TLNTAAM Chapter 17

Watch Your Step

It wasn't a thick book. But the warmth behind it made her smile anyway.

Having someone care was the kind of thing that made you squirm and feel good at the same time.

Then the door opened again.

Three maids stood in the doorway carrying a small wooden tub and an enormous kettle.

"Good heavens!"

This was what bathing meant here? Not go use the communal bathhouse, but have them bring the water directly to you?

She leapt off the bed barefoot and went to help them.

"You don't have to do that," said the maid holding the kettle, but she shook her head.

"Is this bathwater?"

"Water with fragrant tea leaves steeped in it. Didn't anyone tell you?"

"I just heard about it—I didn't know it meant this. Goodness! That must have been heavy. Next time I'll just come to wherever it is myself. Where do I go?"

They all shook their heads at once.

"We're just following orders. We'll leave towels here, so go ahead and bathe."

"No, really, there's no need for all this—"

"We'll come back for the wastewater later."

They left without further discussion.

She stood between the steaming kettle and the little wooden tub, blinking.

The dormitory that had been bustling all day had emptied out, leaving only her. She stared blankly at what they'd left behind.

'But why bathwater?'

She wasn't that dirty, was she? So why specifically order her to bathe?

No answer came. She let out a groan.

"Do I just... do it?"

Why go to all the trouble of hauling water and a tub up here. And they'd left fluffy towels.

'This feels like ordering room service in medieval times.'

Wasn't this kind of treatment reserved for important people? She scrunched her face and started removing her apron, one piece at a time.

"This water is going to waste."

Was water abundant in Iberia? She hadn't gone outside once, so she had no way to judge.

She removed the navy skirt and white underskirt. It felt strange, but there was nothing to do but undress.

'Nobody's going to walk in, are they?'

And if they did, it would just be another maid. The maids' quarters were a women-only space. Whatever else this place might be, at least there weren't any perverts.

She kicked her discarded clothes up onto the bed with her foot. Maid uniforms didn't involve that many layers.

'Thank goodness there's no corset.'

Not as convenient as modern clothing, but reasonably practical. Last, she pulled the cap off her head and tossed it onto the bed.

She poured the kettle water into the wooden tub. It wasn't all that hot.

'Still, if it was hot enough to steep tea leaves, it must have been boiled and cooled at some point.'

She bent over and breathed in the scent, sighing. What on earth is this for, Sabina.

"No matter how I look at it, they're making me wash up after the king touched me."

She poured enough water into the tub and stepped in barefoot. The warmth touched her skin and her whole body loosened.

It felt good. The feeling, however, was not.

'What exactly is the reason?'

She settled into the tub. She clenched her fist tight, then opened it, and water flowed between her fingers and scattered. Whether it was the tea leaves or something else, a pleasant fragrance filled the south-facing room.

Sitting blankly in the tub, she remembered being Lee Hwayun. She'd done half-baths like this often—half-baths were supposed to be good for circulation. Staring at the bathroom ceiling in warm water, the world seemed to stop.

She dunked her whole head under and slowly came back up. Nina's platinum hair stuck to the sides of her face, and as she smoothed it away, she noticed something.

"Nina has slightly wavy hair."

Come to think of it, in her memories of Nina, the long hair had fallen in elegant waves. She ran her fingers through it like a comb and sighed.

"What's the point of being pretty if you're going through all this."

She shook her head. No. She had to think positively. This wasn't a hopeless situation. Cheer up!

Drip, drip. Water fell from her wet hair. A chill came over her. She sank down until her shoulders were submerged.

She thought it through from the beginning, step by step.

First question: why did they want her to bathe?

If the bathing had been ordered after the king touched her, that was probably the reason. She smacked her palm with her fist. The realization landed with a truly deflating thud.

They wanted her to bathe because the king touched her.

Not a historical drama about a court lady spending her first night with the king, and yet this was the reason!

She laughed despite herself. The hollowness made it funnier somehow. She lifted her legs out of the tub, then dropped them back in.

"She'd been wondering why they gave her tea-leaf water, and now—goodness, that's going too far."

Well, given that the king might grab her at any point, being grimy probably wouldn't do. She knew it wasn't that kind of thing, but it still rubbed her the wrong way.

"So that's why Sabina had been radiating don't-ask-me energy."

Irritating. But the question was answered. She honestly couldn't tell whether her situation had improved or not. At least she probably wasn't going to die.

"But now there are twice as many things to worry about."

Why was the king cooled by touching Nina? If magic and divine power clashed, shouldn't it be the same for Nina too?

'Was it all divine power? No. They'd have figured that out already. Nina seems a bit unusual.'

She lifted her legs again and sank them back. A ripple rose in the narrow tub and disappeared.

"This is going to be the death of me."

The situation kept twisting in strange directions, and she knew nothing about any of it.

'It won't get any more complicated than this. Right?'

Nothing has been resolved at all.

She covered her face with both hands. She didn't even want to think about it.

"At this rate, male supporting characters are going to start popping up out of nowhere—"

She shook her head. Don't think bad thoughts! Keep your wits about you and you'll be fine! Corrupt world or not, surely it couldn't come to that!

"Besides, it's my birthday!"

Unlucky as she was, surely her luck wasn't so rotten that it extended to birthdays?

