Side story 1: Working as the Claes family head gardener (2/2)

His eyes kept sparkling as he said so, and the young Duke Claes forcibly dragged me over to his mansion. He happened to be the family head of the previous generation, Duke Claes.

And so, even though I was pulled over here forcibly in the middle of my work by Duke Claes, I found his mansion to be a very comfortable place to work.

All the servants were nice people, I finally had a steady job that even included vacations, and the family head that had forcibly recruited me was a very friendly and approachable person.

He was liked by many of the servants, even those that were bad at interacting with others, and to the other servants and even to me who couldn’t get close to others easily, he would always call out to us light-heartedly, and he would often go out to play in town while hiding his identity.

Just like that, one time I went with him to play in town while he was hiding his identity, and we completely became good friends, and we went to town together over and over again like that.

And so, before I realized it, even though he was the head of a family and a duke, and I was just a servant, he was calling me “friend,” at first I was extremely humbled by this, but I was finally affected by his feelings, and I finally began to think of him as a “friend” as well.

Since I was bad at interacting with others, and never knew what to say to people, he’s the first person that truly ever called me a “friend.”

While I was living beside this friend, and doing my best at work, and at the time I suddenly realized that I’ve become the head gardener -

My only friend unceremoniously passed away from an illness.

After that, I just spent my days idly. My friend that always called out to me and told me my garden was “wonderful,” was no longer here. I didn’t go anymore to the town that we used to visit together so much.

I wonder if he’ll call for me soon, I want to go to where he is as quick as possible…… I want to meet him again……

As I was thinking about this every day, that girl appeared.

“I would really like to create a field in the garden!”

The way she seemed as her light blue eyes sparkled, was very similar to the day where I met him for the first time.

And so, that girl began to come see me every day.

“Tom-san, I’m here~”

Before I noticed it, the girl was always smiling at me like a friend. Even though there were still painful memories of my friend everywhere in town, I forced myself to go to town to buy the materials needed to help her create a toy snake, and suddenly it became natural to go to town again.

And so, while I spent time with this girl, my feeling of wanting to see my friend as soon as possible disappeared.

“To my precious friend. I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait a little bit more for me after all. In exchange, when I finally do see you again, I’ll bring you a ton of interesting stories about your granddaughter.”