Chapter 49
――The day after I dug the orange stones out of the cliff.
It seemed our number of residents would increase starting today. She had been drinking last night, after all, so I decided to ask whether she was serious.
"Nyamena, were you serious about what you said yesterday? You were drunk, but do you remember it clearly?"
"It was certainly strong liquor, but I wasn't drunk enough to forget anything. You mean the part about living here, right? I'm serious."
"This is the only house we have, though..."
I took a shed with galvanized steel panels on its walls out of my Item Box and placed it beside the house.
"Whoa! Is this a house made of iron plates?"
"Yeah. I built it so we could take shelter if monsters attacked."
The metal plates were thin, so perhaps it was only a psychological comfort――but it should be enough to keep out something the size of a Black Wolf.
I showed her the inside as well. It was 2.5 meters by 2 meters, or five square meters――about three tatami mats.
"I'll give you the bed you were sleeping in too."
"Are you really giving this to me?"
"I'm lending it to you, remember?"
"Yes, I understand. The rent is expensive, right?"
"You don't have to pay rent if you help Primula with her work."
But when Nyamena heard that, her expression clouded.
"Boss, what exactly are you planning to make me do? I'd do a little something for you, of course――ah! Wait, are you planning to make me your sex slave...?"
"Don't get the wrong idea. If you feel awkward living here for free, one beast per month will be enough."
"Oh, that's all? I was getting a little excited――is that really the rent?"
――Honestly, what was she talking about?
"Yeah――but are you really okay with living in such a small place?"
"Compared with where I live now, this is a mansion."
"What kind of place do you live in...?"
According to her, you needed a guarantor even to rent a room, and without one, you couldn't find anywhere decent.
An attic was still considered relatively good; apparently, some people lived in places like gaps between walls.
Since humans willing to act as guarantors for beastfolk were extremely rare, simply having somewhere to sleep was apparently a stroke of luck.
As for Myaree, she had lived with her companions and paid the rent in advance all at once. That made sense; she wouldn't need a guarantor that way.
The place where Nyamena currently lived was apparently a gap in the ceiling, with only about half a tatami mat of space.
Compared with that, even this shed was quite luxurious...
In any case, the matter was settled. Rather than a housemate, it felt as though the village had gained another resident.
Have you finished talking?
"Yeah, it's settled."
"Fgyah!"
Myaree was still opposed to the idea.
"We have separate houses, and we're not sleeping together, so what's the problem? It's like the village gained another resident."
"Heh, I'd always be available to you, Boss."
Nyamena hugged me teasingly to provoke Myaree and wrapped her long tail around me.
"Gyaa!"
"Hey, don't tease Myaree so much. It's almost time to go to the city."
"Sure thing~"
I had to go to the city today as well to find out the value of the stones and take care of a few other things.
After putting Primula's luggage into my Item Box, I brought out the off-road motorcycle. Primula put on a helmet, and we rode tandem.
The city soon came into view as Nyamena ran alongside us beneath the dappled sunlight.
Normally, we parted ways here, and Primula pulled the cart to the market herself. But today, I had my Item Box.
I took her all the way to the market, where we set out the goods.
When we arrived at the market, people were already waiting at the spot where Primula usually did business.
"Ah, there you are! Hurry up and sell me some."
"Yes, I'll have everything ready right away."
We went behind the stall, and, hiding behind Nyamena, I took the goods out of my Item Box.
"Customer, did you come to buy food from that pot?"
"Yeah, that's the soup for this evening and tomorrow morning. Soup alone costs five small angular copper coins per serving (500 yen), right? It has plenty of meat and vegetables in it too――you can't find soup this delicious anywhere else at this price."
Primula's shop already seemed to have regular customers. It was no surprise that a place with reasonable prices and delicious food would become popular.
Once a shop became popular, harassment usually started too, but with Nyamena there, that shouldn't be a problem.
"Primula, I'm going to the guild. Is that all right?"
"Yes. Thank you for bringing the goods."
I left things in her hands and decided to head to the Adventurers' Guild.
I left the noisy market, went back to the main street, and entered the Adventurers' Guild there.
As always, it was crowded. I asked the busty young woman at the counter—the same one as usual.
"Do you buy minerals here?"
"Yes, we buy them if there's a request for them, but normally you should take them to a tool shop or somewhere similar."
"I see. Thanks."
"You're welcome."
I went to the purchase counter at the very end, where the usual young man took care of me.
"What have you brought today?"
There were seven birds, four Horned Rabbits, and one four-legged beast resembling a badger. I had them all butchered for their meat.
According to Myaree, the Horned Rabbits in the vicinity had been hunted to the point of exhaustion.
This wasn't a game, so they wouldn't automatically respawn after some time passed.
There were also about sixty medicinal herbs, including yesterday's haul.
"Whoa, that's a lot of medicinal herbs. Did you find a good patch?"
He leaned close and whispered. In situations like this, there were usually people listening in to find out where the game had been caught.
If information like that leaked from the guild, it would become a serious liability.
