Chapter 120: The Bear Has a Four-Person Walk

Chapter 120:
The Bear Has a Four-Person Walk

 

GUIDED BY ATOLA, we ended up going on a field trip to the fish market. The morning catches were lined up in the market, ready and…

“Wriggling! Ohmigosh they’re wriggling?”

“They look so gross!”

The two were making an awful big deal about watching an octopus. “It tastes good, believe it or not.”

“No way, really?”

Yep. Octopus tasted good whether you ate it raw, grilled it, or boiled it.

“Yuna, what’s that thingy?”

“That’s a crab. They taste great boiled.”

Plus, soup flavored with crab tasted great. Shrimp too.

“Can you really eat all these things?”

“Heck yeah you can. You already did, as a matter of fact: they were in the stuff we ate yesterday that Deigha made.”

“Really?! Whoaaaaa.” Fina and Shuri looked at the crab…

…and slowly reached their hands toward it…

“Hey, that’s dangerous. Don’t touch it,” I warned them. I’d hate for them to get pinched.

At my words, the two of them quickly pulled their hands back.

 

After we took a look around the market, we headed to the clearing in town where the food carts gathered. A delicious aroma wafted toward us as we approached. Mmmm…

“That seems so yummy…”

“I wanna eat some!”

The two of them were eyeing a grilled squid stand.

“All right,” said Atola with a laugh, “I’ll buy some for you. You two eat whatever you want with this.” She tried to hand them money, but they wouldn’t take it.

“What’s wrong?”

“Um…?” The girls looked up at me. I guess they had reservations about accepting money from someone they just met, so I just pulled money out of my bear storage and handed it to the two.

“This,” I said seriously, “is for helping me dig up the bamboo shoots yesterday.”

“But you brought us with you here!”

“Maybe. But since you came all the way over, you’ve gotta eat the great food.”

Fina and Shuri looked at each other, then—as though they’d communicated with each other—they nodded slightly, looked up at me, and took the money I had in my bear puppet’s mouth.

“Yuna, thank you.”

“Thanks, Yuna!”

But there was one person who seemed to feel left out…

“Would you take my money too?” Atola asked the girls, looking a little abandoned as she stood beside us.

The sisters looked at me again, and I gave an imperial nod. With a thanks, the girls took her money, took one another’s hands like the best friends they were, and ran off to the stalls.

Atola smiled wistfully. “They’re such honest, good kids.”

“Pretty much.” They weren’t difficult. Me, on the other hand…I’d been a bit different. Atola and I sat down at a bench nearby and watched them.

“Yuna, did you hear what’s going on at the seaport?”

“Deigha and Anz told me a little.”

“Did they tell you anything about the criminals?”

I just shook my head. They hadn’t mentioned anything about that.

Atola sighed. “I suppose they wouldn’t be able to with those little girls around. Well, the former guild master of the trade guild was executed, as were all the other felons.”

“Oh, really?” I didn’t really remember what they even looked like. Huh.

“It was a public execution. Not many people came to watch—mostly just the old men and the family and friends of the people they all…took from us. I do think that the victims’ families will be able to get some closure from this, move forward and such.”

Move to Crimonia, maybe, just as Anz requested. “Come to think of it, have you decided on a mayor? Seemed like Cliff wanted you to take up the position.”

“Oh, but I can’t accept. I know myself, and I know that I’m too lazy for that. Too much work, thank you very much.”

“Then who’s mayor?”

“Old man Kuro’s son, believe it or not. He was reluctant, but he’s the son of a bigwig around here, so no one was going to oppose that.”

“Reluctant, huh? I thought there’d be a ton of people who would want to be mayor though.”

“Pssht. You know what happened with the previous mayor, don’t you? Everyone kept hounding the mayor, day in and day out, to do something about the kraken. When the mayor tried to stock up food from a neighboring town, the robbers appeared and that whole plan went nowhere. The townspeople got even madder with the guy. After seeing how rough things got with him, nobody wanted to take up the mantle. Old man Kuro pretty much forced his son to do it.”

Yikes. Thoughts and prayers to Kuro’s poor kid. “The old mayor’s not coming back then?”

“Not unless he’s willing to face the consequences for slipping out in the dead of the night, I doubt it. The townspeople would not be forgiving.”

“But what if he came back? Who would be mayor then?”

“Same as we got now. This seaport is now under Lord Cliff’s jurisdiction, so the old mayor wouldn’t be able to do jack. If anything does get wonky, Lord Cliff would probably help us out and calm things down.”

Seemed like Atola had her faith in Cliff. Well, I guess I could leave things up to Cliff if the ex-mayor did come back.

“Also,” Atola added, “it would probably be dangerous for the ex-mayor to come back.”

“Dangerous?”

“I said they wouldn’t be forgiving, and I meant it. There are a lot of people with grudges against him.”

Yeah. I guess any populace would hold a grudge if they were abandoned by some jerk like that, no matter the world.

“Enough about that depressing stuff—Yuna, where are you all staying? At Deigha’s? Or in the bear?”

“The…the bear?” Stay cool, Yuna. “Deigha’s inn was filled up, so I happen to be staying at my house on the outskirts of the seaport.”

“I knew it. Hm. I wonder if we’ve got to start building more inns. Once the tunnel’s done, we’ll probably have more people. At this rate, we’ll definitely run out of rooms.”

“You’re not starting to build stuff?” They finished prepping the lumber, but hadn’t started any constructions?

“We’re going to start soon, but we don’t have enough workers at the moment. Also, we still have the issues of all the monsters in the area, so we’ve had to postpone it till we can take them out.”

