“She was so fast!” Regina exclaimed in shock.
“Yeah. Incredible, huh?” Larna agreed.
What did I tell you? Maria is the best.
“Now that we’re all here, we should taste them,” Regina said, giving each of us a small plate and a fork.
“Yay! Finally!” I said. After pushing around that cart full of food, I was starving. I took the first bite without waiting even a second.
“Th-this is…”
“I-Is it bad?” Maria asked, worried.
“Not at all! It’s delicious. I knew that you were a good cook, but this is the first time I got to eat something just as soon as you cooked it. And it’s great!” I explained, and Maria’s face broke into a smile.
“She’s right. This is really good,” Regina said, putting a hand to her cheek.
“As if you can tell? I mean, it is good though,” Larna said as she moved her fork to take another bite.
Even Sora was murmuring, “Delicious…” as he kept eating, looking impressed.
“I know, right? Maria’s a great cook. She wouldn’t even lose to a pro,” I declared, proud of my friend.
“Lady Katarina, you are exaggerating…” she said, shaking her head as she blushed.
Regina, after complimenting the taste once, had just kept on eating silently. She eventually stood up.
“This is good! You’re on par with the professional cooks I’ve hired before! Maria, get back to cooking! We’re going to serve your dishes!”
“Do you mean…right away?!”
Maria was the one who had offered to cook in the first place but, now that she was suddenly told to do it, she looked taken aback.
“Exactly! Right away!” Regina smiled and ignored Maria’s shock. “It’s almost time for dinner, and I want to serve the things you make. Let’s start preparing!”
She sounded so convinced of what she was saying that we, as her employees, could only do as she had said, and so we started preparing for dinner according to her orders.
The Harbor Restaurant was now open for dinner.
I changed into the waitress uniform I’d received and went to the dining room.
Maria was supposed to wait tables with me but now she was working in the kitchen, and Sora was standing in a corner as a bouncer.
The old woman who normally worked here and I were the only two waitresses. Regina was standing behind the counter to serve drinks, so she wouldn’t come out among the customers.
The old couple came in about one hour before opening. They were calm, kind people who had been working here since the start of the restaurant, making them almost more knowledgeable about it than Regina herself. The old woman gave me a detailed explanation on what I was supposed to do and then told me to come and tell her if I had any problems. Those words gave me strength, but as I was standing there waiting for the store to open, I felt anxious.
I hadn’t worked as a waitress since my previous life, after all. Back then, I’d gotten to the point that the restaurant manager would even praise me for my work, but things were probably different in this world. I wondered whether I would be able to do it…but then again, no point in worrying. I just had to do it!
Right when I’d found the motivation not to give up, I heard the shopkeeper’s bell ring and saw the first customer walk in.
“Welcome!” I said with a smile.
The shopkeeper’s bell rang as the last customer for the night walked out.
“Thank you! Please come again!” I said before letting out a sigh of relief.
All the anxiety I had at first quickly disappeared as the training and experience from my previous life kicked in, and I somehow managed to finish my first shift as a waitress in this world.
If anything, this was much easier than working at a Japanese family restaurant. There were only a few items on the menu, I could jot down the orders on paper instead of inputting them at a computer terminal, and as Regina had told us before, there weren’t that many customers.
“You did well, girl,” the old woman who was working with me said with a smile.
“Thank you!” I answered, blushing at her compliment. Just then, Regina also walked out from behind the counter to approach me.
“I was surprised. When I read about your experience, I thought you wouldn’t be able to do much at all, but you proved me wrong. The customers praised you as well.”
“Th-thank you!” I stammered, blushing even more. I wasn’t used to being praised.
“We had more customers than usual today, so I’m glad you were here helping me out,” the old woman said.
“You usually get fewer people?” I asked, confused. It wasn’t as completely deserted as Regina had said, but I thought that she was just being humble.
