"Follow me."
Once the Prince disappeared completely up the stairs, the butler turned around and started walking. Busy following along, I couldn’t keep my thoughts going.
I mean, what did it matter. Even if the Prince was royalty pushed infinitely far from power, even if he really was a duke like he claimed, it didn’t change the fact that his status was one that could take my head off in an instant.
I had to get a grip. I’d finally managed to dress, eat, and sleep like a human being, but that didn’t mean I was perfectly safe. Not at all.
"An exclusive attendant is, in principle, supposed to stay in a room attached to the master’s residence, but the Duke has never once had an attendant stay in the residence. Your room will be given in a place that makes it easy to move to the main building, so make sure there is never a time you are late when the Duke calls for you."
The butler told me what I needed to know. I had to memorize the schedule I was expected to keep—wake-up time, mealtimes, and the like—along with the building’s layout, so I didn’t really register how far we were walking. Starting from the main building and making a full loop around the annex, we ended up back at a room closest to the entrance that led into the main building.
"This is your room. I’ll have clothes sent over, so wash in the shared bath in the basement, and throw away what you’re wearing now. Don’t be late tomorrow morning. Your lessons will take place after the Duke’s dinner is finished, so brace yourself."
Even after the butler left behind that long list of instructions and went away, I couldn’t rest right away. I looked for something to write with. If I didn’t write it down immediately, I felt like I’d forget everything the butler had told me, word for word. Luckily, I found paper, a pen, and ink, and started taking notes in Hangul.
Even though the way the words were spoken had sounded strangely familiar, I didn’t know a single letter used in this place. The letters and numbers stamped on coins were all I had. I wanted to learn more, but there was nothing I could read and no one to teach me. Only now did I finally manage to escape being illiterate.
Seeing the characters I’d written in Hangul made a crooked smile come to my face. The letters my hand—unused to a pen—had scratched out were so sloppy I could barely recognize them myself.
After I received a change of clothes, I headed for the bath. This was the first time I’d actually bathed since coming to this world. The hot water felt like it was melting my arms and legs.
It felt like I was going to fall asleep like that, so I forced myself to sit up. As I was about to step out of the bath, I stopped in place. My reflection was there in the mirror, clouded over with steam.
A kid with gray hair and green eyes was staring back at me.
I quickly looked away.
All at once, exhaustion washed over me. Even though it was a time when I’d normally be working in the tavern at full tilt, I wanted to hurry back to the space that had been given to me as my room and close my eyes.
I changed in a rush, without even having time to feel the texture of the new clothes. I ran down the long hallway. The butler had said I would need to learn how to walk without making a sound, but I only cared about getting back fast.
Back in my room, I closed the door and set the latch. The clicking sound felt like it was calming my rapidly pounding heart.
It wasn’t a spring mattress, but the bed was still soft. I lay down and closed my eyes as-is. It had been a chaotic day.
※
From the moment I opened my eyes the next day, I had to spend another chaotic day. I’d had some confidence in customer service in my own way, but the butler constantly criticized my demeanor. It would’ve been a problem if a kid who’d come up from the countryside and worked at a back-alley inn had been perfect from the start, but what I was getting corrected on was my body itself.
"Straighten your waist, your back, your shoulders, and tuck your chin. More. More. More."
This young body was already showing rounded shoulders and a hunched, turtle-like neck. More shocking than the butler’s barking scolding whenever my posture slipped was the fact that I hadn’t even known this was the state my body was in.
I was a merchant who had to care about appearances. Even just to offset, a little, the fact that I was far too young to be a jeweler.
Clothes, hairstyle, cologne—I’d managed all of it, and I’d even managed my own body. This was a different body from my original one, but still, I’d had no idea that a body I moved with my own will had bad habits already set in and hardened.
"When you walk, take the strength out of your heels. You are someone who must attend at the Duke’s side so the Duke is comfortable, not a stage actor showing off your presence in front of others. Do not make footsteps carelessly. The Duke enjoys freshly brewed hot coffee every morning. Even without anyone raising their voice, the Duke coughs at the sound of the grinder, so you must prepare it with care."
Criticism of my every movement and work instructions poured down without giving me even room to breathe. I had to take the coffee set out of an ornate cabinet the butler unlocked and load it onto a wagon, and I had to fill a glass bottle with water and carry it without letting it slosh. I’d walked barely ten meters, and my back was drenched.
Every unbalanced part of this body grated on my nerves. It felt like I was only now properly recognizing that this body was my body.
My still-unkempt gait made water spill from the glass bottle and wet the back of my hand. I found a clean cloth, wiped down the wet bottle, and put it back on the wagon. I forced down the urge to sigh.
