I was absolutely miserable as I shuffled like wet Komondor dog, practically frozen like an icicle and still dripping small puddles of water in the long trail that I left behind me.

  It was so cold... so cold...

  Moreover, it was incredibly heavy. Women's clothing in the Kingdom of Galuterica could be compared to "historical" fashion on Earth, which mean that my current outfit was four yers thick when you considered the shift (undergarments), bodice (simir to a corset), petticoat, blouse, skirt, and then finally a frock. This was also considered the bare minimum for women, in the sense that female fashion was considerably more extreme for aristocrats and the wealthy. Since I was a working-css maid, my clothes were still fairly "practical" in the sense that I could definitely dress myself without any help, although Guiyu would definitely consider this nightmarishly inconvenient and time-consuming compared to the modern-day clothes I was used to.

  My arms ached from lifting the sides of my waterlogged skirt. It felt like I was carrying a 100 pound suit of armor, which was worsened by the fact that I didn't want the hem of my soaked dress to get muddied by dragging it through the dirt. I did not have a change of clothes with me, and it would be a serious problem ter if I returned to the dormitory with my edge of my skirts stained brown just like I was a young child. It was not raining today, and there would surely be questions if I casually strolled through the pace hallways like I had walked through a category 5 hurricane.

  My destination, naturally, was the nearest bathroom or undry room.

  There was a toilet close to the Royal Garden, but it was small and there wasn't anything in there that could help me rinse.

  The wash room adjacent to the botanical garden was a better choice. It was in a hidden alcove that was tucked away against the wall adjacent to the shed where the gardening equipment and supplies were kept. The original intention for this room was for gardeners to leave their soiled overalls after spending a day working in the earth. In the spring and summer, there would be a single maid assigned to washing the the garments in this auxilliary undry room, although currently it was the off-season so it was highly unlikely that anyone was working here.

  Shivering, I turned into the hidden alcove and pushed open a creaky wooden door.

  Just as I expected, the room was completely dark and no one was here.

  + + +

  I turned on the heat to the water faucet so it could slowly warm up.

  Immediately afterwards, I began the arduous process of extricating myself from my wet clothes. If you have ever experienced the pain of removing a full-body diving suit, you might be able understand exactly how challenging it is remove four yers of Victorian-style dress. I felt like an exasperated reptile struggling to wiggle out of multiple yers of shedding snake skin.

  It was probably going to take at least fifteen minutes...

  Meanwhile, as a commercial break, I can briefly expin how magical technology is used to wash undry in Galuterica:

  The faucet in the undry room has a magical condenser and heating element. The condenser is attached to a water tank, which stores moisture that is absorbed from the air throughout the day. The heating element is a basic magical device that heats things like a stove, so it allows us to have hot water without any centralized plumbing in the Royal Pace. Like all magical devices, these tools are powered with magical crystals that must be repced like batteries.There is a drying rack that is attached to a magical radiator approximately the size of a washing machine. It consists of a basic magical heating element and a basic magical wind element. This equipment allows us to dry undry retively quickly even when it isn't sunny outside.The device for ironing clothes is another magical tool (a simple heating element), although it is rger and heavier than its equivalent on Earth. Galuterican magic technology in general is not very good at miniaturization or compact devices....Anyhow, eventually I managed to overcome the challenge of stripping naked.

  However, I still had a logistical problem ahead of me.

  The magical faucet in the wash closet was approximately one meter off the ground, and it was intended to fill a rge wooden basin for washing clothes. Meanwhile the wash basin in this room was essentially a rge bucket — approximately the size of a kitchen trash can — which posed a somewhat unique puzzle given my current circumstances.

  The faucet was too low for me used as a shower, and the basin was too small for me to use a bath.

  In the end, I chose to squat underneath the faucet.

  The water was too hot — and almost intolerably so — but at this point I was shivering and practically freezing to death. I wanted something hot even if it was uncomfortable. At first, I flinched when the scorching water scalded my skin, but I gradually acclimated to the temperature. Steam quickly filled the room as water poured onto the stone floor and collected in the drain. Although there were no mirrors in the room, I was sure that the skin on my back was bright red like a lobster.

  Meanwhile, I quickly rinsed my hair and scrubbed my legs.

  + + +

  Two minutes was the most I could tolerate.

  After painfully hopping out of the hot water and shutting off the faucet, I realized that I had forgotten something.

  Earlier, I had been so desperate to escape the cold that I missed an extremely basic step in this process.

  I had forgotten to grab a towel.

