By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 7 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5 Episode 5: Reunion 3

“We’re ready for you,” a new maid announced as she came to the room. Thanks to Araune and Lilian, I felt much more relaxed. It was finally time to see the Jamil family. “Let’s get going.”

We followed the maid. She seemed to be a cat beastkin, and her beautiful, furry tail waved around in front of my face. I carried a box full of gifts through the hallway decorated with vases and paintings which I could only imagine the worth of.

“Here we are,” the maid said and stopped outside a white door, looking to us to see if we were ready. When we showed that we were, she pushed the door open.

“Welcome, Ryoma!” Elise said the moment she saw me.

The room had a large window that let plentiful sunlight in. Elise was waving to me, surrounded by tons of houseplants. She sounded as friendly as ever, much to my delight. But because of that, I completely forgot all the proper formalities. Thankfully that was only for a moment, but it didn’t matter.

“We’re glad you’re here. Let’s skip all the stuffy formalities. Come, have a seat,” Duke Reinhart said. He was standing next to Elise.

“You heard him, Master Ryoma,” Serge said with a chuckle. “Let’s go.”

“Right,” I said. It seemed that all my practice was for nothing. “I’m glad I get to see you again.”

“We’re glad to see you too,” said Elise. “We know from your letters that you’ve been in good health, but it’s best when you get to see someone in person.”

“I worried about whether you’ve been handling life in the city well,” said Reinhart.

“Serge, Pioro, and many others have been helping me.”

The conversation began amicably. Reinhart and Elise greeted Serge and Pioro as well. The maids prepared our tea and teacakes in the meantime, then left the five of us alone.

“This tea is delicious,” I remarked.

“I’m glad you like it,” Elise said. “It’s my favorite brand. Have some tea cakes too.”

“Thank you. By the way, if you don’t mind me asking, where is Reinbach today? I was hoping to see him too.”

“Father?”

“He ditched us,” Reinhart said bitterly.

“Ditched you?”

“A lot of people want to meet with us around this time of year, you see. And most of them simply don’t wish to engage with us the way you do. Some just want to meet with us out of respect, I suppose, but most have ulterior motives. Father didn’t want to put up with it, so he ran off to the Firedrake Mountains and took Sebas with him. He complained that we rely too much on them.”

I’d heard from Taylor about the Firedrake Mountains before. It was the dangerous zone where Reinbach made a contract with a divine beast. An ordinary merchant couldn’t easily go there to greet him.

“I see. That’s too bad,” I said.

“When he gets back, I’ll tell him that you wanted to see him. I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear that.”

As the chat got more lively, it came time to give the gifts.

“I’ll start, if I may,” Serge said, taking a small box off the stand attached to his chair and placing it on the table. The box had a porcelain-like sheen, but it smelled like wood. It was completely adorned with decorative string, giving it a classy look. “This is the latest version of the music boxes that my company started to sell this summer. I asked Fletch Merlin, the famous composer, to do the song. The box is made of the highest grade of rockskin wood from Banand. Not only that, but this pure white wood is the rarest variety.”

“A music box? I’ve been hearing a lot about those lately,” said Reinhart.

“From the Dinome Workshop, right? They’re quite famous,” said Elise.

“Yes, and the core parts of this one were handled by the Dinome Workshop’s most talented artisan.”

“It looks pretty, too. I can see it being a conversation starter at parties.”

“This type isn’t for sale, but we do get many orders for the music boxes we do sell.”

There are music box museums in Japan too, so maybe some people got fanatical about these things.

Next was Pioro. After a brief preamble, he took out a box that I was surprised to see. “This is chocolate made from cacao from Bluwanart.”

I bought chocolate every time I craved some in my past life, but this was my first time seeing it in this world. Pioro went on about how he got good beans for this and it was the best chocolate in years, but I didn’t care. I had every intention of asking Pioro if I could buy some later.

Then it was finally my turn. “Here’s what I brought,” I said.

I set some deodorizing fluid on the table, as well as a stab-proof shirt made from sticky slime thread. I wanted to pick something that made sense coming from a laundromat. Regarding the shirt, I gave them the explanation I got from Darson at Tigger Armory and gave them my impressions from using it myself to talk it up.

“So it’s effective armor, but also light enough for anyone to wear?” Elise asked. “It looks like you could use this material for the lining of clothes, too.”

“If it’s relatively cheap stab-proof material that’s comparable to metal spider thread, maybe it would be good for our army,” Reinhart said.

That said, however, it also took a while to manufacture, and it wasn’t effective against blunt impacts. If the enemy used enhancing magic or qi, it might not necessarily stop all blades. I had to make that clear to them.

“Even so, it’s worth considering the idea,” Reinhart said. “It takes a lot of time and money to train a single soldier, and giving them all even one piece of equipment comes at a great cost on top of that. So if we could give them good equipment and expect them to return safely from battles, it will be well worth it. Assuming we find them effective enough for the cost, of course.”

“If you’re even willing to think about it, it’d make me happy as the creator.”

“I’ll give you an answer at a later date. I know I would like at least one per member of the family, and I can tell you the measurements later.”

“And this is deodorizing fluid, right? From your store?” Elise asked.

“Yes, it’s the same as what’s sold at my store.”

The demand for deodorizing fluid had been going up as of late. Some customers were clearly buying more than they could use on their own. I heard about this in a report from the Lenaf branch and had them investigate whether they were being bought and resold. I learned last week that they were being brought to the Jamil estate, so I decided to include some among my gifts. In addition to the sample I presented here, I handed a fair amount off to the maids.

