It was hard to keep her concentration after staying for more than thirty hours, but Aloe had a trick up her sleep: drugs.

Lazily, she poured ter’nar leaves on her recently heated teapot, courtesy of the palace maids. Whilst the leaves weren’t a stimulating substance, they managed to keep her focused. There were many papers she needed to go through, and the more time she took, the harder the responsibilities would later fall on her shoulders. She couldn’t allow herself to even think about the previous events of her day.

Two knocks on the door interrupted her work. “Excuse me. Are you there, venerable Scribe?”

“It’s open. You can enter, Lulu.” Aloe responded tiredly.

She had recognized the voice; it was the maid that had made her makeup. During that time, she managed to ask all the present maids their names, though only Lulu’s stuck in her mind. She was also the youngest of them all, barely over Aloe’s age.

At her prompt, Lulu opened the door. She carried a silver tray on her other arm.

“Venerable Scribe!” She raised her voice horrified – not shouted, because that would have been unbefitting and irreverent. “You should rest! Your expression is that of a living dead!”

“I’m doing fine, Lulu,” Aloe added with a deprecative smile. “It’s not the first time I have pulled an all-nighter. Anyways,” she put her feather aside, “what are you carrying there?”

The maid clearly wanted to protest, but she held her commentaries. “Scribe Tamara didn’t see you on the feast hall, so she was worried you didn’t eat. This is the meal she commanded me to bring to you.” She left the tray on a corner of the desk.

Lulu was rather fair-skinned by Ydazi standards, though her skin was more like a coffee someone had spoiled with too much milk rather than the white of Loyatans. She was way taller than Aloe, and that was especially accentuated by her maid outfit. Ydazi maid outfits were... revealing. All of them were a one-piece white dress with a skirt too short to be sensible and uncovered shoulders.

As revealing attires went however, Sadina’s maid outfits were more on the conservative side of things. What made the attire actually indecent was the leather belt that highlighted Lulu’s waist and then a very outlined chest zone. As someone who preferred loose clothing, Aloe would certainly not feel comfortable in such attires.

“I see,” Aloe said with a hazy gaze, her eyes falling on the maid’s undressed knees. “Leave it on the desk, I’ll eat at some point.”

“You should rest, venerable Scribe.” Lulu reiterated.

“You can call me Aloe, Lulu. There’s no problem, we are both commoners.” She returned to her papers, though she didn’t fully believe the last statement. Aloe had never considered herself an actual commoner, for better or worse.

“You are trying to change the subject,” Lulu added less formally.

Aloe groaned. “I am the first that would like to sleep, but I can’t. Someone has to do all these papers, and that someone is me.”

“How about if you take a nap? There are no audiences this afternoon, so you could take a little rest.”

“I...” Aloe’s eyelids weighed down on her. “Let me have something to eat first.”

“But of course, venerable Scribe.” Lulu lightly giggled, but Aloe responded with a scowl not that dissimilar from what Rani-al-Sadina had directed to her once. “Aloe.” Then both shared the same smile.

The tray contained chicken breasts oozing with sauces so colorful and elaborate that looked like poisons. Only now that Aloe paid attention to the food, she could smell the glorious smell. Intoxicating. Her stomach grumbled in agreement.

After eating her self-cooked trash, the simple tray looked like a never-ending feast of kings.

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“Is that...?” Aloe pointed at the silver goblet, the words dying in her mouth.

“Is wine not to your taste?”

“It’s not that, I’m a...” An adult. She realized.

There were no rules against underage drinking in Ydaz, only regulations on how strong alcohol taverns could offer to underage customers. It was only her father who had prohibited her from drinking even the lightest wines as a child, and she had respected his decision. The argument that alcohol rotted the mind was solid enough, and Aloe had her mind in high regard, so she preferred it if it didn’t rot. An image like that stuck deep in a child’s mind.

But she was now of age.

She took a shy sip. Hm... Her visage contorted in a grimace. “I guess it’s an acquired taste.”

“I can bring something else if you’d like to.” Lulu offered with a bit of nervousness.

Aloe raised a hand to stop her. “Do not fret, I have my own tea here.”

