As he left the river, Ryuji was left thinking of all the people bathing in the river. Already, it was a bit chilly. He wasn’t sure if it was spring or fall here. For that matter, though the weather felt a bit chilly to him this could be the local summer or even the dead of winter. He didn’t know enough about the world yet and figured he should probably talk to Karen about it.
If it was going to get colder, he certainly didn’t want to come to the river to wash his hair. If it got colder, how would the locals bathe? He dreaded the thought of the adorable little cat-girl having to freeze to take a bath. Then an idea occurred to him. If it was too expensive for locals to bathe indoors, why didn’t he just make several public bathhouses?
He would have several things to overcome but that was just the kind of thing he needed! That would be the ultimate way to launder his money. He would have a monopoly on them since they apparently weren’t a thing. That meant that he would be able to charge as little as he wanted or as much. He considered the people at the bathing at the river and before his mind could stray to the scene of all the nude women, he diverted his mind to the conditions that would make them bathe there, in the nude! Gah, he couldn’t get that image out of his head.
Still, the price would need to be low enough that the average person could afford to use them. But why use the bathhouses if the river was free? He pondered this for a moment before remembering what had attracted the attention of all the women there. That would be the ticket! He now had his next destination.
He walked over to the stand he had in mind. The beastfolk woman of indeterminate species was already finished setting out her wares and was calling to passers-by to try getting their interest. When she saw him coming, she got a big smile. She had only recently made a decent bit of coin off of this very elf and she saw the opportunity coming to make even more.
As he approached, she cocked her head to the side slightly and grinned at him. Ryuji noted a dazzling array of sharp, pearly-white, canine teeth in a slightly elongated and lightly furred muzzle tipped with a black nose like that of some kind of canine. Her triangular but round-tipped ears flicked towards him in rapt attention. “Welcome back! How did your lady friend like the perfume?”
Ryuji smiled at her and felt a slight itch on his ear. Before he realized it, he was flicking his ears to try removing the offending itch. It was only now that he was realizing how mobile his ears were. He scratched his ear but decided he would have to explore that a bit further later. “I was actually wondering, how much soap can you get? You don’t happen to make your own do you?”
As he asked this question, she got a look of slight trepidation and looked off to the side. When he looked where she had glanced, he realized it was a hatter stand that he had previously made a contract with and thought she might have the wrong idea. “I never put pressure on anybody to make a deal you know. The only one that I have had to coerce was the older brother of the boy selling meat skewers. I wouldn’t have done that if I weren’t worried that the boy might die of illness.”
He looked back and saw that she was staring wide-eyed at him. “I have deals with a number of businesses but I won’t force anybody to make a deal. I also don’t want much from these deals.”
She wore a skeptical look and her one-word reply was very telling. “Why?”
Ryuji smiled as charmingly as he could. “I mostly want to be able to collect a little bit over a long period of time from them. Unless you were asking about the boy. In his case, I just don’t like the idea of leaving anybody to their fate. I would risk my own life or even sacrifice it if needed to rescue a child and I want you to realize what I mean by that.”
At these words, he pulled the chain around his neck up enough for the woman to see the small silver and gold bar-shaped pendant on it. As he dropped the pendant proclaiming his nobility back into his shirt, her eyes went wider and she bowed her head. “No need for that, I’m, not the type to stand on my title. Why do you think I wear it under my shirt? However, add that to what you know of most nobles. I really would die to save even one child. I have plans that will save many more however that is going to take a lot of time.”
While the woman was deep in thought, he broached the subject he wanted to ask about in a strategic move to drop her guard. “As a small part of that plan, I need a steady and fairly sizable supply of soap. Yes, soap! So I ask again, are you the one who makes it?”
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Suddenly, she looked a little abashed and answered in slight disappointment. “No milord. I make the perfumes and colognes. My brother is the one who makes the soaps.”
Ryuji was afraid she was going to say she bought them but this could actually work out quite well. He perused her stand and looked over her prices for a moment in consideration before replying. “This cheapest perfume and that cheap cologne, can those be made any cheaper?”
The woman looked bewildered by the questions at first and then she seemed to grow indignant. Ryuji realized that it might have sounded like he was telling her to lower the price for him so he hurriedly continued. “I just wonder, if they were made in larger batches, would they be cheap enough to sell in my general store? If so, they might be a good thing to sell at the other store I had in mind as well. I could certainly see the more expensive ones selling at the one I plan to build in the noble’s district.”
