Day 41?“Tell me, RM, what was that all about?” Ray asks over the sound of an electric kettle brewing in the background. He looks rather annoyed.

  “What was what all about?” Amy asks, more confused than anything at this incredibly early hour of the morning. The arm clock had been a very unwelcome guest just ten minutes ago and she still hasn’t recovered.

  “That Cornish bitch showed up when the sun had already been down for ages.” Ray expins with a surprising amount of energy for the time of day. “And you followed her. You returned after an hour or so, then stroked your dick hard enough I could hear it from a few metres away. The moan afterwards was worse. You sounded like a—”

  “There’s such a thing as too much detail, Ray.” Amy rolls her eyes. She knows what she sounded like. She knows how pathetic it is that she can’t even moan like a man anymore.

  “You sounded like a girl.” He notes with finality.

  “Yeah.” Amy nods. “So?”

  “I’m just saying.” Ray grins slightly, accepting a cup of hot water from Dar and picking a bag from their shockingly wide range of tea fvours. “You’re a worse AGP than me.”

  If there’s one person who can’t make the accusation of autogynephilia, it’d be him. She points at the small pile of knickers that had formed at the end of Ray’s bed. There’s five of them, and Amy knows for a fact that her friend was thinking of less than masculine things in the creation of that pile, never having bothered to take off his maid dress during the process. The only reason he stopped is because he risked running out of clean underwear altogether.

  “Nevermind that.” He finishes making his tea, leaving the tea bag on the table.

  Amy cautiously picks it up and drops it in one of the dirty mugs near the edge, precariously close to falling onto the floor. “Ew.”

  Ray shifts awkwardly in his chair and watches her with minor suspicion. He avoids saying anything about it, and Amy is all too happy about that: she doesn’t want to expin the fact that she’s paying more attention to the rubbish the three have been piling up because she’ll have to clean it soon enough. Saying she’s being punished would imply she’s accepted the punishment, and if she admits that it becomes hard to expin it to her friend without breaking the promise Eira made her break.

  She understood the woman quite well and agreed to her proposal. Now she must live with the consequences.

  “Oh, thank you, darling.” Amy whispers as Faith passes her a cup of boiling hot water, making the girl blush.

  “Darling?” If Ray was suspicious of her before, Amy has now made it a thousand times worse. “He isn’t a girl. Dar is a—”

  “It’s a pun.” Amy says nonchantly as she prepares her own tea, adding rather more milk than she had intended. She really doesn’t want to deal with this right now, lest she get another migraine.

  “I know it’s a pun.” He protests. “It’s the contents of that pun.”

  Amy shrugs. “Could you not be such a miserable git at 7:15 in the morning?”

  “If you stop trying to turn Dar into a girl.” It seems like he wishes to continue the statement with something more damning, but Ray abstains from it for now.

  “I’m not trying to do that!” Amy leans back in her chair. The three middle fingers of her right hand stick through the handle of the mug and hug it closely, further banced by her left hand. It’s about as stable a hold she can think of. She isn’t particurly looking to spill a hot drink on her dress today.

  “Please stop fighting.” Dar whispers. “It’s not helping anyone.”

  “It’s not my fault this guy would rather start arguments than drink his bloody tea in peace.” She looks away from the person annoying her and inspects the kitchenette instead. She sees multiple piles of ptes with decomposing leftovers and another half a dozen piles of mugs. She's going to have to clean up a lot of things, isn't she?

  Maybe she shouldn’t have taken Ray’s punishment on herself as well, at least if he’s going to be like this to her all the time. It’s not worth her time nor her effort.

  “You never answered my question.” He ends the tangent that Amy was happy to indulge in. “What were you up to st night?”

  “I was having a wank. I thought we had already established this—” She tries to think of an answer which isn’t some variation of ‘nothing that pertains to you’.

  Ray groans. “With the sponsors. I know for a fact that you know what I meant.”

  “A fact?” Amy asks innocently, buying time.

  “You’re smart enough. You did debate club— you studied philosophy. You can understand a question.” Ray clearly forgot that philosophy is merely a part of PPE.

