Chapter 79: The Bear Submits a Quest to the Adventurers’ Guild

Chapter 79:
The Bear Submits a Quest to the Adventurers’ Guild

 

“I’M DEAD. D-E-D. Deceased.”

“Soooo tiiiiiired…”

We sprawled out on the store chairs, completely drained. Even the ever-energetic kids seemed to be tuckered out.

“I never would have thought we would have so many customers.” Morin sipped her tea with a strained smile.

“Why were there so many?” Karin asked, slightly muffled because her face was smooshed against the table. “Does Crimonia not have a bakery?”

“We do. I don’t know how long it’ll last now that everybody’s tasted Morin’s baking.”

When I praised Morin’s bread, Karin perked up.

“Your pizza and pudding were doing pretty well too,” I added. “I can’t even remember how many pizzas we baked.”

Morin’s bread wasn’t the only thing that flew off the shelves—the pizza, pudding, and fries did too.

“But this can’t keep up,” Morin moaned. “Or tomorrow we’ll crumble into dust.” I agreed. Not only were customers swarming, but ingredients were dwindling.

“Morin, how did things work out in the kitchen?”

“We prep the bread the day before and bake it early in the morning. If we need to increase output, I’d really like a few more ovens. That way I could bake more loaves simultaneously.”

More ovens? That was a piece of cake.

“That way,” she continued, “we can bake pizzas as we get orders for them, and bake the popular bread when we need supplements. We only managed today thanks to the kids helping out. But prep for tomorrow will be an ordeal if we end up with the same number of customers. We’d need to have a lot of things ready or we’ll end up with the same situation we had today. Not having time for a break is also an issue.”

True. If she prepped bread the day before, woke up to bake it at the crack of dawn, and opened right after finishing, there’d be no time to rest. Plus, the more fatigued they got, the less efficient they’d be and the more likely they’d make mistakes.

“What if we opened later?” I asked. “We had more customers coming in closer to lunch. If we used that lead time for prep work, everyone can have lunch before we open up. We won’t end up with the same issues as today.” I was able to make sure the kids got something to eat today, but Morin, Karin, and myself hadn’t.

“That would help. I’d like to also give the orphans some downtime.” Morin looked over at the kids. They were dozing off in their chairs. They’d been on edge all day and were probably exhausted.

“Also, about closing time,” I said, “I think we should allot a certain amount of ingredients per day and, once those run out, we should close.”

Morin baked additional bread every time we made a sale. Since we were doing things that way, there was no end to the baking in sight.

“Are you sure?”

“I mean, I’m not doing this to get rich. As long as you get to keep your bakery in business and the kids get to work, who cares? And I’m not going to lose money, you know? If we’ve got this much demand, I think we’re good.”

“Yes,” said Tiermina—she checked up on us throughout the day and even joined in. “We’re making more than enough in profits. But the shop will have some expenditures, so I think we should save up whenever possible.”

“You don’t have to worry about that.”

“If I didn’t worry about it, where would that leave you?”

Still in the black, Tiermina. I still had the money I earned in my original world and the money I earned from the monster slaying. As long as we weren’t hemorrhaging money, things were fine. But I let her have this one.

“Besides,” she continued, “ingredients are finite. It’s not like we can whip them up from thin air. If we keep using the eggs, cheese, and spuds at this rate, we’ll run out right away. That’s why we should be deliberate about portioning out how much we’re using for a day.”

Hmm. If we had a fixed quantity of everything we’d use per day, that’d also make restocking easier. “True. Other than the flour, a lot of the things we’re using are difficult to get ahold of. We also can’t cut down on the number of eggs we’re selling through the trade guild any more than this.”

We reduced the amount of eggs that we were selling wholesale to the guild for the store opening, so we were already hitting the limit of our pudding production potential. We also needed to treat our potatoes and puddings preciously until the opportunity presented itself to procure supplies.

If we were going to offer more of anything, we needed to guarantee that we had enough ingredients. No way I could’ve even imagined we’d have this many customers on day one. “Also,” I said, “every six days of work, we’ll have one day off.”

