Apprentice Shrine Maiden Volume 2 (Premium)

by Miya Kazuki

  “That’ll work if we can get the High Priest’s help. Don’t mess this up, Myne.”

  Benno gave me a firm handshake and we grinned at each other, at which point Rosina tilted her head elegantly.

  “Excuse me, Sister Myne. What about music? When nobles eat, multiple musicians are summoned so that they might take turns playing while the meal proceeds. Will no music be played in the restaurant?”

  Well... I hadn’t thought about music at all. I looked back at Benno, only to see him raise his hands in surrender.

  “Sorry, but I don’t know any musicians good enough to play for nobles.”

  “...How would you feel about playing music in the restaurant, Rosina?”

  “I am willing to do anything if it means spending more of my time playing music.” Rosina replied so quickly and confidently that I realized she had probably brought up music specifically because she wanted to be the one playing it.

  “This will be a mostly lunchtime restaurant, right? If people ask for music when making reservations and pay a fee for the service, well... I can lend you Rosina.” I wouldn’t mind lending him Rosina if there were customers who wanted music enough to pay a fee for it. She could make it in time if she went to the restaurant after third bell rang and our practice ended. But she needed to learn to do paperwork too, and the High Priest would get involved if it came to her going outside every day.

  “...Hey, what about nighttime?”

  “Wha? That’s gonna be a hard no from me, obviously. Nighttime means alcohol and I’m not going to throw a cutie like Rosina into a den of drunk wolves. If you want music at night, find a musician of your own.” Waitresses working at nighttime bars here tended to be prostitutes on the side, and despite the nature of the Italian restaurant, there would probably be some customers who wouldn’t take no for an answer. I had no intention whatsoever of putting Rosina in an environment like that.

  Sixth bell rang as we ironed out the details, signaling the end of the workday. Benno eyed me while writing a summary of what we had discussed.

  “You better learn a lot from the High Priest tomorrow.”

  “You can count on me!”

  “...Ngh, why do I feel so nervous?” said Benno, holding his stomach in faux pain. I blew up my cheeks in a big pout.

  “You know who’s nervous? Me, about whether this restaurant’s ever going to get finished. Slowpoke.”

  The next day came, and it was the date of my lunch with the High Priest. The time until third bell was my last cramming opportunity, and I practiced my heart out as Rosina watched over me with steely determination. I could play the harspiel itself without much issue, but I always lost my place among the strings when I started to sing. I would be fine if I was just careful about that.

  After practice, it was time to help the High Priest with his paperwork. Fran was busy preparing for the lunch and thus entrusted Gil with taking me there. Personally, I wasn’t extremely worried since the High Priest was reasonable and would be forgiving of some mistakes, but Fran and Rosina were both on edge. They always end up on the same page when nobles are involved.

  After fourth bell, I returned to my room with Gil. Delia cleaned me up a bit, then I left the room with Rosina carrying the large harspiel and Fran holding the utensils and the box containing the small harspiel. Rosina had been asked to play music during lunch, and in contrast to how my hands were already shaking with nervousness at the prospect of playing the song I had finished learning days ago, she looked calm and composed.

  “...Aren’t you nervous, Rosina?”

  “I am nervous. There is an unsettling feeling stirring in my chest.” She spoke with such a bright smile that I had a hard time believing her. But Rosina’s smile was a weapon she wielded, just like noble women. It was a tool to protect oneself and show no weakness to others.

  “It’s next to impossible for me to tell, but I suppose you’re forcing that smile to hide your nervousness?”

  “Yes. A smile tells others that you are in control of the situation.”

  We arrived at the High Priest’s room just as a number of gray priests were moving furniture around in preparation for lunch. With their trained movements in the corner of my eyes, I greeted the High Priest just like a noble would. I said the exact words Fran had beaten into my head and curtsied the exact way Rosina had trained me to.

  Fran and Rosina had thought up the greeting together. It began with the names of gods and used poetic metaphors to express how honored I was to receive his invitation, so it was pretty long. I had to say it while kneeling on one knee and crossing my arms in front of my chest. Behaving gracefully was pure suffering for someone lacking in muscles like me.

  Lutz was told to memorize the greetings with me and even he couldn’t believe it. He actually started complaining, saying that a simple “thank you for the invitation” should suffice. He was memorizing the greetings with me since he would be dealing with nobles as a leherl, but the number of difficult expressions and hard-to-pronounce deity names were beating him down. I was used to polytheism myself as a Japanese person, but whenever noble greetings got involved I found myself wishing the religion here was monotheistic.

  But still, our practice bore fruit. I managed to give a greeting twice as graceful as my normal greetings without ever stumbling or forgetting what to say. I stepped on my robe at the end and struggled to stand up, but I didn’t fall over. I sure have grown.

  “Good enough. Not great, but not bad either. You two have trained her well. Now, let us see if her harspiel practice has gone just as well.” After the High Priest praised my attendants for their efforts, his lips curved into a slight grin at the sight of the harspiel in Fran’s hands.

