Kill not the goose that lays the golden egg. It's an old saying and it warns of causing yourself more problems later on to accomplish something frivolous now. The problem is that we almost never realize that we are doing it in the moment, but it’s always obvious in hindsight. My advice for dealing with this phenomenon, just roll with it.

- Kuya Tio on Enjoying Life, Kuya Tio’s Guide to a Healthy and Happy Homestead.

The next week seemed to progress rather slowly. I spent a lot of time hammering at the floor of my Doma with a flat iron bit connected to a shovel handle. I had always assumed that the flat dirt floor of the Doma was simply packed in by having been walked on a whole lot. It never occurred to me that there was a tool. The only other thing of note as far as the inside went was framing out the hole for the Horigotatsu and filling in the hole for the mass heater with sand, various-sized rocks, bricks, and the clay tubes. The outside, on the other hand, left me with a giant pile of reeds that I was to bunch up in specific size bundles and tie off. There were a lot of reeds.

Eventually, Lia returned, and we started framing up the roof pitch. I don't really know if pitch is the correct word to use; that just meant the angle of the roof. So maybe the roof frame? The point was there were certain timbers that slotted into everything else that had been placed already. It really didn't take all that long. I'm honestly surprised at just how much of this building had been crafted in Hiroshi's workshop prior to assembly. All we were doing was fitting it together.

Several lengths of bamboo poles made a lattice work, and we eventually began the long task of hauling up the reed bundles and tying them into place. Yes, I said tying. They go over certain bamboo poles in the lattice work and under others, and then they get tied in. All the reeds tend to just overlap each other. And apparently, one of the drawbacks to not having an Irori to constantly smoke out the reeds was that you had to periodically set up a fire in your doma to season the reeds and get rid of the rodents. When I had lived in the city, the roofs had all been made of tiles to prevent fire from spreading, though, I suppose that really wasn't an issue way out here. The top, or peek, of the roof was capped with a wooden structure that was again, prebuilt and assembled on site. It was fascinating.

"Hell's, that's good," Lia said, her mouth still half full of dumpling. "Have you considered starting a restaurant?"

"No, it's not that good," Wei Lin replied before pointing out, "And it's my sister that makes the dumplings, not me."

"Well, then maybe your sister should start a restaurant," Lia suggested. It was a very average day with average conversation about the food, and Wei Lin, as usual, looked a bit uncomfortable about getting so much praise.

"Are you almost done?" Wei Lin asked, likely in an attempt to change the subject, though she didn't seem completely certain who she was supposed to be asking.

I looked to Lia, who had a far better idea than I did. The muscular girl shrugged, "Kind of, sort of, not really. Once the thatch is on the roof, got some detail work, doors, windows, stuff like that that Yuji here doesn't know how to do. Then he has a butt load of work that he's not willing to pay me for. A lot of sanding, insulating, clay work." She turned to gaze at me and continued, "I'll show you how it once, and you can finish it up." She shoved another dumpling in her mouth, ending that conversation.

"Well, that looks great so far. You're an excellent carpenter," I told Lia in an attempt to compliment her, half as much as she was complimenting Wei Lin's cooking. Though, it sounded really forced and awkward.

Lia shrugged as she swallowed and pointed her chopsticks at Wei Lin, "So, what's your plans? You know, for the future and stuff."

Wei Lin poked at her own meal and kind of shrugged, giving a half-hearted response, "I'm taking care of my father for now. Though, that seems to be less of an issue now that he has somebody else to take care of. I think he's pretty much adopted my nephew as his heir… What about you? Any future plans?" Wei Lin threw the question at Lia. "Just the slow and steady acquisition of my father's business. It was always supposed to go to his first-born son, but that didn't work out quite well. I'm slowly getting him to ease up on the whole 'girls cannot be carpenters' bullshit." As if it was a second-hand thought, she paused, looked at me, and then threw the question at me, "What are your plans? You’re almost done here, planning to find a wife, do the homestead thing, and live happily ever after, yada, yada?"

I had to stop and consider that for a moment. “I'm not sure. That was always the plan, but I've been working my ass off for so long for this that I think if I suddenly hit the finish line, so to speak, I'd go mad. I guess I could go full farmstead. It's gonna take at least another year or two to actually get this up and running fully." I looked around my property; most of it was still covered with brush, though a lot of the actual trees had been felled. "Maybe I should get some pigs."

