Saikyoukantei 14: Is cleaning well useful?

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Saikyō no kantei-shi tte dare no koto?~ Manpuku gohan de i sekai seikatsu ~
Author: Minatose Tsukasa
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Is cleaning well useful?

A/n: Morning is cleaning time.

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“You start cleaning from the top -”

Yuri’s carefree voice echoed throughout the base. All four of the boys responded willingly to that voice. Starting with Yack, all of them are still apprentices so they’re the boys who do the small chores. As for ages, the youngest Yack is 13, and the eldest Urgus is 16. In this world you come of age at 18, but rather than being treated like an adult, you’re treated as a fledgling.

There are only a handful of people who come of age at 18 and are immediately capable of doing skilled work. Other than the people who come from a line of artisans, who have had the know-how beaten into them from a young age, it’s unthinkable. … Or perhaps it’s different for demihumans who are born warriors, but the boys here are all human. It’s not due to racial discrimination. It’s simply that right now there are only humans among the apprentices. We hope to have our understanding.

With a cleaning rag in his hand, Yuri wiped down the tops of the shelves. … In the Scarlet Lynx, the cleaning of your personal room is your own responsibility, but aside from that, the cleaning of the public areas is the job of the apprentices. Of course, when there aren’t that many apprentices, the other members of the group will help. This isn’t a way to harass the newbies, it’s so that, like with cooking, they will be able to do the bare minimum required, and also in hopes that they will develop the temperament to do these so-called small chores without any complaints.

This here is a reading room inside the base. Books are valuable, but they aren’t not in circulation. And in this base, there are many books left here, from books the clans’ members acquired, to the textbooks for learning necessary information. For that reason, there are many shelves in this and other rooms. The tops of the shelves were covered in dust, indicating that they had practically never been cleaned up until now.

At first, Yuri intended to clean according to Yack and the others’ instructions. When in Rome do as the Romans do. He thought he’d work as his ‘seniors’ Yack and the others told him to, but their so-called ‘cleaning’ wasn’t to Yuri’s standards of cleaning at all. He was unable to see it as anything but having a lot left to be done.

As a result, Yuri continued to clean quietly by himself when Yack and the others went to leave the room, happy with being done. He continued cleaning with a cleaning rag even as he thought that they didn’t have enough cleaning tools to begin with. He thought they did good enough with sweeping, but Yuri just couldn’t ignore the details.

As a result, it ended up with Yuri taking command over the entire cleaning before he realized it.

However, Yuri did it in such an easy-going way that it didn’t have the feel like he was commanding them even from the outside. To describe it, it was a bit like a kindergarten. Or a nursery school. Let’s do it like Teacher, okay~? – it was that kind of atmosphere. … The culprit of this atmosphere is most likely Yuri. The only adult left in the base, Tifana (one of the instructors with the Job Thief), was watching them like she was seeing something heartwarming, so it felt even more like a kindergarten.

They wiped each bookcase like Yuri did. The more dexterous boys easily climbed to the top of the bookcases and wiped them like that. As for Yuri he stood on a chair and stretched to do the wiping. The smaller Yack wiped the lower shelves. It seems that they normally fight over this and that, but perhaps it’s because the carefree Yuri is mixed in with them, there wasn’t a single fight nor complaint, and they got along as they cleaned together.

“Yack, you, it’s dangerous so wipe the lower shelves. Camille, make sure you don’t fall from the bookcase!” (Urgus)

“I’m fine, Urgus.” (Yack)

“Oka-y. But Urgus as well, don’t put too much weight on it and flip the shelves” (Camille)

“Shut up-!” (Urgus)

The eldest, Urgus, is somehow or other the type who’s good at looking after people. He’s also the one who’s been here longest among the apprentices, and he worries over Yack and the second youngest, Camille. Urgus has a large build, and when he puts his weight on a bookcase it shakes, so Camille cackled as he pointed it out, but there wasn’t a bad atmosphere.

“… …”

Among them, the one who hasn’t said a word and continues to work silently is Mag. He’s normally silent and expressionless, so they say you can’t tell what he’s thinking. But he’s probably the type to work properly, so he continues to work quietly. He’s directly below Urgus, so that should mean he’s on the side who cares for the others among the apprentices, but he’s the solo-player type so he doesn’t do that sort of thing much.

That’s how things are going, but somehow or other everyone is having fun cleaning. That’s right, they’re having fun. After all, if they work as Yuri tells them to, the shelves become clean and beautiful. They were happy that things were now clean, and as Tifana passed by she said said, “You’ve cleaned well today haven’t you? Everyone’s so admirable,” and the boys were suddenly in high spirits after being praised by a beautiful onee-san.

As a result of that, the bookcase shelves became shiny.

Everyone was excited that the shelves had become so clean they were like brand new. Thanks to being excited, they went to wipe all the shelves within the base with cleaning rags and buckets in hand. Seeing off the boys who had dashed off to wipe shelves, Yuri stared at the windows.