  I looked at Rosina with a smile. “If I have gotten better, it is thanks to my splendid teacher.”

  “Oh, perish the thought. You have a talent for music, Sister Myne. You learned the musical scale in the blink of an eye, and reading music comes more naturally to you than anyone I have seen. The movements of your fingers are still awkward, but practice will take care of that.”

  S-Stop! I don’t have any talent! It’s all leftovers from my past life’s piano practice and music lessons! I wanted to grovel on the floor and swear that I didn’t deserve her praise, but now wasn’t the time for that. I tried smiling to hide my anxiety, as I had been taught moments prior, but I could feel my mouth twitching.

  “Fascinating. You will show me the fruits of that practice while lunch is being prepared.” At the High Priest’s orders, a gray priest prepared a chair for me and helped me sit. Fran handed me my harspiel, whispering encouragement as he did so.

  All I needed to do was repeat what I had practiced. The song wasn’t that hard, since it was the first one. I would be fine if I stayed calm.

  After taking some deep breaths, I looked up and saw that Rosina was tensed up, as if nervous. She resembled a mother seeing her child play at their first school recital.

  I strummed the harspiel’s strings. The short practice song I had learned was called “The Autumn Harvest.” The lyrics simply consisted of listing food names then calling them tasty, and it wasn’t too hard if I could just keep my fingers moving.

  “Blessings of the forest, what an autumn harvest~”

  After finishing the song without making any mistakes, I let out a sigh of relief.

  “...Not bad at all.”

  “Indeed. Sister Myne is quite the fast learner. Actually, Sister Myne, why not use this opportunity to play the song you composed the other day?”

  “Wha? The song I composed...?” Mmm...? I don’t remember anything like that.

  “I believe it went like this.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was because I was a kid or because this body was just built for it, but these ears were better at picking up sound than my Urano ears had been. I didn’t have perfect pitch or anything, but I was pretty good. It was easier to convert my thoughts into the musical scale than it had been in my Urano days. At one point I tried playing a random song
I remembered, and apparently Rosina remembered that in full.

  “I-I haven’t thought of any lyrics for it yet. Maybe next time...?” Naturally, translating the English lyrics to a movie theme song into this world’s language was a bit too much to ask for me to do on the spot. But after I shook my head, the High Priest gave a slight smile with his eyes shining with curiosity.

  “Yes, have it ready by next time. Here is the next song for you to learn.”

  Noooo... I’ve made things harder on myself again. I wept on the inside while taking the new sheet music from him. Now I had to learn a new song and think up lyrics for my own song.

  “Now then, let us eat.” Gleaming silver tableware was set on the table in front of the High Priest. Fran had lined up my own tableware in front of me. It was common practice for only servants to touch their master’s tableware, for fear of it being stolen or destroyed.

  The tableware I was using had been left by the prior orphanage director, which meant it was pretty good. Fran had suggested that I buy a new set, but I turned him down. A set that matched the room would be too expensive. I told him “I don’t know what kind of person the former orphanage director was, but their sins are not the sins of their belongings” and took the tableware for myself.

  As I had eaten the equivalent of what nobles ate at the guildmaster’s house, the food was delivered in courses similar to what I expected. First drinks were poured, then appetizers, then soup, then the main dishes, then fruits and a dessert, and then the meal finished with tea.

  However, the quantity and quality of the food was on another level. I knew it was because the leftovers were given to servants, but the appetizer course alone had eight plates with different kinds of food. An attendant would bring food to their master’s plate bit by bit, and if I didn’t hold back I would get beyond full just on the appetizers. Fran knew well how much I could eat and selected portions from the three kinds of foods I would be most likely to enjoy. I chomped down on them while thinking about how Benno and I could improve our own food.

  ...Our food tasted just as good, but it seemed we needed to work on our presentation—how we cut the food, put it on the plates, and so on. Noble cooking had some pretty high-level presentation. But soup was just as bland here as it was at the guildmaster’s. If there was one battle my food won, it was with the soup. The main dishes came in several plates. There was a lot of meat, but I couldn’t see any fish. It seemed that even nobles didn’t eat fish much at all.

  As we ate we talked about my harspiel practice, questions I had about the paperwork, the state of the orphanage, and the status of the Myne Workshop. The High Priest mainly just gave non-committal comments to things I said. He sometimes said things laden with euphemisms, but I could never figure out what he was actually trying to say. The conversation was basically a loop of me tilting my head until the High Priest sighed in defeat and gave up.

  ...Looks like Fran and the other gray priests would be solid waiters. Maybe I should work harder to get music for the restaurant. I couldn’t help but think that way while listening to Rosina play the harspiel as we ate. Back in my Urano days, every store I ever walked into would have music playing in the background, but listening to music wasn’t so easy in this world. At this point, I ended up sentimental every time I got the opportunity to hear music at all.

  “...You seem to have fallen into thought. Was this lunch a good reference for you?” asked the High Priest while sipping his after-meal tea.

  “Yes, very. And by the way, before I go... could I talk to you about something?”

