Vol 1 Chapter 6 – The Princess’s Personal Maid’s Agony (Maid POV)【Vol 1 – Ten Years Later, the Male Disciple I Reunited With Had Somehow Turned Into a Succubus】

That day, when Princess Shion returned, Shion’s personal maid, Rikka, was there to greet her—and Shion was more excited than Rikka had ever seen her.

“You seem to be in quite a good mood today, Lady Shion.”

“Listen, Rikka! I reunited with Master!!”

“Wait, that was real!?”

Of course Rikka knew that Shion had been thinking nonstop about the Master she’d parted from ten years ago.

In fact, Rikka herself would be the first to admit—and everyone else would agree—that she was the one most affected by Shion’s, frankly, Master obsession.

Every year, Shion tried to dump a massive amount of the national budget into searching for Master, and every year, it was Rikka who desperately stopped her.

Whenever Shion tried to sneak out of her official duties and slip off to the castle town where she’d once walked with Master, it was Rikka who tracked her down and dragged her back.

Whenever Shion started going on and on about her raw, unfiltered memories with Master—stories completely unfit for public ears—it was Rikka who sat through them all.

Just recently, because of a certain questionable prophecy from a famous saint—“Lady Shion, you will soon meet the fated one of your destiny. Yes—at the place of your memories!”—Shion had skipped both official duties and training every day to sit in front of the great cathedral fountain waiting for a Master who was obviously never going to show up.

And now, as Shion bounced around, giddy about how Master had come back and the prophecy had been right, Rikka, in her capacity as Shion’s personal maid, tried to keep as objective a view of the situation as possible.

“Just to confirm… when you say ‘Master,’ you mean that Master, correct…?”

“Obviously I mean the Master I was separated from ten years ago!”

“Um, but Lady Shion, your Master should still be sealed away, shouldn’t he? Forgive me for saying so, but is there any chance this could be an impostor…?”

“Impossible. We crossed blades, and there’s no question—it was Master.”

“Even so…”

“Listen carefully, Rikka. ──Master dodged every single one of my full-force attacks by a hair’s breadth, and even when he let my hits connect on purpose, they didn’t do a single bit of damage. Can you think of anyone other than Master who could do that?”

“…When you put it like that…”

Even if you set aside the bias of her being a princess knight, Shion’s strength was widely regarded as second only to the captain of the First Knight Order, Yuna—and Rikka agreed with that assessment.

In other words, Princess Knight Shion was the second-strongest person in the entire national army of tens of thousands.

If she really wanted to, Shion could wipe out one or two average knight orders all by herself.

Even managing to beat Shion would be a feat—but to toy with her completely was something even Captain Yuna couldn’t do.

So hearing that there was someone Shion couldn’t so much as lay a finger on was overwhelmingly shocking.

And if Shion said that person was Master, Rikka had no grounds on which to argue.

(I always thought we needed to stay on guard for the possibility of a fake Master showing up…)

Only a handful of insiders knew the truth, but Princess Knight Shion’s one clear weakness was “Master.”

Normally, Princess Shion was perfectly reasonable—but when it came to Master, her mental age dropped by ten years. In a bad way.

To be blunt, if a fake Master ever did appear, turning the princess into a puppet would be easier than twisting a baby’s arm. That was exactly what worried Rikka.

──But if Master was strong enough to completely crush Shion, then at the very least, he probably wasn’t a fake.

Thinking that, Rikka felt a quiet sense of relief.

“So with that in mind, Rikka, I’ll need you to prepare a dress for tomorrow.”

“…Yes, my lady. But if I recall correctly, you don’t have any diplomatic or evening engagements scheduled for tomorrow, do you?”

Preparing the princess’s dresses was part of Rikka’s job, but “dress” covered a huge range.

Rikka met Shion’s eyes, silently asking what the occasion would be, and Shion, grinning from ear to ear, dropped a bombshell.

“Tomorrow, I’m going to make Father kneel and apologize in front of Master.”

“Where did that come from!?”

Needless to say, Princess Shion’s father was the current king.

Forcing the king not just to bow but to kneel with his head to the floor was basically treason.

But Shion spoke as if it were only natural.

“Father is the one who ignored the fact that Master sealed the evil god and made me the Demonbane Princess Knight instead. Him and the chancellor.”

“That’s true enough.”

“So now that Master is here in person, owning up and fully apologizing for stealing his glory with a lie is the least they can do. Whether Master forgives them after that is a separate issue, of course.”

“That is a fair point, but—”

Rikka really didn’t want to think about those days ten years ago.

When the evil god revived, the world was plunged into chaos.

End-of-the-world rumors and doomsday theories were everywhere, violence ran rampant, and public order fell apart.

If, back then, they’d just announced that some nameless young man had sealed the evil god away in subspace, nobody would have believed it.

Shion was a princess born with divine martial talent from the War God, or so the rumors went.

By spreading the story that the beloved Princess Shion had used her skill in battle to cut down the evil god, the kingdom whipped the people into a frenzy of hope and managed to restore order.

So the king and chancellor who told that lie weren’t really in the wrong—and of course, Shion understood that in her head…

Rikka thought through all of that and finally grasped what Shion really wanted.

“In other words, Lady Shion, you want to set things right.”

“…Exactly.”

Even if something is perfectly logical, that doesn’t mean your heart will accept it.

Rikka realized that Shion was still regretting having betrayed her Master, even now.

So this wasn’t about logic.

──Still, getting the king to kneel is definitely not okay.

As Rikka wondered what to do, she had a flash of inspiration.

At times like this, the trick was to pretend to agree while suggesting something even more extreme.

If you could turn a simple kneeling apology into something else, the plan would fall apart on its own.

“In that case, we’ll need to find a dress that doesn’t burn easily…”

“Rikka? I get needing a dress it’s okay to get dirty, since Father and the chancellor will be kneeling next to me, but… why does it need to be fire-resistant?”

“What do you mean? A mere kneel isn’t nearly enough to show your sincere remorse, is it, my lady?”

“Huh? What do you—”

“Where I come from, there’s an old saying. ──If you truly wish to apologize, you should be able to kneel even on a bed of red-hot iron.”

“What!?”

Anyone can offer a half-hearted apology or drop to their knees and bow their head.

If the king, the chancellor, and the princess really wanted to prove they were sorry, they should be able to kneel side by side on a burning hot iron plate.

When Rikka explained this, even Shion went pale.

“E-Even if I’m okay with it, making Father, the king, do that is a bit…! Besides, no matter how sorry you are, if you touch a red-hot plate, you’re going to jump off it on reflex!”

“Rest assured. I can also arrange for a kneeling-enforcement device.”

“Why does that sound like the most ominous contraption ever!?”

──And so, in the end, a panicked Shion had no choice but to abandon the idea of making the king kneel, and they settled on the much milder plan of the three of them offering a heartfelt apology together.

The personal maid’s devilish cunning had just managed to outmatch the princess’s hopeless Master-brain.

Letting out a long sigh of relief, Rikka thought to herself:

(We got through this one somehow… but I just know Lady Shion is going to keep saying nothing but stupid things whenever it comes to Master…!)

Just thinking about that made her stomach start to ache.