My Master's Sweet Maid
Cialan had never carried a gun like the soldiers, but every day he had skirted the edge of death. Days of assessing enemy movements on the front lines, disrupting information, and assassinating key figures had continued without end. Fortunately, the empire won the war before he met his end, and the department he had served in vanished without a trace. The emperor praised him for surviving and thanked him, but Cialan could not conceal his bitter feelings.
His life had already been dedicated to the nation. He had settled his personal affairs completely and set no goals for his life other than dying in the line of duty. Amid the crowds cheering the news of victory, he alone wore the expression of a lost child. The wandering Cialan roamed the quiet countryside until he entered the small village of Obern. It was to scatter the remaining days of his life without any lingering attachments or regrets.
Yet somehow he had been drawn to such a clueless fool. A soft, hollow laugh escaped his lips. When he first met her, Emilia had appeared to him as nothing more than a clumsy fool desperate to find her place. Though deeply loved by all the villagers, she was a troublesome child that everyone found awkward to keep too close.
He had hired such an Emilia willingly out of a kind of guilt. While civilians were caught up in the war and died, he had survived, and that guilt lingered heavily in his chest. Emilia, extremely tense about being employed by a noble lord, broke the tea set the emperor had personally bestowed as a victory commemoration as soon as she started working.
Seeing Emilia with tears welling in her eyes, not knowing what to do, Cialan did not bother to scold her. He did not even mention that the items were gifts from His Majesty the Emperor. Even now, Emilia believed them to be nothing more than luxurious tea cups. When he offered a small encouragement that it was all right, her teary eyes widened and she quickly regained her spirits. Once she was convinced that he would not dismiss her for ordinary mistakes, she became even more spirited, though she still managed to do something startling once a week that surprised him.
Watching her, Cialan learned that there were people in the world who lived like that. His old work was the kind where mistakes were never tolerated. If he erred even slightly, it would not be only him who died—the entire empire would collapse. Cialan was convinced that the only reason he had survived so long in a life where only success was permitted was pure luck. He had witnessed countless times how agents far more capable than himself had perished from trivial mistakes.
To him, living had meant balancing precariously on a thin thread, barely holding on while a monstrous, terrible and miserable fate gaped its maw below. But Emilia's world seemed entirely different. Every day she ruined perfectly good clothes, broke dishes, rolled in the grass, lost expensive ribbons, burned bread, forgot messages she was supposed to deliver, and sometimes caused accidents that left her vision blurred. Yet after being briefly disheartened, she would bounce back with vigor and go about as if nothing had happened, as if the mistake belonged only to the present and tomorrow held only far more wonderful things.
Cialan found a strange comfort in that sight. That there existed a place in the world where such a clumsy person could live without issue, and that it was still all right. So he never once tried to correct Emilia. Rather, he even felt a sense of duty to embrace all her mistakes, as a way of honoring those who had died from a single error. Fortunately, because he had an abundance of both money and time, he could create an environment where Emilia could make as many mistakes as she pleased. At first, that fact had simply filled him with gratitude.
But now, after spending more than a year together in this way, Emilia had become someone who could no longer be explained by that meager atonement. He had clearly resolved to hold no attachments or regrets for the rest of his life, yet before he knew it, Cialan found himself swayed like a reed by Emilia's round eyes glancing at him like a puppy after she burned the stew, by her flushed cheeks smiling bashfully as she arranged freshly bloomed tulips in a vase, or by the way she radiated happiness as if she held the entire world in her hands with just one bite of dessert.
Even his strength of remaining unmoved by joy or sorrow in any matter had vanished before he realized it. When he was with Emilia, Cialan was literally swayed by everything. He rejoiced with her over a small dandelion blooming beneath the stone wall, grieved with her over a sparrow that struck the window, and when they bickered over the ingredients going into the stew and finally closed their eyes at night, the only thought that filled his mind was how lovable Emilia was that day as well. Cialan could no longer imagine a life without that adorable bundle of accidents, and he was not foolish enough to fail to recognize that this feeling was love.
Sometimes even the grass clinging to Emilia's apron, the bread crust where she had secretly scraped away only the burnt parts to hide her mistake, or the shirt left wrinkled and dry because she forgot to hang the laundry on the line—even those things were so lovable that his chest burned with warmth. But if a high-born employer revealed his feelings, it would only be burdensome for her. Cialan tried hard to bury his emotions without letting them show.
Every Wednesday, when Cialan went to the city to obtain news from the empire, he always bought various desserts for Emilia. At first, he had started it lightly, simply to see her happy face, but now he had reached the point of placing advance custom orders with the patissier to suit her tastes. Of course, Emilia did not know this. Because she would feel burdened if he bought her portion separately, Cialan would nibble on cakes that did not even suit his own taste while watching her reactions. Only after seeing Emilia's cheeks flush red with anticipation would he hand over the plate.
Then one day, while Cialan was watching Emilia eat cake with a pleased expression, he saw her sucking on the fork, thoroughly licking the cream from the tines with her tongue, and scraping up the cream that had fallen on the table with her hand to suck it clean—and lust boiled up within him, robbing him of sleep that night. The sight of her glossy lips coated with cloudy cream being meticulously licked by her light pink tongue, or the way she held the fork in her mouth even after finishing the cake, tickling the slender metal with her tongue, would send blood rushing heavily to his lower body. His own tongue would ache with the desire to taste that soft, yielding tongue.
It was the same when Emilia, glancing at him, quickly licked up the cream spilled on the table with her finger. When her finger coated with white cream was drawn into her soft and moist lips, Cialan had to desperately restrain himself to keep his trousers from tenting at the sensation of those lips stroking his manhood. Now, merely seeing Emilia smile or meeting her eyes was enough to make lust surge to an embarrassing degree.
He could confidently say he had never shown any sign of it. Emilia must still have thought of him as a noble, elegant, and kind Master, the one and only in the world. At least, until today. Could a man who had touched a maid's bare skin and even buried his face in her most intimate place still be respected in that way? This thought pressed heavily upon Cialan's chest.