Nobina took a deep breath as she overlooked all the guild’s financial documents. And by overlooking all of them, she was basically looking at a single book that kept track of the guild’s money every day. It was as basic as you could get, keeping track of what the guild funds were at all times. It wasn’t a bad way to go about it, but it could be improved to help figure out certain things like trends or even expenses in this case better.

“This won’t do at all,” she sighed.

By no means was Nobina an accountant. Her expertise was in economics, which involved buying and selling goods. She wasn’t really someone suitable to handle creating a whole new accounting system, but she did take a few courses on the matter, so she at least knew the basics.

With that said, she began a new Ledger, which was where all the guild’s financial data would be. It would be used to keep track of income, expenses, assets, and everything related to the guild finances. She also wanted to make an income statement, but that could be for another day. For now, she wanted to use as basic of a system as possible. Not only for her sake but also for the sake of the other guild officers. What she was doing was inherently going to create more work for everyone.

Hours seemed to pass as she hammered out the basics of her monetary system. Everything she expected was there, and moments like this made her wish she had some of the pleasantries of her old world. Headphones to listen to music would have been perfect, but in a fantasy work like this, there was no chance of that happening. At least, that was what she thought. Her eyes fell onto her bag, which hadn’t done anything since yesterday. She wondered if something new would come out of it, but it wasn’t a big concern. More importantly, she was keeping tabs on the Gaze on her, which seemed pretty relaxed so far. She had no time to figure out more about it, but one day, when she had nothing to do, she thought about researching it.

As she finished the first part of the monetary system, Lare came in, his eyes on the financial books and documents around her.

“How’s things going Nobina?” he asked, his curious gaze wandering around her desk.

“Oh, it’s going,” she smiled back. “Setting up a new system from scratch isn’t easy, but I’m doing my best.”

“All we can ask for, right?” he chuckled. “Now can you explain a bit of what’s happening?”

Nobina’s eyes lit up with excitement to show her progress.

Safe to say though, it was more of a one-sided endeavor. As Nobina began talking about assets, liabilities, and stockholders’ equity, Lare himself felt more and more at a loss. Nobina had told him to cut in if he had any questions, but he had so many questions he didn’t know what to ask. When she was done explaining though, he merely nodded.

“Hopefully when it’s done you can properly teach all of us. Clearly you're well vested in Economics, so I’m sure you’ll be able explain everything.”

She nodded, and Lare headed back to his office. Nobina still had her work cut out for her, but she was excited to do as much as she could.

Eventually, Nobina decided to break for lunch. As she left the guild library and headed to the front, she almost bumped into Mimiki, who gracefully dodged her.

“That was good,” said Nobina, hoping her compliment would be taken well. However, Mimiki merely said “hmph” before heading to the back.

“Rude much…” sighed Nobina.

For now, she wasn’t concerned about resolving things with Mimiki, so she continued to head out of the guild. Once she was out, she realized she had no money. Part of her wondered why she didn’t ask Eric for any money in advance, but she realized she wasn’t a permanent employee yet. If things didn’t work out between her and Mimiki, or if she did a poor job with the money system, she risked losing her job.

It was a big deal in the sense that she loved everything the guild offered. Sarah offered a good friend. Lare and Eric were very supportive. She had a library for all the information she needed. Most of all, she had writing resources to begin her dream here. She only had a diary and the ledger so far, but she wanted to start a proper book sooner rather than later.

“I guess I’ll ask Lare,” she sighed.

Asking people for money felt wrong, but she really had no choice. She needed to eat somehow, and she hadn’t clarified lunch with anyone yet.

Heading back, she met with Lare, who seemed ready to head out. He was about to leave his office when he noticed Nobina and waved.

“Hey Nobina,” he called. “Heading out to lunch?”

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“Yeah… I don’t have money though so…”

His face showed surprise as he nodded his head.

“I understand. Come with me. We can share my lunch.”

Nobina was surprised by the offer, looking at the basket he had.

“But… I wouldn’t want to impose…”

“Nonsense,” said Lare. “You’re a fellow guild officer. I’d be such a bad boss if I let you starve when you can’t get food.”

“Thank you,” she said with a gentle smile.

With that, the two headed out the back door into a nice garden area that wasn’t too far away. There were tables there as well, so finding a spot to eat wasn’t too hard.

As the two sat down, Lare gave her half his food, with Nobina thanking him once again. Once they began to eat, Lare took the chance to begin asking questions.

“So how are things going?” he asked, enjoying a bit of his sandwich.

“Things are… going ok,” she responded.

He quickly noticed her expression had saddened as she continued to talk.

“The thing is… Mimiki seems to want nothing to do with me. I want to resolve this tension between us, but this isn’t going to be easy if this is a one-way street.”