Lia just shrugged, while Wei Lin threw me a half-hearted follow-up question, "Where did you get the money to do all this stuff anyway?"

That was an easy answer. "I worked for it."

"That's it?"

Lia snorted. "How else do you think you get the money for this stuff? Sorry, I didn't mean to sound mean."

"Yeah, that's it. I worked at a dock for years, just putting stuff on ships and taking things off. Did fletching in my spare time and shared a tenement house with two other guys. I really lucked out with this place getting it as an inheritance. The taxes on it were steep, but I'd have had to work my ass off for another couple of years before I could even dream of buying a property." I shrugged. "You know, it's just one of those things you gotta do. Almost nobody gets anything for free. You just gotta go after your goal, make a plan, and start working towards it. If I hadn’t started on my plan, I would have inherited this land and not had the money to pay off the taxes." I went back to my food.

"Are you okay?" Lia asked Wei Lin, who was staring at me as though I just swapped places with some other person.

"Uh," Wei Lin turned her attention back to Lia, then looked down at her food. "I have to go."

Lia and I watched Wei Lin get up and walk back to her house. "Did I say something wrong?" I asked Lia.

"I don't know.”

“Do you think she's okay?"

“Not sure.”

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***

The next few weeks continued as usual. I had work to do in the rice fields, worked on my property, weeded rice paddies with Wei Lin, and had Militia training in Sharinzhen proper. Like last time, I sought out food and stayed in town a bit, ending up having lunch together with Kaori. I told her I thought I had a thing for Lia. When she confirmed I was talking about the carpenter, she laughed at me like I had made the most clever joke in the world. I kind of got the feeling I was missing something.

Lia and I finished the roof, and she showed me how to sand the floors and insulate the walls with a mixture of straw, interwoven branches, and then a nice covering of clay. That covering of clay meant I had to choose color, which is not something I'd actually thought about when building my house. Most houses were the black and browns of wood and the whites of paper. Of course, the interior had walls, and every tenement I had been in had the same wall color, which I only now realized was just uncolored clay. This was my house, and I could choose whatever color I wanted. I focused on just getting the initial insulation and first coat on because I honestly didn't have the slightest clue what color to make the walls.

Wei Lin continued to deliver us food while I worked on the grunt labor and Lia worked on the casings for all the sliding windows and the door. But ever since that day, she had seemed a bit off. Even when not around Lia and just out at Saito's paddies weeding, she seemed like she was in her own little world. Not sure if I offended her or what, but the sensation was rather odd.

It kind of sucked to see Lia leave for the last time. The summer festival was close, and I'd likely see her then, but our constant banter had been a massive highlight to my weekly routine, and I was going to miss that if not the woman herself. The only other highlight was the metal drum and stovepipe for the mass heater had arrived, which meant I could finish and fire up my mass heater and see if it worked.

They let me borrow a cart for transportation, which meant I had to bring the barrel home, then bring the cart back. It was a lot of work, well, a lot of walking for a day, but I couldn't wait to get everything hooked up, and I started working on it immediately when I got back home.

Some of the bricks had to be adjusted slightly to get the metal to fit in correctly, but once that was done, I managed to mix the cob, a mixture of clay, straw, and water that turns into a slurry, and got that packed around all the fire bricks and the metal. The lower portion should never actually burn out, so I would likely never have to break this part open again. With that done, I was able to fit the drum over the core. The core, being just a bunch of bricks mortared together in kind of a tube, was supposed to cut off about three or four fingers width before it hit the top of the drum. Mine clung to the top of the drum with still a little bit to go down, which meant I had to take the drum off, knock off a few of the bricks, and put a little bit of cob mixture on top of the core. With the big metal drum seated appropriately and latched in, I got to work on mounting the stove pipes. This was a pretty simple process as they were tapered to fit into each other. They went up past the drum before turning and going out a pre-drilled hole in the wall which would eventually be insulated around. I wanted so badly to fire the thing up and see if it worked, but I had to wait for the cob to dry. It would be a few days before I could do that.

