"Do you really have to drag me with you?" Tibaut said, sounding somewhat irritated.

With a smile on her face as always, Grace didn't care how he felt and happily pushed him along.

"Oh, shush, if the other maids saw me walking without you, I'd probably be forced to work."

"Didn't you choose this job?"

"Yeah, but I thought all I had to do was sit around and look pretty. I didn't know he hired us to do real work."

"Hey…" Tibaut thought of defending Albus for a second. He thought of it.

Grace stopped pushing him.

"Oi, oi, at least say something nice about the lord, you two seemed so friendly."

Tibaut stood in a thinker pose and the air around him became dense. His eyes became focused though not on anything around.

"Oi, come on, you don't have to think that hard?"

Tibaut's teeth were now gritted and the veins all over his forehead were bulged. To say the air around him was stifling would be an understatement. He was dedicating all his brainpower to say something nice about Albus. Grace swore she could hear the gears in his head running at full throttle.

"At least he doubled our pay for me wearing that stupid uniform?"

"Don't sound so unsure!"

Tibaut initially thought they stopped because he was bad-mouthing but from the semi-regular traffic into the building in front of him, he guessed this was their first destination.

It was a short building with only doors and no windows.

"Miss Tour Guide I don't remember seeing this place on the brochure*." Tibaut as he pretended to analyze the building.

"Ohoho, have no worries, sir, this place is way better than anything on that piece of toilet paper."

*there was no brochure.

Grace held his hand and walked inside.

The smell immediately hit him and he knew right away what this place was. It was the smell he had been hit with a few days earlier in town. Few bottles lined shelves on this floor and the stairs leading down went quite deep into the ground. The place was lit with oil lamps (though he wasn't sure if these were hazards, considering what the place contained.)

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His face was immediately filled with disappointment.

"Oh, is this just a wine cellar?" Tibaut commented already disinterested.

"Just a wine cellar?" She commented in mock offense. "This place is where our worries melt, it gives us the energy to keep working when our master gives us our hardest tasks, second to the pay it's probably why most of us stayed. This is no mere cellar but a cathedral of happiness the lord so graciously granted us."

The maids in there nodded their heads and took a swig of whatever they had in their mugs or glasses.

"Oh, that so." Tibaut said, eyeing the exit.

She waved her hand at him. "Come on, let's get some drinks in, I'm not gonna leave you out of this."

"No."

"Come on you don't have to be this serious, if the lord allows us to get some drinks then you should be fine." She said.

She held his hand and walked down to the cellar.

"No that's not it."

"Then why don't you want any?"

"Cause I don't drink?"

Grace looked at him in shock. She looked him dead in the eyes.

"Really?"

"Really."

There was deception or a hint of trickery in his eyes. He was serious.

"What, you're like past 12. How haven't you had a drink yet?"

Tibaut stared at her with eyes devoid of life and said these next two words

"Drop it."

The whole room felt the mood shift and slowly poured out of the Safe Haven of All Maids.

"(Ugh, I don't know why but that question felt like it kinda killed the mood. Why is he so touchy about this?) Ah, that sucks, I had so much wine stored up that I wanted someone else to drink. Oh, well guess I'll just have to drink for two people."

"What do you mean stored up?" Tibaut asked, seeming normal as ever.

"(I wish I could switch moods that fast.) Hehe, you see the lord gives us a quota of wine we can drink on," she pulled something out of the chest of her uniform "these sheets of paper right here, every week." she pulled out what seemed to be ten of those sheets.

"You've been working here for ten weeks and you avoid your job so much?"

"Shut up and I've been here for much longer since I already used some of them up. So do you still want to sit this one out?"

Tibaut was no longer paying attention to her and was admiring the illustration on a bottle that had been emptied.

"tch, be that way then, I'm going to having the time of m-"

A maid walked over to her and tapped her shoulder.

"Grace?"

"Hmm, what is it?"

"You do know how those things work right?"

"Yeah, you give them in and you get wine, what about them?"

"Well the thing is, they're only good for one week."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Grace?"

A gloom unlike the silent resolve Tibaut had exerted on the room earlier, had completely overtaken the room. It was especially effective since most of them could imagine the pain she was going through and couldn't help but think "man, that sucks." The atmosphere had become so bad that the drinks of those inside somehow became unpleasantly sour and caused the whole room to clear within a matter of seconds.

Tibaut, not really a man who was ever known to wet his gills, was oblivious to this atmosphere and was really enjoying the picture of what looked like a tsunami ( or was it an explosion?) on the bottle.

She dropped all the papers except one and grabbed Tibaut's arm.

"Hey I'm still looking a-"

"You're right Tibaut, maybe alcohol is overrated."

With a broken spirit and tears forming in her eyes, Grace left the cellar feeling the most defeated she ever had in her life.

("I never said that I just said I don't drink.")