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Chapter 85: Laundry

Translator: Haruchin   Editor: Marky

「 Allow me to do the laundry. 」

Butler interjected with a smile, and before I knew it, he had already retrieved the bed sheets and towels, washed them, and hung them up to dry.

Not to mention those towels, even these sheets are left here just because I don’t sleep in this place! It’s not like I never change my sheets!!!

I’m washing my bed sheets properly, properly, you know! Well, I admit that it’s tempting to just buy new ones without washing those!

It’s not like I could just blurt out all the above, so Butler must’ve thought I’m a guy who lives on the same sheets forever. And so, sheets, towels and shirts flutter in the alley in front of my house.

I wonder what kind of negotiation he did with the folks living on the other side of the street? Maybe it’s a tacit agreement? Canum mostly have bad weather days and sunlight is poor, so people probably hang their clothes indoors to dry. At the very least, it’s unusual seeing clothes hanging outside the house.

Ah, but I see clotheslines hanging in between houses in warmer places, so I guess it’s kinda normal?

「 If it’s too bothersome, you can also leave it to a laundry lady. 」
「 Yeah. 」

Laundry lady, as the name implies, is a woman who washes dirty clothes and stuff for a living. In a lot of cases, they are widows or unmarried ladies with children in tow. Some do housecall service, but maybe that’s for the big manors with lots of laundry.

Hmm, maybe it’s a good idea to ask somebody to do a bit of laundry except for my undies.

「 Do you know anyone who isn’t too demanding and troublesome? 」
「 You can settle the demanding ones with a good tip. As for the troublesome ones — Jean-sama is popular, so… 」

Ugh, all I can look forward to are aunties pestering me with marriage proposals, huh! See, I just saw an aunty twice in a stall and she already pushed several candidates to me…!!

「 If it’s alright with you, I can bring yours along with our laundry. 」
「 Oh, please do. 」

Yes, I’ll be freed from doing laundry! Er, the clothes will probably turn stiff after washing with hard water but… yeah, no big deal. The lime that dissolves in the water will stick to the clothes, so I got the feeling that the whites will turn into gray, but that’s fine. No, I don’t think it’ll be fine…. I said I’ll leave it to them, and yet here I am, worried about it.

Okay, let’s just leave it for the meantime and wait and see, yeah, let’s do that.

「 Should we request the neighbors to put up the clothesline? 」
I glanced at the laundry fluttering from between our second and third floors.

「Yes, we do it for the first time. It’s a mutual thing, after all. 」

「 Did they ever hang things up? 」
I don’t remember seeing them. Ah, but I do see towels and other stuff that look like they’re from Ash’s house. Hm, so if you leave it to the laundry lady, you don’t really get to hang it here, huh.

「The house next door is currently unoccupied. They were extremely worried about the monsters’ surplus and the matter of subjugation team, so…」

So they completely moved out!

Yeah, even the house I rented was built because the monsters destroyed the city walls, so yeah, I get it, this place must’ve been a scary place to live in. Rent’s cheap thanks to that, though.

And so, after some twists and turns and my discovery of complications due to not sleeping in this rented house, they finally finished my commission. The expedition team had also departed two days ago, thank goodness.

「 Thanks for the hard work. 」
「 Mm, good work. 」
「 Thank you very much for all the great work. 」

Around 300 porcelain bottles of medicine were all lined up inside the underground cellar. If I catch wind of illness somewhere, I’ll just sell them there.

「Congrats, the bath in your house has also been completed, Ash. 」
「 Thanks. 」

They also built a kiln like the one I have in my house, and it’s also fashioned so that they can enjoy steam baths, too. The structure of the wet area, including the bathroom, is almost the same as mine now. Their house is wider, so they got a more spacious bathroom, so enviable.

「Here, your wages and bonus. It’s a job that makes your shoulders stiff, so enjoy this in your bath. 」
I handed a bag of gold and three porcelain bottles.

「 What’s this? 」
「 Two of them are the medicine we just made, and the one with the tag is lavender scented oil. I just casually made it while experimenting with the still, so it’s not really that great. 」

It’s good that I can make scented oil, but I’m not gonna use it so it’s just extra. Plus, it’s a shame that it’s in the same bottle as the medicine.

「 Isn’t this expensive? 」
「 The cost isn’t, you know? 」
「 It is expensive. 」

Oh, so it’s expensive.

Maybe I can make different stuff and sell it, but I guess the rented house will become too stinky.

「 Lavender oil is effective for burns, and I don’t have any plans to sell it, so just accept it. 」
「 Thanks. 」
Ash looked a bit happy, while Butler quietly bowed his head to me.

Alright, let’s bring a few bottles to the Commerce Guild, and show them that we can also make medicine for macular disease. In the worst case scenario that the disease spreads, they’ll definitely look for me so they could purchase these meds.

…I totally didn’t expect that it would turn out into a huge commotion, with people rushing to the Commerce Guild saying “So there’s medicine for macular disease in the Commerce Guild!?” and the like.

In the end, an old man said to be a disciple of a healer was summoned; he collapsed in tears, claiming “this is definitely the medicine that Master created…!!”, and that also troubled me.

And yeah, I’m not the reincarnation of your master and whatnot, okay. Please have mercy on me.

Folks call this as ‘Kinka grass’, but the method of making medicine out of it seems to have been completely forgotten, I guess. Still, I can’t help but think that perhaps, the nobility’s custom of soaking this grass in wine and drinking it might have begun with the intention of preventing macular disease.