Volume 2 - CH 31

Leena had begun to wipe the table clean in a hurry. Thanks to the help of some customers who weren’t able to just stand by and not help her, she finished cleaning unexpectedly fast. Another fortunate thing was that lunchtime had already passed, so they reached the time of day when no new orders were coming in. And so, Leena, having cleaned up the table, hastily rushed into the room at the back of the shop.

Her mother, Regina, had excused herself earlier, so there was just the young girl and the young boy inside the room. The young girl had taken off her dress and was dressed in their waitress uniform instead. Since this uniform was a spare of Leena’s, it didn’t fit her correctly but strangely, from the way she held herself, it seemed as if she was long accustomed to wearing one. 

Unconsciously, Leena stared at her, fascinated before suddenly returning to her senses and bowing her head.

“I sincerely apologize. I swear I will return your dirtied dress after it is thoroughly cleaned of any stains, so please, forgive me!”

“I forgive you.”

The young girl gently smiled at Leena who was desperately begging for forgiveness. There was a phrase that was often used among nobility: ‘I accept your apology.’ The expression the young Lady used this time was ‘I forgive you’, which was a distinct phrase that made it impossible for any future problems to occur. It was a phrase that Leena wasn’t aware of because she was a commoner, but she was able to guess its meaning from the young girl’s expression and felt relieved.

“Thank you very much! Then, I should remove the stains…”

“Your mother was kind enough to go and clean the stains from the dress, so that’s not an issue. More importantly, isn’t it troublesome for you to leave your customers unattended?”

“That- it is, but…”

Leena was of course worried about the front of house, but more importantly, she believed that there was no way that she could just leave the young girl be. As if she had read Leena’s thoughts, the young girl nodded slightly.

“You must certainly feel anxious about just leaving us behind here. Ciel, please take care of the front of house.”

“As you wish, Lady Effy.”

""

“Huh?….Huh?”

During Leena’s state of confusion, the young boy called Ciel headed towards the diner’s customers. When Leena came back to her senses, she turned her questioning gaze to Effy, as if to ask: ‘What is going on?’

“You needn’t worry about your customers if you leave them in Ciel’s care.”

“Even if you tell me to leave them to him…”

To have someone who wasn’t part of the staff helping out… Leena wasn’t aversed to that, but entrusting the diner to a child at least three years younger than her made her anxious.

“If you’re worried, I won’t mind if you go take a look at the situation either.”

“I- I will go do that.”

When she followed after Ciel and took a peek into the diner, Ciel was smoothly picking up the plates from the customers who had finished eating. Even from Leena’s perspective, who had been helping out at the shop for a long time now, he was frighteningly well-skilled.

Thankfully, the rush hour was over and there weren’t any new customers coming in. Therefore, Leena concluded that it would be alright even if she decided to entrust the front of the diner in the young boy’s care. Although she was confused about a lot of things, Leena returned to the room.

“Do you feel reassured now?”

“Yes…But can I really entrust it to him?”

“Then do you have any other options?”

“I…”

She wasn’t able to answer. Since she caused Effy trouble by making a careless mistake, she couldn’t just leave her be, but it wasn’t like she could neglect the customers that came into the diner either. Since that was the case, she truly didn’t have any other option but to leave the front of house to Ciel. 

‘How did this happen?’ Leena thought, baffled before bowing her head and saying: “I am indebted to you.” 

Leena brought out some tea as refreshment while waiting for the stain removal to be finished. Meanwhile, Effy piped up: “Can I ask you something?”

“Y-yes, what is it?”

“It seems that your diner is thriving but aren’t you short on hands?”

“I-I’m sorry!”

Thinking that she was being reproached about spilling the drink, she apologized hurriedly.

“Ah, I am not admonishing you. I was simply wondering if there was a situation on hand since it looked like you were short on hands.”

“Ah, that is…”

“Is there a reason for it?”

Leena didn’t think that the shops’ circumstances were something she should talk about with someone she had just met. However, it would be even more ungrateful to not reply to the young girl that she had just caused trouble for. Arriving at this conclusion, Leena revealed to her that her father had collapsed due to overworking and although he should be recovering soon, he was currently in a state where he couldn’t even get up.

“Your father had… that’s terrible.”

A complex expression showed on Effy’s face. However, right after that, she looked at Leena as if she had realized something.

