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By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 5 - Chapter 39




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Chapter 3 Episode 39: The Final Night

Dawn arrived after the magnificent festival, and Gimul was getting back to everyday life. Decorations remained on the streets, but I expected those to be cleared out within the next couple of days. Most of the festival stands were gone, as it seemed that their owners had left town already.

“I’m sure all the tourists are heading home now, so the southern gate must be packed,” the guard at the northern gate said as I passed through. Then I headed down to the stage.

“We’re reusing these parts, got it?!”

“Understood! I’ll just disassemble them!”

I received orders from the Semroid Troupe’s chief of large devices as I helped take the stage apart. I was pretty good at construction work, but this was a pretty different sort of experience, so I took it as a chance to learn. Simply by taking these objects apart, I could come to understand their structure to some extent.

“Excuse me, what’s this screw-like pillar?” I asked.

“It’s a stage device, so it’ll be reused. You use it by turning that handle on the lower end, and it raises whoever or whatever’s on it into the air. We didn’t use it this time around, though.”

“I see.”

There were hidden devices that couldn’t be seen from the outside, so that was pretty interesting.

“Boss.”

“Dolce? What is it?”

“A guard’s here to talk about the soap theft from the other day.”

“Got it. Sorry, I need to go.”

“Yeah, I heard. We’ll be fine, do what you need to do.”

“Thank you.”

Dolce and I headed down the path back to the store, passing many customers on the way there. It had only been a day since all the work we had to do at the festival, but the laundromat was open as usual. I considered closing the laundromat for a day, but the housewives said their laundry was piling up after all the prep work for the festival, so I decided to leave the place open to meet the demand. To make up for it, I was planning to hold a party for everyone at night.

It seemed like I made the right decision, since the line was twenty percent longer than it would normally be in the morning. Not only that, but Arnold was standing in line. The Founding Festival was held every year, so they had decorative cloths and flags that they reused for each occasion. Most years, somebody would sort out what needed to be thrown out and what could be washed for later use, then wash it themselves before putting it back in storage, but this year they decided to use my laundromat. They thought it would be more efficient and cost-effective, apparently. Arnold was here to test our services on his own clothes first. The results were yet to be determined, but maybe this would give us a big and unexpected client.

When I entered the reception room, there was a guard sitting on the couch. He stood up, greeted me, and got straight to business.

“Regarding the soap theft from the other day, the culprit has been caught. Is this your soap?” the guard asked, reached into a package next to him, and pulled out the net with the soap inside. Not that I didn’t appreciate everyone’s hard work in retrieving this, but I wasn’t especially expecting to get it back.

“Oh, stolen goods aren’t always found, of course,” the guard said. “The culprit in this case got caught in the act of pick-pocketing someone yesterday. When we searched the culprit’s lodging, we found this. This crime had already been reported, so we questioned the culprit about it, and they confessed.”

Lucky me. I decided to pray to Gain and the other gods for this later. The guard wanted me to sign something confirming that this was my soap, and I was taking it back. So after reading it over, I wrote my signature.

“That will be all, thank you,” the guard said with a smile, took the document, and hurried away. The guards were evidently pretty busy.

After the guard was gone, I heard Fina humming and carrying luggage into the store.

“Seems like you’re in a good mood,” I said to her.

“Ah! Boss, when did you get here?”

“Just now. The guard left.”

“Oh, right, that guard...”

“Did he intimidate you?”

“A little bit. Were you listening to me just now?”

“That was Prenance’s song, wasn’t it?”

Fina blushed. Her humming sounded great, so I didn’t think she had any reason to be embarrassed. Now I was wondering if something happened between them.

“Oh, right, listen to this, Boss,” Fina said. “I was just taking orders a minute ago, and tons of customers asked if we were still selling barley tea. They loved that tea. We were never able to sell our crops, so the fact that people like the tea made from it is kind of nice.” That was the whole reason she had to move to the city to work in the first place, after all.

“How about if you keep selling that tea, then?”

“At this store?”

“At your village. If the crops don’t sell as crops, you can manufacture them into something to sell instead.”

