Give Me Back My Glass Shoe - Chapter 24

Hello everyone! there are changes in the chapter numbering, I had edited it to the correct arrangement as there was confusion in the chapter count. Apologies and enjoy the translation!

Paiki had a talent for making cowardly words sound utterly delightful. Of course, the delight was from his perspective as the speaker; Aniella was so shocked she was left speechless.
“So, you don’t have to worry about your family searching high and low for you, since you’re missing. There, problem solved, right?”
Paiki shrugged his shoulders, as if pleased with his own neat handling of the situation. Aniella bit her lip hard at his strangely proud face. During the five days she had been imprisoned here, she had done a lot of thinking.
Would she ever be able to return home? How depraved did he have to be before he was satisfied and would stop his research? Why did it have to be her in this situation?
No matter how much she thought about it, no clear answers came, and the more she agonized, the more stifled she felt. Before this, even when water was filling the ship’s hold, her family had overcome the crisis together. But now, it felt like she was fighting alone against a giant rat named Paiki.
“There are a lot of problems.”
Aniella glared at him for the first time with an angry face. At her sharp tone, the ends of Paiki’s eyebrows rose.
“While I’m trapped here and can’t leave, I can’t do any work.”
“You mean working as Marius’s assistant? That tightwad probably doesn’t even pay you much. Are you really sorry to lose that money?”
Aniella was flabbergasted. Of course, the income she earned as his assistant might seem trivial to him. He was one of the wealthiest men in the empire, second to none. Unlike some, he never had to worry about whether he could afford an extra piece of bread each day.
“It might be just a few pennies to you, Duke, but it’s a significant amount of money to me.”
Paiki put down his fork and knife and looked at Aniella. The woman who always avoided eye contact was now meeting his gaze directly, seemingly quite angry.
While she had attempted to hide and escape many times, this was her first act of defiance right to his face. Paiki pondered how to handle it for a moment, then smiled brightly.
“Fine. I’ll pay you instead of Marius.”
“You’ll pay me?”
“I was originally going to pay your fee. Since I’m taking Marius’s assistant for my own use.”
Paiki explained that he hadn’t had a chance to discuss it before because Aniella had kept pretending to be asleep. Although it felt like a blatant lie to Aniella, her heart was tempted by the offer of money. The furrow between her brows had already smoothed out.
“How much were you getting from Marius?”
“18 Gold.”
“Per day? No wonder that tightwad spent money for once.”
“No, not per day. For seven days. It was 18 Gold per week.”
“…18 Gold per week?”
Aniella nodded.
Paiki blinked slowly in surprise. He knew his fellow alumnus was a miser, but he hadn’t realized it was to this extent. To his knowledge, the average pay for a mage’s assistant should be around 30 Gold per week.
“It was 15 Gold at first, but he recently raised it to 18 Gold.”
Seeing Aniella’s proud expression, Paiki felt a pang of pity.
“I’ll count it as 40 Gold per week for your stay here.”
“40 Gold?”
Aniella asked, startled. She kept asking if he really meant 40 and mulled it over, reacting like someone hearing such a large number for the first time.
“Th-that seems like too much. What do you want me to do? I’m not a mage, so I can’t be of much help. I can clean passably well, but…”

It wasn’t hard to imagine how much of a disadvantage she must have been at when Duke Paiki negotiated her weekly wage with Marius. While she felt somewhat pathetic, it was also a little unpleasant that he seemed to categorize her, like that tightwad, as a ‘mage’.
“My assistants get 50 per week. Of course, they are mages.”
“50 gold!”
Aniella shouted loudly, her jaw dropping open in astonishment.
“If you manage to be lazy well enough to satisfy me, I’ll pay you as much as my assistants.”