“Then, are you and your mother the only ones running the diner at the moment?”

“Yes, that’s right. Frankly speaking, we are short on hands just like you said…”

At this rate, without even being able to stock up, Leena’s mother or even Leena herself might collapse from overwork as well. However, they drew a loan for building the diner and they also had to pay her father’s medical bills. 

In order to pay these bills as well, there was no way that they could close the shop. 

They were looking for a part-time worker but since they couldn’t pay that big of a wage despite needing someone experienced, they weren’t able to find anyone. When Leena laid these circumstances of theirs bare, like she was prompted to do, Effy hit her fist against her palm with a soft slap. 

“Then, Ciel and I shall help you out with the restaurant.”

“…Huh? Wh-what are you saying?”

“As a matter of fact, Ciel and I are in the middle of a social studies lesson. Therefore, if you were to let us assist you, you’d be of great help to me too.”

“That is…”

Ciel would, without a doubt, become a valuable asset but Leena didn’t think the lady-like Effy could become one as well. Moreover, they didn’t have the funds to hire two people to begin with. After she explained this to Effy in a roundabout way, Effy said that they would be fine with being paid only one person’s wage. Since Effy went as far as stating this, Leena couldn’t refuse her albeit being anxious about hiring a little girl that was a young Lady. Besides, that they were short on hands and struggling was true as well. As a result of Leena consulting with her mother, she decided to hire Ciel and Effy as the diner’s part-time employees.

In short, this decision was the right one to make. Just by looking at how Ciel worked at the front of the house, Leena understood that he would immediately become a valuable worker that wouldn’t need any training but even Effy, a young Lady, was able to wait on tables with refined movements.

Moreover, Effy was so skilled in cooking that she was also able to help out in the kitchen. 

‘Even though they don’t let me do more than plate the food yet!’ Leena lamented.

In any case, Ciel was in charge of tending to the customer’s needs, and Leena’s mother and Effy were in charge of the kitchen. And so Leena, who was free, decided to quickly check up on the stock of their ingredients.

“We were almost in trouble here…”

They had barely anything of just about every ingredient left and at this rate, they’d run out of stock as soon as tomorrow. Panicking, Leena consulted her bed-ridden father and then made her way to the wholesale supplier’s store. Relying on the map that her father had drawn her, she pulled a small cart and made her way to the shop that was located a short distance away from the main street. She entered the store which was neat and tidy despite being old and called out to the back from the unattended counter.

“On my wayyy, wait a moment!”

Not long after, a figure of a cheerful-looking, black-haired girl appeared.

“Um, you’re a customer right?”

“Ah yes, sorry. Actually, up until now, it was always my father who went to buy the stock. But he’s on bed rest for a bit at the moment so I came in his stead.”

Having said so, Leena handed over the order form written by her father. However, it was written in characters that she had just managed to finally learn. She was doubtful if a child younger than her would be able to read them, but the black-haired girl quickly scanned the letters before smiling:

“I’ll go prepare the order so wait a moment, alright?”

""

After the young girl had headed to the back and called out to someone, a young boy, seemingly a helper, appeared while carrying the ingredients over. He put them on the cart for Leena and after making sure that nothing was missing, Leena paid him. This was when the young girl went up to her, carrying an armful of bundles.

“…What are those?”

“It’s potatoes! We’ve ordered some from the neighboring country and we also began growing them ourselves recently.”

“Potatoes?”

“Yeah, yeah! On top of them being cheap to buy, if you prepare them properly, they are delicious. I’ll teach you how to prepare them and write down a simple recipe. So, won’t you give them a try once?”

It wasn’t rare for them to hand out unusual ingredients as free samples. When her father went to stock up, he would sometimes return with ingredients like that as well. Usually, a new delicious ingredient would normally sell even without advertisement. Since it got to the point where they were being handed out like this, it probably meant that the majority of it wasn’t really that edible…

Since she didn’t really have a reason to decline, Leena accepted the potatoes while muttering out a ‘thanks’.

Incidentally, since it wasn’t generally known that the potato sprouts were poisonous, it was easy to get food poisoning from eating them. Therefore, in this country, they were detested as fail-tatos 1that one wouldn’t eat unless they were a really poor person.

Leena didn’t yet know that her own fate was going to change greatly by her reaching out her hand to take these potatoes.