“Thanks. Our servants love this stuff. We’ve had so many guests lately, and the smell of their perfume gets into all our clothes and furniture.”

“If you wrote me a letter asking for some, I would’ve been happy to send it anytime.”

“We go through a ton of it, so I would’ve felt bad about that. I feel like you’d give us anything for free if we asked for it.”

“Well, I won’t say I wouldn’t. Since you’ve bought so much, I’ll at least include a bonus for you from now on.”

It was a product from our store, so I couldn’t just go giving it all away for free. Plus we had other customers to sell to as well. But it was true that I wasn’t that stingy about it personally, so I smiled gently.

“Serge, Pioro, Ryoma, thank you for the wonderful gifts. I’d like to pay you back by inviting you to dinner tonight, if you don’t have any other plans,” Reinhart said.

Nobles were visited by many merchants around this time of year, so they couldn’t spend too long speaking with any individual one. Merchants knew this, so they would come meet with nobles in groups the way we did. It wasn’t a time for especially deep conversation, but if the nobles wished to spend more time with the merchants, they would invite them to dinner. If the merchants garnered their interest with their gifts and their brief conversation, and curried favor with them during dinner, they could even get a chance to stay the night. That was the implicitly understood goal of merchants when they visited nobles, as Carme explained to me over these last two weeks.

“I will gladly join you for dinner,” I answered promptly, as did Pioro and Serge.

“Good, I’ll tell the chef. By the way, Ryoma,” Reinhart said before I could leave the room. I looked to Pioro and Serge to see if they knew what he wanted, but they didn’t seem to. “Weren’t you good at making figurines and such?”

“I do remember being told that I was,” I said, remembering the days before we parted ways in Gimul.

“And you can make statues of the gods too?”

“I do that sometimes. Do you need divine statues?”

“Yes. We need statues of Lulutia, Kufo, and Wilieris. They should be human-sized, or a little bigger than that. We can pay ten small gold coins per statue. Could you do that for us?”

“I see. Are they for the wedding?”

Lulutia had dominion over love, i.e. human relationships, while Kufo had dominion over life, and Wilieris dominion over the land. They blessed the health of couples and the birth of new life, so they were prayed to during weddings.

“Exactly,” said Reinhart. “I’m sure you’ve heard about it already, but we’ll be using these grounds to hold a wedding.”

“The bride is a girl who’s worked hard for our family for a long time,” said Elise.

“She wasn’t even going to have a ceremony herself, was she?”

“Right.”

I’d heard about this from Araune in the waiting room. There was a maid who had been serving the Jamil family for a long time and took her job seriously, garnering everyone’s trust. But she was so focused on her job that she’d never had a relationship, and she was starting to grow older. That’s what everyone thought, at least, but last month she suddenly announced that she had gotten engaged.

However, her only friends were servants at this estate. Their schedules were arranged such that they couldn’t all make it to a wedding without causing trouble for the Jamil family. She could have instead put the expenses of the wedding toward future savings and gotten married anyway, but she insisted on a wedding. The way Araune talked about her, she sounded like a mother concerned about her workaholic daughter.

“She does good work, but she prioritizes her job far too greatly over herself,” said Elise.

“Since she wasn’t going to be able to hold a wedding any time soon, we decided to hold a surprise one here at the estate for her,” said Reinhart. “Many of her coworkers want the chance to congratulate her as well. Serge, Pioro? If you could also help with the decorations and food, it would be appreciated.”

The two merchants smiled and agreed to cooperate. I wanted to pitch in too, but I wasn’t so sure about it. “You want me to make the statues for such an important celebration?” I asked. This would be a memory that lasted forever for the couple, so I wanted to ensure I was the right man for the job.

“It’ll be fine,” Reinhart said with a smile. “They actually ended up hearing about the plans, so we’re asking for their opinion as we make preparations at this point. They both said they’d be happy with your statues.”

“Why not talk to her if you’re worried about it? She wants to talk to you too,” Elise suggested, then rang a bell on the table.

“You called?” the cat-eared maid asked as she entered the room.

“We were just talking about your wedding, Lulunese.”

“Huh?”

Now that I looked at this maid again, she had sharp eyes and glasses that made her look like a working woman or a secretary. She certainly had a serious demeanor, but when she heard mention of her wedding, she blushed a little. I could see her being popular with men, and wouldn’t have been surprised if her fiance drew a lot of envy.

“Thank you for all you’re doing for us,” the maid said to Elise.

“It’s nothing. We asked Ryoma to make the divine statues for the wedding. That’s fine with you, right?”

“My fiance speaks highly of Master Takebayashi’s talents, and we’re quite indebted to him. He always insists on having Master Takebayashi make the statues, and I would be glad to have something made with more heart than what we could find on the market. As long as it’s not too much to ask, of course.”

“Not at all!” I said. “If it’d make you happy, by all means let me do it. But does your fiance know me? And how are you indebted to me?”

Lulunese cocked her head. “Did he not tell you? You just saw him yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“Yes. He was always saying how he’d tell you next time he saw you, and he did say he took you to the inn last night.”

Reinhart and Elise commented on how they thought it was all explained to me already in the background, but they sounded strangely distant. If he was indebted to me, knew I could make statues, saw me yesterday, and took me to the inn, it all pointed to one man.

“You mean it’s Hughes?!”

“Yes, it certainly is,” the cat-eared beauty said, blushing even more.

Hughes was nice, but I was surprised to hear he’d be with someone like this. They were within the same age range, but I couldn’t see them getting married. And while I was happy for him, it was kind of vexing to see, as someone who’d never managed to get married myself. I could only feel conflicted as my meeting with the Jamil family drew to a close.