Chapter 2 Episode 40: The New Tamer
The sun had risen to about its highest point.
“There he is!” I exclaimed. I heard that Jeff was supposed to leave soon, but ended up waiting off in a corner of the guild for an hour before I found him. I watched for when it seemed he was done with work, then called out to him.
“Hm? If it isn’t Ryoma? What’s up?”
“I wanted to ask about what we discussed the other day.”
“Oh, that was fast. I thought it might be a bit longer still. Want to go right away, then?”
“Can we?”
“Sure, I was heading to the slums today either way. Besides, my house is in that direction.”
“Then thank you.”
I followed Jeff and helped him shop for food and such along the way. He intended to give it to the denizens of the slums. In Gimul, those who managed to leave the slums tended to help those who remained there in what small ways they could.
“It’s been especially bad lately with how much income has dropped. Look, we’re almost there,” Jeff pointed out. The further we walked, the fewer people we saw, the older the buildings looked, and the more ragged the clothes of the occasional children appeared. They waved and shouted when they saw Jeff, and he responded in kind. They looked serene, like they were pleased to see him. I drew attention too, but I didn’t sense any malice. It didn’t seem like I had to worry about being mugged. Further down the road, we arrived at another old, but sturdy building that was a bit bigger than the rest.
“You here, old man?” Jeff asked and tapped on the door. It opened by itself. I sensed a little magic energy. “Looks like he is. Let’s go inside. C’mon.”
I attended Jeff inside the building, where there was a large and mostly empty room. We passed through another door and found a makeshift desk beyond which a man in his 60’s sat in a large chair.
“You again?” the man sighed and played with his gray hair as he leaned back. “Jeff, I appreciate all your help, but I’m not that old yet.”
“You’re plenty old.”
“I can still stand on my own two legs. That means I’m not old. Anyway, who’s the kid? You want me to look after someone again?”
“I know what he looks like, but he’s an outstanding adventurer. This guy makes more than enough to put food on the table. That’s not why he’s here. He’s got an offer that could even help the slums out.”
“Oh really?” the man asked and looked at me.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Ryoma Takebayashi.”
“No point acting so polite around here. I’m Lible, boss of the Gimul slums. If Jeff’s introducing you, I’m sure you’re worthy of trust, but let me tell you something just in case. You can’t do with this place as you please, all right? If we can stay on good terms, that’d be great,” he declared with great force behind his words. I could see why he was the boss.
“Of course. I don’t want any needless fighting either,” I said. Lible snorted and grinned.
“Not scared, eh? You’ve got guts.”
“You better believe he does,” Jeff interjected. “He’s got my approval for a reason.”
“I see. So what’s this offer?”
“I’ll talk about that,” I said. It was about my store, so it only made sense.
“...And that about sums it up.”
“All right, so you had some ruffians causing you trouble, and you don’t know where they came from. Now you want to find someone you can trust, and that can include someone from the slums; did I get all that? Sounds good to me, as long as you’re paying enough to live on. Hire whoever you want. It’ll mean that much more food and resources to go around for us.”
The discussion ended surprisingly well. I expected them to charge a fee to find employees for me or something, but maybe Jeff’s introduction worked. At any rate, now it came down to gaining the trust of whoever I wanted to hire. Jeff and I left the boss’s house and headed off to see the tamer that Jeff knew. On the way there, Jeff called out to two kids and told them to go get somebody.
“Where are those kids going?”
“You’ll see later.”
When we finally arrived at a building, Jeff violently knocked on the door.
“Hey! Caulkin! I know you’re in there! Come out!”
It felt like I was watching a debt collector. Soon enough, the door was thrown open by a skinny, middle-aged man who had the air of a white-collar worker that was laid off.
“Quiet down, Jeff! You don’t need to knock so much, I heard you the first time!”
“You haven’t come out when I knocked way too many times for me to believe that!”
“Your fault for visiting when I was in the middle of research!”
“Like hell it’s my fault!”
“You’ve never researched anything in your life, what do you know?! Research is about submerging in the deep sea of your thoughts, trying to inspect the transient bubbles of your ideas before they pop. There’s no time to pay attention to anything else!”
“And as a result, you dumped a bunch of money into your useless research, went broke, and ended up here, didn’t you?!”
“Ugh, when you put it that way, yes. Enough about that; what do you want?”
“I was gonna ask if you wanted a job. A taming job,” Jeff said. The instant he heard that, Caulkin blinked.
“A job for me? As a tamer?”
“Yeah, at the request of Ryoma here.” It was only then that Caulkin seemed to notice me.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Ryoma Takebayashi.”
“Sorry, that wasn’t a great first impression. You’re hiring a tamer? For what?”
“Could you just let us inside, Caulkin?” Jeff demanded. Caulkin scratched his head and let us through the door, then closed it behind us. The building had only one room. It was dim, lit only by the glow of a magic stone. Aside from that and a cloth near the wall that I could only assume served as a futon, the room was empty. There weren’t even chairs, so we sat on the floor.
“So what do you want me to do? Sadly, I can’t say I’m that great of a tamer, so I don’t know if I can live up to your expectations. I do think I’m a pretty good researcher, though.”
“What kind of research do you do?” I asked.
“I used to work at a lab, and I focus on the last job they ever gave me,” he said bitterly. “I research slimes.”
“Really?!”
“Yeah, but I couldn’t produce any results, so I got the boot. That was over ten years ago now, but I could never forget about that lab, so I’ve kept up my research. Anyway, why are you looking at me like that?” Caulkin replied self-derisively, but the moment he saw me, he looked confused.