  “Well, thank you. You’re rather charming yourself.” Amy responds with a sneer. “I’d tell you if I thought it’d be relevant, so please get off my ass.”

  “Amy…” Dar whispers, her voice slightly muffled. “Please stop.”

  She pauses and finally finds a moment to take a look at the girl next to her. Faith has pulled her legs up onto her chair, holding them as close as she can. She’s hiding her face in between her knees, terrified of the ongoing fight.

  “Dar,” Amy lowers her voice. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “I just want everyone to get along.” A few sobs emanate from the figure next to her. “All you’ve been doing is arguing. I wish we could have fun again.”

  There are so many things she wants to say, each of which include herself as the subject — she knows, she’s sorry, she will try to do better and variations on the same theme — but it’s not something Faith needs to hear right now. She needs more certainty.

  “We will.” Amy says. “Ray and I can figure it out.”

  “Can we?” Ray asks, silenced with an incredibly vague hand gesture that’s some combination of ‘don’t worry about it’ and ‘shut the fuck up’.

  “We will.” She repeats. “It’s not like we haven’t had fights before.”

  Faith nods, still bundled up but having stopped crying for now. The poor thing must be so afraid. She’s being forcibly feminised and her closest friends can’t even get along throughout it all.

  “I had a talk with Eira st night.” Amy eventually decided to answer Ray’s question, going with as much of the truth as she can give him. “She wanted to yell at me again. Apparently she missed doing so for the past month. Apparently I can be rather frustrating to deal with, and thus extra satisfying to call all kinds of horrible things. She likes pying with me, apparently, like a fox toying with its prey, making its inevitable end obvious and unnecessarily drawn out.”

  “And that made you…” Ray doesn’t finish the sentence as he doesn’t have to.

  Lost for words, with yesterday’s feelings of humiliation already returning, all Amy can do is blush and nod towards the boy on the other side of the table from her. Ray may not hold power over her to make her feel this way, but it hurts more when it comes from one of her friends.

  He chuckles, almost choking on his tea in the process. “That expins a lot.”

  Amy looks down at the floor, knowing just how pathetic she’s being. It’s worse now that her excitement comes in quick bursts, the awkward feeling coming and going in less than a minute. It’s probably for the best — she’s never had to control her desires this much before.

  “We really need to get out of here.” Ray says, looking at the girl in front of her.

  The cameras and microphones start to feel everpresent again. She wants to agree with him and make sure he knows that she does so. But it’s for the best if she doesn’t, for his own sake, as discussing the topic again will just lead to Ray getting punished regardless of Amy’s efforts.

  What kind of torture would Eira have pnned for her friend if she did tell him? Amy would be returned to the cells, that much is obvious.

  She really doesn’t want to think about it.

  “Not interested. Got it. There are other things you’d rather think about.” Ray says in the most defeated voice she’s heard from him yet. “Guess I’ll have to learn how to be a good girl.”

  ***

  It mustn’t have been the sponsor’s intention, but Amy finally gets to feel a little free. Sure, it’s a retive freedom, manufactured through some very simple developments: an unlocked door, Ray and Faith who have been taken elsewhere in the building, some strength returning to her body. But it’s freedom. She has more ability to do whatever the hell she wants than she knows what to do with.

  Amy pauses for a moment, thinking about things a little more deeply.

  Is this really what she is going to interpret as freedom now? Has spending a few weeks at this pce really warped her concept of what she owed to such a significant extent? What she wants — what she deserves — is the total freedom of abandoning the manor and rebuilding her life, this time living with her friends.

  They’ll find, like, a cute little apartment in London or whatever. Maybe Ray will calm down once he doesn’t have the spectre of femininity wielded over him. It could actually be quite pleasant!

  Maybe, just maybe, the key to getting out of this building is somewhere in the rooms that are avaible to her now. Sure, the sponsors seem competent, but they can’t have taken away every option a creative mind can come up with. There’s always something they’d have missed out upon.

  Amy should explore a little. Her friend already thinks she’s accepting her situation because it’s terribly exciting to her — it is, but she fought equally degenerate desires for many years before. She just needs to prove to her friend that she is serious about getting out of here.

  Maybe he’ll start being more tolerable.

