By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 5 - Chapter 37

Chapter 3 Episode 37: The Founding Festival Day 1, Part 3

“There, that should do it.”

I was in my store’s break room, which was being kept as cold as a freezer by using a barrier and ice magic. I stared at the ice statues lined up before me. I didn’t see any problems with them, but just to be safe, I called Prenance over.

“Prenance, the ice statues are done. Can you take a look at them, please?” I asked him.

When I visited the room in our employee lodging that was currently in use as a dressing room for the troupe, he was wearing a white robe that was open in the front with embroidery made of gold thread on his chest. It was a relatively simple outfit. Any filth that got on his clothes would stand out, but there wasn’t a single stain. He was a handsome, silver-haired man regardless of his outfit, but that combined with these clothes gave him a mysterious image.

“They’re over here,” I said.

Prenance gasped when he saw them. The room was frigid to make sure the statues didn’t melt, but he didn’t mind the cold at all. He looked at the statues from many angles. “A pair of birds, a plate of fruit, a running beast, and my harp. All exactly as I requested,” he noted.

Tonight’s show was to be centered around a fearsome beast that’s defeated and subjugated by a traveler. The statues were meant to fit the story. The stands for the statues were made of wood. Those were provided by the troupe so they could carry the statues to the stage and easily set them up.

“So they’ll be set up as planned?” I asked

“Yes, we’ll bring them over after the next show. I’m sorry we asked so much of you on such short notice.”

“It’s fine. Anything to make the show better.”

Prenance chuckled. “We’ll have to put on a show great enough to not be overshadowed by these decorations.” He confidently smiled as he checked the statues, then headed back to the dressing room. After that, I left and went to the food stand.

“Hello, everyone. Do you need help with anything?” I asked.

“Boss, please wash the dishes for the lee miang!”

“Got it!”

The leaves we were using to wrap the food were commonplace in this country and often used at food stands, but they didn’t work for soup. Instead, we had wooden bowls for the lee miang. The husband of Mary, one of the housewives helping us out, was a woodworker who was generous enough to make some for us. After the customers finished eating, they returned the bowls to our stand to be cleaned.

“I’ll handle the dishes and the trash!”

“Gotcha!”

I picked up the bags of trash and dishes and entered the laundromat. These were only sorted into bags at the food stand itself since we had professional cleaners in here.

“Here’s some work for you!” I said to my cleaner slimes. This wasn’t the sort of product they usually dealt with, but they were ever vigilant. After I left the garbage with the scavenger slimes in the basement and came back, the plates were all clean.

Then I carried them back to the food stand. The dishes and silverware were already sorted, so I just had to place them in their designated racks.

“Next set, please!”

“Okay!”

But there were tons of customers buying our food, so the used dishes kept piling up.

“This is kind of nuts.”

As I repeatedly ran back and forth cleaning dishes, the line of customers seemed to extend a bit.

“Carme! Should I get this line in order?!” I asked.

“Yes! Please do!”

Carme’s clothes and hair were usually neat and tidy, but because of the heat and the nonstop work, he’d taken off his coat and tied his disheveled hair back with a bandanna. Now he looked like the sort of guy you’d see working any food stand. I never thought I’d see him like that, but we were just that busy.

“Master Ryoma!”

“Oh, Serge. Hello again.”

“You seem busy. Some of my employees are free, if you’d like some assistance.”

“Thanks!”

Thankfully, Serge lent us some extra helpers. With their assistance, we set up some ropes to keep the line organized.

“There you are, Boss!”

“Yes?! What is it?”

“Someone just went to the bathroom and said there’s almost no water left in the toilet.”

“No water in the toilet?! Alright! I’ll fix it right away!”

I told our helpers the situation, then left for a bit.

“Excuse me, I’m the manager here. I need to get in here, sorry.”

Thankfully, it looked like the toilet could be fixed in no time. In fact, it didn’t look broken at all. There was no sewer here, so instead I had set it up so water in a storage tank would flow into a big container inside the toilet. By removing the water in the container with a bucket, clean water would pour in to replace it, but the container was currently only half full of water. The problem was just that the storage tank ran out of water. Opening the bathroom to the public presumably made the water run out quickly. I hurried to the tank and used water magic to fill it up until water began to come out.

Now the water was fixed, but then I noticed that the soap in the bathroom had been stolen. I had put it in a net made of sticky slime string and tied it down with a cord the same way I did for the bucket, but someone went out of their way to cut the cord with a bladed weapon so they could take the soap. I made the cord, net, and soap myself, so they were all pretty much free for me, but I figured I should still report this to the authorities. That just gave me yet another problem to take care of.