“Yes. Usually most of the seats are empty,” Regina admitted without batting an eye, “but the news that we’re serving Maria’s cooking instead of just warming up stuff like usual spread throughout the neighborhood. The customers liked her dishes, so tomorrow could be just as busy as today.”
Her eyes were already sparkling at the idea.
When she first explained to us about the restaurant, she sounded so detached, but maybe that was just because she’d lost motivation thanks to the lack of customers.
“Maybe we could even fill the whole place up, like when the restaurant had just opened,” the old woman mused as she looked at Regina warmly.
I was looking at the women, feeling happy for them, when Sora came back. He’d been checking outside the store and putting out the “Closed” sign.
“Well done. Nobody seeing you work like that could guess that you’re a noblewoman,” he told me.
“Hehe, thank you!”
I’d never received so much praise in a single day since I was reborn.
“So, how did things go?” he asked me.
“Very well! A lot of customers came in to try Maria’s cooking, and maybe tomorrow will be just as busy too. We’ll have to give our best!” I proclaimed, shaking my fists with enthusiasm, but Sora sighed.
“I meant, how did our mission go? Did you get any information on the kidnapping?”
“Ah!”
I was so busy waiting tables that I’d completely forgotten about our mission!
“You forgot about it, didn’t you? Just as I thought. You probably had your hands full though, it being your first day as a waitress,” he said with scary accuracy.
“S-Sorry…”
“But if there are even more customers tomorrow, gathering information will also be even more difficult,” he said.
I thought that the restaurant being busy was a good thing, but that also meant that I couldn’t concentrate on my mission.
“You’re right… What can we do?” I said, concerned.
“Don’t worry,” Regina, who was listening to our conversation, intervened.
“Huh?” I looked at her in confusion as she smiled.
“I’ll be the one gathering information.” she said.
“You? How?” I asked, remembering that, the entire time the restaurant had been open today, she never left her counter in the corner, making drinks. That is, pouring already made drinks from bottles into glasses.
She was only listening to the chitchat of the customers sitting close to her, probably trying to hit on her, and she didn’t even seem particularly interested in that. She certainly didn’t look like she was gathering any information.
“I’m actually a Wind Magic user, you see. And by using that magic, I can control the vibrations in the air to pick up on distant sounds. I can hear pretty much everything that goes on inside this restaurant,” she said, explaining her unbelievable trick.
“And you’re gathering information like this all the time while the store is open?”
“Yes. I’m always listening to people talking.”
That’s incredible! She looked like she was just half-heartedly listening to the customer in front of her but she was actually working! She’s a respectable Ministry employee after all, I thought, but…
“Well, to be honest I’m mostly listening to local rumors and such because standing there doing nothing is too boring. I get to learn a lot about this town,” she said, making me unsure of what I was supposed to think about her. Was she a respectable worker or not?
“And did you hear anything about the kidnapping?” Sora asked.
“Uhm…” she replied, “I didn’t hear anything about that today. But the more customers we get, the more likely we are to find something.” She then looked at me and said with a smile, “If you all work hard, I’m sure we’ll find the information you need!”
So we basically had to bring in even more customers.
“Anyway, I’ll worry about the intel, so you can focus on waiting tables,” she concluded before disappearing to the back of the restaurant.
Knowing that I could focus on just one thing was a relief, at least.
When most of the cleaning up was done, the old couple went home, and Sora and I finished tidying the dining area.
Maria was still in the kitchen, preparing for the next day. She looked tired after having to cook that much on such short notice, but when we told her about the many customers her cooking had brought in, she got even more motivated and happily promised to do her best the next day too.
I mopped the floor while I thought of how much I had to learn from her.
This wasn’t a high-class restaurant for nobles, and the clientele’s manners weren’t exactly high-class either. The floor wasn’t very dirty, and thankfully I was used to this kind of labor from my job at the Ministry. The restaurant’s dining space was actually smaller than the huge surfaces I sometimes had to clean there.
As we were almost done, I started a conversation with Sora.