He pretended not to have noticed her indignant look from earlier as he looked at her now thoroughly confused expression. “I wonder, would you be interested in perhaps having a shop where you could make larger batches of these for me to sell in several different shops around the city? I would need to talk to your brother about the soap part though. That is a critical part of my plan.”
The woman took several minutes to process all of what he had said. Afterward, she agreed to meet him the next morning and bring her brother along. Ryuji left her in a daze but not before replacing his missing bar of soap and washing linen.
After that, he went to the magic shop and spent the morning in instruction under Dorn. Having learned the generalities of the script, Dorn wanted to see if he could write any. He was pleasantly surprised again by how quickly Ryuji picked up on his lessons. They had a quick lunch of cold things Dorn had fixed that morning for breakfast when he had expected Ryuji to be by early. After apologizing, Ryuji astounded the old dwarf again by turning bread, bacon, cheese, and eggs into a sandwich. Lunch out of the way, it was back to practicing mana control and writing.
The glyphs were easy enough to draw out in the air but then Dorn thew him a curve ball. Apparently, the glyphs he was drawing out would need to be roughly one-third the size he was drawing them in order to be usable in drawing magic circles! Dorn just watched in silent judgement as Ryuji dipped a finger into a tube of ground rock and brought it back out to study it. He began by trying to apply less mana but that just made it fade. Next, he tried to narrow the focus of his mana on the end of his finger but he couldn’t keep it steady enough to draw straight lines like that even if he did get the lines narrow enough.
It took Ryuji more than an hour to finally figure out that he could focus his mana when he stuck it into the tube. Doing that allowed him to draw out a thin stick of the powder that he could then draw thinner lines with. When he finally figured it out, Dorn just whistled loudly and began grinning like a demented tanuki figure.
He came over and clapped Ryuji on the shoulder a couple time before exclaiming in a loud voice. “I had me suspicions but now I be a knowin’. Ye had to’ve been a wizard before. I’ll be a goblin’s uncle if ye weren’t! Ye gots a feel fer it. I didna tell ya how ta be doin that an ye figured it out anyway. An ye be figurin it out in a bit o’ no time!”
After that it was practice drawing with the fine sticks of powder. When Dorn had to deal with a customer, Ryuji tried to see just how fine he could make his powder. After a few tries he managed to pull out what was practically a needle of powdered stone. The result of drawing with a tip so fine was that he ended up with a headache from how hard he had to concentrate to keep it that way.
After getting the headache, Ryuji checked his mana but it was fine. When Dorn came back, he told Ryuji to just spend the rest of the day taking it easy. Having a few more things he wanted to do in the back of the shop he told Ryuji to just dust and sweep the shop and then he could go home for the day. Ryuji spent the next two hours cleaning every nook and cranny of the shop.
The dirty condition of the shop had been annoying him anyway and he was used to cleaning both the classroom at school and his house. He remembered how Haruko used to harp on him about making sure the house was spotless so their mom didn’t get sick from the dust and nearly broke down crying. He stopped in his cleaning and said a silent prayer to the gods that his mother would survive the news of his death. He began wondering how everyone was back on earth.
In order to kick his mind out of that depressing line of thought he began thinking of things he could perhaps start selling to legitimize his money. He was already set on doing the bathhouses, one way or another. He thought about the general store and realized that it was a lot like a convenience store. He might be able to work with that and turn it into a chain store. Another thing that went well in a convenience store would be a pharmacy. His own general store had a small selection of some kind of medications it looked like. What else? In that way, he passed the rest of his time cleaning and thinking. When he finally finished wiping down the last of the tables full of items for sale, he realized he was out of things to clean and yelled to Dorn that he was leaving for the day.
Karen was surprised to see him back so early and when he told her that he had been cleaning all afternoon she seemed a little more than skeptical. When his assurance that he wasn’t kidding failed to impress her he took it as a challenge. As she was in the midst of cleaning the rooms, he told her he was going to help and ended up making her depressed when he did a better job cleaning than her. After that, he spent the next hour explaining what all he had done and giving her pointers. After that was supper, Journal entry, and bed.