The dog beastfolk guy behind the meat skewer stand looked confused for a second but he began working through the math in his head. After a minute or two, he locked Ryuji with a look of suspicion. “You would only be making one small silver. You would be okay with that? Also, how do I know we could trust you? It seems like too good of a deal to be trusted.”
Ryuji smiled at him and just waited a moment but not long enough to be awkward. “What would you say if I were to ask for double my money back? You would call me a greedy crook, and rightfully so. Would it make you take my offer? I bet you would turn it down. I don’t want a bunch of money from you. If you had a bunch of money, you wouldn’t need my help, to begin with.”
Ryuji looked over the stall a moment before continuing. “What I want isn’t the money but that doesn’t mean I’m doing it just because I’m a nice guy. I have certain people that I want to be able to tell that I have a hand in several local businesses. Besides, what’s the alternative, you watch your brother get worse and maybe die?”
The beastfolk guy looked away with an expression of resignation before answering. “Okay, you have a point. You said you would keep a record of how much we had paid, will we be able to see the records? How much are you going to leave us to live on?”
Ryuji negotiated with the guy for a couple minutes before he was satisfied. Then Ryuji tore a page out of his new letter practicing book and pulled out the ink and pen. He had to have the guy write the contract but he played that off as him not being able to sneak in any hidden wording. They both signed it before Ryuji pulled out one small gold coin and handed it over. He got his two skewers and told the guy to sell all of his stock before taking his time off to help his brother and the money wouldn’t be counted, that the contract would start when they got back to work.
Ryuji then spent a while going around to several other businesses and making contracts with them. It was rather awkward always having them write a contract but he played it off well and vowed he would study and learn the language fast, not just to do writing but also to continue learning his magic. The others were mostly just loans like the skewer stall but there was one exception.
Lastly, Ryuji made his way to the back corner of the plaza where the old gray cat greeted him like an old friend. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite customer. Here to purchase something else, don’t tell me you need more pouches already?”
Ryuji laughed it off and explained. “No, no pouches. I was however hoping to get another satchel. I really wanted one that was bigger, maybe twice as thick even, with a reinforced bottom and maybe even extra leather over the seams to make sure it could hold the heaviest thing I might want to carry without fear of tearing out a seam. Also, if I could get it in a nice green or maybe a blue?”
The old cat beastfolk thought about it for a couple seconds before nodding in thought. “Maybe you could tell me more about what you had in mind. It just might be a really popular idea. Would you mind if I made a couple extra and tried selling them as well? Of course, I would make yours first!”
Ryuji nodded a moment with a smirk on his face. The guy was a great salesman. He wasn’t too pushy but he was motivated, he had a family to support. The old cat had told him part of what he wanted to know but not everything so Ryuji then launched into a series of questions about the business.
It seemed that the old cat’s two daughters and the older children helped sew the leather goods during the day. The husbands had labor jobs around town and the old man ran this stall. Even the younger children contributed to their household with chores.
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Ryuji made him an offer. “what would you say if I told you I wanted to open a leather goods store and sell your items there? Well, actually I would buy the property and I would have you work there selling the goods. I would make sure to get a place big enough that part could be the store while the rest could be your family’s new home. What do you think?”
The guy enthusiastically agreed without hesitation. Ryuji asked if he had any doubts and the old guy said he had been doubting the appearance of a rich sun elf walking around shopping in this plaza. He went on to say that if such a guy were looking for businesses to buy out or something like that then it would make a lot more sense. Ryuji just had to laugh at that and told the old guy he would catch up to him later. He claimed it was so he could see the leatherworking area but the truth was he wanted to make sure that he got a place that had a lot more room than their house. He certainly didn’t want to squeeze them any tighter together.
After parting with the old cat Ryuji headed back to the magic shop. He knew he had taken a little too long getting back but when he told Dorn he was back, the old dwarf didn’t seem concerned in the least. He sat himself at the counter and prepared for a long evening of reading practice.
He had the hang of the different letter sounds after the morning’s study. The people called them glyphs instead of letters or at least that’s the word his brain heard Dorn refer to them by. The jump from sounding out glyphs to sounding out words was an easy one. His next hurdle came shortly after resuming his studies of the Tzho Language that evening.
Ryuji couldn’t make sense of the placement of the words. He could sound them out but they didn’t seem to make sentences as far as he could tell. Finally, he realized that everything on a page, or at least in any part of the page was dedicated to one subject. It was such a bizarre concept that he couldn’t wrap his mind around it until he recalled the way that the people actually talked. He realized that the words he heard and what they said didn’t always match up.
These people didn’t talk in sentences, they talked in paragraphs. Each paragraph would have the subject stated once. They also used verbs before the object each time. It was so confusing that Ryuji was having a really tough time with it. It didn’t help that they didn’t talk in tenses, and instead, everything was always in the infinitive form.
After making very slow progress, Ryuji finally managed to comprehend the meaning of one page of a tome. It was everything he could do just to follow the flow of the writing. One page took him hours to work out. When he finally finished, he had a headache and looked up. That’s when he noticed it was getting darker out.
He told Dorn he was going for the evening and the dwarf asked him about his progress. He explained what he had figured out but he couldn’t explain why it was so strange to him very well. He left the shop and hurried back to the plaza and the old cat had already packed up his shop for the night. He was just standing there waiting for Ryuji to arrive.
Ryuji came over and apologized for taking so long. “Sorry, I got caught up in what I had to do today. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting. Shall we go see your leather sewing facilities? I may be better able to explain the bag I want if I can give some examples also.”
The old cat just smiled and nodded at him before hurrying off towards his home. He was hurrying but that wouldn’t be apparent to anyone who didn’t know him since his age was slowing him so considerably. He was certainly hurrying though because he had some great news for his family tonight. The only worry he had was that the meal wouldn’t be fit for his guest.
By the time they arrived, Ryuji was thoroughly lost. One good thing was that he could easily see even though it was getting fairly dark. The house that the old man approached seemed entirely too small for the number of people he claimed were living there. Ryuji was wondering if he misunderstood the situation a bit and simply followed after.
As soon as the old man opened the door Ryuji could see almost every member of the household. He realized that the old guy wasn’t kidding about the lack of privacy. As Ryuji walked in behind the old guy he was having a hard time imagining the sleeping arrangements in there, that’s how cramped it was.