The butler glanced at me as if checking, then, without a word, took the lead while pushing the wagon. I started walking again, putting strength into my waist. You can’t correct a slumped body overnight. While I was building an exercise routine in my head, it seemed we arrived at our destination; the butler stopped and knocked on a door.
After waiting a moment, the butler opened it. The room inside was extremely dark.
"Open all the curtains."
In a small voice that was barely audible, the butler told me what I needed to do. Thanks to a carpet so plush my ankles could sink into it, I didn’t have to strain to reduce my footsteps. The curtains were far heavier and thicker than I expected, and I hesitated for a beat. To avoid making noise, I opened them slowly. Only then could I properly see the room.
It was a room with an atmosphere exactly like the Prince’s first impression.
Dark maroon furniture sat in heavy, imposing blocks. The curtains, the carpet, and the bed canopy were all black. It looked like the room of a seasoned businessman who wanted to make himself look intimidating.
The biggest VIP at my shop had been a loan shark who ruled over the streets of Myeongdong. Everyone called that person "Chairman," and the Chairman’s hobby—backed by an insane ability to mobilize cash—was collecting gold. Things like gold toads and gold turtles—stuff I couldn’t understand why anyone would make or buy, but it helped sales, so we sold it—were exactly that person’s taste.
I’d gone into that person’s private office exactly once. For someone who loved flashy gold so much, the office was surprisingly papered over with massive mahogany furniture. It was a room designed to crush a customer’s spirit. I still couldn’t forget the laughing face while saying there were just too many punks who came to borrow money and still tried to talk big. Even the teeth—still full—had looked like an old beast throwing its mouth open in an exaggerated way to show off how intact its fangs were.
The sound of the grinder pulled me out of my thoughts. In a space that felt like it would absorb both light and sound, that noise felt out of place. I could understand why the Prince supposedly woke up to this sound.
"Good morning."
The Prince’s voice, coming out after drawing back the canopy, rang with the same lively energy as the day before. Maybe he’d already been awake, waiting. It even felt like he hadn’t slept at all.
The butler poured the cold water I’d put in the glass bottle into a kettle.
Thinking about it, it was strange. There was nowhere in the bedroom that looked like a place to light a fire. Autumn had already deepened, and it made no sense that the owner’s bedroom had no heating device at all.
Holding back my head from tilting at the slightly chilly temperature, I almost screamed. I covered my mouth with my hand and stared hard at the butler’s hands.
"What’s so surprising?"
The Prince looked at me and laughed as if it amused him. Only then did I ask the Prince.
"How is that possible?"
"Magic made it possible."
If someone from an era that boiled water over coal in a fireplace saw a rechargeable cordless electric kettle, they would have called it magic. That was exactly what I looked like. Hot steam was pouring out of a kettle with no heat source at all.
In the kettle the butler was holding, it wasn’t an LED indicator light that was glowing—there was a red gemstone shining instead. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that gem.
If my eyes weren’t wrong, that was definitely a ruby.
※
A month had passed since I’d been carrying beer mugs at an inn, getting called things like "country bumpkin" or "hey," and then got dropped—like a parachute—into being the Prince’s exclusive attendant.
I wore clean clothes that were a bit stiff but didn’t itch my skin, I could feel what being full was again, and on a soft bed without bugs, even if it wasn’t for long, I slept deeply. My neck was still attached to my body, too, so I guess you could call this a successful job.
"Make it strong and fast today, Jay."
Today again, the Prince got out of bed at the sound of the grinder, flopped down into a chair, and demanded it.
"My lord Duke needs strong coffee not just today but always, but it seems you also need patience."
"Fast."
"I can’t control the water however I please, but I’m praying the water drops down faster too."
Even through that pointless exchange, the butler pressed the newspaper without saying a thing. It was the same exchange every morning, so maybe it had simply become familiar—but it was also because the butler knew I was doing everything I could, with all my effort and sincerity, to meet my employer’s needs.
Hadn’t he said, "Part of why I made you my exclusive attendant is because your way of speaking is subtly rude"? That was something the Prince said after watching me—someone who doesn’t speak unless asked first, and who answers after carefully choosing each word.
It was a confusing thing to hear. As someone in the service industry, was I supposed to reflect on being rude, or be happy that my approach had worked exactly right?
What I’d said rather boldly in the tavern had been to leave a strong first impression. Now that I’d succeeded in getting hired, I judged I should be more careful with myself, but the Prince found that version of me boring.
There were things you realized when you watched your employer up close. There was no one at his side who could babble back at him or tell him no. Not parents, not siblings, not close friends.
Even the butler answered "Yes" even when the inability to agree showed in the butler’s attitude. Each time, the Prince made a subtle expression.
Drunkards who got overly familiar and disrupted his steps, and people around him who did nothing but obey him. By comparing the Prince’s reactions to those two groups, I slowly started measuring, little by little, how much lenience he could afford to show.