Chapter 19
To be honest, I thought people would more or less follow the rules if we at least pretended to be trying to control things.
I was mistaken.
At dawn the next day, there were even more people in front of the main gate.
This time, it wasn't just servants who had come.
There were stewards, attendants, coachmen, and even someone who looked like a mercenary, all sent by various houses.
Anyone could tell they were people hired to hold places in the reservation line.
They spread blankets along the road in front of Monbel Manor, lit small braziers, and sat there watching one another's positions.
I looked out the window and said quietly,
“Let's drive them all away.”
Marie blinked.
“All of them?”
“Yeah.”
“Those people are from noble houses.”
“Whether they're from noble houses or not, anyone sleeping rough in front of someone else's house is homeless.”
Uncle Bernard said with an awkward expression,
“Kyle, you're right, but responding too harshly could be perceived as an insult by the various houses.”
“Then we'll drive them away with dignity.”
“How?”
I thought for a moment before answering.
“Tell them Maison Monbel welcomes guests who come to dine, but drives away anyone loitering in front of the manor.”
Marie said quietly,
“Is that dignified?”
“I put ‘Maison Monbel’ at the front.”
“Is that all?”
“Yeah.”
Marie didn't ask anything else.
These days, the girl was learning how to let strange things go without asking too many questions.
It was growth.
I wasn't sure whether it was in a positive direction, but growth was growth.
I went out to the main gate with Uncle Bernard.
The servants in front of the main gate all looked at us.
They all had murderous looks in their eyes.
Some had the exhausted madness peculiar to people who had held their places all night, while others were already in battle formation because nine in the morning was almost here.
I took a breath.
“Starting today, waiting in front of the manor's main gate is prohibited.”
A murmur immediately arose.
One of the stewards stepped forward.
“What does that mean? We are waiting for our turn to make a reservation properly.”
“If you want to wait properly, go down to the village.”
“The village?”
“Yes. Anyone loitering near the manor will be driven away. No tents, no blankets, no braziers, and no duels. Duels are doubly forbidden.”
“But didn't you say reservations would be accepted at nine in the morning!”
“That's right. We only accept them at nine in the morning. So until then, you can wait in the village. Stay at an inn, eat at a restaurant, or pass the time in a tavern—do as you please. Just not in front of the manor.”
The expressions of several servants twisted.
A man who had come out of the waiting tent belonging to House Kalden said in a low voice,
“Are the duke's people not exempt?”
“No.”
“Can you handle the consequences?”
I looked at him.
“What we can't handle isn't guests. It's garbage.”
“Garbage?”
The man's expression instantly hardened, but I continued regardless.
“If you stay in front of the manor all night, garbage accumulates. It blocks the path for incoming ingredients, gets in the servants' way, and, more than anything, turns the main gate of a house welcoming guests into a marketplace. If you want a dignified meal, wait with dignity.”
I regretted it a little after saying that.
I'd come on a little strong.
But I had no intention of backing down.
If we left things as they were, the servants of noble houses would draw their swords and splash blood in front of our house before we even accepted a reservation.
I was more accustomed to wiping up the blood of meat than human blood, and I wanted to keep it that way.
A brief silence passed.
Surprisingly, the first to react was the steward of House Reinfeld.
He pushed up his glasses, then quietly bowed his head.
“Understood. We'll wait at an inn in the village.”
Once he stepped back, the other stewards' expressions changed.
When one high-ranking house accepted a rule, the rest would look for a way to win within that same rule, if only out of pride.
House Kalden looked displeased, but apparently they didn't want to start a rumor that someone from the duke's house had been thrown out in front of a baron's gate.
In the end, people began gathering their things one by one.
Blankets were folded, small braziers extinguished, and tents taken down. The road in front of the manor slowly emptied.
Marie muttered quietly behind me,
“Wow, you really drove them out. Is everything going to be okay now?”
“No.”
I looked at the road below the manor.
The servants from the noble houses were filing down toward the village.
“The village is going to be fucked now.”
I was wrong.
The village, on the contrary, began to overflow with vitality.
There was a small village below Monbel Manor.
It had originally been the center of the baron's territory, but as the family declined, the village had declined with it.
The inn was run-down, the tavern had few customers, and the bakery seemed to bake more sighs than bread.
But once all the people waiting for reservations went down there, the situation changed.
The servants from the various houses didn't simply sit on the roadside and wait.
They had to maintain appearances, so they rented rooms at the inn, and when there weren't enough rooms, they even rented the shed beside the stable.
They bought breakfast at the bakery, passed the time at the tavern, and bought blankets, ink, and paper at the general store.
One house even paid a village boy to run to the manor just before nine in the morning and check the positions in line.
Once the rumor spread, the village children suddenly became professional reservation-line runners.
It was fucking absurd.
“Kyle.”
Elysia said as she looked down toward the village through the window,
“There are more people in the village now.”
“Yes.”
“The bakery lady was smiling today.”
“Because business is good.”
“Because of us?”
“More precisely, because of our reservation slots.”
Elysia was silent for a moment.
As the Monbel family declined, the village must have been dying along with it.