“I see,” he nodded, thinking about her words. “What if you apologize to her? You did say something rude to her.”

The only thing she did was back-talk to her, but for everything Mimiki had done, she felt like she didn’t need to apologize first.

“Did that justify her actions?” Nobina asked, trying to hold in how annoyed she was having to say the same thing over and over again.

“Nobina,” sighed Lare. “I know you must feel like she doesn’t deserve it, but people notice the effort at least. Give it a shot and see what happens.”

“You think she’d apologize back?” Nobina asked, chewing her sandwich now.

“Unlikely,” Lare said bluntly. “Mimiki is pretty stubborn and will more likely double down on her insults rather than apologize.”

She looked at her remaining food, her thoughts on what to say next slowly drifting out.

“Then… I don’t know what to do.”

Nobina considered peace a two-way street. If Mimiki didn’t want it, then it wouldn’t happen. No amount of effort on her end would change things either. In all her years of working, she had never run into a combative co-worker to this degree, but perhaps that wasn’t the norm. Perhaps she was too ignorant when it came to communication with co-workers.

Seeing her in thought, Lare began talking apologetically.

“Nobina… I might need to take a part of the blame here.”

Seeing his expression, Nobina tried to speak before suddenly realizing something appeared in her bag yet again. She went into it, opening it and seeing a flashlight. Her face of pure confusion prompted Lare to ask what was happening.

“Well… I got something new in my bag.”

“Oh? Care to show it?” he asked, looking at her bag as well.

Nobina took out the flashlight and showed it to Lare, who was completely confused.

“Is that some sort of weapon?”

“Well… No. It’s an object that produces light. Think of it like some sort of magic wand.”

His expression turned into pure shock seeing it.

“Magic wand? I hear those things can fetch a hefty price in the market.”

“Ok, it’s not… Anyways, this is more so a personal object. I’ll find some time to show you it someday,” she said, putting it back into her bag.

Nobina realized this was the most modern object she had gotten so far. Using it was inherently dangerous, but its usefulness also wasn’t to be understated.

“I feel like we got sidetrack,” she said, returning to facing Lare.

“Oh right. Yeah, I might be at fault for what happened,” said Lare, a guilty expression appearing on his face. “I told Mimiki that we got a new guild employee who would handle the money side of things. Her expression went from happy to upset so quickly. I think she was hoping you’d be a combat guild employee.”

“Are those even common?” Nobina asked. “I’d have thought that most of the guild work was administrative.”

“A few combat guild employees are important for rule enforcement. Not to mention guild masters in particular have a minimum power expectation.”

It made sense. If a guild master was too weak, a guild would be pretty useless in a crisis. She could only hope that one of those wouldn’t happen in her tenure as a guild officer.

“So that’s why she dislikes me? Because I can’t fight?”

“That could be it, but I feel like there’s more,” said Lare. “Though, I won’t pry for that information. I’m leaving that up to you.”

She sighed, shaking her head.

“As expected. Don’t worry too much about it, Lare. This is my problem to deal with.”

Lare spoke to Nobina with a smooth calm, trying to make his next words meaningful to her.

“Nobina… Don’t feel like this is something we are dumping onto you. We are all here to support you and you should feel free to talk to us.”

Nobina gave a nod. She did believe that, but not completely.

“Maybe one day that will be true, but for now I need to worry about the money system and Mimiki.”

Nobina finished up her meal and departed, giving her time to think about what had happened. She fully intended to at least get the ball rolling and resolve this matter. The first step was talking to Mimiki and apologizing. She didn’t expect it back, but it was progress.

As she returned from lunch, she saw Mimiki was at the front desk, merely waiting for an adventurer to come by. Her gaze fell onto her for a second, but she ignored Nobina for the most part.

“Mimiki,” said Nobina, trying to be as apologetic as possible. “I’m sorry for my underhanded comment earlier. That was uncalled for, and I hope you can forgive me.”

Mimiki’s lack of speaking prompted Nobina to wait a few minutes before speaking again.

“I’m open to resolve this matter as peacefully as possible. I know you said we shouldn’t be buddy-buddy, but me and you are guild officers. We shouldn’t let things get too bad between us, right?”

Again, no words came from Mimiki’s end. Nobina patience was running thin, but she held strong as she decided to close off the conversation.

“Well, if you need me, I’ll be in the library.”

As Nobina headed into the library, she found herself peeking out of it to see what Mimiki was doing. She was still staring away from her, prompting Nobina to concede and head back to work. As she sat back down, Nobina began wondering how long the money project would take. Setting up a whole system was no easy feat, and it took time away from her writing.

“I need to get this done sooner rather than later.”

In her mind, she was referring to both the situation with Mimiki and the money project. No matter what, she wasn’t going to give up.