Avoiding Minene's scorn was an impossible task for Saki, even on the best of days. It was one of the many cons of working beneath the stern woman's authority, after all.

So when Saki returned to work the next evening dressed in her maid's uniform like she was meant to and with her hair grudgingly braided back as demanded, Saki wasn't the least bit surprised to find the woman tearing over at the merest sight of her, almost like that last bear she encountered near the Tanbarun border.

'Akazawa Saki!' Came Minene's particularly shrill call as the clacking of heeled shoes echoed through the courtyard.

Again Saki knew she was in for the humdrum of meaningless and rather hypocritical complaints the very instance her name had been shouted. Still, to sate the woman's need for complaint, Saki turned to face her with all expression wiped clean from her face and her broom held neatly at her side.

'How many times do I have to tell you that your appearances are not appropriate for work?!' Minene's immediate words hung in the sunset evening air. 'Again you're wearing those gloves! And your hair is if possible worse than usual! Explain this hideous monstrosity you insist on appearing like at once!'

Saki raised a brow as she stared Minene down, who was growing more and more agitated with every passing second.

'Well?!' She pressed with a raised tone.

So, all Saki did was shake her head in response.

'Excuse me?!' Minene practically seethed, drawing a sigh from Saki with little effort.

'How am I supposed to explain myself if you ban me all the time from speaking to begin with?' Saki responded with a heavy tone, wishing more than anything else that this woman would just grant her one evening to work in peace and quiet.

'I do not need your attitude!' Minene snapped. 'Explain now, before you assault a passing lord with that hideous voice of yours!'

'At least it's better than a witches shrieking...'

'What was that?!' The woman shrieked.

'Nothing, nothing.' Saki dismissed quickly as she turned her gaze away from the painful woman.

'Unbelievable!' Minene scowled as she lifted a bony hand to cover her face. 'Not only does your presence here get overlooked, but you prance through this place in rags and filthy shoes when you're not here to clean! You have no civility as a human being!'

Saki's gaze narrowed slightly at that jab, though she lifted her gaze upwards to the low-hanging branch a few inches above Minene's head. A particularly large spider was perched up on the leaves, as if it were waiting for a stray insect to fly far too close. As the woman continued to prattle on about how disorderly and unpleasant Saki was in spite of being a "servant of the Royal Family", Saki carefully lifted her broom and used it to gently lower the branch down until the leaves, spider and all, were nestled upon Minene's shoulder.

The woman failed to notice in the throws of an unpleasant rant, hand still covering her eyes in absolute disgust, all the while Saki paid no attention to her.

As she gently eased the branch back towards it's neutral position, the spider, after deciding it preferred its new perch, carefully clambered down to sit on the woman's shoulder.

'Forget it! I have better things to do than deal with you right now!' Minene spat as she finally lowered her hand, thankfully slow enough for Saki to quickly lower her broom and pay prompt attention to her. 'Just get your job done and get out of my sight! You're an eyesore!'

'Of course.' Saki agreed.

'And don't you dare open your mouth again! Nobody wants to hear that hideous voice of yours!' Minene snapped as she turned on her heel and began to storm off.

However Saki didn't dare tear her gaze away in the least. Instead, she made as quick and discrete a move to hide behind the tree the spider had once been within, and watched with a grin threatening to spread across her face.

Needless to say, she didn't have to wait very long for the woman's harsh movements to begin to unsettle the large spider on her shoulder. It wobbled with every brisk step, struggling to maintain its hold on the neat shoulder of the maid's uniform, and in an attempt to grip onto a more manageable surface, reached out past the brown linen material.

Unfortunately for Minene, that happened to be the hair at the nape of her neck, bringing her to lift a hand to try and brush off what she likely presumed to be a small beetle of some description.

However, as Minene's hand met a fuzzy spider the size of her hand instead of a small, shell-like beetle, realization dawned and a deafening shriek of terror escaped her, along with the frantic flailing of limbs as she panicked. She managed to slap the spider off of her with the first swing, where it skittered away quickly to leave her flailing and screaming like a lunatic as she took off running for sanctuary.

A chiming echo of a laugh escaped Saki as she straightened up behind the tree, with a bright smile spreading across her face as Minene disappeared well from sight, but her screams still rung through the Castle grounds with echoing effect.

'You're surprisingly vindictive.' A voice spoke up from right over Saki's shoulder, causing the woman to freeze up on the spot. 'That spider didn't deserve the abuse.'

Immediately, Saki sprung forward to put distance between herself and whoever had managed to sneak up on her, with her right hand slipping within the sleeve of her left arm to grip at the handle of a dagger she kept strapped to her arm. However, she hesitated to draw the weapon as soon as she laid eyes on the person who had managed to startle her.

