Volume 2 Chapter 17 Trivial Matters After the Morning
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
”Were you staring at the stars all night long?”
Ms. Floria looks at me with a puzzled expression.
There’s a bit of sharpness in her voice, like she’s slightly scolding me.
She’s probably worried about me.
”It’s just part of the job for my kind,”
That’s actually true.
A Stargazer is basically an astronomy scholar; what I do is kind of close to astrology.
It’s supposed to be a job where you look at the stars to predict fortunes, leading people, you know.
Since there’s no accurate calendar in this world, it seems the scholars served the powers that be by deciding when to plant crops.
But thanks to wall barley, the need to plant the main crops has mostly vanished.
After all, if you leave it alone, it guarantees a bountiful harvest every year──it’s like a cheat crop.
Not only is there no need to plant seeds, but if you aren’t careful, stray seeds can turn the whole town into one big barley field.
Wealthy noble houses with no time to tend their gardens end up half-forced to enjoy this rich blessing, with their roofs covered in wall barley.
Of course, there are still farms producing vegetables and fruits, but it seems they manage just fine with experience and intuition.
The once-needed Stargazers gradually disappeared from the sight of the people.
”But even in summer, it gets chilly in the early morning. If you’re not careful, you could catch a cold.”
She sounds just like my mother; Ms. Floria’s concern annoys me a little.
It feels like she’s pretending to be all caring just because I got some sleep.
”I don’t want to nitpick at a grown man, but even dragon-slaying heroes can die from a silly cold. I’d prefer to avoid that.”
Suddenly, Ms. Floria’s words turn soft.
When she puts it like that, I can’t help but feel a bit guilty.
”No, thank you for caring.”
If I think about it calmly, Ms. Floria hasn’t done anything wrong; I’m the one being childish.
I don’t want to get awkward over something so trivial; I need to be careful.
If Ms. Nina were a human, even if we managed to become lovers somehow, we might break up over some boring little fight.
Ms. Nina is a bit childish and surprisingly stubborn too.
She can’t read the room like Ms. Floria, and sometimes she sulks for days because of her pride.
Well, over half of this is my fault though.
At the perfect moment to break the awkward silence, the maid came in with breakfast.
Toast topped with ham and eggs, and a glass container of milk?
”No way, is this…?”
”It’s an otherworldly breakfast menu~desuwa. I hope it suits your taste.”
Someday, I want to recreate a breakfast menu of salted salmon and miso soup in this world.
Of course, I love ham and eggs too.
Is the ham from pork loin?
It’s a bit salty, but it might just be perfect with the toast.
The butter spread on the bread is top-notch, and the fried egg is flawless.
I see, they’re using good eggs.
Here, chicken eggs are high-end items, costing about 2 hundred gold each.
That’s equivalent to about 2 thousand yen based on the ten yen per gold conversion.
Apparently, a chicken only lays about a hundred eggs a year.
I just want to shout, summon a white Leghorn from Earth before the Hero!
The milk is rich, but a little sour.
It’s definitely fresh, but there’s this gooey stuff like soft tofu settling at the bottom, which is kinda gross for me since I’m not used to it.
This milk is said to be even more precious than the eggs.
Even with abundant wall barley for quality feed, there are extremely few livestock in this world.
They believe that keeping too many livestock in one place attracts monsters.
Monsters that attack livestock don’t seem that scary, and if there’s a strong Antfolk around, I feel like running a farm would be pretty profitable.
”It’s been a while since I had eggs, this is really delicious.”
For now, I’ll praise the eggs.
I genuinely thought the fried egg was tasty.
”Saburou has a refined palate, so the chef must be pleased.”
Did you just really say Saburou?
You were the only one who could pronounce it right, Ms. Nina.
”Um, is there something?”
”Well, it seems people have a hard time pronouncing my name right.”
”Hehehe, this is also the strength of love, you see. Outside of formal settings, please call me Floria.”
In a society with a class system, the hierarchy can be pretty confusing.
When I told Ms. Floria that, her eyes started to sparkle.
Here it comes, teacher mode.
Miss Floria’s classes are easy to understand and really helpful, but she does tend to talk a lot.
”In noble society, you only need to remember the hierarchy of titles, so it’s basically simple. However, these days, titles and strength don’t always match, so it’s wise not to stick your neck out with someone you don’t know.”
A high-class person bowing is seen as a person of character, but the other way around and you’re just a fool.
As a Japanese, if you keep your head bowed low enough, you probably won’t go wrong.
I’m pretty good at humbling myself; it’s way harder when someone tells me to be more assertive.
”For nobles without titles, you can mostly figure it out if you know the hierarchy of positions. After all, the ones with strength naturally get the better jobs.”
I don’t even get the hierarchy of positions in the first place.
But if I open my mouth, it feels like I’ll trigger a lecture, so I’d better just keep listening.
”By the way, positions are mostly hereditary, but when upstarts muscle in, it can get pretty wild. It’s nice to be someone who gets to clean up the mess.”
If you start hiring based on real strength, it causes a lot of chaos until things settle down.
So unless someone with extraordinary talent shows up, it looks like the hereditary system is here to stay.
The actual work is done by the servants, so even if the noble in the position is incompetent, they just have to look busy.
”Lower positions only get a tiny noble pension, so there are a lot of lower-class nobles who end up having to cut wheat to make ends meet.”
Since there’s no retirement age for noble positions, you can think of the lifelong noble pension as a salary based on your rank.
It might be a bit enviable that you can just put up a proxy and not have to go to work yourself.
Being assigned the lowest rank possible for a lower noble is this home guard duty, which sounds kind of like being a NEET.
Literally a home guard, with my workplace being my own house.
I don’t even need to send a proxy; seems like I can just laze around at home and it’s all good.
I’m supposed to be ready as a reserve strength, so I need to have my gear ready for battle, just in case.
I guess I really should be staying up to train my martial skills, but it seems like people everywhere are basically lazy at heart.
Please bookmark this series and rate ☆☆☆☆☆ on here!
Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
Thanks for reading.
Leave a Reply