In the four years that I spent as a servant in the Royal Pace, it was quite common for maids to be reassigned to another location in the Kingdom of Galuterica.

  The capital had the highest standards for maids, and the Royal Pace had extensive facilities and infrastructure for training professional servants. An uneducated commoner could be hired at the Royal Pace, and within a year or two of strict training regimens, they could develop all the skills necessary to serve the highest echelon of society with excellence. In this sense, the Royal Pace was something analogous to a factory that specialized in producing maids, just as there were royal barracks that specialized in producing soldiers.

  If a frontier noble or wealthy merchant requested it, they could hire fully-trained maids directly from the Royal Pace. There was nearly always a constant outward flow of specialized professionals from the capital, given that all of the guilds, universities, cultural centers, and wealth were heavily concentrated in the heart of the kingdom. In contrast, the frontier regions were significantly less developed and always desperate for skilled talent.

  It was fairly common to have aristocratic visitors periodically wandering the upper floors as they observed us. They were quite literally looking to "purchase" a maid, and many prospective buyers wanted a close look before investing a rge sum of cash. Our saries weren't cheap — if that made any sense — and the only thing that distinguished us from sves was the fact that we were fully competent, stylish, and eager, whereas you couldn't count on a resentful sve to do anything with quality, trustworthiness, or speed. People often said that a single competent maid could do the work of ten miserable sves, and we often felt pressure to uphold that standard of quality. If our Master was dissatisfied in any way, there was a very serious risk that our jobs would be repced if he decided to visit to the local sve market.

  A maid had no other choice but to be fully excellent.

  + + +

  A number of maids stepped forward to volunteer, but the Crown Prince strode right past them.

  There were some thinly veiled expressions of surprise, but there was nothing anyone could do as Prince Leopold walked deep into the dense herd of women where the rest of us were standing — notably, the group that had certainly not volunteered. Ever so subtly, I could sense people shifting in the crowd around me like sheep. There were over a hundred of us, and there were certainly some maids who were quietly trying to put distance between themselves and Crown Prince Leopold. After all, there were probably a lot of us who didn't want to go on a six month journey with a small army of thirsty soldiers to an unknown destination in the middle of nowhere with a slight possibility of death.

  'If the Crown Prince didn't see you, then he couldn't choose you.'

  —Wasn't that the logic?

  However, I already had a feeling that there was no way to hide.

  The Crown Prince had a certain look in his eye, and he struck me as the type of customer who already knew exactly what he wanted. He wasn't the type of aristocrat who needed shopping recommendations from the Majordomo. Rather, it looked like he was looking for a few specific maids in particur, and their "willingness" to participate in this expedition seemed to be an irrelevant factor for Prince Leopold's process of selection.

  + + +

  His first stop was in front of a small maid with straw-colored hair — a small girl who looked considerably younger than her age. I did not know her particurly well, but I recalled that she had beautiful voice like a songbird.

  Even from this distance, I could see her knees trembling.

  "You." Crown Prince Leopold announced emotionlessly, as if he were selecting a dairy cow at the farmer's market.

  "Your Highness..." she stammered. "My grandmother is ill... it would be difficult for my family if I am transferred far away from home... if you could graciously reconsider—"

  However, the Crown Prince simply turned around and didn't even acknowledge her words.

  His attitude seemed to suggest that he wouldn't tolerate any dissidence. He was the King's first-born son, and the Kingdom of Galuterica was an absolute monarchy. In principle, everything in this country was owned by the King, and all ws were created by the King. If the regent decred something to be the case, there was no one who had the authority to question it.

  The Majordomo, who had been following the Crown Prince like a third-rate evil minion, stopped and berated the maid.

  "If you insist on refusing, you can pack your bags and go home," our manager spoke coldly.

  It was an open threat.

  If a maid disobeyed her orders, she would be fired from her job.

  That was the ever-persistent modus operandi of this pce.

  + + +

  After that exchange, no one else dared to show any sign of resistance.

  When the Crown Prince selected a maid, she would bow her head and thank him for choosing her with a grateful smile — a carefully manufactured expression not so different from the way that sex workers feigned love for their clients.

  All of the maids in the Royal Pace were professionals with respect to concealing their inner thoughts, and any sign of everyone's true feelings vanished nearly instantly. It was all hidden behind six inches of mental armor, and no one wanted to be singled out as an insubordinate or rebellious servant. There wasn't a single positive outcome that could possibly arise from angering the Crown Prince, and practically everyone had thrown up a carefully fabricated mask on their face.

  Meanwhile, the underground atmosphere in the ballroom had already turned bck. It was like we were attending a funeral where everyone was forced to smile. Although we all spent our entire lives growing up in a deeply patriarchal and socially restricted culture, no one could be happy to see their autotomy and consent dragged through the mud in such a fgrant way.

  Prince Leopold had thus far chosen 17 maids, and only 2 of those were women who had actually "volunteered."

  Not a single maid had the courage to refuse the offer.

  None of us were in a position to decline, either.

  + + +

  21... 22...

  23 maids were selected...

  The Crown Prince moved through the crowd, making his choices as if he were an emotionless farmer picking the highest quality fruits from a vast orchard of apple trees.

  Practically everyone was keeping count, and we all knew he would choose a total of twenty five.

  + + +

  To my left, Prince Leopold stopped in front of Lilian.

  I remembered all of sudden that she had been working in the Royal chambers all week, so he must have surely seen her around. Lilian was a fast-paced and extremely efficient maid who certainly stood out compared to the others, although most aristocrats were too self-absorbed to notice which of the cleaning maids were especially productive.

  "You will come too," the Crown Prince said to Lilian, confirming my worst fears. "You are good."

  "As you command, Your Highness." Lilian responded instantly.

  It was a direct compliment from the Crown Prince, but I couldn't tell how she felt about this. If a despicable person said nice things about you, would you feel happy about it? At the end of the day, there were good aristocrats and bad aristocrats, and the art of appealing to the tastes of one but not the other was an incredibly challenging affair. Maids rarely had the luxury to make the decisions in these types of uniteral retionships, and the most we could do was fish for whales and hope we didn't attract sharks.

  The Prince Leopold returned on the prowl after ciming my friend, and for a moment, our eyes met.

  He paused in front of me and examined at my body from head to toe.

  He appeared to think about it for a while, but then...

  —It was a "No."

  Unsuitable.

  The Crown Prince moved onto the next maid down the line, and the tension that had built up in my body released like the steam in a pressure cooker. Privately, I hadn't really wanted to be chosen, mostly because the logistics of forwarding money to my family would be extremely complicated if we were constantly traveling. The consistency of a monthly sary was very important to me, and a lump-sum payment at the end of a long expedition wouldn't work well with my circumstances.

  I felt sorry for Lilian, but I had responsibilities I needed to take care of.

  Moreover, the sword that he possessed was genuinely a scary thing — a magnet for trouble — and I had a very bad feeling about it. I couldn't shake this gnawing feeling in the back of my mind that my lifespan would definitely be shortened if I spent too much time around that distasteful man (who was possibly also a murderer in an alternate timeline), and I genuinely did not want to die while caught in the crossfires of a gactic war between multiple overpowered cosmic beings.

  Essentially, I was too much of a chicken.

  Several girls ter, he found his twenty-fifth maid, which filled all of the avaible slots on the Crown Prince's expedition.

  Somehow, I had managed to avoid being chosen.

  ?