## Chapter 6 – Number 25. Charlotte # 1
Aser woke up and headed straight to the bathroom. She couldn’t let the servants see her with sleep in her eyes or her hair a mess, not when she always had to maintain her dignity.
Besides, there was now a man in the house. Even if he was a slave, she didn’t want to show a disheveled appearance in front of the opposite sex.
After quickly washing her face with cold water in the bathroom, Aser saw the slave in front of her and opened her mouth in surprise.
“Number 25?”
Number 25 was standing in front of her, holding a white towel. With his eyes lowered, he extended the towel to her as politely as possible and said in a trembling voice.
“I, I thought you might need this…!”
She didn’t know how he knew and followed her, but she definitely rushed out more urgently than usual today and didn’t have time to pack a towel separately. Aser hid her flustered expression and barely regained her composure, trying to look as calm as possible.
In a curt voice, she wiped her face with the towel in Number 25’s hand and ordered him to leave.
“Okay, thank you. You can go now.”
Number 25 bowed his head and carefully disappeared from view without making a sound. As Aser watched Number 25’s retreating figure, she noticed someone else in her sight.
Charlotte was hiding behind a pillar, looking this way and smiling.
Only then did she understand the whole situation. Aser squeezed the damp towel tightly and stared at Charlotte.
After Number 25 disappeared, Charlotte approached Aser, who was glaring at her, with a sly smile on her face.
“Your Majesty~ You must maintain your dignity. How can you rush out so urgently in the morning? Is it okay to show Number 25 this side of you already? The majesty of the Demon Lord might fall to the ground, you know?”
Aser sighed deeply towards the floor and said resignedly.
“This is all your doing, isn’t it?”
The only person in this Demon Lord’s castle who could monitor Aser’s every move from morning was Charlotte.
“Are you suspecting me? All I did was go to Number 25 and suggest that he help Your Majesty, you know?”
Aser couldn’t say anything to Charlotte, who responded with a bright, flower-like smile. Maybe Number 25 really brought the towel here for Aser herself, right?
She had a hunch, but no evidence. In the end, Aser went down to the first floor with a slightly uneasy feeling. When she went down to the first floor, Number 25, who had handed her the towel, was already kneeling on the floor, mopping.
Just as she was about to approach him and say hello, another maid rushed over and started scolding Number 25, pointing her finger at him.
“How can you mop like that! It’ll only make it dirtier! Didn’t I tell you the method earlier?”
At that moment, something welled up in Aser’s chest. Seeing someone other than herself scolding Number 25 made one side of her chest ache as if pricked by a needle. Aser immediately approached the maid and asked in an overbearing tone.
“What are you doing right now?”
The maid, who had been grilling Number 25, immediately took a half-step away from Number 25 and bowed her head when she saw Aser.
It wasn’t the usual warm morning greeting. The maid could feel that she had done something wrong without even knowing it.
Aser sighed deeply, gestured for the maid to leave, and began to speak.
“I didn’t bring a slave here just to have him clean. Leave.”
The maid bowed her head with a trembling body and returned to her original cleaning area, and Number 25 clenched the rag he was using to wipe the floor so tightly with both hands that it crumpled, and held it to his chest.
Number 25 naturally thought he had made a mistake. Was the Demon Lord angry because he cleaned strangely? That worry coiled in his chest again.
In the end, a tearful apology came out of his mouth reflexively.
“I’m sorry… It’s my first time doing this… I wanted to help Your Majesty in any way I could, so I asked her for help…”
Number 25 was frowning as if he was about to cry. The moisture in his voice represented his feelings.
Guys always start crying when something happens, and Number 25 was no exception.
Aser pressed her temples and then grabbed Number 25’s fragile wrist, which looked like it would break at any moment, and pulled him up.
Number 25, who was suddenly lifted from his seat by Aser’s hand, stared blankly at her.
Aser bent her knees slightly and gently brushed the dust off Number 25’s clothes with her own hands, and said softly.
“There’s no need to cry. You did it for me, right? It’s commendable that a slave who has lived locked in a cage his whole life is trying to do something on his own. There are trash all over the world outside this castle who can’t even do that.”
Those words resonated greatly with Number 25. He felt that his efforts were being recognized. He was just trying to do anything to keep himself alive, but it seemed that Aser saw it in a good light.
And that was actually one of the things that made Aser have a better perception of Number 25.
Frankly speaking, there was a lot of trash in District 7.
Trash that only knew their own interests. Villains who had long forgotten how to sacrifice for others.
Aser, who grew up watching those guys and eventually rose to become the king of District 7 after her father, was feeling disillusioned with the residents of District 7.
Why do I have to live for these guys? That thought occasionally tormented Aser.
But a slave who had never even seen the light was trying to live somehow. He had already learned how to sacrifice himself for others. Such an altruistic appearance was naturally bound to look beautiful to Aser.
Aser put a pleasant smile on her lips and took Number 25’s hand.
“Let’s eat first. I’ll tell you what to do after that.”
“Yes!”
Number 25 answered brightly for the first time since coming to the Demon Lord’s castle.
When he thought of the walk he had started yesterday while being led by a leash, his face still burned, but Aser had a bright light that made him forget the shame of that walk.
If he was with this person, he could proudly stand before his dead family. That’s how he was feeling.
When they arrived at the dining room, Aser naturally sat down at the table in the center. Number 25’s seat was unknowingly designated next to Aser’s.
Number 25’s mouth automatically watered at the meal placed before him. He had seen it yesterday, but it was food that he couldn’t take his eyes off of.
The meals he used to eat in the cage, where he couldn’t even stretch his body properly, were always garbage like porridge that had been ground into something.
At that time, he didn’t even know that it was food waste, but he ate it deliciously, but after coming here, he realized that it was garbage.
When Aser said that he could eat, Number 25 awkwardly grabbed the tableware in front of him.
When Number 25 kept dropping the fork from his hand with clumsy movements, Aser spoke to him again.
“That’s not how you do it. Here, hold your hand like this.”
Aser directly grabbed Number 25’s hand and taught him how to use a fork and knife.
At first, it was an unfamiliar sensation, but with a few pointers he received during that one breakfast, Number 25 gradually became more skilled, and in the end, he reached the point where he could finish a meal properly on his own.
‘He’s fast.’
Aser thought.
She wasn’t good at teaching others. Charlotte had always told Aser that the Demon Lord instinctively moved her body and didn’t think much, so she was unskilled at teaching someone.
But after she taught him how to hold a fork and knife a few times, Number 25 began to use them skillfully, as if he had been using them his whole life.
Could this intelligence also be due to the influence of the dragon? she wondered.
What kind of monster would be born if she injected the knowledge in the Demon Lord’s castle into this servant? Could he have the power to reach District 1, beyond District 7?
With that expectation, Aser quietly finished breakfast.
Aser wiped her mouth with a dignified appearance and said to Number 25.
“When you’re done eating, follow Charlotte who’s waiting outside. She’ll tell you what to do. Oh, Charlotte is the maid you met when you first came here, so don’t get confused this time.”
The maid he met when he first came here was a slightly friendly-looking maid with white hair. When he thought of her, Number 25’s face turned red as he remembered what had happened in the bathtub.
Would she do that again?
With that feeling in mind, Number 25 bowed his head and went outside.
