Someday Will I Be The Greatest Alchemist?

Chapter 422: Maid Apprentice Girls

I lost my parents when I was a kid and was raised in an orphanage of the Genesis Faith.

In orphanages, you have to find a job by 12 years old as the earliest, and 15 years old at the latest.

Becoming an adventurer was popular among the boys. It came with danger, but first class adventurers were rich, after all. I get why the boys want it. Even girls, those with magic aptitude aim to be adventurers.

The boys could also become merchants, artisans or other sorts of jobs.

But when it comes to girls, it was a bit different.

There’s so little jobs for girls. That’s why many of them sell their bodies to the red light district.

At the orphanage, we’re taught letters and numbers by the priests of the Genesis Faith, but they didn’t teach us etiquette. The reality is that there are very few workplaces that can train girls from orphanages the work of a maid from 0.

The orphanage I was raised in was in a city in the territory of a viscount close to the Volton Margravery. With very little budget, us orphans were desperate to find work as soon as we could.

At that time, an OB[1] working in one of the country’s leading trading companies, the Papeck Company, invited us to go to Volton to try for the maid recruitment. He even said that he would come back with a carriage if we go.

In the orphanage I’m at, there were still 2 girls who haven’t found a job. We learned to read and write from the priest so that’s fine, but I was uneasy because we didn’t learn a single thing about etiquette, and was it okay if they had to teach us from the very start? It was the employee recruitment of a family with deep connections with the Papeck Company, so he gave his stamp of approval for the employment terms of that workplace.

The interview venue was going to be held at Volton City, in a really huge place close to the castle. It was apparently the place where the knights train.

There was a sea of people waiting for the interviews to begin.

I regretted coming here because I stuck out like a sore thumb. That’s cuz I heard there were 2000 people here. There were only a few skinny, shabbily dressed girls like me, the rest were practically maids who worked in some noble’s house.

I was embarrassed, just so so embarrassed at my clothes which wore out from too much washing, and both my friend who came from the same orphanage and I shrunk.

Weirdly enough, that many maid applicants were disappearing bit by bit. Do interviews end this fast?

When it was my turn to be interviewed, my shock reached its limits.

「……no way, the Great Spirits!?」

I’ve never seen a spirit, but there was no doubt about it. Their presence just couldn’t be of a mortal. I almost fell to my knees.

Now I know why the interview was going this fast. The Great Spirits decide whether the applicant passes or fails in just a glance.

「Hey, we passed, didn’t we?」

「Y- yeah, it seems like it……」

Those that remained were two men who applied to be butlers. The maid candidates were 5 women, an elderly veteran woman, and women who seemed capable of doing the job. The rest were us and girls who were kinda the same.

The two wives of Mr. Employer prompted us children who thought that there must have been some kind of mistake, to leave the training camp.

From there, it was like a dream come true.

At a clothing store, we bought clothes and underwear for everyone, and also daily necessities.

And then we were shown to Mr. Employer, no, master from now on. Master’s mansion was a surprise after surprise.

Protecting its gates were two huge iron golems. We registered our magic power at the Madams’ instructions. If we didn’t do this, we wouldn’t be able to enter the mansion freely. We also registered our magic power with the golems that patrolled around the mansion.

After that, we were instructed to take turns taking a bath for the first time in our lives. They taught us how to take baths. Soap for washing my body, and a very nice smelling liquid soap used only for hair. It felt like I was some sort of noble.

I wore the pretty clothes and underwear we had just bought after I got out of the bath and touched my hair which had miraculously become smooth.

What waited after our baths were more delicious food than we could ever eat.

Everyone cried as they ate in a delirium.

Really, I was thinking I wouldn’t regret it even if we were tricked and sold after this.

Goddess Norn-sama, please. Please let me work in this mansion.

***

Footnotes:1. Old boy – someone who graduated from the orphanage.