The farmers weren't getting fair prices for their produce, noble customers had stopped coming, and even the merchants who supplied the manor had dwindled in number.
But now, because of one strange restaurant, the servants of noble houses had begun coming to spend money.
A restaurant wasn't just a place that sold food.
When people moved, money moved too.
It had been the same in my previous life.
A famous restaurant could revive the businesses in an alley, or, conversely, suck away all the customers and kill the surrounding businesses.
Maison Monbel was unintentionally pumping blood through the village economy.
The problem was that someone had noticed the smell of blood.
Three days later, Count Klever came to visit.
This time, he had the face of someone who had smelled money, not someone who had come to collect a debt.
“Miss Monbel, Kyle Prat.”
The moment he sat down in the parlor, he got straight to the point.
“There seems to be a shortage of lodging in the village.”
“You already looked into that?”
“Wherever money is moving, one must investigate.”
Count Klever was a gourmet, but fundamentally, he was a man who moved money around.
There was no way a man like that would sit still after seeing the servants of noble houses and the people waiting for reservations crowd into the village.
“Two inns aren't enough. The rooms are run-down and don't suit the standing of the guests. For now, servants are staying there, but before long, the nobles themselves or their close retainers may come down the day before. Even more so if Maison Monbel's reservation time is nine in the morning.”
‘This man sees even our rules as a business model.’
Count Klever continued,
“So I have a proposal. I'll build a proper hotel in the village.”
Elysia's eyebrow twitched.
“A hotel?”
“Yes. A place where people sent by noble houses who are waiting for reservations can stay. It will have room for carriages, rooms for servants, and simple meals and baths. We can decide on the name later, but we can make it look like exclusive lodging for those visiting Maison Monbel.”
Marie muttered quietly behind me,
“He's a merchant, too.”
Count Klever smiled at me.
“Of course, I'll take the operating profits.”
“Then what do we get?”
“I'll deduct a portion of the profits from House Monbel's debt.”
The parlor fell silent, and Elysia's expression changed.
This was a new way to repay the debt.
Until now, Maison Monbel had been making money from meal payments, but the family's debt remained enormous.
But if the village lodging business's profits could be connected to debt reduction, that changed things.
One restaurant was bringing a lodging business along with it.
In the terms of my previous life, it was a complementary business.
“What are the conditions?”
Count Klever answered as though he'd been waiting for the question.
“First, the hotel will be built in a location that doesn't diminish the dignity of Monbel Manor. Second, it won't use the name Maison Monbel directly, but it will imply that it's lodging for guests visiting Monbel. Third, separate luxury rooms will be prepared for nobles themselves to stay in. Fourth, guests staying the night before their reservation will be provided with a simple breakfast, but it must not be elaborate enough to be confused with a meal at Maison Monbel.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“I like the last condition.”
“I thought that would be the part you cared about most.”
“If you serve a strange breakfast, Maison Monbel will look cheap, too.”
“So I intend to make it moderately expensive and moderately simple.”
As expected, people who knew the smell of money were easy to talk to.
Elysia thought for a while.
To her, Count Klever was a creditor.
He was one of the creditors who had pressured her, and someone who had come to confirm Monbel's downfall.
But at the same time, he was the first guest to pay 150 gold, and now he had brought a proposal that would get money circulating in the village.
The world was complicated.
Especially when money was involved.
“All right. I'll accept your proposal.”
Count Klever bowed his head.
“A wise decision.”
“But I have one more condition.”
The count's eyes shifted slightly.
“Please, go ahead.”
Elysia spoke calmly.
“Please prioritize hiring people from Monbel Village to work at the hotel, as much as possible. They're the people who have fallen on hard times along with our family.”
Elysia was definitely clever.
She knew better than anyone that this village had been drying up along with her family.
Count Klever looked at her for a moment, then nodded.
“I'll do that as far as possible.”
“It's not a matter of what's possible. It's a condition. If you don't agree to this condition, I won't approve it.”
The count gave a very brief laugh.
“Miss Monbel, you've become a much tougher negotiator.”
“I learned a thing or two from charging so much for meals.”
I pretended not to hear that.
Count Klever eventually nodded.
“Very well. I'll prioritize hiring the villagers.”
And so, the matter was settled.
After Count Klever left, Marie said with a blank look,
“Kyle, is a hotel being built because of our restaurant?”
“You could say that.”
I looked out the window.
Smoke was rising from the chimneys in the direction of the village.
Noble-house servants were lined up in front of the bakery, and the children were running around earning money for errands.
Sound had returned to the old village for the first time in a long while.
Elysia was looking in the same direction.
Her expression was strange.
She wasn't smiling, but she didn't look as though she were about to cry, either.
It was probably the expression of someone watching the things that had been dying as her family declined begin moving again, little by little.
As I returned to the kitchen, I said,
“My lady.”
“Yeah.”
“Now we really have to do even better business.”
Elysia turned to look at me.
“Why?”
“The village economy is riding on what we charge for our meals now.”
Elysia stared blankly for a moment, then burst out laughing.
“That's how you put it?”
“It's true.”
“You're a truly awful merchant.”
“Thank you for the compliment.”
As expected, working with an investor and owner who had a good head for business was great.