The morning did not begin with birdsongs. It began with a sound that made the very foundations of the estate tremble.
Cough. Wheeze.
To anyone else, it was the sound of a woman with a seasonal flu. To Master Jin, it was a world-ending catastrophe. He moved faster than a flash, appearing in Anya's doorway before her second cough had even finished.
"Anya. Report," Jin barked, his face pale as if a mighty beast had landed in the courtyard.
"I'm… fine, Master Jin," Anya rasped, her face flush with a deep, unnatural heat.
Before she could even swing her legs out of bed, a small pair of hands beat her to it. Sofia pushed her back with a tiny, determined hand.
"Anya… are you okay?" teary eyes look in earnest.
"Lady Sofia…I must attend to my duties so please let me go," she tried to muster strength to free herself from the small one's grip.
Jin's expression tensed. "I order you to remain here and rest for the day. You are forbidden from leaving this room."
"Bu–"
"Do you understand?" he interjected.
Anya looked at the tiny girl, then nodded her head and let out a weary sigh.
Ten minutes later, Keita was summoned to Jin's office. The Master of the house sat with his fingers clasped beneath his chin, his expression so grim that Keita expected to be told a demonic army was at the gates.
"Keita," Jin said, his voice a low vibration. "Your training has changed. For today, you are taking over Anya's duties."
Keita blinked. "Cleaning…Cooking? Compared to running laps while starving, this sounds like a breeze."
"I can do that, Master," He said confidently.
"Don't underestimate a housemaid's duty, kid," Jin warned. "Now go. A list of tasks for you to do is over there."
"5AM: Clean the house before sunrise.
6AM: Do laundry
6:30AM: Prepare breakfast
8AM: Water garden
8:15AM: Clean courtyard and surrounding areas
12PM: Prepare lunch
…"
Keita started with the long hallway. But the hallway was miles of polished stone, and the more he scrubbed, the more the dust seemed to mock him. He passed the fifteen family portraits, his brush hitting the stone. He stopped at the final one–the Lady. Even with the sun rising, the shadow on her face felt heavy, obscuring her features behind a veil.
"Assistant Sofia, reporting for duty?"
Sofia appeared, wearing a miniature cleaner's get-up complete with a cloth tied over her pigtails. She looked ready to conquer the world—or at least the dust.
It was only a matter of time before these two partners in crime created havoc in the household.
Keita was behind schedule. Breakfast had to be made, but the laundry was piling up. He rushed to the kitchen, cranking the stove to maximum heat to boil water for making stew, while Sofia took charge of the "cleaning crystals" for the laundry mechanism.
"Anya said to take care of things," Sofia murmured, picking up the heavy jar of cleaning crystals. "So I'll make it extra clean."
Dump.
The entire jar vanished into the wash.
Thirty minutes later, the estate was a disaster site.
Black smoke billowed out of the kitchen window as Keita's '"maximum heat" stew turned into a carbonized brick. At the exact same time, a muffled thump-wump echoed from the laundry room.
A wall of thick, white foam erupted from the courtyard, rising like a tidal wave. It swallowed the rosebushes and climbed the walls.
In the middle of the chaos, a frantic shouting echoed through the halls.
"Why isn't there a pair of socks in this household?!"
Jin appeared in the hallway, looking completely unhinged. He wasn't looking at the smoke nor the foam. He was holding two black socks, staring at them with the intensity of a man losing his mind.
"They don't match, Keita! One of these has a ribbed cuff, and the other is plain! How am I supposed to function like this?!"
Keita didn't answer. He was on his knees in the smoke filled kitchen, frantically scrubbing a scorched spill. The heat, the smell of the burnt food, the frantic scrubbing caused his vision to blur.
He saw his mother.
He remembered her coming home from the shops, her face grey with fatigue, immediately dropping to the floor to scrub their kitchen because he had spilled milk. He remembered her silence—not as the anger he had feared, but as the absolute exhaustion.
"Mother…" he murmured.
The weight of that memory hit him harder than the smoke. It was almost noon and nothing around the estate had been completed properly.
"Get… out… of… my… kitchen."
A raspy, commanding voice broke through the haze. Anya stood in the doorway, wrapped in three shawls. She looked at the foam-covered house, the smoke filled kitchen, and the Master of the estate who was still crying about his socks.
With the efficiency of a mage, she flicked her wrist.
"[Create: Wind]"
A gust of wind cleared the smoke. She tapped the laundry mechanism, and the foam settled instantly. She tasted the "stew," winced, and threw in a handful of herbs that made the scorched scent vanished.
It was nothing less than a miracle.
A silver-winged bird tapped on the glass, dropping a letter.
"To Anya. I heard the season's change has been harsh. Please, rest well. The estate cannot breathe without you. Take a break for the next couple of days. And if that idiot of a Master dare oppose, let me know and I will have his head. Get well soon."
Anya read the letter and her expression lightened, a soft glow returning to her tired eyes.. She looked at Keita and Sofia, then at Jin—who had finally found a matching pair of socks and looked like he wanted to hide.
"You're all hopeless," Anya whispered, a genuine, tired smile touching her lips. "But I suppose… if you can survive this, you can survive anything."
She looked at Jin. "You heard the Lady of The Estate. I want to go to the beach."
Jin sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "Fine. Pack your things. Tomorrow, we go to the coast. And Keita? Don't ever touch the laundry again."
Sofia, with a dollop of foam still behind her ears, gave a hidden, mischievous smile as she watched Keita take the fall for her laundry disaster.
That night, after the chaos had settled, Keita passed by Anya's room. Through the cracked door, he saw the letter pinned neatly to her wall, right next to a small drawing Sofia had made of her cleaning the floor.
"Get well soon, Anya," he whispered.
From inside the room, a soft, sleepy voice replied.
"Go to bed. You've got a beach to catch."