Chapter 698: Lets Have a Housewarming Party ② (1/2)

On the sofa in Lilia-san's office, which was used for resting and for urgent visitors, I was sitting, holding my head in my hands.

Lilia-san, who was sitting opposite me, was looking at me with a worried expression on her face, and her complexion doesn't look that great either.

To be honest, I hadn't expected that I would face such problems with building a house.

……No, I'm not talking about the housewarming party. I heard that Ein-san and Zwei-san have been making preparations for that party at an overwhelmingly fast pace, and that the date for the event has been decided and preparations are complete.

Then, as for what is the problem that I'm currently troubled with…… That is……

[……Lilia-san.]

[……Yes.]

[Illness-san is too amazing……]

[I understand. I know exactly how you feel, Kaito-san.]

Yes, currently, in my house…… in my house that could be described as a mansion, Illness-san had done almost all the work by herself.

[Lilia-san, a mansion of this size usually requires a lot of servants, right?]

[Yes, one would normally need a certain number of people just for cleaning and other maintenance work, and even just maintaining the garden requires more than one gardener. Adding the other jobs, one would need a lot of servants.]

[Thinking about all that work, just 10 or 20 people aren't enough, right?]

[Of course. Every person needs rest and vacation time, so one would need more than what was needed. In fact, for a high-ranking noble, the number of people I employed is rather small for the size of my mansion.]

Hearing my grave words, Lilia-san also replied with a serious expression on her face.

My house is the same size as Lilia-san's mansion…… The same size as the mansion of Lilia-san, who holds a very high position as a Duchess, is the sister of the King, and has many subordinates who have followed her since her days as a knight.

I don't know the exact number of people who work at Lilia-san's mansion, but there are more than 50 people whose names I know. There are still some people who I've never talked to, and that should mean that there are probably much more than that.

Well, in Lilia-san's case, there are civil servants who help her with her work as a Duchess and people who guard her mansion, so I can't really say that I would need the same amount of people she had in her mansion…… Still, it was obvious that a certain number of people were needed to maintain the mansion.

[……Illness-san originally did ten times more work than other maids.]

[……Yes, but she was apparently already holding back on work……]

[If she does work of an entire mansion, that's not just ten times more, right? It could be dozens or even hundreds of times the amount of work, right?]

[Yes. That's how I perceive it too.]

When I had said that much, I paused for a moment and deeply exhaling…… I muttered.

[……Illness-san, it doesn't seem like her workload changed that much…… I mean, she's still ”helped me brush Bell as usual”……]

[……She also brought me a cake and helped me out with some of my overdue work.]

[……What do you think?]

[To be honest, I'm trembling. I thought that even though she was a Count-rank, handling so many household chores is much harder than fighting, so I thought that she must be exhausted even if she was keeping her calm.]

[……Right?]

[……Yes. But I didn't expect…… that she really wasn't joking, as even with all the work she's done, ”she's still rather bored”.]

Of course, Lilia-san knew that Illness-san had done most of the work in my house by herself. Rather, Illness-san was the one who offered to do it all for me.

As for Lilia-san, she was thinking of having Illness-san assist us until she could find servants for my home, and she was also planning on sending more maids who had some spare time…… but the situation was very far from what Lilia-san had expected.

The first was that Illness-san nonchalantly did everything but the work of Anima, Eta, Theta, and Caraway-san all by herself.

If Illness-san was having a hard time or was fatigued, we could have sent additional people to help her but…… instead of looking like she was having a hard time, she seemed to be in a better mood than ever, as if she was saying ”I'm grateful to have something to do since I've been so bored”.

The second was that Illness-san, who rarely asserts herself, had unusually told Lilia-san and I that she wanted to continue working at my home.