  The first thing she sees is something that isn’t quite new to her: the wide, inviting hallways of the manor. Their floor has one corridor running all along the western side of the building — she knows that it has to be the west, because she can see the sun rise from her window in the mornings — connecting all the rooms of the floor, with a T-split in the very middle. There are smaller rooms along the sides of the off-shoot and sets of double doors at the end of each path.

  Amy tries the doors to her immediate left, but they seem to be blocked. It’s not a simple lock, she knows that: something rge and bulky is holding the doors in pce. It makes sense, though. There’s a spiral staircase behind those doors, which continues to go further up as well as down. She remembers Kelynen taking her down the stairs when she visited Eira. They want her to be unable to leave the floor she’s on.

  The entirety of the hallway is lined with rge, inviting windows, flooding it with natural light. If Amy looks out of them she can see a courtyard covered in snow, with a well-maintained circur road leading up an entrance situated at the north side of the building. Trees line the rest of the length, as do some hedges, with tall iron fences taking over once they reach the cliffside. They don’t look very climbable, not with their pointy tips and the ck of horizontal bars to hold onto.

  The aristocracy must be fans of designing their retreats like prisons, as she has seen too many designs quite like this — or perhaps the fences are to keep the common people out rather than people inside.

  Something else she notices: they’re on the second floor of the building. She’s not completely sure about that, as the rooms are taller than she is used to, but she would bet good money on it being the case. Not that it really matters: it’d be too far down to jump out of the windows regardless, unless they’re more intent on breaking limbs or risking death than actually finding the liberty they want.

  Of the ten doors on her floor, only one of them seems to have been left open. Amy sticks her head inside for a second to inspect what she sees — the motherlode of all cleaning supplies. None of them are ones she particurly recognises. The various brand names on oddly shaped pstic bottles are already giving her a headache — which ones does she need? How would she even pick between them? She’s more likely to create mustard gas than she is to manage to clean even a single mug if this is what she has to work with!

  She hates it when she doesn’t know. Even more so when it’s her own fault, both her ck of information and the immediacy of that problem.

  It was unwise to accept the punishment of cleaning a room the size of an entire apartment without ever having learned how to perform that task in the first pce. She’s been rather privileged in that regard: her mum would do it for her when she was a child. As a teenager she managed to neglect her room enough to ensure that her mum did it regardless. When she became a student she never did much more than hoover the pce — she didn’t do more than sleep in that room. She was always doing one thing or another and preferred to eat at the surprisingly affordable campus restaurant over cooking.

  Amy might be uniquely underprepared for the task she insisted she’d take on. It’s probably why Eira was so happy to hold it over her head as a punishment — she’ll do something wrong and then they can make fun of her, or more likely, send her to the cells anyways. This way they’d have gotten another round of making fun of her out of it.

  Her head hurts from the sheer amount of choices she has, so she decres figuring out what she needs a problem she’ll have to solve ter.

  Continuing to explore is a much more doable task anyhow — even if most of the doors seem to be locked. In fact, there are but two other doors that she can open: both of them lead into identical bathrooms. So multiple people can shower at once, probably: it’s a mystery why there are two as opposed to three, though.

  She shrugs. They probably just cked rooms on this floor. Not everything has to be some kind of conspiracy.

  There’s better distractions to be had.

  Indulgently, Amy locks the bathroom door behind herself and starts to undress. The room is set to a comfortable 27 degrees according to a screen next to the door — seemingly it has room-specific climate control, with the heating coming from the floor, keeping her feet nice and warm. It’s fancy, even by Amy’s privileged standards. Lingering for a moment doesn’t feel so bad if she’s warm like this.

  And who would even mind if she started cleaning a little ter? She’s got all day: Ray and Dar are away doing whatever the sponsors had imagined for them. All Amy has to do is carry out her punishment, entirely unsupervised.

  The mirror starts to beckon her over like a siren’s call once Amy is fully naked. She’s not seen herself in a good long while. The sight of herself — himself — had always been too painful. It’s something she avoided unless she absolutely had to, for example whilst shaving or putting on a touch of makeup for a py. But there’s been a lot going on in her life, and maybe, just maybe, it’s not as bad anymore.