That was easier said than done, since it left the question of what to manufacture those crops into and whether it would sell, but now we had people asking for barley tea. That meant there was at least a little bit of demand.

As an aside, 70% of the drink sales from yesterday came from the barley tea. Some people kept coming back to buy it multiple times. Those were some remarkable results after only two days of sales, so if we had a proper avenue to sell the tea through, maybe we could create more fans.

The village would grow the crops from which to make the tea. Then it just had to be processed and sold somewhere. If nothing else, it would at least mean the village didn’t waste as much barley and give them some income. If necessary, I could also write a letter of introduction to Pioro for them. The barley tea for the festival was made by roasting barley from Fina’s village. They could presumably make it in their village as well, and if they worked with the Saionji Trading Company, it seemed like it could work out. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself, but I at least thought there was a non-zero chance.

“We’ll have to think about how much barley needs to be harvested, among other things, I’m sure,” I said.

“The village grows a few different types of crops each year in case disease spreads among one of them. Barley is thirty percent of what they grow, but they should be able to grow more starting next year. But you really wouldn’t mind if they sold it at the village?”

“I feel like I said something like this to someone before, but while I have a lot of ideas, it would take considerable work to execute them all myself. My goal right now is to prepare to return to my home village, so I don’t have time to get involved in selling barley tea.”

But there were customers asking for barley tea, and there was a village that wanted money in exchange for barley. That being the case, leaving this business in the hands of the girls’ village and the Saionji Trading Company seemed like it would be for the best. Better than waiting for me to do anything with the idea, at least.

“We discussed the idea of other girls from the village coming to work here before, but if the village turns a profit from this, some of them may decide against it,” Fina said.

“Nobody’s been hired yet anyway. It’s fine if only the ones who want to come to the city work here. If that doesn’t leave us with enough employees, I can hire from somewhere else. I would hate to make someone work here if they didn’t want to, so if some people want to stay in the village, I think that’s a good thing. Best to spend time with their families while they can, after all.” As long as they sent me tea leaves sometimes, I would be satisfied.

“Boss, should I send a letter to my father about this? I can have the village think about it.”

“Of course, that’s fine. I’ll tell the Saionji Trading Company that this is something we’re considering and leave it at that. We can take our time with this.”

“Fina! What are you doing?!” Jane shouted.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Fina replied. We ended up talking too much on the job.

“Sorry, Jane, I was talking to her,” I said. “Sorry to you too, Fina. We’ll discuss this more later.”

“Got it!”


I parted ways with them, then decided to get back to disassembling the stage.

That night, after the stage and the stuff from my store had been moved out of the food court, we gathered together for a party.

“I’m hungry! Mom, I want—Gwuh!”

“Shut up already.”

Even the exchanges at the start of the party were much like at the last one. The celebration began with laughter everywhere.

We used food from the stands last time, but this time we had different dishes that utilized our leftover ingredients. For example, Chelma made a hearty soup full of the sausages for the hot dogs and the vegetables for the stir fry.

As for myself, I provided shio yakisoba. The noodles and vegetables came from the ingredients for the lee miang. I also used chicken soup and added some lamon juice, then seasoned it with salt and pepper to make my special broth. Then I boiled it on an iron plate I produced with alchemy, and poured the noodles and vegetables inside. Eventually, a nice aroma wafted from the pot.

“Mm, that smells good! I’ll take one big helping, please!”

“Me too!”

“Got it!”

After Maiya and Rick were drawn in by the smell, more and more partygoers came up for soup. I offered some to everyone.

“Sorry I kept you! Has everyone gotten some now?”

“Still seven more to go,” said Fay.

“Ten more, if you include us,” said Lilyn.

“Got it! Then let’s make this the last of it.”

I made ten more servings of shio yakisoba, including some for Fay and Lilyn, who had been helping me out. And of course, I remembered to make some for myself. Finally having time to eat, I looked around and wondered where to sit.

“Boss!” Carme shouted. He was with Serge and Prenance. I decided to go mingle with them.