'W-with Nina, it might be possible though?'

She really was unlucky. The more time passed, the more she suspected Nina hadn't died for nothing—this girl was genuinely cursed.

'To mark the occasion of turning fifteen, absolutely terrible things might start happening.'

Nina, should I buy you a talisman?

The hot water was making her flush. This was enough bathing. She stood up.

"For now—let's read the book Sabina gave me!"

Even a little knowledge wouldn't give her answers, but it might give her a thread to pull on. She desperately needed positive thinking right now.

Drip, drip. Water fell from Nina's fifteen-year-old body. Watching the droplets run down pale skin, she realized Nina had very good skin. Soft as milk, white as milk. So clear and pretty that not a single blemish could be found anywhere.

"Nina really did have the kind of face that made you look forward to the future."

Why does she have to be pretty all over.

She sighed and arranged her wet hair, shaking out as much water as she could before reaching for the towel. She kept at it for a while before noticing.

The water in the tub was still clean.

She wrapped herself in the large towel and examined the remaining water from different angles.

"Such a waste. Should I do laundry?"

If she was going to be bathing like this every day, she might not need to send anything to the laundry room. She considered it seriously, then shook her head.

"If my uniform smells like tea leaves, that would be a problem."

Could she ask them to leave out the tea leaves next time? Underwear might be fine to wash in this. She was running through these various thoughts as she lifted her other leg out of the tub.

That was when it happened.

The door burst open.

She startled and looked at who had come in.

'What—what—!'

She could not believe what she was seeing.

"Is this where my brother's woman is?"

An unbroken voice, but unmistakably male. She went rigid and slowly turned her head. Why was there a man in the women-only maids' quarters.

"Your Grace, you can't—this is—!"

"Let go! The only place in this whole castle I can't enter is my brother's residence!"

The boy was walking in without a care when he spotted her and stopped dead.

She looked back and forth between the maid trying to block him and the boy.

'What in the world is happening. But more importantly—'

She realized what state she was in.

The boy evidently hadn't expected this, because his face went scarlet. She quietly looked down. She was covered by a large towel, but it was not proper clothing.

The moment it hit her, she screamed.

"EEEEK!!"

The shriek filled the small room. She scrambled desperately for something more to cover herself with and spotted the other towel by the head of the bed. She lunged for it—

—and lost her balance.

CRASH!

The sound of her and the tub going over together was spectacularly loud.

'Please just let me be covered—'

That was the last thing she felt. The world went black. She tried to hold on, but it was no use.

And so she lost consciousness, sprawled face-down, bare as the day she was born.

The TL novel Bound Bird naturally had male supporting characters. The reckless Grand Duke who both admired and envied his older brother was one of them.

The boy had first come to see the saint out of curiosity about his brother's woman, only to end up enchanted by Seraphie's purity.

'Well, Seraphie is pretty.'

The boy drew closer and closer to the saint as if bewitched. And one day, he kissed Seraphie while she slept. The saint woke then, and the boy came to understand his own feelings.

'Up to this point, it's a pure first love...'

It would have been perfectly fine as a beautiful memory of first love. The problem was that this Grand Duke caused trouble with spectacular regularity.

'Eighty percent of the blame for the king losing Seraphie falls on this Grand Duke.'

It was Nina who helped Seraphie escape from the inner chambers, but it was the Grand Duke who got her across the border. Thanks to him, the king had to lead an army over mountains and across rivers.

'Come to think of it, Nina's share of the blame is only twenty percent.'

Nina became morning dew on the execution grounds and vanished. But the king didn't kill the Grand Duke. He merely had him confined to the countryside for life.

'Good god.'

He let it go because they're brothers? He forgave him for spiriting away the precious Seraphie, all because he's his little brother? People without family connections can just die of heartbreak, is that it? Your Majesty, this is not acceptable.

'How utterly unfair.'

This tiny girl did something wrong in the course of trying to do something good. At the very least he could have spared her life. Or he could have done a better job convincing Seraphie to stay in the first place.

Oh, the more she thought about it, the angrier she got. Would it have hurt him to forgive her? Nina didn't help the saint escape for her own sake! What Nina wanted was Seraphie's happiness!

And it was his fault for imprisoning the saint in the first place! If he hadn't captured and locked her up, Nina never would have done it!

'If you didn't want the saint to escape, you should have tried harder to win her over!'

Set conditions! Make a deal!

'Use your looks, for goodness' sake!'

The king is handsome and has a great body! If he'd just lavished her with gifts and jewels and properly courted her, she wouldn't have run!

She sighed deeply, and someone patted her chest.

The steady rhythm was quietly soothing.

Who was it?

A gentle touch. For some reason, she felt like a very small child. Maybe that was why. She smiled without meaning to.

The patting stopped.

She was thinking what a shame, when—

Something suddenly yanked her upright. There was no time to react. She was pushed back in an instant and blinked. Bright light slid down across the bridge of her nose.

"Sir Dio, she's awake!"

A gentle voice called out.

She blinked and tried to focus. When her blurry vision finally cleared, she could make sense of things.

'I fainted.'

How many days had she even been in Iberia, and she'd already lost consciousness again. Poor Nina. Knocked around from every direction and only her body taking damage.

Being a maid might be a good job. She still wanted to throw it all in.