No one had ever order Nate around, but not because he was stubborn or anything. His mum had passed away during labor, his dad was never around and his caretakers were a tad too subservient to tell him off when he was being a nuisance, or steer him away from his growing list of obsessions.

  Even at school he was too good of a student – and his dad too good of a sponsor, for the teachers to bother with him. He was too much of a weirdo to make any friends, and no sooner had he started to get bullied, he doubled down on his studies, skipped his remaining grades and graduated early into an antisocial hermit.

  In short, no one had ever made Nate confront his many problems before, and it surprised him that he was somewhat able to do so. But even so, Nate’s punishment couldn’t have backfired more spectacularly…

  “What are you doing out here?! You should be inside the kitchen…?! Give me that!”

  “No, is still dirty!”

  “It’s clean enough… Amanda! What is this boy doing here?! Didn’t I told you he was to help you out with… By Selene! What happened here?!”

  Inside the kitchen there were ceramic’ chips all over the floor and the table was on fire.

  “Olga! Thank the goddess, help me!” Amanda yelled, while grabbing for a wet rag to stomp out the flames.

  “No! Don’t’ use that one…!” Nate started, but then the rag caught fire, “That’s the one I disinfected the table with…”

  Nate winced, Olga gaped, and Amanda screamed, throwing the rag away… setting fire to the curtains…

  *

  “So, let’s start from the beginning…” Olga glared at a sheepish Nate, while patting the crying mess that was Amanda on her back, “You were sent to serve up the porridge…”

  “At first, yes…” he admitted a tad too fidgety.

  “But then?” Olga prompted.

  “Mother Amanda sent him back to the kitchen because he was holding up the line.” Zoly said from the crowd of spectating kids after a second of silence.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “But she told me to serve every one and equal portion!” Nate defended.

  “Yeah! Not to fill each plate a drop at the time, nutjob!”

  “How else I am supposed to measure…?”

  “SILENCE…! What happened next?”

  “I… ahem… tried to clean the plates left from last night… and… I might have broken a couple of them in the process…”

  “Actually,” a kid with a congested nose sniff, “he broke at least five of them before Mother Amanda went back for him… he was very loud about it too…”

  “They were greasy! You try holding them with only two fingers…!”

  “FORGET ABOUT THE PLATES! What I want to know is, what POSSESSED YOU to poor HALF A BOTTLE OF ALCHOHOL over a wooden table near a fire, UHM?”

  “Well…” Nate twirled his thumbs, “Are you people familiar with the concept of germs…?”

  Olga’s eye twiched.

  *

  “Ouch...”

  “I can’t believe Mother Olga actually use the cane on you and ban you for the kitchen. I’ve never seen her this angry since Lazeter tried to steal a reliquary…” Whispered Uric.

  “Ouch...”

  “What I can’t believe is that we got saddled with watching him… Hey, Nutjob, stop cleaning the same spot already! Do you want to leave a hole on the floor or what?!”

  “Just give me a minute alright! Ouch…! This mark is about to come out…! Ouch…! I can almost feel it…! Ouch…!”

  “Nathan… that’s a crack on the floor…”

  “Oh…”

  “That’s it! I said we ditch this guy and go about cleaning the rest of the chapel ourselves!”

  “Zoly, we can’t do that! Besides, you know it is still his first day. Is normal for him to be nervous. I bet he made a mess because of that. It happened to me too.”

  “You were four and you peed yourself! He almost burned down the freaking kitchen!”

  “I told you that in confidence! Don’t say it out loud…!” Uric pleaded red-faced.

  The two kids started bickering, but Nate wasn’t listening.

  “Was I always this helpless? I mean, I have turn into a child, but even then, cleaning was supposed to be my thing, but now these two kids would do so much faster without me… Well, sure they would do a half ass job, but that’s what you expect from some kids. I am supposed to be the adult and I can’t even wash some dishes without breaking them...” He gazed at the bickering duo, “I wonder…what do they have that I don’t? Can I learn from them?”

  “Hey, Uric, Nutjob its muttering to himself again…”

  “Uh? Do you want to ask something, Nathan?”

  “Just call me Nate.”

  “Sure thing, Nate,” said Uric happily.

  “Actually, I wanted you guys to tell me what to do, so that we can clean faster. You seem to have the hang of things here so…please teach me…”

  Uric and Zoly looked at each other and shrugged.

  From that point onwards, there cleaning efforts went much better. Nate still insisted in double or triple clean some random splotches on the ground and was adamant in arranging back the pews to be perfectly equidistant from each other, but other whys he did his best to follow the kids instruction.

  They were raping up for the day when suddenly;

  *DING*

  -New Skill Available-

  -Do you want to learn

  [CLEAN]? -

  -Y/N-