“Speaking of Ms. Claire, is she alright? She drank quite a lot of wine yesterday…”
“Ah, she will be fine. While she is quick to get drunk, she always acts like nothing happened the next day.”
“She doesn’t get hangovers?”
“Not that I have seen. However…she does remember everything she did while drunk. But she is a deep sleeper, and will usually sleep for most of the next day. And then when she wakes up…”
“She thinks about what she does and regrets…?”
“Yes. And so she will try not to drink so much next time… But I suppose yesterday was special. The wine was so delicious and easy to drink. And it was the first time she had it, so she ended up drinking a little too much.”
So Ms. Claire didn’t get hangovers, and also remembered everything. Much to her own dismay.
Perhaps getting a hangover and forgetting was the better between the two.
Well, sometimes it could be very bad, with the headaches and feeling sick.
As for me, I tended to get hangovers even if I didn’t drink all that much, so I related to Ms. Anne…
Well, I had often been forced to drink with coworkers. And then the next day I would have to work from early in the morning.
…So perhaps it was a good thing that I no longer felt drunk or got hangovers in this world.
Though, it did feel good to get a little drunk, so that was a minus.
“…I see. Do you think she’ll be alright? I wanted to have another taste test tomorrow…”
I had told Milina about it in the morning. Tomorrow, we would taste the wine that Ms. Helena made, that contained the medicine.
If Ms. Claire was wallowing in regret, maybe she wouldn’t want to drink it?
“Hmm, that’s true. There is still more that is being made. Sebastian told me about it. However…Claire might not drink it this time… It depends on just how much she regrets yesterday… Especially since you saw her.”
“Me? What about you and Ms. Anne?”
“I don’t know about Anneliese, but I’ve seen her like that many times. So it should be fine. However, she prides herself as being a lady, so when it comes to being seen by people who are not family or servants…”
“Ah… I see. Well, if she does not want to drink it, then perhaps we could prepare some juice for her instead.”
“Yes, that might be good.”
Ms. Claire was hard on herself…and quite hard on her younger sister as well…
So she might be regretting that she had allowed herself to be seen in such a way.
And if she avoided drinking…that would be too bad, as I had wanted her to drink it.
But we would just have to give her something else.
“Now, what will we do next?”
“Indeed… As Leo is with us, we cannot go inside any of the stores… And there is no one who can watch Leo for us.”
Leo was much too big to go inside any buildings.
It would be fine if there was a place that was as large as the mansion, but there weren’t any here.
And I didn’t want to ask Mr. Ekenhart to wait outside and watch her.
Next time, I would have to consider bringing someone else with me, so that I could go into the stores.
“Well, we do not need to enter any shops then. We can just go around and see the town.”
After leaving the cafe, we decided to walk around and see the town.
We had eaten enough at the stalls for lunch. Maybe a little too much even. So we didn’t need to worry about that.
But I thought it would be a good idea to get an idea of where everything was in the town while we were here.
“By the way, Mr. Ekenhart.”
“Hmm. What is it?”
“What is on the northern side of this town?”
“Ah, the north…”
I asked Mr. Ekenhart about this just as we reached the east side.
On the west side was Mr. Kalis’s store, as well as the gate we always went through.
As for the east side, that’s where the malicious store used to be, as well as the gate I went through when going to Range village.
Also, the orphanage was slightly south of the east gate.
But I had yet to venture towards the north side of this town.
In this town, there was a large street that went through the center, and it connected the east and west gates.
Most people traveled through this town when traveling in those directions.
And from there, they branched off to the south and north… But what was there to the north?
But when I asked Mr. Ekenhart about it, his expression became serious.
Was there a problem?
“It is not something I like to say out loud… But do you know about slums, Mr. Takumi?”
“Slums… A place where the poor classes live, and there is a high crime rate?”
“Something of that sort. Well, we do what we can to deal with crime. So it is not actually very high. It’s just a little less safe than other places.”
Slums, huh… I had heard stories. There were definitely places like that outside of Japan.
Though, I heard that there were places that were similar enough in Japan as well. Some places could be quite dangerous.
But it was not something that I knew a lot about, and so it was hard to imagine it.
“And this slum is on the north side?”
“Yes… We are trying to reduce such places on these lands. There are none around the towns near our main house. But here…far away, where there are so many people… It is much more difficult.”
“I see…”
As it was far away from where he lived, he could not act quickly, and things had not progressed enough.
Unlike Japan, you could not travel quickly over long distances in this world.
Besides, since there was so much traffic in and out of the town, it was hard to keep track of who was in it… If so much happened out of sigh, then it was harder to do something about it.
And perhaps this work was a little too dangerous for someone like Ms. Claire.