I decided to redo this chapter 7 since I wasn't totally happy with it.
That strained smile of Ichigo's haunted Rimuru for months after that day. Mostly because it nagged at him almost constantly just how discontent she had seemed to him back then. And if there was one thing that he absolutely wouldn't tolerate- it was a citizen's discontentment.
After all, he wanted her to be happy and to thrive as one of his people and a citizen of Tempest just like everyone else was.
He wanted that so damned much for her that he began to plan various ways to make the girl happy. His first idea was to finally get around to assigning a job for her and her friends.
Which went pretty well, in his opinion.
Chad got a nice job as a babysitter.
One that he would thoroughly be compensated for since Rimuru knew what some of the town children were like.
Rukia and Renji, since they both knew how to use weapons were given the options of being instructors for those who wanted to learn or working under Souei and his team. The couple decided to think over their options since he knew that they were planning to start a family for themselves soon and told him that they would tell him once they were done.
Which was fine with him since he knew how careful one had to be when starting a family.
Once those three were out of the way, all he had to do was figure out what sort of job to give Ichigo. He toyed with the idea of seeing if she wanted to be a babysitter to the village children too. But quickly dismissed it soon after since the poor girl would likely get so frustrated that she might set something on fire like Benimaru had a bad tendency to do.
And that was something that he really wanted to avoid if he could since having one firebug loose in Tempest was more than enough.
So, instead he decided on making her his second assistant. Which he was fairly certain that Shion didn't exactly like because the woman burst into tears and threw a fit right there in front of Ichigo and her friends.
Not to mention whoever happened to be passing by at the time.
And as much as he tried to calm Shion down and explain that having a second assistant meant less of a workload for her and maybe even some free time to herself- it was Ichigo who stepped in and calmed her down.
He didn't even know how she managed to do it! All that he knew was that Shion was happy again once she finished. And as far as he was concerned the girl was worth twice her weight in gold for that incredible, and somewhat superhuman feat.
In fact, for saving him from Shion's tantrum, he was already planning to shower her in all kinds of nice things. But he digressed.
Since he had decided that Ichigo would be his second assistant, her training began immediately. Which basically meant that he grabbed her and dragged her out of her home while she was still wearing her PJ's.
In hindsight, he hadn't meant to do that at all, but he had felt that escaping while Shion was still happy was for the best. Besides, it wasn't as if he'd just dragged her out of a bath in nothing but a towel.
She was wearing a nice, modest matching set of silk pajamas that could almost double as a darker version of Shion's own work outfit. Though she didn't have any shoes on at all since he'd apparently forgotten about that too when he'd dragged her off.
One thing he could honestly say about the girl though, was that after barely half a day or working with her- she had a much better work ethic than Shion did. She was also better at keeping track of things too. Especially the things that Shion seemed to forget herself.
And by the time that lunch rolled around, he was totally convinced that he had made the right call for her new job. At least until Shion served him his lunch and refused to let his escape until he ate it.
He was pretty sure that he was going to die again when Ichigo interrupted, he and Shion's arguing to set something down in front of him. He glanced down at whatever it was and nearly burst into tears when he saw food. Normal, non-lethal, acidic, from the pits of hell, food!
"That's sweet, my underling thinks that our lord will enjoy her cooking." Shion said in a slightly angry/mocking tone. Rimuru didn't bother to say anything right then about her venomous words since he was too busy checking out the simple affair laid out for him.
Unlike Shion's cooking, Ichigo's looked like something out of an actual restaurant. A nice one at that. And when he tried a small bite of it, he honestly did weep this time.
How could he not? It had been so long since he'd eaten such wonderful food! But more than that, the girl's cooking gave him a small reminder of what the food in Japan was like. So of course, he loved it.
He loved it so much that he started to stuff his face as fast as he could and nearly took poor Shion's hand off when she tried to take the stuff from him. Which caused the woman to start crying again. But unlike her usual tantrums she took this one outside.
He knew this because he practically heard a bunch of people screaming and fleeing the vicinity. Not that he could blame them any. He'd run too if Shion decided to chase after him while she was crying.
But whatever.
