The air was fulled with dust, a beam of light flickered on and off before it finally turned on right above the head of their catch, a captured nobleman with high status but low reputations, their careful planning lead them to a perfect victory that could've only be better if Duke wasn't charred like a badly roasted beef.
And there was also this weird guy snoring.
Ju didn't like his presence at all, she tapped her feet and stared at his stupid and badly cut scruffy hair.
"Rei, why did you bring this guy?" The redhead was rubbing healing herbs with water and soap in Duke's back, his skin healing with each rough back and forth slowly, even though the scrub kinda stinged.
Without taking her eyes off any spots she might miss with all of this foam, she picked the cup from inside the bucket and watered down all the filthy water out of him, temporary relief in his face before she started scrubing again.
"I thought the boss might like him." Ju pouted, that was very apparent even though she was wearing a cloth mask over her mouth and nose.
"This moron will have it back when he wakes up!" She poked him in the ribs with the tip of the broom she was holding, sneering at his face as she continued to poke him on and on.
The sound of the shackles rattling made a nice and pleasant sound that was very good for listeners of metal music, that with the poking in his ribs made the hero groan and mumble before finally opening his eye halfway, the blurred image of a angry little woman not being processed by his sleepy mind.
With his arms held up by comfortable padded iron shackles welded to the ceiling and his feet also held in the same way but more close to the ground, without any thought he flexed his chest to make his back pop.
However, a sudden sharp lower back pain jolted his eyes open, and he made a growl like noise from his throat as a single tear rolled from each eye.
"Augh, im so old, my back!" Ju smirked, she lifts his jacket while pressing the broom against his stomach and rubbing against his skin like she was putting out a cigarette.
"Now then, what should i do to you?" Looking down at the black haired short girl using an apron, a fishnet in the hair and a cloth mask, he couldn't help but remember when he lived in a apartment for a some time in his youth.
"Am i really gonna be tortured by a cleaning lady?" As she turned the broom the other way with just one quick spin of her wrist, Chat prepared himself to ease the pain that it would cause his host if she did what they thought she was gonna do.
The hero felt a surge in his body, already prepared to mash the flow against the broom so it would not be painful against his soft and delicate skin, it was like that because he took a lot of baths throughout the day, without the use of moisturizer!
Women envied his skin care.
Finally, Ju pushed the broom's bristle against his clothes and scrub him with quick ups and downs, making them not fold in a weird way that would hinder her cleaning and torture, the rough sound of the sweeping was like she was doing it with a folded carpet in a sunny day.
Feeling satisfied with the intense expression that loathed ma was doing that was not caused by her rough cleaning, but by the effort he was making to follow her speed and flow the power Chat was using to make the bristles only hit his clothes and not his skin, she turned her attention to Rei and Duke, who had been done healing and taking a bath in a pail.
"Finally!" Duke was done drying himself up with a towel and had it around his neck, his shorts were heavy due to all the water it had absorbed. With just one hand, he carried the chair that Elias was tied up in while Rei took the pail of water and carried it outside behind Duke, her black bra visible through her wet white shirt.
The hero couldn't help but remember when he was a child and did the same with his mom in the backyard, when they lived in a somewhat poor house that was not theirs nor rented, the details were kinda foggy in his mind actually.
"Do you think you can break these shackles?" Chat was analyzing the kind of metal used to make the chains and shackles, reinforced platinum and mythril alloy polished with Berry's Beastial Polish, padded with red tiger fur leather and stitched with ordinary thread in the cuffs, the cotton inside it made it comfortable and not that rough in the wrists and ankles, perfect to ensure the comfort and security of your prisoners.
"What do you take me for?" Even though he was smirking and with his chest puffed, the hero couldn't make it bend at all despite all of his might.
"Some over his head idiot." without even sparing a glance to the pitiful man before her, Ju was sweeping the floor meticulously, not a single drop of filth or dirt scaping the all-powerful bristles of her almighty broom.
Taking the chance that the girl had turned her back to him while trying to reach a corner of the room, he popped his hand out of the handcuffs and used it to itch his poor nose that was inhaling all of that dust, popping it right back when she took the stool and got out of the room.
"Do we have an escape plan?" Looking at the way he was swinging back and forth even though he couldn't go much due to how short the chain holding his feet was, Chat knew he wanted to see where this was going.
"I wanna know where this is going." Chat looked at the young woman come back to the room with a bucket of water and a different broom with acloth, learning how to clean up a dirty, dusty backroom because that could be useful, maybe.