“The lab considered this research unimportant, so it was thrust onto people that the ones in charge wanted to get rid of. That was the case with me. Why are you so excited?”
“I do my own research with slimes.”
“What?!”
Caulkin and I stared at each other in silence for a few seconds, then exchanged a firm handshake.
“My comrade!”
“My brethren!”
“What happened in those last few seconds?!”
“Well, something.”
“Outsiders wouldn’t understand the joy of meeting a comrade who engages in the same research.”
“You’re right, I don’t get that at all.”
Then we heard a knock at the door.
“Another guest? Awfully busy today,” Caulkin grumbled and stood up to go open the door. A man and a woman were standing outside.
“Caulkin? We heard we could get work here. Is that true?”
“I never thought we could get some tamer work, so I hurried straight here!”
“What, Lobelia and Tony? You heard about it too? There’s someone here looking for tamers to hire, and he’s a comrade!”
“A comrade?”
“Does that mean what I think it means?”
“Anyway, come inside!” Caulkin said, dragged them into the room, and closed the door. We each introduced ourselves.
The man, Tony, was 23 years old. He was an excellent tamer, but out of jealousy for his talent, his boss and coworkers took advantage of his sincerity. They blamed him for their failed experiments and scandals to get him demoted. He was then ordered to research slimes, and when he was unable to get results, they used that as an excuse to fire him. I asked why he didn’t work as a tamer if he was so skilled, and apparently the people who ran the guild at his old town withheld work from him. The Tamer’s Guilds had already heard through their information network that he wasn’t to be trusted, so he couldn’t find work as a tamer in any city. He was now working as a miner.
“Have you been to the Tamer’s Guild in this town?”
“The ones in other towns were just awful, so no. I couldn’t make enough to feed my familiars and ended up letting them go, so there’d be no use in it now.”
He came to this city to work in the mines. He gave up on the Tamer’s Guild, apparently. Maybe I could get him a meeting with Taylor at some point.
“It happens,” Lobelia said to reassure Tony. She was 25 years old and worked as a researcher, but got sexually harassed by her boss. She was so focused on research at the time that she never learned how to deal with men, and she was so shocked that she sent her familiar after him. It wasn’t a strong monster, so it only served as a threat, but her boss ignored his own scandal and hypocritically demoted her. She was later placed on slime research, then fired. She now worked at a brothel three days a week, where she did assorted chores and menial work. She also made a living selling mended clothes.
“I see,” I said, now the only one left to introduce myself. As we discussed work, I piqued their curiosity.
“There are slimes like that?”
“I’ve never heard of those before.”
“They have unusual abilities, too.”
I decided to demonstrate. To keep myself clean, I always kept a single cleaner in my Dimension Home. I took it out and started by having it wash my shoes. They were impressed.
“It’s certainly a slime.”
“The dirt from those shoes is really gone. Did the slime eat it?”
“But the shoes haven’t been deformed at all.”
“Hm, it really only consumed the filth?”
Once I proved it was safe, I let the cleaner slime cleanse my body next. I didn’t know whether they were worried or excited, but they watched in silence until it was over.
“As long as I have it out, would any of you like to try it?” I offered. They all expressed interest at the same time, but I only had one on hand, so they had to take turns. It took an oddly long time, but to my surprise, their skin was so thoroughly washed that it was glossier and more vibrant than before.
“I like this more than soap.”
“It does feel refreshing, doesn’t it?”
“I haven’t felt this way in years!”
The grime that they could never fully get rid of living in the slums appeared to be gone. The worse the filth, the more time it took to remove, so it was especially noticeable.
“This is fascinating. Our job would be to run a laundry business with this slime? May we use our free time to do research?”
“With this, we can get back on everyone who looked down on slime researchers!”
“And the pay is much better than what I’ve gotten in the past. I’ll even get to work as a tamer again. I’ll do it, so please give me the job!”
Their passion and intensity was a bit overbearing. I was somewhat hesitant to hire them, but I wasn’t one to talk when it came to passion in this area, so as long as they would remain faithful, they were fine. Our goals were similar, so it seemed like a good enough idea to hire them. After that, I would just need to have my other employees keep an eye on them to ensure they were trustworthy.
“Would this conflict with your current jobs?”
“Nobody’s hiring me right now anyway. My most recent job just finished up, so I didn’t know when my next opportunity would arrive.”
“I was getting same-day pay in the mines, so I can stop whenever.”
“I only have to tell the brothel that I’m done.”
“I see. Can you do math?”
“Of course, for the most part,” they all said.
“Then by all means work for me. I haven’t decided where to open my second store yet, but you’ll have to spend some time learning what to do on the job. Where will you live? You can stay here in the slums, or live in my store.”
“In the store!” All of them shouted at once.
“Then let’s go with that. Now, I’d like to take you straight to my store, but maybe we can do something before that. Jeff, are there any clothing stores around here?” I asked. Not to insult these three, but their clothes were awfully tattered. The cleaner slime washed them up, but they were still full of holes. It was only the high-end stores that had uniforms, while normal stores had their employees work in their own clothes. My store was one of the latter, but I couldn’t have my employees looking like this.
I asked Jeff and Lobelia to go to the nearest clothing store to buy a few pairs of clothes. If there were only men, Jeff could have done it himself, but nobody but Lobelia would have known about women’s clothes. In the meantime, I had to rush back to my store and tell Carme about the new hires.
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