  Amy looks more different than she had imagined. It can’t be the HRT — fat redistribution wouldn’t start until about a month in, and take months to fully finish. It wouldn’t make her look worse in the ways she does. No, what has happened is that she’s lost weight, less body to hide the skeleton underneath. All it did was reveal the imperfections underneath.

  Her head is too rge. Her shoulders are too broad. She has a giant forehead — maybe not by male standards, but definitely by female standards. Her orbitals only make it worse. Her chin is too rge, too u-shaped, too covered in hair and everything else she would rather not look at.

  All she can see is a man. Five feet and eight inches of one. She has to avert her eyes, because all she can imagine is what they’re turning her into. A honbeast in a dress, one that people can clock from miles away. An obviously transgender toy.

  They don’t want to turn her into a woman — they couldn’t. Nobody could. There’s not enough technology in the world to take these raw materials and turn them into anything approximating the female sex.

  Fuck. She needs to do something. Something to stem the dysphoria.

  Amy finds an electric razor in one of the cupboards and starts to use it. She presses it roughly on her skin, willing it to destroy every st hair on her face. It’s one of the better brands — it won’t hurt. She wishes it does, that it would cut through the skin and chip away at her bones, but all the useless thing will do is eliminate hairs.

  Her hands run along her chin. They don’t eliminate enough of them. She can still feel them. Maybe she’s not used it enough: maybe she hasn’t gone in enough different directions.

  Somehow, magically, it does work after a few dozen more passes. Her body is red from agitation, gets very irritated when she touches it, and she’s pretty sure she managed to get some cuts from a razor made so that even an idiot wouldn’t get one, but she doesn’t feel any facial hair anymore.

  She almost cries once she remembers they’ll be back soon enough.

  That definitely didn’t help. Normally she would just open up the group chat to vent or find some horrible little story on the internet, but those options aren’t avaible to her anymore.

  The only real option she has is to indulge in her fantasies. Her autogynephilia needs to be fed. She needs to think of herself as a girl, even if it’s just an impossible fantasy. It’s an issue that she can’t imagine herself looking like a woman at that very moment. There’s only one thing she could realistically do to satisfy her needs.

  Amy enters the shower in the corner, its ventition and light immediately switching on the second she opens the door. It takes a little moment for her to find a comfortable temperature, her hand tenderly touching the stream a few seconds after every minute adjustment.

  The humming started before the water had hit her body.

  She’d first learned to sing as a young child. First in the choir at her Anglican church, which she happily attended, even though she never believed in God. It was fun! Once she was a little older she started to dabble in the performing arts more explicitly, learning how to act and how to sing more than simple Christian hymns, however beautiful they might be. And she was good at it too. Amy was able to participate in some smaller local musicals in a lead role — her teacher said she could make it to the West End if she wanted to make it a career.

  He wanted her to sing like a man, though. She had to learn how to sing like a woman on her own. At first she was annoyed that some of her favourite songs just didn’t sound correct unless she hit higher pitches than she was used to, and ter on she started to sing from her head rather than her chest and at a more fitting frequency. It was one of her favourite things to do when she was a young teenager.

  It was only ter that she realised why it had been so enjoyable to hit those more feminine pitches. When she started to understand the compulsions that led her to imagine herself in particur roles more than others. Why the thought of following in her father’s footsteps and managing a medium-sized business in construction filled her with anxiety.

  She realised why her feelings were wrong and self-destructive. That didn’t stop her from copying her favourite female artists, though.

  If she can’t look like a woman, she can still sound like one. She can sing and no one will be any wiser as to what she really is.

  There’s one West End show she’s always loved. It’s the one that has run for so many years that it has become iconic — the one that made it international like no other, its most popur song used in actual protests against tyranny around the world. It’s a shame though: the version that became so famous is the worse version of the two simir songs in the musical. It doesn’t hit the same emotional heights. She may not be able to sing it in London, but she can still sing it here.

  The 1985 CD version always had such clear female voices too — she loved imitating them.

  Do you hear the people sing?

  Lost in the valley of the night.

  It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light.

  For the wretched of the earth,

  There is a fme that never dies.