The Merchant Guild's compliance standards were lax, but the Adventurers' Guild seemed a little better.
"Something like that."
"You have a lot of birds, but they hardly bring in any money, you know?"
"The meat is all I need."
"You're an unusual one."
Unless a bird had exceptionally beautiful feathers or was something like the Kokka bird Myaree had failed to catch, it apparently had almost no value.
"So bird feathers are at least useful as a material...?"
"Yeah, for making arrow fletching or stuffing pillows, mostly."
He told me everything would be ready by evening as usual, and gave me a claim ticket.
I gave the receptionist a casual farewell and left the guild to visit the old woman at the tool shop.
I entered the tool shop, which was as dim as ever.
"Hey, Granny, are you here?"
"Oh, it's you, young man."
"I see Snowflake written here. Is that your name?"
"That's right."
So it was, then. Snowflake, huh...
"What's with that look? If you've got something to say about my name, go ahead and say it."
"No, no, it's a nice name."
"Hmph――so, did you come to buy something?"
"I was wondering how much this stone might be worth."
I took the rhodonite I had collected from the cliff out of my Item Box and showed it to the old woman.
"Hmm... Two silver coins (100,000 yen)."
"That's all...?"
"It's an uncut stone. Processing it from here costs money."
"I suppose that's true. In that case, I'll keep it rather than sell it."
"Wait a minute! Then I'll give you three silver coins (150,000 yen)!"
The old woman hurriedly raised her offer.
"No, it's fine. I'll just keep it in my Item Box."
"Then one gold coin (200,000 yen)! I can't offer any more than that!"
So in the end, she was offering the same price as Shangri-La's buyback appraisal.
However, since I'd come all this way, if I didn't sell it to her, her service might get worse later.
Maybe I should sell it to the old woman...
"All right, Granny, I'll sell it to you."
"Honestly, you already had a pretty good idea of what this stone was worth, didn't you? How sly."
"Well, something like that. But you were trying to buy it cheap too, so we're even."
The old woman grumbled under her breath, but I received one gold coin in exchange for the orange stone.
Once processed into jewelry, it would apparently sell for five to fifty gold coins (1,000,000 to 10,000,000 yen). That was about the same as in my original world.
"Young man, was that magic tome from last time any use?"
"Yeah. I couldn't use it, but a girl did."
"Oh? At her age? She's got talent. Aren't you going to send her to school?"
The old woman had been sorting her merchandise as she spoke, but she stopped in surprise.
"The subject of the school in the royal capital came up, but she doesn't seem interested. She says she wants to live with me."
"What a waste. If she went to school in the royal capital, she might at least become the mistress of a major merchant or nobleman."
"But I hear most of the students are people like that, so getting admitted from an ordinary background is difficult."
"Well, yes, that's true."
"You can use magic too, can't you? Did you attend a school like that?"
"Yes, a very long time ago."
"Really? Then did you never have a romantic relationship?"
"I did... I was young once... I was called the belle of the academy, you know."
"So you were a peony when standing, a tree peony when sitting, and a lily when walking?"
"I don't know what peonies or tree peonies are, but people often compared me to a lily."
As though remembering her past, the old woman stared intently at the merchandise.
According to her, she had fallen in love with a nobleman's son and even had a child with him. If a noble had taken notice of her, she must have been an extraordinarily beautiful woman.
"What? Then what happened to the child?"
"The nobles took the child away. They gave me a severance payment, and that was the end of it."
She said she had built this shop with that severance payment.
"Noble families have succession disputes and things like that. They probably took the child away to keep track of their bloodline."
"Well, something like that."
A royal or noble bloodline might die out, only for someone to discover that an illegitimate child existed――then the whole country would suddenly be searched for that child.
That was a common enough story. Perhaps they had taken the child away in advance to prevent something like that from happening.
"You really don't know what happened to your child?"
"No, I do. The child graduated from the school in the royal capital, married a noble, and apparently even has grandchildren. One of those grandchildren seems to have graduated from the school too."
"What? You seem to know quite a lot."
"They're a fairly famous noble family in the royal capital, so rumors about them have reached all the way here."
"Don't you want to meet your child?"
"Of course I do, but... I received the severance payment on the promise that we'd never see each other again..."
According to the old woman, the other party was a noble named Marquis Nasturtium.
"Putting the school aside, I want Anemone to learn a little more magic. If you have magic tomes for Explosion or anything like that, I'll buy them even if they're expensive."
"I don't get many good ones, but don't hold your breath."
Having sold the stone, I returned to Primula's stall in the market.
However, there was a new girl inside the stall. She looked about seventeen.
She wore a linen blouse and a navy dress, and had tied her long black hair into braids curled into loops like pretzels.
"I'm back. Who is she?"
"She's an apprentice."
"Are you the young lady's father? It's a pleasure to meet you. My name is Iris."
"Pfft! Hahaha!"
Nyamena suddenly burst out laughing. Well, there was enough of an age difference that calling me her father wasn't entirely wrong...
