Laiza had to work at a very young age, but even then, she knew she was lucky. She knew that if she lost this opportunity, she would starve, freeze, and die.
So, she worked as hard as she could with her small body.
It required significant effort to wash clothes. But working as a laundress at Yurinova Castle was not hard at all.
The castle was built with an underfloor heating system that warms the entire ducal residence by circulating warm air through pipes that run beneath the floor. The warm air is produced by furnaces in the castle’s basement, and this warm air was also used to dry the laundry.
As a result, even in the winter, they were never cold.
Because the fire was used to boil a large amount of water for heating, the castle not only had a large bath for the duke and his family, but also bathrooms for the servants.
Not only could they bathe every day in the large bathtub, but they could also use the leftover water for washing their clothes, so their hands would not get cold.
Unknown to Laiza at the time, the system of underfloor heating had existed since the time of the ancient Astra Empire and was developed by a famous inventor invited from another country by Vassily, the fifth generation Duke of Yurinova.
It was the mainstream heating method in the northern capital, and that of Yurinova Castle, among others, was the best equipped in the empire.
What a wonderful place!
Laiza would never forget the first time she stepped into the laundry room of Yurinova Castle. The air was hot and sticky in the middle of winter. It was an entirely different world from the small houses in the village she had grown up in, where the water she had drawn would freeze on cold winter mornings.
She started working and washed a lot of clothes. By the end of winter and early spring, Laiza, who was clever and dexterous, was allowed to handle a few of the Nobles’ clothes. The child was rather well suited to wash delicate silk shirts and the like.
And so, it was up to her to do the laundry on a daily basis. There was only one member of the family who soiled their clothes terribly.
Isaac Yurinova-sama was 18 years old at that time. He had just graduated from the Imperial Magic Academy, but his clothes were always covered in mud, like a toddler playing in the dirt.
Isaac-sama was usually treated a little lightly at Yurinova Castle. He had always been an unusual child, collecting ordinary stones every day and piling them up in his room. He learned to read and write at a very late age. So even the laundry room workers made fun of him, saying that he was a bit strange, unlike his older, more respectable brother.
Laiza was exasperated.
The duke was a great benefactor. How dare they mock his son? What right did they have to talk about a man who had learned to read and write so well, when most of the servants couldn’t even do it?
The 8-year-old child made up her mind.
All right, I’ll ask Isaac-sama to keep his clothes clean. So that everyone would not make fun of him.
Now that she’s an adult, she realizes how foolish she’d been to think that way. The laundry woman’s place was underground. In comparison, Isaac-sama, a member of the ducal family, even though he was a strange one, was a person above her. She was not allowed to talk to him, or even to show herself to him.
A child from the countryside did not know this.
