Emily’s worries eventually became reality.
Up until the third day, I had slept well enough and managed to make time for meals and baths, but from the fourth day onward, I began to feel just how short on time I was.
The clothes showed no sign of being finished, the designs were still piled up like a mountain, and half the time had already passed.
Realizing that, at this rate, I would fail to properly complete either one, I finally pulled out the forbidden secret art that would make Emily foam at the mouth.
The dark art of cutting my sleep down to two hours a day and gaining six extra hours.
After forcing time into existence like that and grinding through for three days, when the seventh day arrived—the day before I was to show Mother the completed results—
“Heheh... heheheheh...”
“Young Master...”
I had managed to obtain the finished clothes and a design with exactly one sheet left before completion, but in exchange, I had lost my mind.
“Oo-oo, madi-dya...”
As I spread out a new sheet of paper about the size of a full sheet of drawing paper and tried to say, “Finally, the last one,” what spilled from between my lips was the babbling of a newborn baby.
It was a state that could fairly be described as completely gone, but amazingly, this was actually an improvement after getting a snatch of sleep.
My mind itself was clear, and I could at least make sounds with my voice.
Before that brief sleep of only thirty minutes, I hadn’t even been able to speak, let alone think clearly; I had just been staring blankly down at the paper.
But that was strictly by my standards.
Emily, who had been anxiously watching me slowly fall apart from beside me, twisted her face into a grimace at my babbling, unable to hide her horror.
“Young Master, what in the world was that dreadful sound?”
“Uwaeung...”
I tried speaking again to Emily, who had covered her mouth with both hands and retreated about two steps.
I meant to say “sorry,” but there was no way the meaning could be conveyed through nothing more than the sound of air leaking between my lips, so Emily’s face only turned pale.
“Are... are you all right? Would you like to sleep a little more? No, I think you really should sleep. Please, I’d like you to sleep.”
Emily carefully approached and placed a hand on my shoulder.
“......”
It was true that I was not all right and that I wanted to sleep more, but I shook my head limply and poked at the paper with my pencil.
Because once I finished drawing this one, it would really be the end. I could finish everything and fall into a deep sleep, so it felt wasteful to split it up awkwardly now.
“You’ll sleep after you finish just that?”
“Dyu...”
I started to answer reflexively, then closed my mouth and nodded vigorously.
“Please don’t overdo it too much. Madam will understand at least that much.”
“......”
I shook my head again.
I had come this far, so I had to put the final period on it properly.
I wrote a few small words in the corner of a scrap sheet, tapped it, and signaled for Emily to read it.
[A cup of tea.]
“Ah, yes. I’ll prepare it right away.”
_
I drank the tea I had asked Emily for, sent Emily away around sunset, finished everything at about ten o’clock, and lay down on my bed.
Then I closed my eyes for just a moment.
“Young Master.”
“?”
A soft voice reached my ears.
A gentle palm quietly came to rest on my forehead.
I was sure I had sent Emily away.
Why had she come back?
Had I asked her for something and forgotten?
If I couldn’t remember it, then it probably wasn’t that important.
I shook my head limply and let my consciousness sink back down into the depths.
“Mmm...”
It felt as though my body was melting.
If I slept soundly like this and woke up...
“It’s morning, Young Master. You need to get up.”
“Uhh...?”
At the words that followed, my mind, which had been about to grow hazy again, snapped awake.
It was already morning?
For Emily to come wake me, it had to be at least seven in the morning, so did that mean I had slept for nine hours?
I had slept so deeply that I hadn’t even realized I had been asleep.
But my body felt as heavy as if it were being pressed down by a block of iron, and it showed no intention of moving.
There was no way I could get up.
Feeling that it was impossible through my own strength, I forced my stiff, unmoving lips to part.
“Just ten more minutes...”
What slipped from between my lips, barely parted like a thread, was a dried-up voice on the verge of death.
Even to my own ears, it sounded pitiful.
At this rate, Emily would give up too and—
“No more. That’s already the third time you’ve said that.”
She did not.
Emily firmly rejected my desperate plea, withdrew her hand from my forehead, grabbed the blanket, and pulled it straight down.
As the blanket that had been snugly wrapped around my body disappeared, the cool air pricked at my skin.
“Huuung...”
This was punishment for some wrongdoing of mine that I did not know about. I let out a miserable groan, turned onto my side, and curled up.
“Time’s up. Hurry and get up. You’ve been waiting for today too, haven’t you, Young Master?”
But Emily seemed to have no intention of backing down at all, and she shook my shoulder in a firm voice.
“Ugh, ek, ugek, guek...”
As my head rocked this way and that, bizarre screams leaked out.
If I kept resisting like this, I wouldn’t get any sleep anyway, and Emily would only be exhausted in her own way too.
“Haaahm... All right...”
I declared my surrender with a huge yawn.
Then I forced my body, which refused to gather any strength, upright.
My arms trembled like those of a newborn calf, and my head kept drooping downward, but after somehow succeeding in sitting up, I opened the eyelids that had been firmly shut until now.
