She's An Ugly Duckling

Chapter 1

The Elite Customer At The Brothel

In the spring of Elswood, the cherry blossoms covered the streets of the busy town in shades of pink, sprawling its delicate petals on the roads and over the sleepy roofs of buildings.
One such petal flew gently in the spring's breezy air and landed on the nose of a person resting lazily by the windowsill of her usual abode. The tickling petal rendered her to sneeze rather very loudly, enough to scare the wits out of the white ball of fur snoozing peacefully by her side. The cat, startled, shuffled around its owner then purred before heading back to sleep again.

Amori Kai, gazed at her cat apologetically, thinking that the God of Cats would be grinding their teeth at her every time she scared the poor cat because of her ear-banging sneezes.

Amori Kai soon followed suit, and decided to take the forth nap of the day, although it was just past noon. For her nothing was more pleasurable than sleeping on lazy days like these, but the only problem was the long sunlight hours and short nights in spring and summer. Therefore it goes without saying that Amori Kai hated summers from the depth of her heart.

The second enemy of her frequent naps were those girls that often come to trouble her in her room when they have nothing better to do.

The brothel in which she and many attractive maidens resided in was run by Amori Kai's maternal aunt, Clarisse. Her aunt had taken care of Amori Kai after her sick mother left the four year old child with her aunt, while breathing her last on her death bed. Clarisse adored her elder sister, and therefore gave her word to look after Amori Kai until the girl would get married, but to this day Amori Kai hadn't married and lived like there was no tomorrow, and frankly, Clarisse was now having a pain to keep her and feed her for the past few years.

The brothel had twenty five maidens, including Amori Kai, and the only difference between her and the other twenty four women was that Amori Kai was unattractive, or to be put bluntly, ugly.
After living twenty years with the same face, Amori Kai had gotten used to being called ugly and at this point she listens to the teases from one ear and throws it away from the other. It hardly ever bothered her because she did not think it was worth enough efforts to fret and wail over ones unfortunate appearance, and besides she was too occupied sleeping the entire day and night. Then when was the time for her to actually care..?

Also because of Amori Kai's looks, she was hardly chosen for a one-night and earned the least in the brothel. To sum up, she was chosen only twice in her entire job at the brothel. Hence Amori Kai couldn't fetch enough cash, and it was becoming a burden for her aunt to keep feeding her at the brothel.

When questioned by her aunt when she would marry, Amori Kai who was oblivious to her aunt's miseries regarding herself, would casually reply that which kind of rich and handsome man of Elswood, in his right mind would marry her after seeing her appearance, and after knowing she serves at a brothel. Then Amori Kai would laugh her belly out thinking of that scenario happening, and leaving her aunt in despair, with Clarisse also wanting to say that she should forget about the 'a rich and handsome' part because that was building castles in the air, and she should just find 'a' man...

The door of the room in which Amori Kai was soundly asleep, flung open with a bang and this time both the cat and its owner woke up so frightened, their body and souls seemed to be separated. One couldn't imagine maidens of a brothel that looked so fragile like the small laurels could have the strength of a bull when it came to getting their daily means of entertainment.

"Kai ! Wake up sleeping beauty !" One of the girls shouted. Ayra was younger than Amori Kai by two years and one of the jewels of the brothel, also someone who fetched Clarisse a thousand fold of cash than Amori Kai did.