The glass technology in this world is a little inferior to that which Yuri knew. The glass’ transparency and strength aren’t quite there. However, thanks to the diligence of each person that had the Smith Skill, they were able to make a splendid glass window like that anyway. … In addition, the glass that people with MAX level Smith make is the highest quality of this world’s standards, a superb item with good transparency and good strength, but that sort of thing is used in the windows of the regional Lord’s castle or the royal palace.

Because of that, the window panes of the Scarlet Lynx’s base are made with glass that’s slightly dark. The panes have been dirtied by wind and rain. Furthermore, he can see that the inside is dirty with dirt and housedust. They said they wiped the windows, but did they wipe it with a fuzzy cloth? There are streaks left, and it’s not at all beautiful.

Yuri stared at the cleaning rag in his hand. This cleaning rag is likely cotton. In this world the typical cloth is cotton. It seems to be the cheap material that commoners can get, so therefore the cleaning rags are cotton. But there aren’t any towels.

The trick to cleaning glass windows is to wipe it with a half-dry cleaning rag. After wetting half the rag, wring it thoroughly. Then fold the other dry half on top and wring it well again. By doing that, you’ve made it half-dry. Wiping the glass with that cleaning rag makes it possible to wipe off the dirt with a moderate amount of water without drenching the glass.

That is the way Yuri knows how to clean glass windows. There are other methods using tools, but he doesn’t have the tools so he can’t do it now. What he has on hand is the cleaning rag only. Therefore this should be the best method he thought, but there is just one problem.

The cleaning rag Yuri always used is a towel.

He turns worn-out towel into cleaning rags. Don’t households all over do that? When he was told to bring a cleaning rag in elementary school, he brought a towel-type cleaning rag prepared by his parents. Yuri’s house folds old towels into the size of cleaning rags and sews them together to make them. That’s why towels = cleaning rags for Yuri, but what he has now is the same cotton, but a cloth material. So, will he be able to make the glass windows clean if he uses the same method?

“Well, it will be fine to try it out, right?”

Muttering quietly, Yuri stuck just half his cleaning rag in the bucket. Then he wrung out the well-soaked portion. Next he folded over the part that was still dry and wrung it out again. With that, he’d made his preparations. Yuri softly stuck the half-dry cleaning rag to the window pane. He didn’t put much strength into it, but he tried wiping carefully to remove the dirt properly. The dirt was removed. And there wasn’t any weird streaks left. It seems like a cloth cleaning rag is fine as well.

Once he confirmed this, Yuri began to wipe down the window panes one after another. The outside is left for later. For now, he squeakily wiped the inside of the windows. Since he wiped with a half-dried rag, the water evaporated quickly and the window panes returned to being dry. That way there weren’t any strange water streaks, and there also wasn’t any build up from the cloth fibers. Like this, it was clean enough to earn a passing mark.

“Huh? What are you doing, Yuri?”

“I’m cleaning the window panes.”

“Heh… wait, isn’t it super clean now!? Yuri, how did you do this!?”

“Uwah?! For real! It’s usually white-ish, but after Yuri wiped it, it’s super clean!”

Yack raised his voice and Urgus, who saw it as well, yelled. Camille and Mag also came over and checked the windows, and when the two of them had confirmed what was said, they stared at Yuri. Yuri tilted his head as if mystified at their silent request to teach them the method, laughed his usual light laugh, and began to explain.

A little later on, they used the human-wave tactic to deep clean the windows.

At first they intended just finish the reading room and the dining room. However, the moment they had wiped down the inside, wiped down the outside, and checked the results, they understood. If just one part was clean, that meant the other places’ dirtiness stood out greatly!

When looking at it from the inside, it was fine. However, when going outside, comparing the cleaned windows of the reading room and dining hall to the windows of the other rooms that haven’t been cleaned at all, it was absolutely no good. With Yuri making his move and saying, “It bothers me, so I’ll clean them,” the boys also continued, of course. … As for why they were that eager is largely because Tifana praised them. The existences of beautiful people are powerful.

Thanks to that, they even used the time normally assigned for self training to clean the windows. Training can still be done in the afternoon. However, none of them had the intention of stopping in the middle of cleaning. Furthermore, it felt like Yuri would continue to wipe windows even if he was by himself. They had no intention of making Yuri, who doesn’t have as much physical strength as them, overdo it.

After all, if Yuri collapses, there won’t be any delicious food.

This is a matter of life or death.

Or rather, if they made Yuri clean by himself and he overdoes it and collapses, he won’t be able to prepare meals. The members who are exploring will probably all get mad at the apprentices. After all, Yuri had firmly grasped the Scarlet Lynx’s stomachs with just two meals of dinner and breakfast.

And so, they finished cleaning the windows in the morning. This is a digression, but with Yuri’s guidance it felt like they did just a little bit of deep cleaning, but the result made the shared space so much cleaner that there were many instances of the returning members asking Yuri for cleaning tips to make their personal rooms cleaner.

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A/n: Please don’t hope for crazy transmigration cheat development in this work.

There are cheats in a different meaning, but Yuri is a my-pace otomen so…

Anyway, next is the lunch’s turn.

I am awaiting your opinions and impressions.

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