“A day off?”

The people in this world didn’t take days off, by and large. I’d never seen the dining rooms or the inns take holidays. In exchange for that, though, they’d create pockets of free time within working hours to do other stuff. But we hadn’t had any downtime. While the shop was open, we needed to engage with the customers. After that, we had to clean up, prep, and do all sorts of other stuff.

Most importantly, the kids needed breaks.

“As in, a day when we don’t open the shop. You can go shopping or sleep or whatever. It’ll be a day when you rest so you can come back to work energized.”

“Are you sure we should take breaks? We won’t be able to sell as much.”

“I really would rather we take turns taking days off, but we just don’t have the people for that.”

Kids did work in this world, but they were still kids. They weren’t slaves, and I’d just feel bad not letting them have a rest. The kids came before profits.

 

“Let’s talk about the floor next. Did you have any issues?” I asked Karin. Though I was also working in the shop front, she was in charge of the floor.

“There were some customers who seemed like they were going to take home the bears.”

I definitely had seen some diners trying to pry the bears from the tables. Tough luck, guys—the suckers were fixed in place.

“A few customers also asked us to sell them,” said Karin.

“They’re not for sale, so I guess I’ll put up a notice about that. Was there anything else?” I asked the floor workers.

“Some customers were getting annoyed by the wait times for the counter line.”

“Then I’ll set up another counter for tomorrow. There were a lot of people who just wanted pudding, so maybe we could put the refrigerator with the pudding beside the counter to reduce the wait time.”

We discussed the pain points we learned throughout the day. Running a business sure was difficult. If I just had experience selling stuff back in my old world, we probably wouldn’t have ended up this exhausted. The only stuff a hermit fifteen-year-old like me knew came from manga, television, and the occasional whimsical light novel. It wasn’t like I was studying them for business advice either, so my plans were full of holes. Still, thanks to the workers, we’d gotten through the day without many issues.

Tiermina stood up and headed out to correct the operating hours on the fliers we’d spread…but it might’ve been too late for that. Most people came by without realizing there even were hours. If they came by during the same hours they had today, we wouldn’t have any issues, but there was a chance they’d try stopping by in the morning. There was also the possibility of other trouble breaking out. I was on the lookout for any rapscallions today, but there would probably be things I wouldn’t be able to see. Plus, all the employees were women and children. If anything happened, what if I couldn’t deal with it alone?

And so I headed to the adventurers’ guild.

 

“Yuna, what are you doing here at a time like this?” Helen asked. I found her on the way out of the guild.

“Are you headed home?”

“Yes, my shift is over. What’s the matter?”

“I came to submit a quest.”

“A quest?”

“Kinda. I’m hoping to prevent trouble before it happens.”

I gave a simple explanation of what happened today: we had a ton more customers than we expected, we were changing business hours, and I wanted to hire an adventurer who could protect the kids.

“I’m sorry, I had no idea,” she said. “It looks like I advertised too much.”

“It’s not your fault. I just made a lot assumptions that…didn’t go the way I thought they would.”

“What’s that got to do with a quest?”

“I’ve got kids working in the shop, so I want to hire an adventurer who can keep an eye on things for me.”

“Hmm. Well you do have all those orphans, so I suppose this would become a necessity.”

“Yeah—I was just thinking of hiring a guard for seven days. Do you know any adventurers who would take a job like this?”

“Depends on the quest reward. Money greases the adventurer’s wheels, after all.”

“Money, huh? I’m not sure what market rate is.” Even if it was a little expensive, if it ensured the kid’s safety, it was worth it. If the kids got hurt because I skimped out, I wouldn’t be able to face the headmistress. I wanted to hire a strong guard to make sure that never happened.

“It depends on which rank you want to recruit from. You want someone to guard a shop, and the people they’re going to guard it from are average townspeople, right? Then I think lower-ranking adventurers would do just fine. Then again, if you receive trouble from a high-ranking adventurer, someone from a lower rank wouldn’t do.”