Short, slightly messy black hair, yellow, rather cat-like eyes with a scar above his left brow, and a tall and lithe frame that seemed somewhat lazy in spite of how easily they'd managed to move without sound. The olive-green scarf around his neck and earthen-hued clothes were the same as she'd last glimpsed this person, and the situation felt far more uncomfortable for Saki than she thought possible.

It was the man who was with the scarlet-haired woman named Shirayuki, the one who, in spite of the lazy way he seemed to hold himself, appeared nothing but dangerous to her.

'You're jumpy.' The nameless male before her responded with a hint of amusement dancing in his gaze, though he hadn't seemed the least bit surprised by her reaction. In fact, it was as if he'd expected it. 'Don't mind me, I was just enjoying the show.'

Sure, enjoying the show was probably right, but right now Saki was reeling from the shock, and she didn't like it.

So instead of responding in any real sense, she tipped herself forward in a bow much like the other maids would, and took off at a dash well out of sight.

Courtyard sweeping be damned, even with Minene's shrill complaints when she would return to work tomorrow.

Needless to say, Saki worked in overdrive in order to finish work for the evening as soon as possible, and she did so with two hours to spare, though granted one would have been taken up by the courtyard she didn't finish cleaning. Though, needless to say, Saki wasn't so lucky the very next evening.

She had returned to work an hour early this time to find Minene tearing through the castle grounds frantically in search for her, and what ensued was the longest rant Saki had ever experienced. Lecture upon lecture went into Saki's appearances, the way she carried herself and even the way Saki even looked at a person. And that was not including the angry shriek over the neglected courtyard the night before.

The hour head-start on work she'd intended for that courtyard had been dashed thanks to the hour-long lecture Minene had given her, and her paranoia had begun to kick in on her.

While her reaction the evening before was undeniably abrupt and possibly uncalled for, Saki still felt she had a plausible reason for being uncomfortable around such a suspicious man. Especially one who could sneak up on her so effortlessly.

She wasn't some city woman who had no sense of self-preservation, after all.

However, Saki's evening of avoiding the nameless, suspicious man ended in vain come the end of her shift at 2am.

She had trudged out of the Maid's quarters after narrowly avoiding an end-of-shift rant from Minene by veering around the back of the building towards the Court Herbalists office to make use of a particularly large spruce tree nearby. She threw herself up into a dash up the thick trunk of the tree in three large strides, clad in maid's uniform and all, and hoisted herself right up to a large and particularly sturdy branch half-way up the large tree.

Minene's severe mutterings about useless abominations and their unsightly attire echoed throughout the area as the aforementioned woman marched herself right past the very tree Saki had retreated into, leaving the latter feeling quite relieved to have escaped immediate notice.

In fact, as soon as Minene had disappeared down the paved path behind the next building, Saki really did let out a relieved sigh.

'You and that other Maid don't get along very well, do you?' Came a voice from right above Saki's head, ripping a startled yelp from her with little effort.

Stretched out lazily across the branch right above her head was that same man, as if he'd been reclining there for quite a while. Needless to say, Saki was rather appalled to find him there, even more so by the fact that she hadn't even noticed him there.

And as soon as she'd instinctively shifted back to try and put some distance between them, she felt her foot suddenly slip off of the tree branch.

Her sudden loss of balance and prominent tumble out of the tree was halted all of a sudden as a firm grip latched around her right wrist, bringing her to a halt half-hanging from the branch.

'Let go.' Saki commanded as she lifted her gaze from the three meter drop to look up at the wryly smiling man.

'If I do that, you're just going to fall.' The man responded with a small smirk. 'I'm sure that would be rather unfortunate for you.'

And yet all Saki did in response was lean her self further off the branch in silent threat.

If he didn't let go, she was going to drag him right out of the tree.

'You can't be serious.' He responded with a small chuckle, bringing Saki to lean completely away from the branch. 'Okay, fine. Have it your way.'

And with a rather amused glint in his eye, the man simply let go of her, just as she had demanded.

Without the expected squeak of fright, or the startled look flashing across Saki's face, she managed to turn herself mid-fall so that she landed neatly on the balls of her feet, and thankfully with no stumbling or unfortunate flipping of her uniform's skirt to accompany the fall.

She found herself inwardly pleased to note the rather surprised look that ghosted across the nameless male's face as she briskly brushed her skirt back down and marched herself away to leave for home.

She was not enjoying his knack of managing to sneak up on her like that.

Thankfully however, she didn't have work for the rest of the week, allowing Saki some leave to tend to her more preferred means of passing time.

--=[Submitted 21st April 2018]=--