Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 125

Chapter 125 - Early Birds Waking up after a serious healing session always seemed to leave Eventus feeling slightly hung over. Which he'd

Chapter 125 - Early Birds

Waking up after a serious healing session always seemed to leave Eventus feeling slightly hung over. Which he'd always found rather amusing given just how difficult for him to actually get drunk.

In the end however that was just the price he paid for making the laws of physics and limits of biology go cry in a corner.

Rolling over to check the clock, Eventus felt his eyebrow creep upwards in surprise at the fact it was nearly ten. Though he supposed that certainly explained why Xiaoyi was already up and about.

Pulling himself out of bed, and doing his best to shake off the remaining lethargy from using his powers like that. He headed over to the bathroom and took a quick shower, then, after using his laser razor to shave off the night's stubble, donned his set of ‘average civilian’ clothes and headed out to the villa’s living room.

One of the maids, Lai Jun if he remembered correctly, was setting a series of covered bowls down onto the low table by the western windows overlooking the small pond. 

“Would that happen to be breakfast?” He asked hopefully as he walked over.

Healing wasn't completely free after all, and that wasn't even counting the fact he and Xiaoyi had gone at it for a good two hours beforehand. So he was starving to the point even Lanteanloaf sounded pretty good.

Straightening up and turning to him, Lai Jun offered a surprisingly energetic smile. “It is, preparation began once we noticed that you were up.”

“You have…” Eventus began, only to trail off as the woman's distinctly different level of dress registered.

Yesterday, all four of the girls had been wearing the same type of general pink and white hanfu dresses that he had seen on various others around the studio. Today however, Lai Jun at least, seemed to have decided on a thinner low cut red version that looked to have been designed specifically to show off her rather significant cleavage.

“No idea how hungry I am right now.” He finished, smiling as he dragged his eyes off the young woman's odd change of dress to meet her eyes.

“I can imagine some.” Lai held a hand up to her mouth to cover a light giggle. “You and Miss Shen were quite loud last night.”

“I suppose we were.” Eventus agreed without any ounce of shame as he stepped past Lai to sit down at the table. “I hope we didn't keep you all up or anything.”

“If that were all it took to keep us awake I'm afraid we would very rarely get any sleep at all.” Lai laughed, spinning around to settle down next to him. “Though you should probably know we sleep in shifts, so at least two of us are always available to fulfill any needs our guests might have.”

The way she had drawn out the word ‘available’ would have made it clear just what she was implying with it even if Eventus hadn't already known. And it made him wonder just what kind of people they usually dealt with where going from what he did with Xiaoyi last night to a completely different girl the next day might be considered a reasonable option.

“You know.” He put forward as he pulled the lid off what looked to be some type of brownish noodle dish. “I'm really starting to wonder if I should leave you girls a giant tip or something. Because I find it hard to believe you're being paid enough to put up with everything that has to follow that level of service.”

“I accept jewelry, bank notes, direct credit card deposits, and marriage proposals.” Lai quipped, leaving Eventus to blink in surprise at her.

“What?” She gave a playful shrug. “Zou might be fine doing that whole honored to serve thing, but I'm hoping to retire before forty.”

That was fair enough Eventus supposed, after all, it would have been odd if the women were all like that.

Taking a moment to try the noodle bowl, he gave a hum of approval. “Interesting.”

“There was some argument about what we should serve since you didn't fill out an order last night.” Lia put forward with a slight bit of reproach in her tone. “In the end we decided to go with a selection of complimentary regional dishes.”

“Sorry about that.” Eventus apologized with an embarrassed grin. “It's been a long time since I've stayed somewhere with this level of hospitality service.”

If he remembered right the last was probably a little over a hundred years before the Wraith war went hot. There had been this weird water creature haunting the canals of a 19th century civilizations vacation town, and they’d spent a full month hunting down and capturing it. Poor thing had been brought through in a bottle by a gate trader who thought it was just some oddly bioluminescent water.

“We didn't really have a lot of people who felt it was their calling in life to provide a hotel experience to others.” He explained upon seeing Lie's confused look.

There hadn’t really been any need to, room cleaning was handled by a combination of materials that didn’t hold particulates and sterilization fields that could clean an entire room in seconds. While food could be created on demand with a molecular synthesizer. Even for actual vacation destinations the only person really around had tended to be the site supervisor and maybe a health and wellness specialist.

“Sounds boring.” Lia mused, circling her finger over the table’s surface in an odd pattern. “I might not want to do this forever, but you wouldn’t believe half the weird things people get up to when the only ones around are serving staff.”

“I can imagine.” Eventus offered, smiling at the memory that brought up. “We built an entire entertainment industry around watching other people who didn’t know they were being watched.”

The front door slid open before she could respond, and Eventus glanced over to see Xiaoyi walk in with the distinctive energy in her step of someone fresh off a rejuvenation treatment.

“Morning.” He greeted.

Xiaoyi looked over to him for a moment before her eyes flicked to Lia Jun and then the food set out on the table. “Please tell me that’s breakfast?”

“Of course Miss Shen.” Jai answered, turning to the other woman with a smile. “It was assumed that you would both be hungry after your night.”

 “Among other things.” Xiaoyi admitted with just the smallest hint of dryness in her tone.

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Author’s Notes: If you haven’t noticed yet, each of the girls is acting as a different archetype as part of pinning down what he responds to. So far we have Zou Fu, the diligent servant. Qin Tai, the innocent maiden. (Who failed to get any traction.) And Lia Jun, the playful seductress. (Who has had the best success so far.)