I didn’t think we had thugs like that around, but then again that thing with Deboranay had happened at the adventurers’ guild, so I couldn’t completely rule it out.

“Yuna, Helen, what are you doing here?” Rulina, the adventurer who once went goblin slaying with me, stepped out of the guild and flashed us a smile. The other members of Deboranay’s party were also behind her. There was Deboranay, whom I’d clobbered; Lanz, the guy who liked to run his mouth; and that silent guy—was it, Gil? The whole squad showed up.

Why was Rulina in a party with these guys anyway? Did she have a thing for oddballs or something?

“Don’t think rude thoughts, Yuna.” Creepy. She couldn’t, like, read minds or something…could she?

“Rude? I was just wondering why someone as pretty as you would be in a party like this, Rulina.”

“I’m not an official party member—just a temp.” She snorted. “Just look at this party, you can tell it’s full of meatheads.” They sure looked it. “We ended up teaming together temporarily, and it just kinda kept going.”

“You should just officially join our party already,” one of the meatheads blurted.

“No way. If I was going to officially partner with anyone, it’d be an adorable girl like Yuna.” Rulina leaned in and gave me a bear hug. Ever since I carried her princess-style that one time, Rulina had become a bit cuddly with the bear outfit. “What’s up, Yuna?”

“I was thinking of submitting a quest to get a guard for my shop.”

“Oh, the new one? Everybody’s talking about it.”

“Saying good things, I hope. Well, I was thinking of asking for some security.” With a quick nod at Helen, I repeated my explanation to Rulina. “So, if there are problematic guests, I was hoping to hire an adventurer who can intimidate them or, like, gently turn them away or something.”

“I see. Then do you want us to do it?”

“Really? It’d sure be a big help.”

“Yeah.”

“Stop making decisions without consulting us, Rulina,” someone groaned from behind Rulina. It was, naturally…

“Deboranay?”

“I’m not doing it.”

“If Deboranay’s not in, I’m not either,” Lanz complained. Gil was silent as always.

“Really?” Rulina’s mouth twisted. “In that case, I’m calling off the temporary party.”

“Wait, you what?” Debornay protested.

“Are you surprised? If you’re going to use me whenever you want to and never help me when I need you, then why should I bother with you layabouts?” Rulina turned away from them. “Yuna, is one adventurer enough?”

“I’ll do it too,” Gil mumbled.

“Really?”

“Heard the grub’s good. You feed me, I’ll help you out too.”

“Gil, you’re just gonna betray us?” Deboranay grabbed Gil’s shoulder.

“She helped us out a while ago, man. Besides, I agree with Rulina.”

“Thank you, Gil,” Rulina said. Gil was a man of few words, but maybe he was different from Deboranay.

The two silently glared at each other. Deboranay was the first one to look away. “To hell with you! Let’s go, Lanz.”

“You got it, chief.”

They walked away, leaving Rulina and Gil behind.

“You’re sure, Rulina?” I asked.

“I’m sure. I was planning to leave weeks ago after our little adventure, but they whined and moaned. We’ve kept things going until today, but things were pretty tense.”

“When you decide to quit being an adventurer outright, let me know,” I said. “I’m in the middle of recruiting talent.”

“I’ll take you up on that when I do.” Was she was just humoring me? Because if not, there were a ton of things I’d like her help with. Personality, skills, and pretty much everything about Rulina was fantastic.

“The quest, though—you free for seven days?”

“Sure am. Hell, just pay me in meals; I don’t need a quest fee.”

“Too bad, you’re still getting one. And the meals too.”

“Um, please do make sure you both go through proper guild channels when you accept this quest,” Helen, who was silently listening until then, interjected. Eh, fair enough. I ended up submitting a quest through the guild, and Rulina and Gil accepted it. The quest fee would consist of meals from Bear’s Lounge and some silver coins.

After I submitted the guard request without issue, I headed home to the bear house. Even though I was just doing stuff behind the scenes (hermit that I am), it was a tiring day. I got into the bear bath and washed away the fatigue. Ahh. That’s the stuff. I got out, changed into my white bear clothes, and slipped into bed.