Our Make-Believe Ends Here - Chapter 52

Volumes I & II are available uncensored on ko-fi!

“You do?”

“I’ve felt it all along, but after tangling with Miya’s group, it’s only become more certain. Still…”

Eneka hesitated a moment, then continued without looking back.

“I’m from the back-alley slums. My family there—no blood relation—they’re still there. Plenty of them are sick and young. So someone like me, who still has all four limbs and at least a functioning head, has to earn money.”

“……”

“But with my background, I have no connections for work in the city proper, and there aren’t many ways to earn as much as a maid’s position does. I went through a lot just to land this job, so it’s not easy to let it go.”

Hopper had already told her that even the Lille Empire, proud of its beautiful prosperity, had its shadowed underbelly. He’d said in passing that if he hadn’t taken her in, Luirene too might have wandered the streets and ended up there.

If that had been her reality, she might have been one of those ‘sick and young friends’ Eneka was talking about. The thought made it impossible to dismiss her words as just someone else’s circumstances. She felt she was glimpsing one reason why Eneka had once said that every citizen of the empire had the right to learn to read.

“But if things keep going like this… yeah, there’s a limit to how long you can just ignore it all.”

“Would you ever consider working at a bookstore?”

“A bookstore?”

“You can write most letters now, and you can read sentences too.”

Eneka made the face of someone listening to a naive remark.

“It’d be welcome news to me. But would any bookstore really give me a job? I heard you used to work at one too, Luirene. So you’d know…”

Eneka’s playful grumbling slowly trailed off. Luirene watched her eyes grow flushed with excitement, bit by bit. She smiled brightly in confirmation.

“I own a bookstore.”

“What… You’re telling me to work at your bookstore?”

“I was about to hire an employee anyway. It’s been empty too long because I’ve been working as a caretaker at the Glair Marquisate.”

“But… you’re not going to work here forever. Won’t you go back to the bookstore someday?”

“Then we can run it together. I originally ran it with the old man who took me in when I was an orphan.”

The bookstore was one of Luirene’s few precious treasures. During the four years Hitaon had been away, she’d sought permission every holiday to visit and maintain it without fail, but a building with no one living there always smelled of emptiness, like a void.

She still didn’t know where things with him would go, but whatever direction it took, she was acutely aware she needed someone. If she stayed at the mansion any longer than this, she’d be plagued by the feeling she’d abandoned the bookstore the old man had cherished and tended his whole life. Eneka had come to her at just the right moment—a precious connection in the midst of that worry.

“You mean it? You’ll really hire me? Then you’d be my employer?”

“Don’t get too excited. I’m going to work you to the bone.”

“Even if you treat me rough like a slave, it’d be heaven compared to this place with that wench Miya!”

“A slave? How long has it been since that wretched system was abolished in this land?”

It was the first time she’d seen Eneka so giddy, like a child. She acted worldly, but this life had clearly been grinding her down inside. It was a hardship only Luirene, who’d personally experienced Miya’s viciousness days before, could understand.

“When we get the chance, let’s go into the city on a shared holiday. I’ll show you the bookstore that day. If you like it, submit your resignation at the mansion and take on managing my bookstore for me. Stay there and your reading will improve far faster than it is now.”

“Gladly.”

The face that had been swollen and cracked like overbaked wheat bread softened in an instant, turning tender as milk porridge. Her sunken mood flipped sky-high so fast she was even humming a tune as she cleaned.

“You keep smiling with that injured face—you look like an idiot, Eneka.”

“…Today, I’ll let anything you say slide.”

Eneka glared at her, and they both burst out laughing at the same time. They finished cleaning in good spirits, and as they were heading out, Eneka whispered behind her, barely audible. Thank you. Luirene smiled and murmured back just as softly, ‘Glad we got the cleaning done without a hitch.’