Saito requested some help getting something from town a few days later. It gave me some time in the morning to finally fire up the mass heater to see how well it worked. The problem with doing that is it would heat the house up, and it was summer. I lifted the flat rock that hid the access point to the riser or the steel pipe that the exhaust went up next to the steel drum. I built a small fire on a flat board and stuck that in there. The purpose of which was to heat up the riser which would pull the air through all the tubes and essentially suck the fire in through the feed port and into the steel drum. With that done, I had lit another small fire into the small feed port area. I waited till the little fire in the feed port caught before covering up the access port to the riser and waited with bated breath to see if it would pull. It did.

After only a few minutes, my bundle of sticks started catching on fire, the flames pulled into the mass heater instead of going straight up like a normal fire would. Within moments, the steel drum was clicking and popping as it expanded from the heat. The whole house started to heat up while I ran outside to check the exhaust coming out of the riser. It was clear and warm, but not hot. Just as it should be. The whole system was working on just a tiny bundle of sticks. It was gonna be damn perfect for winter. With that test successful, I opened all the windows to air the place out while I was gone and headed off to town to fetch Saito's package.

I picked up Saito's package from the same trading post that I had got the steel drum and riser from just a few days before. Again I borrowed a cart, which meant that again, I’d have to run back in town to return it. The box was heavily marked with the words “fragile" written in both the High Ityean character and the Low Ityean letters. I really wasn't sure what he had picked up, but the thing was quite heavy, and it took more time to get the cart safely back to Sharinzhen-4 than the whole trip had taken me with the steel drums, which were pretty much invincible.

"Where do you want it?"

Saito looked down at me while scratching his beard, a thoughtful look plastered on his face. "Well, I suppose we should probably bring it to where it's eventually gonna go," he said. I frowned at him and his non-answer. Saito moved around me and started down the path that led back to the road. "Come on," he called.

Did I seriously haul this thing all the way out here just to take it halfway back? I turned the cart around and started pushing after him. At least the guy had the decency to put a hand on the edge of the cart and keep it steady. When I tried to turn left, he turned right, sparking my curiosity about what was in the crate and if it was meant for my house. I tried to keep my hopes down; I already owed Saito a lot and I didn't necessarily like the giddy feeling rising in my stomach. This big box might be a gift. I held my tongue until we reached the gateway, my gateway, and turned in towards my property. Then I had to say something.

"What's in the box?" I asked.

Saito patted the cart. "You'll see soon enough."

I felt guilty that he was giving me more stuff, yet massively excited. What the hell fit in a rectangular box, was very heavy, and would be extremely fragile?

The short walk up my passage seemed entirely too far, but once we arrived, Saito helped me haul the thing out of the cart, through my doorway, and set it on the floor at the end of the Doma. He produced a metal pry bar and handed it to me. "Just needed an excuse to come look at your house," he said, kicking off his shoes to look around.

"It's not finished," I said, busy trying to pry open the box carefully.

"Yeah, but it was all trees a few months ago," he remarked.

I focused on getting the box open. First the top and then the sides. The thing was jammed, packed with straw, and as I pulled away the padding, the reddish-brown color of clay showed itself.

"Oh, good. It's not broken," Saito exclaimed, standing above me.

"Um," I said smartly.

"Unfortunately, this means that the free meals are over, except on Militia days. Join us for dinner, on those."

"Th-thank you," I stammered out while still staring at the big clay thing. It had two chambers, was made of clay, and was one of those things I hadn't even considered.

"Yeah. Well, you can't call it a house without a way of cooking food in it, yeah?" Saito remarked.

"I didn't even think about a Kalan," I said.

"Well, that's what your neighbors are for," he said as he put his shoes back on and stood up, he patted me on the shoulder before saying goodbye and heading out the door. I was going to have to build a cabinet or something in the Doma to put my new stove on; for now, I guess it could just stay on the floor.

"You still gotta take the cart back," Saito yelled from somewhere outside.

Seriously, I was gonna have to marry either Wei Lin or Yoko just to make that man my father.

Author’s Note:

So the dictation and transcription process seems to be working well for me. At this point my bottleneck is time to edit the transcribed text. It is thursday, im posting this on tuesday and I already have the next chapter dictated. Albeit it's more of a short interlude. I’ll be starting the dictation of the next chapter in about 30 minutes. My goal is a chapter released every Tuesday, but at this rate, maybe I can go faster.

The story is almost over. Maybe four to six chapters left. This brings me to an odd question that physically writing had never left me with… What’s next? Any ideas?