For now, I replaced the soap, went back to the store to let a cleaner slime clean me up, then got back to work. I wanted to make a more durable cord and net tomorrow, but if the net were much tougher than the old one, it would hurt to use the soap inside it.

“You there!”

“Me?”

While I was thinking about what to do about the soap, a mean-looking middle-aged woman called out to stop me.

“Do you work at a store around here?” she asked.

“Yes, why?”

“This kid entered the lot by himself.” She stepped to the side and revealed a young boy behind her. I had a feeling that I knew what he did. “Seems like he picked up some scent and ended up wandering away from his parents. Sorry, but can you call the guards?”

“Yes, right away. Wait here, if you don’t mind.”

I told Carme about the situation, got them some free barley tea, then ran to the guard station. Festivals and similar events are fun, but the more popular they are, the more hectic they get for everyone working there.

■ ■ ■

Then night came. After 8 p.m., our business hours for the first day came to an end. The excitement at the festival had yet to cool off for some men who were planning to go bar hopping, but most of the women and children were returning home. Most of the customers were gone, leaving just a few people running to us for the final orders. All my employees looked relieved as they cleaned up afterward.

As for me, I was calculating the profits that day and deciding how to divide it up with Sieg, the representative of the butcher store, and Pauline, the representative of the housewives.

“So this is the total profit from today, and this is the cost of all the materials used. Subtracting that cost from the total profit and calculating rewards from that, everyone should get 312 sute. Does that sound good?”

“Sounds right to me.”

“That’s a tidy profit. Everyone should be happy about this.”

No individual item we sold was that expensive, but the housewives helped to keep the cost of materials to a minimum, and we ended up selling a ton of food, so profits were higher than anticipated. Everyone who helped was getting paid three days’ worth of living expenses.

“Thank you for all the help, everyone.”

“No need to thank us,” Pauline said. “We’re getting a reward, after all.”

“When my boys get this money, some of them might want to make this their real job instead,” Sieg said. They both laughed.

“I have to say, that was a crazy amount of people.”

“Sure was. Well, you had shows and Morgan’s new products all in one place.”

“There was a lot to draw people’s attention, and it was probably a good place to take a break, too.”

I had high expectations for tomorrow as well.

“Now, let’s divvy up all this money and go home. Can’t leave those kids unattended.”

“See you tomorrow. I’ll pop in during the break.”

“Okay, thanks.”

They left the room. After saying our goodbyes, I also headed home myself. When I went outside, I found the Semroid Troupe next to the stage. They were all together, but I didn’t hear any conversation, so I wondered what they were doing. They were all just silently looking in the same direction. They were facing away from me, so whatever they were looking at was behind them from my perspective, but it was like they were all mentally in sync. It seemed best that I stayed out of their way, so I waited for a few minutes. Eventually, without warning, they stopped.

“Good work today, everyone.”

“Th-Thank you!”

Maybe I startled them when I showed up. The young man in the back of their group seemed jumpy.

“Ryoma, did you need something?” Prenance asked.

“I was going to say goodbye before I headed home. Were you in the middle of something?”

“We were praying. Look,” Maiya said, pointing to what they were looking at. It was a masked statue covered in many colorful cloths. Each cloth was about the size of a handkerchief, but there were so many that the statue appeared to be wearing many layers of clothes.

“Is this a statue of a god?” I asked. I hadn’t heard of any god like this, personally.

“Not one you see every day, is he? I doubt you’d be able to tell, but this is a statue of Manoailoa.”

“Manoailoa?” That name was included in my knowledge of myths. I never met them before, but they were a god on the same level as Gain and the others I knew. “The god of wind?” I asked.

“Indeed,” Prenance said. “The great Manoailoa takes the form of the ever-present wind and watches over us. Manoailoa is also the god of travel and the performing arts, so many traveling performers worship Manoailoa.”

They would normally all pray individually, but after a big success, the full troupe would come together to pray to Manoailoa.

“What are these decorations?”

“We traveling performers never stay in one place for long. Whether the wind of spring, the wind of summer, the wind of autumn, or the wind of winter, the wind carries us from city to city. These cloths are proof of our travels.”

“So when someone new joins the troupe or we meet someone cool, or when we have a great show, or whenever else we form some great memories, we buy a single cloth in that town,” Maiya said. “We can’t buy too much new stuff while we’re traveling, so we just celebrate our travels that way before setting off on a new journey. We wrap them around the statue to thank Manoailoa for gracing us with these encounters.”

“It’s customary for traveling performers,” Sordio said. “I don’t know when this custom began, though.”

Thanks to Maiya and Sordio’s input, I understood now. There were similar methods for remembering things that people used on Earth, so maybe this was something that traveling performers came up with here generations ago. I thought about that as I watched the troupe clean up the statue.