Botsuraku Youtei Nanode, Kajishokunin wo Mezasu - Chapter 65

Chapter 65

Vol. 4 Chapter 7

“Is this the blacksmith within the school?”

“………. Probably not.”

Just when I thought someone with proper etiquette knocked on the door this time, the topic of their conversation was odd as usual.

I do not recall opening a smithy and I am still only a student, so I closed the door.

“Please wait a minute! I am here to request a job! I heard this place had a skilled blacksmith.”

Skilled blacksmith?!

Alright, I guess I will listen to what they have to say.

The one I invited into the room was Jeremy Toariz, a third year of this school.

He is very a sociable and simple person. At the very least, I still have a good impression of him.

I do get many peculiar visitors so I ended up developing this weird habit of being on guard.

He is an upperclassman after all so, to not be rude on my part, I served him black tea.

Definitely not because I was praised.

“Nice to meet you, I heard there was a student who built swords in this dorm room.”

He said so, sounding doubtful, but as he looked around and saw the surroundings, I saw that doubt lifting.

I am only doing this as a hobby so he is probably misunderstanding something.

“It looks like the rumour is true. From the looks of your workshop, you seem to be doing this everyday.”

 
“Yes, at this stage it is only still a hobby though.”

“I see….”

Jeremy-senpai looked a little embarrassed after knowing the truth.

He realized he was being impertinent.

He looked like a guy with common sense so that was a relief.

“But even still, there were many eye witnesses. That there is someone who makes swords in this room and that he is also really good at it. That, even to the untrained eyes, it looks very well-made and strong. After hearing such rumors, I also got a little excited, you see.”

It looks like my evaluation among the upperclassmen is at a certain level already.

While it does make me really happy but inside me, I feel like I am still going through the training phase. So officially accepting a job request really makes me nervous.

“I am Kururi Helan, a first year. A lot of things happened and I ended up studying smithing, but I am still in the training phase and I strongly feel I cannot call myself a proper blacksmith. My teacher did approve of me but I still think that it would be too early to accept customer requests.”

“Really? But you are quite popular. It is by no means a lie. There are other people besides me who have interest in you.”

“Is that so….?”

Nonetheless I do like getting complimented after all.

What shall I do?

“For the time being, I will listen to your request. It all depends on the situation though.”

“I see! Glad to hear that. Please, listen to it!”

It felt like it would draw on, so I served another cup of black tea.

Definitely not because I was praised.

It looks like Jeremy-senpai has an elder brother.

And on top of working at the royal capital, he is a noble who works at the royal castle.

A guy really passionate about his job and quite the stubborn person as well.

He is someone who does not have any hobbies either so even his younger brother, Jeremy-senpai, does not know what he looks forward to in life. People like that tend to like life in itself but, well, I guess that is irrelevant.

And it looks like the stubborn elder brother of his wrote a letter to him after a few years.

He does not have a reliable senpai, neither a cute kouhai nor any friends so he had no choice but to write a letter to his younger brother Jeremy.

 
Jeremy, who had normally thought that having no news of his elder brother was a proof of his well-being, could not hide surprise after receiving a letter.

When he opened the letter in a hurry, inside he found contents that even he, the younger brother, could not comprehend.

Firstly, the letter started out with this one sentence.

‘Recently, I feel this somewhat pain in my heart.’

Jeremy covered his face with his hands.

After reading the contents of the letter, feeling embarrassed instantly, he was lamenting his brother’s awkwardness.

It also came as a surprise at the same time but, as their father is also a stubborn person, he had thought that happiness would also come to his stubborn brother.

And so, his feeling of embarrassment had surpassed that of his surprise.

Being a stubborn person, his brother who was working at the backline, fell in love with a woman in the frontlines, in the Order of Knights.

And that woman is also quite famous for possessing a wild personality and being a skilled knight.

A person who is said to be, in no way, wife-material.

To the extent that someone in the Order of Knights also boasted that -”If there’s a man willing to take her as a wife, I will treat him to a 100 barrels of alcohol as it is obvious that she will be trouble!”

Those two, having very contrasting personalities, met at a very surprising place.

While Jeremy’s brother was in the public bath late at night located in the royal capital, that woman in the Order of Knights came in.

Of course, full naked, on top of that showing no signs of embarrassment as if she had owned the place.

“Th-this is the males’ bath actually….”

“Ah? So what?”

And it seems the woman then went on to wash her body, not caring about Jeremy’s elder brother at all.

And that his brother saw that and fell in love….

Ehh?!

Leaking my surprise out like that, I was relieved to see that Jeremy-senpai had not noticed.

I was appalled that there are people in the world who fall in love in such an unusual way.

 
It seems like his brother normally hides the important parts with a towel even when between men.

Perhaps, rather than seeing it with an erotic glance, it really was an impact strong enough to change his world.

When I said that, Jeremy-senpai also agreed.

“He probably keeps the line between that pretty strong, I think. In my brother’s letter, he wrote how he had met her.”

‘She had not felt shy at all in exposing her body. I felt as if I was looking at a War God. Ah, I cannot forget that. Ah, I cannot stop thinking about her. Ah, the world seems to feel kinda hazy. I have probably caught a serious illness. Even the famed doctors of the royal capital gave forced laughs and did not tell me the name of the disease. What shall I do, my beloved brother? Please save your elder brother.’