"I'm not her father."
"What?! Then are you her husband? Please forgive me!"
"Yes, my husband is Kenichi."
"Hey, don't call me your husband..."
"Is there some problem?"
Primula smiled sweetly, and it scared me――I couldn't deny the situation.
"You're going to have her help at the shop?"
"Not only that. I'll teach her cooking and business, then have her open a branch."
I see. It was a franchise system. As expected of a businesswoman, she planned to keep expanding.
"If necessary, we can sever the branch from the main business. So even if Kenichi runs away again, I can chase after him immediately. You don't need to worry."
"You don't need to worry about that..."
Once again, Primula's smiling face frightened me. It looked as though she didn't trust me at all.
Iris could apparently read, write, and do arithmetic. Hiring a child apprentice who couldn't do those things would obviously be difficult.
A shop apprentice would also need somewhere to sleep and eat. Even if I had her live with us, commuting to the city would be a problem.
We could clear a path through the forest and drive her back and forth in a four-wheel-drive vehicle, but that would be overdoing it.
Even so, there was already only about half of the simmered dishes and Linka compote left. It wasn't even noon yet.
"Kenichi, could you lend me another magic-stone stove?"
"Yeah, sure."
When I lent her the cassette stove, she said she would make more food. I took the prepared meat and vegetables out of my Item Box for her, and Primula began cooking.
"Iris, I'll teach you the procedure."
"Yes!"
The apprentice seemed quite eager to learn.
I left things to the two of them and decided to return home for a while.
------◇◇◇------
When I got home, I decided to build a new shed.
Now that I knew the stones could be turned into money, I wanted to mine more, but I had lent Nyamena the shed.
It would be troublesome if something happened, so building a shed took priority. I bought another shed kit from Shangri-La――the same kind as the one I had bought before.
While Myaree helped me assemble the framework, evening arrived.
But Myaree was still complaining.
"Are you still complaining? You said large families were normal among beastfolk, didn't you? Besides, you'll be sleeping separately."
"Ugh, I just don't like her."
"She's not interested in me, so you're worrying too much. Since you get so worked up, she finds it amusing and teases you."
"Mymymymy――"
It seemed they simply didn't get along. But Primula was the one employing Nyamena, after all.
There wasn't much I could say about it.
I put a bed in Nyamena's shed and left three new linen sheets there.
What else did she need? There were built-in shelves――oh, right, a lamp.
I bought a kerosene lamp called a hurricane lantern from Shangri-La for 4,000 yen.
The shed wasn't finished, but that was enough for today. I put the parts into my Item Box and headed for the city.
When I arrived at the Adventurers' Guild, the meat I had commissioned was ready.
"Hey, it's all done."
"Thanks as always."
"We agreed not to say that."
I couldn't believe that joke worked in another world too.
I collected the meat, shoved it into my Item Box, and headed to the market.
When I asked Primula, who was preparing to close the stall, she said she planned to bring Iris, the braided girl, home with us.
"A welcome party for the new employee?"
"Yes. I also need to teach her how to prepare ingredients and keep double-entry bookkeeping records."
Primula seemed intent on training Iris as a leader, then having her educate the other employees when they opened a branch.
Things were moving forward smoothly and efficiently. It was completely different from my own haphazard approach.
"But how are we going to take her with us? My bike only carries two people."
"I'll carry her on my back."
"Ah, we can do that."
When we had held a drinking party by the riverbank before, one of the beastfolk had carried me on his back and run around normally.
Carrying one girl shouldn't be a problem.
"Aaaah!"
It was already evening, and the spaces between the trees in the forest had grown dark. Iris was screaming from Nyamena's back as she raced through the darkness.
She was going at quite a speed.
Beastfolk could probably see in the dark, but it must have been terrifying for an ordinary human. It was like driving down a road at night without turning on the headlights.
We left the forest and arrived home with Iris's screams still ringing in our ears.
"That was terrifying..."
"There, there. Good work."
"Um... Sir, what is that bike?"
Iris stared intently at the idling off-road motorcycle, its headlight shining brightly and illuminating the road ahead.
"This is my personal bike, powered by magic. Don't tell anyone about it."
"I-I understand."
Iris put her feet together and gave a small bow.
"Nyaa! Fgyah? More people are moving in?!"
Myaree came out of the house, raised her tail, and stared at Iris.
"No, no, she's a shop assistant Primula hired. Apparently, there's a lot she needs to teach her."
"G... grrmyu~"
"Don't be so wary."
Now that everyone was here, I decided to start cooking. I made our usual soup and wondered what to prepare for the main course.
I occasionally wanted to make something unusual――perhaps I should try okonomiyaki, a staple from another world. It was simple enough.
All I had to do was chop up meat and vegetables, mix them in, and cook them.
But okonomiyaki called for cabbage. I bought cabbage from Shangri-La――10 kilograms cost 4,000 yen.
Thin-sliced pork would probably be better than bear meat too.
I got started on the okonomiyaki.