  This undry room was not intended for washing human beings, and likewise it should have been obvious that there wouldn't be any supplies for showering or bathing. The cleaning staff had no reason to stock fresh towels or clean linens in the isoted room next to the garden shed. Moreover, it was the off-season, there wouldn't be clean or dirty clothes to be seen anywhere in this space. There was an empty drying rack that I had intended to use to dry my maid uniform, but it wasn't reasonable at all to climb onto the wire ttice and bake myself in the nude.

  Water continued drip from my wet hair and puddle around my feet.

  ...Well... okay.

  I hadn't thought this far.

  I furrowed my brow and searched the shelves left, right, and all around me.

  ...There really was nothing in this room at all.

  I drew a total bnk.

  Feeling rather helpless, I started to sort through my wet clothes, examining them for stains and scrubbing with a little soap when appropriate. Fortunately, there wasn't too much to do, so I id my clothes out on the drying rack. I could do more thorough washing ter, but I judged that the current state was clean enough to pass.

  Now that I was finished with my task… did I really have no choice but to stand here butt naked?

  + + +

  A few minutes ter, I opened the door a tiny crack and peaked outside.

  When I was ying out my maid uniform, I remembered the gardening shed on the opposite side of the alcove. It occurred to me that the gardeners kept cleaning supplies such as cloth rags, sponges, and mops in case there were any spills. While I had never been inside the gardener's shed in the Royal Garden, I figured it couldn't hurt to search the shelves to see if there was anything clean enough that I could use.

  It was possible that I wouldn't find anything, but it definitely didn't hurt to try.

  Otherwise I was going to stand around completely naked for a whole hour... which really wasn't ideal.

  I wasn't an exhibitionist, after all.

  After confirming the coast was clear, I sprinted 50 feet across the alcove and ran into the shed, smming the door behind me.

  For extra good measure, I locked the door too.

  + + +

  I rummaged through the rows of shelves and moved around a few boxes.

  On my way in, I had found a gardener's wool jacket hanging on the door, which I left aside for the moment because I wanted to see if I could find something better. The coat smelled a little musty and it seemed like it hadn't been washed in some time, so I wasn't especially enthusiastic about putting it on. If anything, I wasn't that desperate to find clothes.

  Another possible candidate was a box of tablecloth that I found on the top shelf, which if I recalled had been used during the Spring Garden Party st year. I didn't want to open it right away because if I used any of the clean linen, I would need to secretly wash, fold, and return it to the shed ter because it had a very unique design. I couldn't leave it in the shared undry because the staff would find it very strange to discover this particur type of tablecloth at this time of the year.

  Finally, I found two boxes of rags in the corner of the room, which was exactly what I was looking for.

  They were filled with fraying pieces of fabric that were on their st legs. Most of the cloth consisted of spare trimmings that likely came from royal tailor's workshop. Textiles were extremely expensive in Galuterican society, as there was no such thing as sewing machines or factories of mass production. It was common for virtually all social csses (except the King himself) to mend clothes, recycle fabric, and resize hand-me-down clothing that passed from person to person. An old bed sheet could be converted into a dress, which could then be dyed a different color and converted into a man's undershirt, and then ter converted again into a child's pants. The eventual fate of all fabric was a small, irregurly shaped rag which could be used to clean the windows and floors until it fully disintegrated.

  I searched through the collection of rags.

  One of the boxes was no good, in the sense that the rags looked as though they had been used, washed, and rewashed multiple times.

  However, the second box seemed to contain retively fresh and unused rags, in the sense that it consisted of un-frayed strips of colorful fabric cut in sharp haphazard angles that looked like it had been delivered straight from the waste bin in tailor's workshop.

  Something like this could probably work.

  I selected a few rger pieces that looked clean, thinking that I could use them like a hand towel to dry myself off.

  I quickly wiped myself in a few spots so that I wasn't dripping onto the floor as much as before.

  + + +

  After that, it occurred to me that I should probably cover my tracks.

  I had quite literally left a giant sopping trail of water behind me, and it was probably best if I cleaned up a bit so it wasn't completely obvious that a crazy maid had jumped into the pond and taken a shower in the undry room next to the shed.

  A mop would be the right equipment for that type of task, so I should probably search the closet.

  There was only one closet inside of the garden shed, so it was probably the only sensible pce for the workers to store cleaning supplies, brooms, and other tall objects. I hadn't seen any of those tools so far, and I had already rummaged through most of the shelves.

  I stood up and walked over to the closet door.

  My guard was fully lowered, so when I pulled the handle, I wasn't expecting a big surprise.

  —Because a very rge thing fell out of the closet and nded on top of me with a heavy thud.

  ?