"Ichigo, this food is fantastic! I didn't know that you were such a great cook." He said once he'd finished off his food and set his dish down on the table again as it suddenly occurred to him that he doubted that she's had any time to cook. "Hey, where did this food come from anyways? I dragged you off so early this morning, and we've been really busy. Far too busy for you to take the time to do any meal prepping."
"You didn't ask," She deadpanned as she took a seat on his right and rested her cheek in her palm before explaining, "And technically your right. About not having any time to meal prep anything. Luckily for you, I have the peculiar habit of excessive cooking and tend to make a week's worth of meals almost daily. Just in case something happens and I'm too busy to do it later."
"Oh, well that explains that. But how'd it get here?"
"Renji dropped it off before leaving with Rukia a few hours ago."
"Ohh." He said as he sat back in his chair and thought, Well that explains everything. "I'm guessing that they were worried that you would skip lunch while working."
Ichigo shrugged and didn't reply. So, he dropped the subject and then asked her if she was going to eat anything. She shook her head and he sighed and told her that it was time to go back to work then.
Work was still hectic once they got back to it, but it also moved a bit faster too. So much so that he totally lost track of time and didn't realize just how late it was getting until he was finishing up a pile of paperwork and Ranga appeared and told him that it was late.
Checking one of the clocks that he'd acquired from one of his trips out of town, he blinked at the time and then screamed and then looked over at Ichigo.
The poor girl had been on her feet for literally the entire day without much rest or any breaks at all! He was a terrible person! Not only that, but it was so late that it had passed midnight ages ago and was now almost three in the morning.
What the hell? Why hadn't she said anything?! Even Shion knocked off long before this. Hell, the woman went home whenever she damn well pleased, regardless of his many complaints.
"I-I'm so sorry Ichigo. I-I didn't mean to keep you so late." He stammered out anxiously as he wracked his mind for anything else that she hadn't done aside from complaining.
He paled a bit once he recalled that she hadn't eaten lunch earlier. And she had even refused to eat anything for dinner too once it had rolled around.
Internally panicking because he'd never really worked with a girl/woman that didn't complain, take breaks, or eat when it was time to, he started to really freak out since that wasn't something that was normal for most humans.
"Calm down, you didn't do anything wrong." She said as she reached out and lightly pinched his cheek to get his attention.
And oh boy did she have it.
"But your feet must be killing you though! And what about your stomach? It has to be hurting since you didn't eat at all today." He said worriedly as he tried to figure out what to do.
He wound up coming up with the brilliant idea of scooping the girl up in his arms, startling her, and carrying her over to a chair so that she could sit down while he ran to grab her something from the kitchen to eat. Then once he returned and handed the food- a simple sandwich since he didn't know anything about how to cook- over. And then he wound up hovering over her just to make sure that she actually ate it.
"Do you normally hover like this over people?" She asked him in-between bites.
"Only when I know that I've made a mistake." He muttered in a slightly angry tone, though his anger wasn't directed at her since it was directed at himself for being so careless.
She was human, after all. Fragile. He needed to remember that better.
She made a humming sound and popped the rest of her sandwich into her mouth, and he was fairly sure that she swallowed it without bothering to chew it any. And as much as he wanted to lecture her on chewing her food properly, he knew that she wasn't a child.
Besides, he'd learned long before now that lecturing rarely did any good anyways. Especially when people tended to ignore them.
Satisfied that she at least wouldn't starve to death at the moment, he gave her a small, brittle looking smile and held his hand out to her. "Come on, I'll walk you home." He said gently but firmly.
She seemed to understand that he didn't want to wind up arguing with her, so she took his outstretched hand and let him lead her to the door.
The walk to her home took them barely ten minutes since everyone was asleep at the moment and everything was quiet and peaceful. But to Ichigo...Rimuru imagined that with her feet hurting, that ten minutes probably stretched out into an eternity of utter hell.
He'd offered to give her a piggyback ride back to her place when they had been leaving the office. But she had shot him down simply saying that she could walk since it wasn't going to kill her any.
Still, he felt badly for her and did his absolute best to get her home quickly.
And the second that they reached her home, he didn't even give her a second to speak, he ushered her through her door and then scooped her up again and carried her to her bedroom where he put her down on her bed and told her to go to sleep. He would give her tomorrow off so that she could recover, and then before she could say anything or even argue- he walked out of the room.