It was a normal morning at the Dragonherz residency, only an hour before the family usually have breakfast together. Outside, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping.

*Swish**Swish*

When the window curtains were opened, the sun even shone into the room. Unfortunately, Clara's bed was next to the window, which meant that the daylight directly beamed into her face. This, naturally, woke Clara up from her slumber.

“Mhmm... Rinaaaa, only five more minutes, please.”

Like every morning, she called out to her beloved maid in a cute way, hoping that she would get a little more sleep. Usually, this worked. Rina had always let her sleep until she was satisfied, so there was no reason for her not to repeat this strategy. This was, after all, their morning routine.

Unfortunately for the young lady, that wasn't the case this time, as...

“It seems you have been spoiled rotten, My Lady.”

…she didn't recognise the voice speaking to her at all. Instead of the usual high-pitched but soft and soothing voice, the one that reached her ears this morning had a much rougher tone. Because of this, Clara's eyes shot open and she sat up straight in an instant. When she robotically turned her head towards the source of the voice and spotted a familiar face, she immediately jumped out of her bed and saluted in a military manner to the person in front of her.

Even to this person, an elderly woman, wearing a maid uniform, that showed she was a servant of the Dragonherz viscountcy, Clara still showed respect. After all, the woman in front of her was responsible for her upbringing, along with her mother Lauren. Besides, this woman was the one, who had intensely beat the manners of a noble lady into Clara, when she was younger. There was no way, Clara would dare to be rude to her, despite being the employer.

So, starting to feel cold for some reason, Clara mustered all of her power to keep her fear from showing on her face, tilted her head, and smiled at her former teacher.

“G-Good morning, Henrietta, T-Thank you for waking me up,” Clara started, while she intensely ruffled her hair in her mind. After all, she knew that Rina was gone for a few days or even weeks, so she only had herself to blame for her mistake.

“I wish you a good morning, My Lady. You had a happy expression on your face when you were sleeping. Did you have a nice dream?” Although Henrietta's mouth was curved upwards, theoretically symbolising that she was smiling, her eyes weren't.

Unfortunately, Clara didn't pick up on that at all. To make matters worse, she even imagined the dream she had just had and even blushed. Luckily, Clara's fast thinking prowess allowed her to remind herself of the situation she was in and, thus, to immediately change her demeanour.

However, whether Clara's former, more than just strict, etiquette instructor noticed it, and whether Clara reaped what she sowed after letting her guard down by being constantly spoiled by Rina, only the gods would know.

***

After breakfast and after Henrietta's gruesome remembrance lessons, Clara sat in her office and went about her daily routine.

Because she won't be able to produce an heir due to her sexual orientation, Clara had lost her position as heir, especially after a son was born into the Dragonherz family. However, this didn't bother Clara at all. Quite the opposite. In fact, she was even happy to hand over that position to her 13-years-younger brother Claudrick. After all, she could now stay her entire life together with her beloved maid with her parents blessings.

Unfortunately, because homosexual relationships were an abnormality in Yggildos, especially in noble circles, Clara wouldn't be able to start a new noble family. It went double that her prospective partner was Rina, a commoner with no family background whatsoever. So Clara would be still dependent on the Dragonherz viscountcy if she wanted to be a noble, and she did.

For that reason, she decided to stay with the Dragonherz family in the future. However, because of her high pride, she vehemently refused to just leech off her family, so she had asked her father for an official position. Luckily, since Eric had originally planned for her to take over as the head, Clara had been educated from very early on, how to manage the lands owned by the viscountcy. This was why her father didn't even hesitate to hand over a part of his work to her. Whether she would still hold the same position even after her brother's takeover though, was questionable and depended entirely on her future relationship with Claudrick. But since that was still far in the future, Clara decided not to think about it for the time being.

So, for now, Clara got her own work space, where she would spend at least several hours a day, checking the finances, development, security, and so on of the land managed by the Dragonherz viscountcy.

“Rina, can you help me with this? The numbers here are...”

While she was looking through some documents, she spotted a few irregularities which puzzled her. So, as always, she asked her trusted partner for an opinion. Strangely enough, Rina, despite her age and upbringing, was very proficient with numbers and had even taught Clara a few tips and tricks concerning calculations in the past.