  Even the darkest nights will end and the sun will rise.

  ***

  Amy can’t believe she’s actually going to be doing this.

  A few minutes ago she’d wandered into the storeroom and picked out a few things at semi-random. There were no bottles she really recognised, but on closer inspection some had rather obvious purposes written out on their bels, and she took the ones which seemed the most appropriate — though most of them were entirely vague still. The other items were easier for someone like her to recognise: a hoover, a bucket, a mop, some washcloths and a sponge, as well as a number of bags to put dirty undry into. She left everything on a little cart she’d found in the corner of the room and started pushing the whole lot.

  The first thing she sees when she enters her room is a rather annoyed-looking Rose, standing behind the door with her arms crossed and taser drawn. She gets the first word in before Amy can even try to talk. “Where the hell have you been?”

  Amy vaguely gestures at the cart: it should be obvious.

  “I’ve been waiting for forty-five minutes.” The sponsor starts her tirade. “You had been given a task yesterday. You were told you would have to carry it out, and that I would be inspecting it. And rather than wait for me, you wandered off?”

  She shrugs. “I felt like taking a shower.”

  “Did you now?” Rose tries to act tough for a little longer, but Amy can see the grin forming on her face. “Good riddance. I’ve been telling Jenny to for a day and a half, but that girl continues to insist she won’t.”

  Amy frowns. “Shouldn’t you be with her, anyhow? You’re her sponsor.”

  “She’s with Kelynen. We’re making Jen help cook something for dinner tonight. Maybe she’ll be compliant enough to cook rice or something. I was given the choice of either cooking with her or overseeing your punishment. Lulu likes to cook, and I would rather do anything but.” Rose takes a closer look at the girl in front of her. “Speaking of: Why aren’t you working?”

  “You were—” Amy takes a moment to realise what is being asked of her, but quickly decides to do the one thing she’s fairly certain she can do: picking up dirty undry. “You’re distracting me.”

  “How horrible.” The sponsor isn’t even going to pretend to be sorry.

  She starts with Jenny’s bed as it’s the closest to the door and starts picking up the hazardous material at its end. “You’re horrible.”

  “That’s a rather rude thing to say. Unbefitting of both a maid and a woman of considerable standing like yourself— you should know better than to be so impolite.” Rose frowns and wiggles her taser threateningly. “You girls have such horrible manners in general. Maybe I should make you girls call us sponsors ‘miss’ or ‘ma’am’ so you get into the habit. I can’t exactly be responsible for maids who will use such words around Ms. Lambert.”

  Ms. Lambert must be the wife of whoever owns this god awful pce. No woman would be interested in owning a bunch of forcibly feminised maids, whilst the fetishistic desires of men are well-known in the social circles Amy found herself on the very edges of.

  “We’re both maids.” Amy says. She’ll have to argue Rose out of making her call her a superior. “We’re dressed the same, even. You can’t exactly go around pretending to be my superior when looking just as stupid as I do.”

  At least she’s finished picking up random bits of clothing strewn around — wet panties, dirty uniforms, sweaty socks and a uniform she’d accidentally stained with soup a few days ago — and is able to start removing pillowcases. As long as she can contain her efforts to their undry she’ll avoid looking as incompetent as she is.

  “Just as stupid as I do, miss.” Rose corrects her. “And you certainly don’t look stupid, either.”

  Amy rolls her eyes at the sponsor. “I look like a tranny wearing some fetishwear from Amazon.”

  “Language, young dy.” The sponsor says didactically. “You know better than to use those words.”

  “Yeah, whatever.” Amy successfully removed all the pillowcases: she’s maybe 2% done with the day’s tasks now. “You troons are all so sensitive.”

  “You’re being awfully insubordinate.” Rose asks. “Do you want to get tased?”

  “Is being annoying an offence worthy of punishment?”

  “You’re close to making it one, Ms. Finch, but no.” The sponsor compins. “We really need something for these minor infractions: tasing you lot is a bit much, and letting you go on like nothing happened won’t teach you girls to behave like the girls you are.”