She calmly ate the chicken as Lulu watched her. Aloe couldn’t understand how the maid had such a pleased expression when she was standing up whilst someone else was eating. As she ate, Aloe kept giving some sips of the wine, trying to understand how so many people liked it but utterly failed to comprehend it. The first caress was alright, but the aftertaste was foul; that was without mentioning how her throat burned from the alcohol.

Her cheeks reddened slightly.

After she finished with the chicken, not a pinch of meat left on the tray, Lulu offered her a towel and basin to wash herself.

“Thanks.” Aloe appreciated the gesture, her voice weaker than before. Lulu simply responded with a nod. “Alright, I’m going to take that nap, but only two hours, have you heard me? Two hours.”

“Understood, Aloe.” The maid acknowledged with a roguish smile.

“I am being serious here. Two hours.” She added with a scowl.

“Two hours.” Lulu nodded, though Aloe still wasn’t convinced. “Let me guide you to your resting chambers then.”

Lulu guided her to a contiguous room. It wasn’t overly decorated like most other instances of the palace, only a colossal wardrobe built like a tower, a padded bench longer than a sofa, and a full body mirror composed the room besides the bed. But what bed it was. The bed alone was bigger than her bedroom back at the oasis, and the sheer volume of cushions on top made her want to jump on it already.

“Oh heavens...” She let out an ovation of surprise. “I wish I could live here.”

“You can do so.” The maid responded behind her as a matter of fact.

“Wait, what?” Her surprise shifted from one meaning of the word to another.

“You are the scribe of commoners, Aloe,” Lulu explained. “The palace does not only offer you an office, but a bath, and a bedchamber. You are free to use them as you please.”

“B-but my mother didn’t do so?”

“Was the previous scribe of commoners your mother?” Lulu herself seemed surprised now. Aloe responded with a nod. “My condolences then, Shahrazad was everything a scribe should be and more. She made Sadina a better place.”

“I...” Aloe was going to say that she didn’t need her condolences but shut her mouth as she saw Lulu’s visage.

The maid truly thought what she had said. She was grateful for her mother’s contribution to the city, she wasn’t just trying to be polite. Aloe knew that her mother’s job was important, but this, this... gratefulness was an aspect of her and her job she hadn’t seen.

“Thank you, Lulu.” Aloe’s words also rung true. “So this was my mother’s bedchamber?”

“Indeed, though she rarely used them, if she even did.”

“Do you know why?”

Lulu shook her head in negation. “I do not, but if I were to guess, it was because she had people waiting for her at home.”

The maid’s honest smile hurt alone more than any knife could. The mixture of sadness and happiness inside of Aloe was tearing her apart. And tearing her up.

“Two hours,” Aloe repeated seriously, mostly because otherwise she may frankly cry.

“I’ll measure the time up to the second.” Lulu bowed dutifully. “Oh, and before I forget. You have various sets of attires in the wardrobe. I selected them personally so they should fit you and suit you perfectly!” Her eyes shone in childish giddiness.

“I see.” A yawn escaped Aloe’s mouth, the call for rest growing stronger. “I’ll remember to change my clothing then. Can I get a bath prepared in two hours?”

“The bath is always ready in the palace, Aloe.” Aloe partially hated how Lulu used her name as an honorific title, but she was too tired to make a fuss out of it. “Now if you excuse me, I’ll take my leave.” The maid made her way out of the room, leaving Aloe in a bedchamber bigger than her grandfather’s old house.

Aloe laid her back on the bed with a muffled thud, her body weighing her down. The softness of the fabric and the mattress absorbed her in a madding manner. None of the beds she had slept on could compare to this one, it was like a cloud.

“No...” She whispered, her consciousness faltering. “I need to deactivate the infusion...”

It took her a lot of concentration that she didn’t have to focus on her vitality flow. Thankfully, it was always easier to switch any internal infusion back to her default state. It was as simple as latching a door.

“Oooh~” As soon as ‘toughness’ left her body, all the stress on her muscles was liberated. Her bones and skin felt massively more fragile than before, but they also didn’t weigh on her any longer.

It was as if her body weighed...

Blackness consumed her before she could finish that thought.