Sadly for Clara, she once again forgot that her maid was on a mission. Only when she called out to Rina for help out of habit, did she realise that fact again, and slammed her head on her desk to hide her blushing face. Fortunately for her, she was currently the only one in her office, otherwise she would have had to find a hole to hide in from embarrassment.

“Urgh, I'm in pretty hard, aren't I?” she muttered while rolling her head left and right. After all, even though it had only been two days since her maid had left on the mission, Clara already started to miss her. How could she not react this way, when she realised how hopelessly in love she was?

Nonetheless, only a few moments later, she sat up straight again and slapped her cheeks twice to calm herself down. She was determined to get more work done than usual with Rina gone for a few days, or even weeks. The reason for this was, of course, so that she could spend more time flirting with her maid when she returned. After all, she didn't know if there would be time for that when she started attending the Royal Knight Academy in less than a month.

So, after she motivated herself for all the wrong reasons, she dug through the mountains of paperwork in the hours to follow, and only took a short break when lunchtime had arrived. But even after she had finished it, she quickly returned to her work.

Only when the sun was about to set and time for dinner was near, did Clara come to a good stopping point. Then, after a short contemplation on whether or not to continue after dinner, she shook her head and decided to call it a day. After all, it was only the second day without her maid's presence, so she didn't want to overwork herself just yet.

But while she was in the process of storing the documents spread out on her desk into drawers, she noticed a carriage entering the mansion's courtyard along with the neighing and galloping sounds of the horses pulling said carriage.

'Is it a guest for Father? Isn't it rather late to invite somebody over?'

With that thought, Clara glanced out of the window to see who could have possibly arrived at such a time. But when she spotted the carriage with a yellow phoenix painted on the door of the carriage, Clara rushed out of her office with an excited expression on her face.

How could she not be elated upon seeing this? After all, it was the same carriage in which Marianne, Fran, and Rina had left just two days ago.

'Are they already done with the mission?'

Whatever the reason, Clara was just glad to see them, especially her, again, much earlier than expected. So, she stormed into the courtyard with her face blooming like a flower and waited for them to exit the waggon.

However, her heart sank immediately, when she saw a downcast Fran and an equally gloomy Marianne getting out of the horse-drawn vehicle. And when she saw a familiar unconscious girl with red hair on Marianne's back, her mind stopped working altogether.

***

When Rina opened her eyes, she was wrapped in darkness, meaning that it was at dead of night. But thanks to the moonlight shining through the windows, Rina was able to make out her surroundings quite well.

First of all, because she was looking up in a lying position, she saw a familiar ceiling. But it was not one she was used to seeing when she usually woke up in the morning. With this alone, she was able to conclude, that she was in the Dragonherz' mansion.

Secondly, Rina recognised the smell of the bed she was lying on and the sheets she was tucked behind. After all, it was highly possible that she had changed the sheets of the bed herself. However, because she was in charge of making the beds in multiple rooms in the mansion, she couldn't be sure in which room she was currently in.

Lastly, she noticed the presence of two other people beside her, one to her left, one to her right. Their calm and rhythmic breathing suggested that they were both asleep. Turning her head left and right to see who they were, she saw, who would have thought otherwise, Marianne and Clara. It was obvious that they were tired from nursing her.

Feeling warm inside at this sight, she sat up and placed her hands on their heads, stroking their hair. While Marianne showed a blissful smile, Clara slowly opened her eyes, probably awakened by her rustling movements. This surprised Rina quite a bit, causing her to retract both of her hands. Even though she noticed that Marianne's blissful expression vanished and was replaced by a neutral one in an instant, Rina decided not to dwell on it any further and instead turned her full attention to her blonde mistress, who had tears forming in her eyes.

Not caring about the fact that it was currently in the middle of the night and that Marianne was sleeping in the very same room, Clara shouted out, “Rinaaaa!” and threw herself into her maid's arms.

Although this surprised Rina, she still found herself calm enough to comfort her sobbing mistress. For that, she wrapped her arms around Clara's body, patted her back, and said in a soothing voice,

“As you can see, I'm perfectly fine.”