“Hmm, it looks to be a pretty serious illness.”

“I know, right? It is a quite serious wound. I never thought the day would come where that stubborn brother would call me by the words ‘my beloved brother’…..”

After saying what he had wanted to say, Jeremy-senpai wore a face as if he had just come after seeing a weird monster.

Certainly, being exposed to a whole new side of his brother, I have no doubt that the shock he received is pretty big.

“And so, how did you end up coming here then? I cannot see the link at all.”

“Ah, yes. I almost forgot. And then I gave an advice to my brother. That he could give her some kind of a present. However, this is about my brother. He will surely hesitate to even greet her. He can’t think of an excuse to give her a present so he keeps sending me letters here everyday.”

Jeremy-senpai continued, looking all worn-out.

“‘Oh no, what if she doesn’t like me after I give her a flower? What if she has some other guy she likes?’ -letters with content like this keep getting delivered to me everyday.”

“….You have been going through a lot too, haven’t you?”

“Haa, and so, I told him, ask someone who is well-informed about girlfriends about what you should give her. And so he got to know that she had wanted a sword. And so I told him to just send her a sword then but even after looking at very good products, he cannot bring himself to like them. And so he requested me to choose a nice sword for her.”

“It feels like you have quite the difficult brother.”

“Well, even still, I am quite indebted to him. Moreover, it has been known for a long time that he was hard to handle, so he is probably going through the most tiresome phase of his life now. I would like to at least help him out a bit in this period.”

Seeing how broad-minded and kind Jeremy-senpai was, the feeling to make a sword for this kind-hearted person filled up my heart. Well, correctly, I guess it is for his brother.

For these pure-hearted people, I feel like I should demonstrate the skills I have been polishing uptil now.

“I see, but, is it okay to ask me  for such an important thing? There are probably more skilled craftsmen in the royal capital.”

“No, even from someone I trust quite a lot, I heard that the swords you build are very good. Well, it might be wrong for me to say this as I haven’t seen it myself but, if it is okay with you, could you please accept this job? I really want to see your completed sword too now.”

Taking a sip of the tea, I thought about it once again.

I have already made quite a lot of swords. But this would be the first time making it for a customer. This person would be my first customer, huh?

I feel like it would not be too bad as my first job.

“Very well. I accept this job.”

“I see, I am glad. Is it okay if I pay you later? Unfortunately, I do not have much money in hand right now.”

“Of course, that is okay.”

Shaking hands with each other, we concluded the negotiation.

I think this would be the best form of accepting jobs from clients and making them swords in the future.

To think I would get a customer even before opening up a shop…..

Jeremy-senpai gave me a deadline of one week,

If I have that much time, I can make it pretty good.

It is my important first job.

I should use the metal I have been keeping for a long time.

It is the metal taken from the best ore of Kudan. Being right in the middle of Kudan, that ore was in abundance and the country started mining it with a large amount of money.

It is called the Irumine ore.

The supply being high and the quality being good, it is the most used metal in Kudan.

Long ago, my teacher had told me something-

‘The skill of a craftsman is best seen from the work he does with the Irumine metal.’

The one I have been always using for practice is not bad either. I can probably pour all of my skill into it.

After that day, except during classes, I had been holed up in my room making swords.

I had wasted the materials and rebuilt it many times.

However, I did not use more than what I would receive.

I aimed for 30% profit as I made it.

As I am aiming to do this professionally, it is only natural having this limitation on myself.

Using all of my skill, I built a sword, making it as equal and as straight as I could.

And at the end, I carved my name, Kururi Helan, on the body of the blade.

I made use of the advice I received from Rail.

As long as I am a craftsman, I should be selling my name.

After one week, Jeremy-senpai came by as promised.

As usual, he is a man of etiquette and tried to pay me before I even handed over the product.

That was the wrong order of doing it, so I apologized and brought the sword first.

I took it out from its sheath and showed it to him.

“There is no imbalance on the sides, the front, the breadth or the straight tempered line. I poured all of the skill I could into it.”

Senpai took the blade, brought it really close to his face and gazed at it.

“Excellent craftsmanship. It is glowing as if water is dropping on it. Also, I heard that swords with great balance feel really light to the hand. This is exactly that. As it is a present, I cannot try it out but I am extremely pleased with it.”

“Thank you very much.”

“No, I should be the one thanking you. You did well making something this good in a period of one week. With this, I can push my brother to gift it with confidence. Once again, you have my thanks.”

Leaving the payment, Jeremy-senpai left.

It looked like he wanted to send it to his brother as soon as possible. You can really see his good character from how happy he is for his brother as if it was his own.

And in this manner, I had properly dealt with my first official customer.

That night, I had relaxed too much and stayed in bed for long.

It feels like I have had quite the fatigue built up.

The deadline, expense, demanded skills and experience, and also the huge expectation from the customer.

I feel like I have done something completely different even though I have been making so many swords till now.

I might be advancing through quite a harder road than I had thought. But even still, if I were to ask for a future filled with happiness, I need to push my way through.

Thinking to myself that I would not waste my first payment, I had closed my eyes for the day.

And also, Jeremy-senpai’s brother…. I hope his love life goes well too…..

Proofread by Ranthe