The Female Knight of Doom - TFKOD 07: Tavern Waitress

That night, the landlady brought Alice to her new home.

The place was more cramped than the one she had shared with her mother before. Apart from a narrow bed, the only other furniture was a stove for cooking and heating. There was also an old urinal bucket next to the stove. Living in a prison probably wouldn’t be any worse. Still, it was a shelter, and much warmer and safer than sleeping on the street.

Alice kicked the bucket into the corner farthest from the bed, hoping it wouldn’t stench too bad.

Now, she finally had a permanent place to live and a means to make a living.

Things seemed to be settling down, but they never went as smoothly as she thought they would.

Although the laundry shop owner’s wife allowed her to stay, she only gave her small items of clothing to wash. Smaller clothes cost a third of the price of larger ones, but they weren’t much more economical to wash.

Alice wasn’t as skilled as her mother. Even if she worked nonstop, she would only earn half of what her mother earned each week.

She did get some tips when she accompanied the laundry shop owner’s wife to the temple kitchen to collect the laundry each week, but she never spotted Lord Etienne there, and the temple apprentices weren’t generous with their tips.

How had her mother earned enough money for both of them to spend when she was a laundress? Alice found it all simply unbelievable.

She knew she didn’t have plenty of money, so she tried to eat as little as possible. However, a twelve-year-old girl’s appetite is insatiable. Sometimes, she did her laundry late and went straight to bed starving. Her dreams were filled with the saccharine aroma of cake.

The next morning, she was so starving and bleary-eyed that she had to eat a big breakfast.

Despite her knowledge of arithmetic, she struggled to calculate her income and the little money her mother had left behind before she succumbed.

She also realized that no matter how frugal she tried to be, the savings would run out in a month or two.

Although the God of the Future had assured her that she would meet the legendary mercenary, Immortal Rom, in the near future, she was still anxious that she might starve to death before then. If that happened, there would be no point.

Alice herself was trying to figure it out.

Whenever she accompanied the laundry shop owner’s wife after delivering clothes, she found an excuse to leave and roamed the streets. She went into every shop she came across and asked if they were hiring.

Most establishments decline to accept children like her who didn’t have someone to introduce them, but the people there were considerate and didn’t treat her brazenly. Some people who knew about her and her mother’s situation, however, viewed her as if she were a calamity.

Often, as soon as she entered a shop, she was blasted out, “Get out of here! We don’t need godless brats here!”

After more than a month, Alice had visited almost every shop in the neighborhood and had been rejected by all of them.

Except for that tavern.

Alice had deliberately saved it for last, and, to be honest, she was a little afraid of the place.

Her mother had often warned her to stay away from it when she was alive. She knew why her mother was so concerned. There were always drunken guys around, and it was precarious.

Although most of those men were honest craftsmen, when they got intoxicated, they became audacious and sometimes did things they shouldn’t have. The tavern often attracted mercenaries and unsavory characters from far away.

If they abducted and sold her to the Red Light District, she really wouldn’t have any place to cry.

There was nothing else Alice could do. If she did not make up her mind soon, she would be unable to survive.

She knew there must be a shortage of people at the tavern because a help wanted sign was always posted on the door. But it took so much spirit to push open that door. She passed by the tavern’s door several times and wandered back and forth a few times before finally making up her mind to push open the oily, shuttered door.

She inquired with as much determination as if she were bound to die, “Do you need a handyman here?”

Alice thought she had shouted, but her voice was as soft as a feather falling to the ground. Luckily, the tavern was not open at that time. The inside was silent, and she was certainly heard outside.

A tall, lean bartender stood behind the bar. He was wiping a glass with a rag when he heard a voice.

He glanced at the speaker with a blank face, “Job seekers go through the side door.”

The bartender was frigid, and it didn’t seem like there was much of a shortage of people here, judging by his appearance.

Alice slurred as she turned her head to find the side door of the tavern.

It was in a narrow, dirty alley. She walked over and knocked on it.

A bartender opened the door from the inside. He had a ratty old dress coat over his uniform and looked more somber, as if a change of clothes were a change of identity.

“I’m the owner of this shop,” he said. “You need to pass an interview if you want to work here.”

Alice had never gotten an interview at any of the other shops she had inquired, so she nodded nervously.

The shop owner let her in, pulled out a chair at the kitchen counter, and invited her to sit down.

Then he began asking questions, “Name?”

“Alice.”