“Right, I saw Blitz. Is the monster extermination going all right?”

“Thanks to the adventurers, we haven’t seen hide nor hair of ’em recently, at least nearby. Right now, I’m having them go a little further out. Then we’ll actually start construction.”

Personally, I’d like them to finish before the nice, warm summer came…if they had summers. They did have summers in this world, right? I put that doubt aside, opened my mouth to say something else, and Fina and Shuri came back, hand in hand and looking joyful.

“Yuna!” A nod. “Ms. Atola!”

“Welcome back, guys.” They looked satisfied, so I guess they’d gotten something tasty to eat.

“Well then,” said Atola, “I’m heading back to the guild. What’re you all doing next?”

“Only thing I can think of is going to the trade guild, asking how things are with the Land of Wa and all that.”

“Right,” said Atola with a nod. “The Land of Wa. They used to come about once a month, but then…the kraken. I hope that their ship wasn’t sunk.”

“Ehh, I’ll just be patient.” Of course, if push came to shove I could ask for info at the capital. With that, we left Atola and headed to the trade guild. When we got there, the employees were completely busy with work, with not an idle employee in sight.

“M-Ms. Yuna!” One of the female employees noticed me. When she blurted that out, everyone else in the place looked at me, all at once.

Fina and Shuri stood there for a moment, shocked by the employees’ gaze. I plopped my hands on their heads to calm them down.

I coughed. “Is, ah, Jeremo around?”

“Yes, one moment.”

The employee called Jeremo out from a room in the back: “It’s the bear girl.” And a very tired Jeremo came over to us.

“Been a while,” I said.

“Yes, you look like you’re doing well.”

“I wish I could say the same to you, Jeremo.”

“I wish I’d never agreed to become the guild master,” he said hoarsely. “Too busy. No breaks. Mountain of paperwork. Never goes down. I have so much to do, and…and then there’s the instructor from Crimonia…” he added, his voice full of dread.

“Please,” said a woman’s voice, “don’t make me sound so terrible. If you just did a proper job remembering how to do your work, there wouldn’t be any issues. The sooner you learn your job, the sooner I get to go back to Crimonia, boy.” She was an intelligent-looking woman (in her mid-twenties, maybe?) and she stood tall behind Jeremo. (I think glasses would have looked good on her.) “I’m teaching you this because Milaine asked me to. I left my husband and child in town, so please get your act together.”

“I got it. I’ll do my best.”

“Please do.”

I guess this was the instructor who Milaine said would “assist” him.

“Ms. Yuna, it’s nice to meet you,” she said. “I am Anabell, from Crimonia.”

Oh, um? “You know who I am, Anabell?”

“I’ve seen you many times around Crimonia. Really, there is not a single employee working at Crimonia’s trade guild who doesn’t know who you are. What has brought you here? Do you have a complaint for Jeremo?”

Jeremo blinked. “Why would she? I haven’t done anything, have I?”

“Do. Your. Job.”

They had this rapid-fire back-and-forth thing going, and I didn’t want to kill the vibe, so I just decided to ignore that part. “Uhh, I was wondering what happened with the Land of Wa.”

“Oh, that,” said Anabell. “It looks like a ship made contact with a Land of Wa ship the other day. The fishermen told them what happened to the seaport, so I believe we will restart trade again.”

“Really?!” Good to hear.

“Yes, but we don’t know when it will restart.”

But not good enough.

Anyway, this Anabell seemed pretty amazing. She had a reply ready a moment after I asked—at the very least, she was good enough for Milaine. If Jeremo learned from her, he might end up becoming a great guild master. “Is Jeremo doing a good job?”

“Hmm. He does try to skip out sometimes, but for the most part he’s putting everything he has into this. If only he wasn’t so insistently asking for breaks right away…”

“What?” Jeremo protested. “That’s because you won’t let me have any room to breathe.”

“The more you suffer while doing your work,” said Anabell, “the better it will be for the townspeople. No breaks.”

What a terrible workplace. If I didn’t get any breaks, I’d just quit. In the words of a wise man, “working is losing.” Now I understood what the old guy gang meant by their assessment of Jeremo. He wasn’t diligent, but he did the work. He was the kinda guy who wouldn’t let you down if you were relying on him.

“There’s something I’d like to ask you, Ms. Yuna,” said Anabell. “When will you be able to return to Crimonia?”

“I was thinking tomorrow.”

“I apologize for asking, but would you be kind enough to hand this report to the guild master?”

“A report?”

“We send a report and request materials every ten days, but Jeremo was late processing something and that matter wasn’t entered into the report from a few days ago. We need those items quickly, though, so we can’t just bundle them with the next report.”

“I just need to hand it off to her? Fine by me.”

“Thank you very much. I’ll bring the documents right away. I’m counting on you.”

So I accepted documents from Anabell, left the trade guild behind, and…there wasn’t much to do, then. I told Anz and Deigha that I’d be going home tomorrow. The three of us ran along the beaches on my bears and, finally, headed back to the bear house to watch the sun set over the ocean.

“We’re going home tomorrow?” Fina asked during our baths.

“Yeah, I don’t want to make Tiermina worry too much about you.”

“You think mom’s worried about us?”

“Moms do that.” She was so kind, I couldn’t imagine her not worrying over her daughters. “More importantly, did you two have fun?”

“Yes, tons!”

“The fish were yummy.”

The two of them were beaming. Yeah, bringing them along paid off.

“Let’s all come together next time, you and your mom and everybody.”

“Yes!”

“Uh-huh!”

Just as we planned, we headed out for Crimonia the next day.