  “I’m not sure saying ‘you lot’ is very maid-like.” Amy points out just to be even more annoying. She presumes that there’s not much the maid is permitted to do to her as long as she continues with her task, and she’s removed the bedding and put everything into undry bags, ready to be sent away for washing.

  “It’s not. But did anyone ever say I’m a good maid?” Rose grins.

  “You must be.” Amy looks at the woman from a distance. “Your job is to teach us to be maids whether we like it or not. That’s the point of this pce.”

  “I’m more into the ‘teaching you to be girls’ aspect, to be honest. Teaching you to be maids is an extra — one I’m enjoying it quite a bit — but it’s really just the cherry on top.” Rose barely finished talking before she broke out into a giggling fit over something left unsaid that must be rather hirious to her at the moment.

  Amy can give herself a small mercy and start hoovering, the sound of the old rickety machine overwhelming anything that the chatty sponsor might be willing to say.

  Rose is weird. She’s being awfully open with Amy, just like Eira has been. It’s different, though, in that she seems much less serious than her boss. Like it’s a game to her — which Amy supposes it would be.

  The girl could perhaps be a fun person to be around if one was already minded to agree with her. But she seems like such an annoying bitch right now, and that’s probably part of the punishment itself.

  After a while Amy has to stop the machine freeing herself from the sponsor, having finished everything other than the rather gigantic carpet that covers most of the room. She vaguely remembered that she couldn’t hoover that, her mum always avoiding it when she saw her cleaning.

  What is to be done about a carpet is entirely vague, though, so she leaves that as a future problem. There’s a chance they won’t compin about it. She doesn’t believe it’s something that needs to be cleaned as regurly as the floor itself.

  She needs to think of the next step she can actually do without giving Rose the enjoyment of watching her struggle with the punishment she’s been given.

  Amy remembers they were supposed to have some clean clothes and bedding, and sure enough, there they are, sitting in the hallway. Putting the maid dresses into their respective wardrobes isn’t so hard, especially not with the bags of clean clothes being tagged by name. The bedding was a little more complex, with the mattresses being significantly wider than she’s used to, but she eventually figured out which way was the slightly longer side and managed to finish it all up.

  Her legs are starting to hurt, though. She might be doing too much whilst still in the st few days of recovery. Perhaps it’s time for a little break.

  Amy sits on her bed and stares at her cart, spending her little break wondering which of the mystery cleaning supplies is supposed to be mixed with water if she wants to start mopping the floor.

  “Need help?” Rose asks in a most devious tone.

  “I’m not allowed to get help doing this.” Amy responds. “Eira said so very explicitly.”

  “I’m just offering, but if you’re sure you know what you’re doing…” The sponsor trails off at the end.

  “Do I look like I know what I’m doing?” She groans.

  Rose sizes her up from a distance, paying particur attention to her uniform. “You’re dressed like you ought to.”

  Amy blushes and looks away. Of course she’s going to make her embarrassment worse by reminding her of both her ongoing feminisation and the competence that should have been expected from her. “Well, I don’t. I’m at a loss, okay?”

  “You’ll figure it out.” Rose ughs. “You’re a smart girl.”

  Amy takes a few cautious steps towards the cart and looks over the various bottles she’s brought. One, she figures out, is for the dishes. Another is, apparently, used for cleaning toilets — she isn’t sure why she brought that. She probably didn’t look too closely at its bel.

  Unable to finish whatever riddle she has to solve, she just shrugs and picks up the ‘all-purpose cleaner’. It ought to work well enough, being all-purpose and all. She remembers that mum tended to mix it with water, so Amy just dumps a more-than-appropriate amount of detergent into the bucket and carries it to the sink.

  She’s left with yet another roadblock: Does she use hot or cold water?

  It’s another impossible question for someone of her skill level to solve. No less frustrated than before, and wanting to look more like she’s doing something than doing it correctly, she shifts the tap to lukewarm and dumps as much water into it as possible. It ought to be fine, really. It can’t be that complicated.

  Rose shakes her head disapprovingly. “You did that wrong. You fill the bucket with water first, and then you add the detergent.”

  “Does that matter?” Amy blinks, unsure if the advice is genuine or some kind of cruel, humiliating joke. It’s the same combination of materials in the end.

