that.

***

Back when I was a night-shift customer service employee at a taxi company for extra cash, we were trained to always smile even if we communicated via the phone to keep our voices bright and lively. I used lines like “Hello, Mr. Yurigel! How may I assist you today?” or “How may I help you, dear customer?”

Many passengers were often completely intoxicated at night when they called, and depending on the customer, they would respond to me by making dumb jokes. For example, some would test how dearly I thought of them, and it would make me very uncomfortable. Now, I was in the same situation, but it elicited a different kind of discomfort in me to do it with Yurigel. Back then, it was because that sort of behavior was awkward. Now, it was because my life depended on it.

As I stood in front of him, I forced myself to smile. Showing an unpleasant face or uttering one wrong word to him could mean my demise. Yurigel stared at me intensely, which made my skin crawl. But soon, his expression slowly turned into a happy one as if he had just seen someone he was genuinely delighted to meet. It seemed like he had never encountered someone this friendly in the queen’s palace before.

“Hmm… What’s your name?” he asked.

“My name is Ash.”

“Ash, you say…”

He seemed to be in a truly good mood. To any observer, his attitude was akin to someone showing up having his lost twenty-carat diamond ring. After tensing up at Yurigel’s hesitant reappearance, the maids were now glaring at me like I were some outrageous drunkard spewing nonsense in the subway. Even the head maid gave me a look as if she were staring at a sycophant trying to curry favor with power. While not entirely devoid of such intent, it wasn’t solely because of that reason. I knew why Yurigel kept coming to the palace.

In the novel, Yurigel was born to be loved, unfamiliar with hating or despising others. He probably was unaware or oblivious to anyone other than his beloved. This was evident in the fact that he didn’t reject or harbor any ill feelings toward the newborn prince, who was born of his beloved and another woman. That was a part of the story that had amazed me. How could he care for a prince who bore the face of both his lover and his lover’s wife without a moment of resentment or distrust?

“I’d like to see the baby,” he said.

Yurigel had been lingering around the queen’s palace for days, longing to see the baby prince.

There was no one in the palace comfortable enough to approach Yurigel, and he didn’t know how to express his desire to see the baby to anyone there. Therefore, no one in the palace interacted with him, which provoked the king’s anger. I was pretty sure that my approach of talking to him first might have been a gross breach of court etiquette.

“Madam, His Majesty Yurigel wishes to see the baby,” I told the head maid.

At the very top of the staircase, which flowed down like ripples on either side, the head maid stood like a goddess of judgment. I, feeling like a novice, confidently curtsied and greeted her, repeating the words she had surely heard the first time. She looked at me and Yurigel with an expression that seemed ready to draw a sword from thin air, and then she knelt down.

“I will convey your wishes to Her Majesty,” she stated with a formal tone.

The queen hadn’t fully recovered from giving birth and wasn’t able to walk well. The head maid entered the inner chamber where the queen was resting, leaving Yurigel behind. Meanwhile, I found myself desperately trying to maintain a smile for him. Being responsible for serving guests, I was at a loss for what to do next. Surely, there must be a waiting room or a protocol for situations like this.

However, considering the frequent turnover of maids and the queen’s inability to employ high-born maids, it seemed that others might also be unsure of the proper etiquette in such situations. The training of the queen’s maids at the palace seemed to focus more on immediate tasks and appearances rather than extensive protocol. Most of us were just apprentice maids, not yet fully trained in the intricacies of palace life. And just because I had graceful hands, I was assigned to be the serving maid, representing the face of the palace.

Fortunately, the queen rarely had visitors since she was holding her title with no real power or authority. Shortly afterward, the head maid returned and bowed to Yurigel, then gestured for him to follow her to the baby prince’s room. I hesitated, unsure whether to follow or remain where I was. At this crucial juncture of decision-making, the head maid paused from the front and turned to give me a quick nod.

Was that nod a subtle threat to end my life? Knowing that she would be the one who would eventually pull the white blanket over the queen’s dead body, I always felt small in her presence. I started counting in my head how many years it would be until the tragic event. Her years, too, must be marked by patience and endurance.

I hurriedly followed Yurigel, trailing behind him to the prince’s room. He was kind and good-hearted but wasn’t particularly accommodating to the people of the queen’s palace, who harbored a hostility he had never experienced. Because of that, the silence along the way felt almost unbearable.

It struck me as odd that Yurigel—whose status was uncertain, falling somewhere between being the king’s main consort or concubine—was visiting the baby while the king, the actual father, had only seen his son once on the day of his birth and had not returned since. If I were the mother, I’d probably whisper to the baby’s ear every day that his supposed father wasn’t there when he was born and that after a single glance, he never came back and didn’t even give him a name.