“Welcome.”

“Come on over.”

“Let’s start with a toast. But what shall we drink?”

“Let me think about it.”

There were other children my age present, so I decided to go with barley tea.

“Good job with the festival, everyone. Cheers!”

“Cheers!” everyone said in unison.

The fragrant tea felt refreshing as it went down my throat. It was nice.

“Whew, now it really feels like the festival is over.”

“Yes, but for us, this is also the beginning,” Prenance said.

“Prenance, you’re going to a new town now, aren’t you?”

“Yes, we will be setting off for a town called Dobanan. A festival will soon be starting there.”

“Already on your way to the next festival? That sounds rough.”

“At least at this festival, everything from a place to stay to a place to perform was prepared for us in advance, so it wasn’t so bad.”

People who made their living performing had to leave one town as soon as their work was done if they wanted to make it to the next destination and secure a good location in time. And if they failed to find an inn, they were forced to sleep in their carriage.

“Wouldn’t you have been better off leaving earlier?” I asked. “You didn’t have to come to the party.”

“Don’t worry, we have time to spare. Besides, thanks to our contract with the Morgan Trading Company, we can easily get an inn and a stage now.”

“I’m having the Semroid Troupe advertise the music boxes, so I want them to secure the best location possible for their work,” Serge said. “I got in contact with my branch store in Dobanan and told them to reserve a location.”

“I see. That makes sense,” I said.

“We’ve sold out of all the music boxes we had already, so I expect good things to come of this. Speaking of expecting good things, I heard something about plans to put this barley tea on sale soon.”

“Huh? Did Fina tell you that?”

“Serge came and asked me what I thought about the demand for barley tea, and whether it’d turn a profit,” Carme answered. “I told him that you’ve given permission to sell it. Not that we know whether the village will agree to the idea, but the girls seem intent on convincing them.”

“So how profitable do you think it’ll be, then?”

“I think it’d have to go for much cheaper than black tea, but that means more availability to the masses. Going by the sales from our food stand, it should be well worth selling. At the very least, we probably have nothing to lose. Assuming that you get the Saionji Trading Company on board, I believe this will be quite the business opportunity. But I’m no expert on the food industry.”

“I agree,” Serge said. “Knowing Pioro, I have no doubt that he’ll agree to your proposal. He isn’t a man who’d turn down a sales opportunity placed right in front of him.” Hearing that from these two was a relief.

“A drink that happened to sell in one small corner of a festival that goes on to save a village? You could write a song about that,” Prenance said, offering a different perspective. “Stories of being saved by someone or something are popular all over the world. It’d be hard to stray too far from the audience’s preferences, so we often use such subjects. But basing a story around a drink would be rather original. Could I write a tale about barley tea?”

The discussion took an unexpected turn. I wasn’t sure what to think about that request. “As long as you don’t attribute the story to me in any way, I don’t mind,” I said. “Aside from that, you should talk to Fina, Jane, and Maria about it. It’s their village that’ll be selling the tea.” I just deferred entirely to other people for that decision.

“Then I’ll make haste with that. Excuse me,” Prenance said and left the table, then immediately found the girls and began to chat with them.

“I guess he was serious. Maybe he’s drunk.”

“I don’t believe he drinks that much, though,” Serge said.

“Well, we’ll see what happens,” I said, having no clue what would happen.

“Ryoma.”

“Oh, hello, Maiya.”

“This’ll be our last night together. Want to put on a show with us?” A few members of the troupe were gathered where the stage had been. If this was going to be the last time I saw them, it seemed like a fine idea.

“Right, I’m going to go do that, if you don’t mind.”

“Good luck, Boss,” said Carme.

“I look forward to it,” said Serge.

Introduced as a new sword dancer, I unveiled the results of my training. Each time I cut the firewood in time with the music, I received applause. When one song ended, there was even louder applause. Caught up in the moment, I took out my guitar and played a bunch of music from anime that airs on Sunday evenings and Saturday mornings. I had a merry time with the troupe, creating some final memories before we parted ways.



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