"Man," Mr. Coman said, turning to face Ryan with an indecipherable look on his face.

"He's my brother," Leo calmly said.

Ryan looked back and forth between both men; it seemed as though the duo shared a history.

Ryan's mind couldn't even drum up a scenario where the two of them had met. For one, Leo hadn't been in town for a long time, and he didn't know if they'd met once he'd come back into town or if the pair had met in Wergon for that matter.

"Really?" Mr. Coman said, his eyes zipping from Leo to Ryan and back and forth a couple of times.

"Well, it's easy to see who got the best traits," the Trader's rep said with a chuckle, Leo joining in at the expense of Ryan, whose face had turned a light red at the slight.

"Some could say that," Leo said smugly, a little too smugly if you'd asked Ryan. "I assume that the pair of you have business to discuss?"

"Yes, nothing too intricate though. We can as well discuss it in front of you since you're family?" Coman asked, throwing the question to Ryan.

Now, Ryan had no idea how he'd let the situation devolve into this... path. This was the exact opposite route the conversation was supposed to go. Leo shouldn't have a part in what was about to happen. Nothing worse than sharing problems with a guest, although he guessed that Leo couldn't really be considered a guest since the big oaf was just his brother in a sense.

Who knows, maybe Leo might even be instrumental in turning the entire conversation on its head, and that might enable him to find a way to convince the cold-hearted guild man.

"Sure, why not," Ryan said through gritted teeth.

"Fantastic," Coman said, either oblivious to how Ryan had responded or too eager to get the conversation over with to care. "Please, Mr. Lionheart, tell me that you have my gold ready?"

The guild man asked with a predatory smile, no doubt in his mind that Ryan wouldn't be able to afford the tax after such a short period of time.

"What gold?" Leo asked, perplexed.

Ryan sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was exactly why he didn't want to get Leo involved in all these things. No doubt that the big man would begin asking questions that Ryan had no interest in answering or trying to advise Ryan on how to wriggle his way out of the situation.

Heck, the big man could even try to strong-arm the Traders Guild's tax man, and only Veron knew how that would end for the pair, or Ryan in particular.

"I haven't paid tax since I bought my shop," Ryan said with a sigh.

He knew what was about to happen; words like that were usually accompanied by ones that no person wanted to hear... harsh words. So he prepped himself for the scolding that was bound to come, and boy did Leo not disappoint.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"What do you mean you never paid tax..." Leo said, surprised. "NEVER!!!! That's beyond stupid..."

And so Leo went on and on, tearing Ryan a new one on how he'd been reckless and stupid. Normally, Ryan would've snapped at the big man, but everything Leo was saying was right. In a bid to cut corners early on, he'd dug himself a hole that kept on getting deeper, something that Coman was aware of as he kept smiling at the words that Leo was throwing at Ryan. No doubt the sadist was reveling in Ryan's despair, ready at a moment's notice to deliver the final nail to his coffin.

As always when someone began to scold him—the matron, Carl, or even the odd person—Ryan would usually zone out, content in the knowledge that he wasn't hearing anything that he didn't need to. After all, he himself was an overthinker, and the fewer harsh things he had to hear, the less material his awful brain had to torture him with.

"...id, and what do you have to say for yourself?" Leo said, the big man probably having uttered a record amount of words in that short period if his sweaty face and heaving chest was anything to go by. Ryan almost laughed at the scene if not for the fact that it wouldn't do him any favors in his current predicament.

"I was young and dumb, relax man," Ryan started. He somehow managed to keep himself from bursting out laughing. "I've learned my lesson. No more cutting corners for me."

Oh, Ryan could barely hold it in at this point. The urge to laugh in their faces was too much, combined with the fact that Leo still hadn't realized that Ryan was completely oblivious to whatever the big man had previously said made for quite the task.

"At least you have some brain left in you," Leo said quietly. Turning to the still grinning Mr. Coman, he asked, "So what's the next step?"

Of course Ryan had some brain left in him. He didn't just turn his life around by being dumb, although he actually got the point in a sense and could understand the various things that most people would think about him. Oh well, their thoughts were theirs; he had more important things to worry about.

"That's the easy part. Mr. Ryan here would hand over the gold he owes the guild, and I'll be on my merry way," Mr. Coman said.

"Huh," Leo said before turning to Ryan. "How much gold do you owe them?"

Now comes the tricky part. If Leo thought that not paying guild tax was bad, Ryan wondered what the big man would do when he found out how much Ryan actually owed in defaulted payments over the last two years.

"Thirty-five," Ryan said sheepishly.

"Thirty-five silvers?" Leo seemed to sigh in relief. "That's cheap. Well, pay the man."

A chuckle escaped Coman at Leo's words, the big man looking confused at the guild man's reaction.

"Thirty-five gold coins, Leo, not silvers," Ryan said, head down.

The shop went quiet as Ryan dropped those words. The lecture that he expected to follow up seemed not to have started at all; Leo seemed to be processing his words.

"THIRTY-FIVE GOLD!!!! ARE YOU MAD, RYAN?!" The big man said as he exploded in shock.

An expression which Ryan felt was merited considering the amount that he was currently owning at this particular point. That, however, was in the past, and Ryan wasn't going to dwell on that.

Pulling up his stat screen with a chime in his head:

[Name: Ryan Lionheart

Profession: Merchant

Class: Alchemist (journeyman)

Coin: 31 gold, 760 silvers

Debt:

- 35 gold (deadline elapsed)]

"Relax, the past is the past," Ryan said to Leo, turning to face the guild man that acted nonchalantly at the entire matter. "I don't think I can pay up that amount today. I have thirty-one gold and three-hundred silvers readily available. I need more time to have the rest available."

Ryan carefully watched the guild man's expression as the man tried and failed to hide the shocked expression at the amount that Ryan had managed to raise within such a short period of time. Ryan hoped for all it was worth that the guild man would show him mercy and compassion. Some leniency and let him have a day or two to complete the payment.

"Mr. Lionheart," Mr. Coman started, "That is unfortunately not what I came for."