  “If you do it the wrong way around with some solutions you might end up creating some nasty reactions.” Rose says. “To expin this in the technical terms I learned whilst studying chemistry: add the strongest shit slowly and at the end if possible. It’s a good habit to get into.”

  Once she figured out this first step things started to get easier again. She just had to mop the floor. Easy enough, at least it was after she found out she would have to wring before plopping the strings down on the floor. Finding out how to walk was more of a challenge though: she learned she shouldn’t mop away from the pce she wanted to stop, but rather towards it.

  She’s stuck in the corner now, like an idiot. Amy was left unable to reach the sponsor, or the cart, without ruining some of her own cleaning progress.

  Rose watched in silent amusement as the girl made a mistake she thought would be rather obvious and easy to avoid. Of course, she decided to rub it in. “What you would call women’s work isn’t so easy, huh?”

  Amy rolled her eyes. Perhaps she thought so, a little, but it’s not something she wasn’t able to mostly figure out on her own with a bit of trial and error. It’s not particurly complex, just something she doesn’t know how to do. That wasn’t the point though: Rose just wanted to taunt her.

  She doesn’t even argue with her anymore — she’s exhausted. Her body is starting to give in. Perhaps doing everything by herself was too much work for someone whose physical condition had been wiped out very recently.

  Perhaps the work is also just more physically exhausting than she’d guessed.

  Amy just wishes it were over at this point.

  After ten minutes or so of waiting, she makes it back to the kitchenette and takes a look around to see what the next steps should be. There’s a lot of dishes and no obvious way to get rid of them that doesn’t involve cleaning them manually: but they’re in a rather expensive manor, not a student dorm. There has to be an easier way than that.

  Maybe she should just ask Rose. Her brain isn’t working properly anymore and isn’t up for mysteries like these. “Do we have a dishwasher?”

  The maid smiles, then starts ughing when she realises the question is entirely serious and not meant as a joke.

  “Girl,” She chuckles. “You are the dishwasher.”

  Amy looks at the many piles of ptes, gsses, mugs and cutlery and can’t help but curse her friends and herself for the enormous amount of work they’ll have left her today.

  But she does clean them, all of them, and then puts them back into the proper cabinets. Feeling her work is nearly finished and getting a little boost in motivation from that, Amy makes sure to wipe the table, kitchen and the nightstands with a wet cloth. She even goes as far as to clean the chairs, though she can’t do it properly anymore — the chairs are too heavy for her, and she can’t really turn them upside down to do the legs. Amy hopes they appreciate the effort, though.

  Meanwhile, Rose just watches, offering the odd snarky comment and clearly enjoying the sight of the privileged boy turned into a very incompetent maid. At some point she looked at her phone and frowned before typing out what seemed like a very annoyed comment. It couldn’t have been too bad, though, as she looked at Amy and put on a grin again.

  She’s having too much fun with her job today.

  The official inspection didn’t start until Amy said she was finished — physically, mentally, and hopefully with her punishment as well. She just wanted it over with, but Rose took after Eira and decided to drag the process out as much as she can by inspecting everything individually.

  All Amy can do is stand around, arms hanging limply next to her body and looking as exhausted as she is. It feels like an eternity.

  The pain she’s dealing with is overwhelming. Her legs feel like they’re about to fall out from under her body: her shoulders are screaming at her, likely a slur-ridden stream of curse words, given how much they ache. But all she can do is stand around and wait.

  “‘s fine.” Rose mumbles her approval after making her wait for ten minutes or so. “It’ll do for now.”

  Amy doesn’t care that Rose is watching and that it is kind of embarrassing: she instantly drops herself onto her bed and tries to rex her body.

  “Shame Jenny won’t see it.” Rose continues, her tone deeply annoyed. “But she decided to try to escape. Pickpocketed some keys and made a run for it. Didn’t get very far. I’ll have to go do a whole talk to her in the cells now. Not looking forward to it. Don’t worry, Faith should be here with something for supper soon enough.”

  Amy blinks, taking a second to process the information, and has to use all of her ability to restrain herself from yelling. She went through all this effort just so her friend could give up on her, fail, and then get punished regardless.

  This pce is the absolute worst.