Perhaps the king had taken the prince away from the queen because of people who shared my perspective. This seemed even more likely, considering the queen was not the type of character to desire such things against the king. Due to the belief that one should not walk over the head of a noble person, the queen’s quarters were located at the highest point in the building, meaning that the baby prince’s room was quite a distance from hers.

The head maid personally opened the massive door to the prince’s room, and Yurigel entered along with a gentle breeze. In the center of the vast room, there was a cradle. A nanny and a few maids stood at a distance from it, seemingly informed in advance of Yurigel’s visit. The infant prince slept peacefully, his breathing soft and rhythmic. A gentle breeze carried the soothing scent toward me.

“Hello, little one,” Yurigel greeted softly.

That day, he held the child of the man he loved—a scene that appeared somewhat different from what I had imagined while reading the book.

“You have no idea how long I’ve waited for you,” he said, looking content. Awakened from his sweet slumber, the prince briefly fussed and waved his tiny hands before gripping Yurigel’s finger.

The blonde man couldn’t bring himself to put down the tiny life he cradled, even as the prince drifted back to sleep. The air in the room felt different from outside, and Yurigel, holding the child, glowed with a gentle radiance as if forgiving all the sins and impurities of the world. His figure, singing a soft lullaby to the baby prince, seemed almost holy, like an image of the Virgin Mary. I guess looks are everything in life.

The queen will eventually lose her child to that gorgeous face. My friends from back home and I had a term for people like Yurigel. We called them “sly b*tches.” The term was for people who smiled while betraying those around them. Eventually, we shortened it to “slytch.” So, despite the discrepancies between what I witnessed and what I had read in the book, my perception remained unchanged. The king was still a bastard, and Yurigel was undeniably a slytch. These were my unwavering truths, just as the sky was blue, summers were hot, and winters were cold.

I glanced surreptitiously at the head maid, who seemed eager to snatch the baby prince away as her glare fixed on Yurigel’s shadow. Maybe staying still and silent is the wisest course of action for now. I really wish I could take a step away from her. If she realizes I’m still beside her, she might well declare me guilty for speaking cordially to Yurigel in the queen’s palace.

Yet, in my heart, I knew I was innocent. My only crime was a fervent desire to live because it was imperative that I survived this place. I couldn’t go anywhere else, so I had to remain here as long—and as discreetly—as possible. In this world devoid of any special advantages or buffs, this was my only goal.

In fact, it had always been the overarching goal of my life, even outside of this fantastical realm.

***

A handsome man arrived. He wasn’t the protagonist Yurigel or the king but a different, equally handsome man.

“Did you see? A handsome man came,” I whispered to the other maids.

I was on morning cleaning duty, having adapted so well that I feared this might indeed be my true nature. I yawned and rubbed my eyes as I started sweeping the garden when that handsome man passed by. I had seen advertisements claiming that beauty could stop time and space, but never before had I witnessed a man who seemed to slow down my world just by his presence. It felt as though time and space were bending toward him. After hastily completing my chores, I rushed to share the news of his arrival with my maid friends.

“Where? Where is he?” one of them asked excitedly.

“Who did you see? Not that fox, right?” another asked, full of suspicion.

My friends, who had been slacking off, stopped what they were doing and quietly gathered around me. I silently led them to the vicinity of the queen’s quarters, where I had seen the handsome man. As we approached, the queen’s door was wide open, and at that moment, he stepped out.

“That’s Sir Alex,” someone whispered.

“Ash tricked us,” my friends began complaining.

I hadn’t seen him before, yet everyone around me seemed to already know him. It seemed Ash was supposed to know him too. But I didn’t let embarrassment take over. I had learned to stay composed and no longer easily swayed or confused by unexpected situations.

“Why? What’s wrong with calling a handsome man handsome?” I defended myself.

He indeed looked dashing, with his flowing brown hair and objectively attractive face.

“Yeah, he is good-looking, but...”

“You made it sound like a new handsome man had arrived,” someone grumbled.

He bore no resemblance to the queen, a delicate beauty herself, not in a way that struck one immediately as breathtaking. The queen only has a younger brother, who later becomes Yurigel’s doormat, and his name isn’t Alex, so this man can’t be a family member. Who could he be then?

“I still think he’s a fresh and exciting handsome man to look at though!”

I needed to think hard. It was clear that all the maids, including Ash, recognized him. The fact that I was uncertain about my specific duties as a maid wasn’t too troubling, as it seemed we were all somewhat in the dark. However, not recognizing someone who was clearly well-known posed a real problem. Pretending to have amnesia seemed like the only way to hide my lack of knowledge without arousing suspicion.

Since he was referred to as “Sir Alex,” I assumed he was a knight. After leaving the queen’s quarters, the handsome man engaged in a conversation with the head maid standing by the door.

I remembered the last time Yurigel visited. The head maid had sternly reminded him to schedule his visits in advance, perhaps unaware of his influence in this story.