  “Wait. Discussions with you are best left elsewhere.” The High Priest interrupted me, so I slowly finished the rest of my strong-smelling tea. He opened the secret room and I followed him inside. By now I was used to clearing space on the bench to sit while the High Priest brought his chair.

  “Now. What is it this time?”

  The Significance of Going Outside

  “There are more gray priests than there is work right now, and I might have a solution to that... Would you let gray priests work as waiters in a restaurant built for serving noble-inspired food to rich commoners?” I asked.

  My question didn’t seem to surprise the High Priest; he must have remembered what we talked about in my chambers. “I imagine you would want gray priests who have worked as attendants to be your waiters.”

  “Gray priests with attendant experience would be best since they’re especially good-mannered, polite, and hard-working, but even Gil does a decent job serving food. I think any gray priest here could be a great waiter after just a little training.”

  Having one gray priest with attendant experience would be a big help, but they didn’t all have to have experience. Those raised in the orphanage were almost always polite and obedient, probably due to following the example set by attendants and blue priests, being taught that violence was wrong, and living a life of locked-up servitude from birth. It wouldn’t be too hard to train them into waiters if at least one of them had experience to draw from.

  “...If training them into waiters would take so little time, why not train commoners from the lower city?”

  “Whether or not someone has lived a life close to nobles makes a big difference here.”

  Benno wouldn’t be worried about training waiters if it was that easy. Most servers in lower city eateries were prostitute waitresses. And although apprentice chefs worked as waiters when things got busy, serving was understood to be a low-difficulty job that didn’t demand much. If Benno began hiring servers, almost all of his applicants would be poor women stricken with poverty, no doubt about it. That would hurt the restaurant’s classy atmosphere. Just like Lutz had busted his back to develop better manners, each waitress would have to be educated from the ground up to completely change their behavior and manner of speaking.

  “Benno owns a fairly high-class store, does he not? I would think his workers there would suffice.”

  Out of Benno’s servants, the High Priest was familiar primarily with Mark. But Mark was on a higher level than most others in the Gilberta Company. And although the other employees were polite and well-mannered thanks to Mark’s training, using them wasn’t an option here. The lehanges working at Benno’s store were mostly the children of merchants who wanted to form connections with the Gilberta Company. Their job description involved clothing and paperwork, not serving food. They would fight back hard if we tried making them work as waiters.

  “It is a matter of course that gray priests with attendant experience would be excellent servers, but would they be allowed to work with no supervision? Who would you propose to be their guardian? In addition, only a select few earning income outside the temple would lead to financial inequality even within the orphanage. Your thoughts on that?”

  Benno could serve as the guardian for at least one of them, but I didn’t know about all of them at once. I also hadn’t thought at all about the financial inequality that would occur in the orphanage. “...I can’t answer those questions right away.”

  “I would imagine so. These are not simple problems,” said the High Priest with a tone that made it clear this was something he had thought about long ago. The problems weren’t simple, but I knew he would never give his permission if I didn’t provide answers to them.

  “I did not expect to get your permission immediately. I just wanted to hear your thoughts. And on that note, might I ask what you think about gray priests working outside the temple?”

  The High Priest lowered his gaze in thought while tapping a finger against his forehead. “Hm. Well, I believe it will be difficult for them. As anyone could tell from looking at you, the culture of the outside world differs greatly from the temple. Do you think that gray priests could adjust so quickly to the lower city after living their entire lives here?”

  Thinking back to the first time I took Fran and Gil outside of the temple, I slowly shook my head. “I think they would manage inside the restaurant, but outside of that...” When it came to serving
wealthy customers in a restaurant designed to look like a noble mansion, the gray priests would need only act like they normally did. Even when it came to dealing with money, their experience with the Myne Workshop would probably help them handle the transactions just fine. But the second they stepped outside the restaurant, their life experience in the temple would start working against them in a big way.

  “Furthermore, what will you do if the gray priests begin to wish for a life on the outside after they grow accustomed to it? Will you be able to provide that lifestyle for them?”

  “That would be difficult, I think. I’m too young to be their guardian, and even if I asked Benno, he’d only be able to give them what he would give to a live-in apprentice. Living alone would be unbearably harsh for someone who has grown up with everything being given to them in the form of divine gifts.”

  There wasn’t really a major food problem in the orphanage at the moment. Everyone did their chores and had enough food waiting for them at the end of the day. But outside of the temple they would need to make their own meals or eat out, and I doubted the priests used to eating food cooked for nobles would feel satisfied with the meals of the lower city. Not to mention that I was a little scared of sending the priests out on their own when they still struggled to understand the concept of money and how to use it. I could imagine it wouldn’t take long for some crook to scam them out of everything they had.

  “Lastly—and this is the most important factor for me—what will the populace think of orphans being hired? Do you think they will be embraced, or rejected?”

  “...More so the latter.” Judging by how my parents reacted to me joining the temple, it was hard to imagine people having a good impression of orphans or the temple. Their skill as waiters would no doubt be appreciated, but the prejudice they would face would probably be rough.