“Since we also serve alcohol here, I was worried that I’d get harassed by drunk guys, but thankfully nothing of the sort happened,” I told him.
“I think that’s because most of the men that come here to drink just want an excuse to speak with Regina. She’s good with those kinds of guys, so there wasn’t any problem.”
“So you don’t really have much to do as a bouncer, right?”
I heard that, around here, a lot of the places that serve alcohol hire a bouncer just in case. Regina said that one from another restaurant came by every once in a while, but now we had Sora taking care of that role. In the end, though, I didn’t get to see Sora doing anything.
“…Right. Anyway, I think we’re done here. Let’s go to bed already,” he said, taking my mop and walking off to the back of the restaurant.
It still wasn’t that late, but he was probably tired from the new, unfamiliar job. I followed after him and found Regina, who I thought had left behind, giggling to herself in a corner.
“The reason you weren’t harassed by drunks,” she revealed, “is that he was constantly on the lookout. As soon as someone even thought about bothering you, he’d give them a stare so harsh that they could feel it stabbing them. And then he’d also escort those people out of the building. But he was so smooth in doing it that you didn’t even notice.”
“…I didn’t know.” Just as she said, I hadn’t noticed at all. Why didn’t he tell me, anyway?
“He’s always looking out for you,” she observed, and I agreed.
As a colleague and fellow newcomer at the Ministry, he was always helping me out.
“Thank you for telling me what was happening,” I told Regina, before going back to chasing Sora.
He was waiting for me in the hallway that connected the restaurant to the employees’ rooms.
Sora always waited for me, now that I thought of it. He never left me behind.
“Sora, I heard from Regina that you were actually keeping the drunks from bothering me. I’m sorry I didn’t notice! Thank you,” I told him as he was facing away from me.
“…It’s what I was hired to do. You don’t have to thank me,” he said bluntly.
“But you’re always saving me in one way or another. Thank you, really,” I said, pulling his arm to turn around, and he ruffled my hair again.
“What?! Again?!” I puffed my cheeks in frustration, and he blushed and looked away.
He was probably embarrassed about being thanked. Seeing him blush like that was so cute that I stopped complaining about the hair-ruffling. I was planning to ask him about Maria, but instead I witnessed this unexpected side of him.
“…Go back to your room already.”
“I will. Goodnight, Sora,” I told him and went to my room.
Working as a waitress for the first time in this world had really tired me out. “I’m spent…” I murmured as I got into bed, and seconds later, I was asleep.
★★★★★
I, Sora Smith, was once again on a mission with my colleague Katarina Claes.
After meeting her through some unconventional circumstances, I thought that I’d never see her again…but then she started working at the Ministry alongside me. We ended up in the same department and often worked together. Given how reckless she was, I always had to look after her. But Katarina was the daughter of a duke and the fiancée of a prince. I had to be careful not to forget that normally someone of her rank wouldn’t even speak to me… No matter how I felt toward her.
Regina asked Katarina and me to go to the restaurant that always prepared food for the Harbor Restaurant. Not ingredients, just food. Already cooked food. The so-called “Harbor Restaurant” secretly funded by the Magical Ministry didn’t even prepare anything; it just served stuff that it bought elsewhere.
As I imagined, this meant that it didn’t draw in enough customers to be profitable and only stayed afloat thanks to the Ministry’s money. As a citizen (though I wasn’t born in Sorcié, to be honest), I didn’t know how to feel about that.
Maria Campbell, another Ministry employee who I often worked with, probably felt the same as I did and tried to do what she could to get more people coming to the restaurant.
We left Maria with Regina and went to the restaurant we were told to go to. I looked at Regina’s hand-drawn map and sighed. It was the roughest, most barebones map I’d ever seen. She confidently told me that we’d be fine with that, and I’d believed her…but we obviously weren’t going to be fine at this rate. It didn’t take long to understand that the map wasn’t going to do us any good.