“How old are you?”

“I just turned twelve.”

The shop owner bristled, “You do understand that only people over the age of seventeen are normally allowed in and out of the tavern. Don’t you?”

Alice knew this, of course, but she was extremely desperate for work to reflect about it.

“There shouldn’t be any restrictions if you only work in the kitchen, right?”

“The problem is, we don’t have a shortage of laborers—we have more than enough. We need young girls who can work as waitresses.”

“Waitress? Shouldn’t you be seventeen?” Her eyes widened.

“You’re quite tall, so you can pretend to be seventeen,” he explained.

He looked at her expression and added, “If you don’t want to, forget it.”

Although Alice had mentally prepared herself before stepping into the tavern, she still felt her heart sink when the shop owner asked her to be a waitress.

Mainly speaking, this was not a glamorous profession. According to the saying, being a tavern waitress was the first step down a slippery slope.

Her mother didn’t work as a tavern waitress, not even during the toughest days; she chose to be a laundress instead. Had she known her daughter was going to be a tavern waitress, she might have slapped Alice.

But with her mother gone and her urgent need for money, nothing could stop her from sliding down toward the abyss.

She gnawed her lip hard and nodded, “I do.”

Soon after, she heard the kitchen door slam, followed by a woman’s voice behind her, “Hewlett, don’t scare the child.”

Alice looked back and saw a plump, beautiful woman saunter in. Her long hair flowed with fluffy curls. She wore intense crimson lipstick, and her uniform hugged her curves so closely that her breasts looked ready to burst.

The shop owner’s eyes, called Hewlett, took on a gentle look—an expression Alice had never seen him wear since she arrived.

She looked curiously at the beautiful woman who had just come in.

The woman came over, put her hands on the counter, and studied Alice while speaking to Hewlett, “A newcomer? Wouldn’t she be a bit too young?”

Hewlett nodded, “We’re truly short-staffed right now, so even if they’re kids, we have to take them. But what should we do? Rosalyn’s uniform is too big for her, and we can’t make another one.”

“She can wear the old uniform I had when I first came here. I still have it in good condition.” She stated, flicking her chin at Alice, “What’s your name, child?”

“Alice.”

“I’m Lina, the foreman here. Henceforth, you’re under my control. If anyone asks your age, say seventeen. Is that clear?”

Alice nodded hurriedly as Lina found a uniform and shoved it into her arms, “Take this, go to that corner, and change into it. If it’s too big, use a pin to adjust it.”

She held the uniform and walked to the corner Lina pointed out, where a half-curtain served as an improvised dressing room. She hurriedly changed, pinned her somewhat empty-looking chest, and stepped out.

Lina looked at her with content, “You can sit and rest here for a while. We’ll be opening soon.”

Alice could only nod, unable to speak. After sitting at the table for a while, she saw a rotund man who looked like a chef come in through the side door.

He saw he and asked bluntly, “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Ten or seventeen?” He laughed out loud. “Lina told you to say that? I’m one of you. There’s no need to act like that in front of me.”

“Have you eaten?” The chef continued.

Alice shook her head. She had eaten oatmeal in the morning and hadn’t eaten anything since.

“How can you let kids work on an empty stomach? It’s not like we’re forcing them to work; someone has to be fed first.” The chef said this while preparing the meal, quickly placing a hefty platter in front of her, “Eat.”

There was nothing special on the platter. It was all the standard tavern fare: fried onion rings, mashed potatoes, and a sandwich with fried bacon and egg that gave off a tantalizing aroma. The chef had even made her a cup of tea.

She hadn’t eaten a meal like this in a long time.

There wasn’t much to eat at home. She didn’t have money, nor did she know how to cook. She could only bake potatoes and cook oatmeal porridge on the stove. She would add salt and eat it.

The meal she had eaten at the Feast of the Gods a month ago seemed like a lifetime ago. Whenever she thought back on it, it felt unreal, as if it were just a dream. When she woke up, she could only endure hunger again.

She had just taken a few bites of her sandwich when the other waitress appeared. Her name was Ruth. She looked a bit younger than Lina but not as pretty. Before Alice could finish her sandwich, the two had gotten acquainted.

She was surprised to find that she felt at home here and adapted quickly.

No one asked what her last name was or which god she believed in. Not one of them would hold on to Fragna. It seemed like a godless world, a world where the gods were shut out of taverns.

This place felt more like her real home than the landlady’s or the laundry shop.