“......?”
Strange.
I could feel the muscles around my eyelids moving, but everything before my eyes was still pitch-black.
It was clearly morning, so why was it so dark?
I turned my head this way and that, hurriedly searching for Emily.
“Emily, what do I do? I can’t see... I think I caught some kind of disease.”
“Young Master... you have to open your eyes.”
“But my eyes are open?”
“Right now, your eyes are swollen like a goldfish’s lips.”
“Huh?”
What was that supposed to mean?
I raised my trembling hand and brought it to the area around my eyes.
My eyelids were swollen and puffy, and my dried tears had stuck them tightly together.
I strained my eyes and tried to open them, but my eyelids only twitched faintly, showing no intention of moving.
“Emily, my eyes won’t open... What do I do?”
“Haa—”
Emily’s sigh, the sound of water sloshing, and then the sound of droplets falling in a trickle.
Then it grew quiet for a moment before something cold and damp pressed against my eyes.
“Ah, cold!”
My shoulders flinched in surprise. When I tried to pull my head away from the unknown object, Emily’s hand immediately came up onto my shoulder and held me firmly in place so I couldn’t move.
“It’s a handkerchief, so please bear with it for just a little. Maybe because you haven’t been sleeping properly, your eyes are terribly swollen.”
“Mm...”
The damp cloth moved along my eyelashes.
As the cold and moisture soothed my swollen eyelids, the discomfort I had felt there seemed to subside a little.
“How is it? Do you feel a bit better?”
“Mm.”
The swelling still got in the way of opening my eyes, but now that the dry, stiff skin had been moistened, I could at least open them into narrow slits.
The problem was that they were very narrow slits.
Emily, holding the handkerchief and sitting on the edge of the bed, came into blurry view.
Was this how the friend who cooked well in that manga about catching monsters saw the world?
If I didn’t calm this swelling down quickly, things were going to get serious.
“Emily.”
“Yes, Young Master.”
“Do we have ice?”
“I’ll bring some right away.”
“Thanks.”
_
For two hours, using the ice Emily had obtained from the kitchen, I calmed the swelling down, even skipping breakfast to do it.
“I thought I’d never be able to open my eyes again for the rest of my life.”
“You’re exaggerating far too much.”
“Exaggerating? I was really scared, thinking I’d caught some disease.”
I had finally managed to soothe my eyelids, which had looked like goldfish lips, and open my eyes like a human being again.
A clear landscape instead of a blurry one, and a wide-open one-hundred-eighty-degree field of vision.
Together with my head, which had become clear for the first time in a while, the visual refreshment was no joke.
“What time is it now?”
“It’s nine twenty.”
Mother had said we would have teatime at ten, so...
“There isn’t much time left.”
“Yes, you need to get ready quickly. Madam said, ‘If you do not come by ten, I will simply leave.’”
“Mother is in the garden, right?”
“Yes, she said she would have a cup of tea there.”
“We’ll have to hurry.”
It wasn’t as though I was short on time, but it wasn’t overflowing either.
If I arrived exactly at ten just because she said ten, Mother would subtly pressure me, so I needed to think of arriving about ten minutes early.
I took off the outer garment I had been too exhausted to remove and looked for the clothes I had made yesterday.
“Emily, where are the clothes?”
“I put them in the basket in advance.”
“You did? I don’t need help changing, so could you roll up the designs I organized on the desk and put them in the basket too?”
“Yes. Six sheets in total, correct?”
“Mm. Please.”
_
Mother’s evaluation, after elegantly sipping her tea and examining the results, was—
“Well done. You pass.”
“!”
It was a concise statement without a single unnecessary word.
All throughout her checking of the designs, Mother’s expression had been stiff, so I had been thinking of ways to persuade her. I was startled when I passed at once without any harsh criticism.
As I opened and closed my lips, unable to think of anything to say, Mother set her teacup down on the table, met my eyes, and began to explain.
“I wanted to see your resolve and your eye for detail through this opportunity. How sincere you are about clothing, and how well you grasp the requests of your client.”
“Yes.”
“And you, William, followed my requirements very well. I am satisfied that you completed the designs within the period. I like that, instead of something flashy and strange, you slightly modified the sort of tailcoat that knights commonly wear. The color combination and design also suit the uniform Emily is wearing now.”
Mother took the tailcoat from the basket and unfolded it.
“I was also surprised that you brought me such a convincing result in just a week, even if it is only basted for now. Among the family’s tailors, perhaps only Sir Daniel could do such a thing. And you altered the maid uniform well too. Is there anything I missed among what I have said so far?”
“No. You’re so accurate it’s as if you looked inside my heart.”
“Hoho, what an exaggeration.”
Mother put the tailcoat back into the basket, picked up her teacup, and smiled gently.
“Let us go see him tomorrow. You have worked hard all this time, so it would be better for both of you to rest today.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Now both of you, go see to your own matters.”
“Yes.”
Mother nudged the basket toward me and dismissed us.
After bowing our heads to Mother in farewell, Emily and I took the basket and left the garden.