I shouldn’t have believed her, especially since she reminded me of Larna, our boss who also couldn’t really be trusted with this sort of thing. At that point I didn’t feel like going back and having her draw another map. Even if I did, I knew that the second map would be just as lousy as the first. We decided we’d just ask for directions.
It took us a while to reach the place we’d been sent to, but at least I had more time to enjoy the sight of Katarina looking around with sparkling eyes at the unfamiliar surroundings.
We eventually got to a restaurant much larger and busier than the Harbor Restaurant. We told one of the staff about our errand, and she let us know that the owner was waiting for us in the kitchen. Katarina thanked her and we set off.
All the nobles I’d met before always looked down on commoners and took their help for granted. They’d never thank one of them for doing something. Katarina, however, was different. I was impressed by how grateful she always was to anyone who helped her, but at the same time, I asked myself what kind of education she had received to become like that.
When we walked into the kitchen, full of its delicious smells, Katarina asked one of the cooks for the owner, but before she was even done asking, the owner herself had started walking toward us, pushing a cart. She had known that Regina’s new hires would come, and she had already prepared boxes full of food for us.
While we were paying for the food, she asked us whether we were cooks. When Katarina replied that she was a waitress, the owner looked surprised and then turned her gaze on me.
I already knew what she’d say next, so I wasn’t surprised in the least when she asked Katarina whether she was being sponsored by the same guy as Regina.
It was weird for an establishment with as few customers as the Harbor Restaurant to hire new waiters, so it was obvious what people would think about them, especially because Regina had the same rumors going around about her. Katarina, however, wasn’t expecting it, and she nervously explained that she was just a relative of Regina’s.
The owner laughed and said that she only thought that because there was a young girl and a handsome boy. She then said that it was a waste to hire two new waiters and looked at me. I could see her eyes sparkle.
As expected, she asked me to come work for her. What a bother. I told her that I wasn’t even going to be a waiter, with a smile that always worked on older women.
However, she looked surprised and told me that it was a waste not having me working in the dining area. To be honest, I agreed, so I just came up with an excuse on the spot, saying that I was bad with people. I made my best sad face, knowing that this was usually enough to make this kind of woman step back. She blushed, smiled, and gave up. Again, all as expected.
I finished her off by smiling and telling her that I would certainly love to work for her one day, and she completely lost it.
Getting on good terms with the people around me was also part of the job. I used to make a living out of getting women to like me, so this was no hard thing to do. It just never worked with the girl who was standing right next to me…
Anyway, the owner even gave us some sweets free of charge.
As we were going back to the Harbor Restaurant while pushing the carts with the food on it, the salty smell from the sea became stronger, and we could even hear the sound of the waves. Katarina excitedly asked whether she was hearing the sound of waves, and when I confirmed that she was, she insisted that she wanted to go and look at the sea. I reminded her that we were working, and she gave up. But she looked so disappointed, with her drooping shoulders and darkened eyes, that I just had to let her see it.
She immediately cheered up and hugged me. Why is she so extreme in everything? I told her not to forget about her cart as an excuse to get her off of me. I felt pitiful doing that. Since when am I so uncomfortable with women?
It had been a long time since I last saw a sea this lovely. The water was clear and the sand was white.
Katarina was looking at it in awe. The first words she finally managed to say were, “It’s so beautiful.” I told her that this place was known for its picturesque beaches, and she looked at me.
“You’ve kept your promise,” she told me.
I had no idea what she was talking about, but she then explained, and I remembered about the time when I first met her.
Back when I still didn’t know much about you, you kept asking me to tell you stories. And then I made you that promise…but I just said that without thinking. I never meant to keep it. I’d already forgotten about it, since I thought that someone like me couldn’t meet a noblewoman like her ever again.
The blue brooch you gave me, and your words… “We’re in the same world.” I thought that having those two things to remember you by would be enough…but you also remembered that promise.
I felt as if she had clutched my heart with her bare hands, and I couldn’t speak anymore.
