The days passed, with the maids and butlers working hard every day. They finished their chores and tasks for the mansion early in the day, and then immediately went to the backyard and continued to produce rows and rows of soap and shampoo.
Meanwhile, Michael was busy constructing his clock project.
The hardest part was already over, with most of the gears and mechanisms already produced in his Project Room. He just needed a little bit more adjustments and he’d finally be ready to piece it all together for it to work.
After two more days, he finally made a very rudimentary version of a Big Ben clock.
It was as big as a cabinet made out of wood, with a simple round face at the very center. And even though the hour and minute hands of the clock were just thin rods of metal, it would do its job properly.
As long as nobody looks inside, it looks decent, Michael said, consoling himself.
Since he wasn’t a master craftsman just yet, he could only brute force his way into completing the project. If one looked on the inside, they would see gears and pulley ropes haphazardly jammed inside with no care for elegance at all. But of course, he made sure that all the mechanisms worked as intended. Hopefully.
If it works, then it doesn’t matter how it looks.
The good thing about this clock was that it didn’t have any power source. The bad thing was that he needed to wind up the crank every day, which would slowly lower the weight inside and make the clock hands move and act like a proper clock.
Michael walked to the side and started to wind up the clock by rotating the crank he installed.
DING
A satisfying sound rang out as Michael felt the resistance in the lever increase, signifying that it was at its limit.
This was the moment of truth.
Michael let go of the crank and finally,
TIK…TOK…TIK…TOK…
The rhythmic sound echoed in the clock as the hands ticked down every second.
“It worked!”
Satisfaction gushed over Michael’s face. It was hard to create, but it was worth it.
“Young master, what is that?”
Michael didn’t know it, but there was already a crowd of maids and butlers gathered behind him. Their eyes burned with an intense curiosity as they looked at the giant cabinet that rang out with a rhythmic tik tok sound.
“Listen up, everyone. This is called a clock. It is divided into twelve parts, with each part depicting an hour…”
Michael went into a very long lecture about how clocks worked, but as expected, it was hard for people who had never seen a clock before to understand it. Heck, even people in his previous world had trouble reading a clock even though they knew it all their lives.
“If this hand moves to the next line, it is equivalent to how long a candle lasts.”
Once he equated it to candles, which was how people measured time in this world, they quickly understood the concept.
“I see, young master!”
“Ooooh…another invention from the young master…he’s too smart.”
Unfortunately, they didn’t know how useful a clock was yet. After all, they didn’t have to keep careful watch of their time during their daily life.
That was about to change.
“So, I hereby enforce all of you to only work eight hours a day, and not a second more.”
His words were immediately met with confusion. They didn’t understand why he would impose such strict rules when doing more work would result in more soaps created, which would lead to a better profit.
Michael could have asked them to work all night long to create the soaps, and they would have done so without question. They were under his family’s employ, after all.
But now, Michael wanted them to work barely half a day!
“Young master, why?” the maids asked. “Are you planning on letting go of us?”
They were so used to working long hours and working every second of every day that they thought it was normal.
But in Michael’s world, everyone found out that working too much led to disastrous consequences. People must have a healthy balance of work and life to truly live the way a human was supposed to live. They were not slaves, after all.
Although Michael could have treated them that way and earned a lot of money in the process, he was not going to be one of those people.
As for why, well Michael had one simple reason.
“If I were put in your place, I wouldn’t want to work all day long. That’s it.”
Michael said those words with the same innocence as a child. It endeared him to their hearts all the more for it.
The workers of the Vanderbilt mansion felt a warm sensation wash over their chests. How could they have been so lucky as to serve the only young master to treat them not as just maids and butlers, but also humans?
Some of them wiped the tears from their eyes and chuckled.
“Hehe, young master. We hope you stay with that kind of thinking even in the future.”
“This makes me want to work even harder!”
“Yeah! Let’s create more soaps and keep the young master as wealthy as possible! I’ll have to do it all night if I have to!”
The maids and butlers cheered and immediately went over to their stations to create more soaps.
Michael shook his head in disappointment. They completely missed his point.
Hmm..perhaps the reason they want to keep working is that they have nothing better to do…maybe I should give them something to look forward to after a long hard day’s work…
He sat on his bed and kept on cycling through his ideas. There were a lot of pastimes in his previous life, but some of them required advanced technology.
If I were them, what would I want to do?
Then, the idea hit him. He almost couldn’t believe that he hadn’t thought about it till now.
What were the usual pastimes and relaxation spots he usually saw in anime and television?
Hot Springs!