“Thank you, Sora,” she told me with a smile. I could feel my heart beating faster and my face getting hotter. I made dozens of women fall for me for work, and to be honest, I thought I’d had enough… Why am I reacting to this like someone who has no experience with women at all?
I was already nervous enough, but then Katarina made it worse by asking me if I remembered about the brooch. Remember? I was wearing it at that very moment… But I lied and told her that I didn’t know where I’d put it.
“But it was such a beautiful brooch, with the colors of our eyes!” she protested. How can she be this romantic without noticing it?! I’m at my limit here!
I was so frustrated by how oblivious she was that I grabbed her head and started ruffling her hair. She asked why I was doing it, and since I didn’t want her to see my (probably red) face, I turned around. I told her that we had to go back to the restaurant and started walking. My face still hadn’t cooled back down. If someone as experienced with women as I was reacted like that, I couldn’t imagine how hard it was for the prince or her brother.
By the time I’d finally stopped blushing, we’d already arrived at the restaurant, where we found some dishes waiting on the kitchen counter.
As it turned out, Maria had made them in the short time we were away. I was really impressed. She was beautiful, diligent, a Light Magic user, and even a good cook. She was fit to be the protagonist of a novel. If she’d been born in high society, Katarina’s brother and her fiancée would probably have fallen for her…but everyone was too busy being in love with Katarina and her antics, and that included Maria herself—she was crazy about Katarina.
When we later tried the dishes she had cooked, Maria seemed to be the most concerned about Katarina’s opinion. But the food she’d prepared tasted even better than I expected, and Regina liked it so much that she asked Maria to cook more of it to serve at the restaurant.
Everyone was shocked at that absurd order, and I was reminded of a certain someone in charge of the Magical Tool Laboratory. In the end, Maria ended up working in the kitchen while Katarina and an old employee waited tables. I’d be standing in a corner, acting as a bouncer if anything happened, as we had previously discussed.
Eventually it was time for dinner, and the Harbor Restaurant opened.
Katarina looked nervous. She had put on her waitress uniform and received some explanations from the old woman who had been working here for a long time. To be honest, I thought that for a noble lady—even one as weird as her—working in a restaurant like this would be too much. I was surprised when she said that she’d do it, but I thought that she only said that because of her usual curiosity. I expected her to give up as soon as she actually had to work.
Back at the Ministry she was always doing stuff like cleaning the floors and delivering packages, but everyone there was well behaved (except my own department, unfortunately) and knew about her being a noble lady. They’d always treat her with the respect that her rank commanded. But here, she wasn’t a noble. She had to work as a normal girl, and I knew how difficult that could be.
What’s more, employees must always respect customers, and someone who’s never had that kind of experience would find it hard to extend such courtesy. I had my fair share of experience with that kind of job, so I was prepared to jump in and replace her as a waiter when she gave up.
Regina probably had me stand in the corner because she was expecting the exact same thing to happen, but Katarina defied all our expectations by being a perfect waitress. She was so good that you’d think she’d already done it before, like me. She was even good at interacting with customers. You’d never guess she was the daughter of a duke. I was so surprised by this that, at first, I just stared at her in silence.
The one problem with the way she was working was that she was so pleasant to customers that people started approaching her. There were already a lot of men coming to the Harbor Restaurant just to see Regina, but a girl as cute as Katarina couldn’t help but draw unwanted attention. They’d ask her things like, “Do you want to go eat somewhere else?” or, “Are you free after work?” but, Katarina being Katarina, she didn’t even notice that they were trying to pick her up.
“I’m sorry, I’m busy right now!” she’d say with a smile, or she’d reply, “Is there anything you need help with?” which didn’t even make sense in this situation.
Some of the customers were drunk or too forward with their advances, so I approached them and kindly asked them to leave. More than a bouncer for the restaurant, I was Katarina’s personal bouncer.
Regina, who noticed, grinned and told me, “You don’t need to scare away all the men who try to get close to Katarina, you know?”