Chapter 1:
The Collaboration
I’D ASKED NOELA to watch the store, but she was missing—although she’d been right next to me during breakfast.
“Mina?” I called. “Do you have any idea where Noela ran off to?”
“Oh… The fridge.”
“Fridge” was what we called the giant metal box we’d made into a primitive refrigerator by spreading icy gel inside. It was next to the well-ventilated kitchen.
Noela was leaning against the fridge; I saw her fluffy tail poking out from beside it. Since it’d been hot lately, I didn’t blame her. To be honest, I didn’t know whether the current temperature was the result of a heat wave or if it was typical for the season.
“Groo…” Noela sighed.
“Hey, Noela. You’re supposed to be watching the store.”
“Garoo! Master! When you get here?”
“Are you serious?”
“Rei Reiiiii!” a voice cried from the storefront. Paula from the tool shop had apparently dropped by. I’d come up with the idea of the special fridge unit, and the only one built was at my house, but it was Paula who’d had the fridge made thanks to her connections.
Deciding to let Noela enjoy the cool refrigerator a little longer, I headed back into the drugstore. “Why’re you here?” I asked Paula. “To kill time again?”
“Don’t be so mean! Here.” She plunked a bottle of grape juice on the counter.
“Want me to cool it off in the fridge? All right, but it won’t chill quickly. You’ll have to let it sit a few hours.”
“Then what’s the point?! There is no point!” Paula yelled, slapping the counter twice.
She’s that disappointed, eh?
“Hey, Rei Rei—make something that cools drinks off instantly, okay?”
“You’d be better off asking a mage,” I replied. Not that you’d find one out here in the boondocks.
“Just make a product that chills drinks perfectly, so people can enjoy them!” Paula insisted.
“You really think I can make that?” Nope.
Still, it had been weirdly hot lately. And, although the drugstore staff had easy access to cold water and food from the fridge, other locals didn’t.
“Oh… Actually, we did have something like that on Earth,” I muttered, remembering a machine that let people at least chill drinks faster than normal, if not instantly. “Hey, Paula, I’ve got to talk to you about something.”
“What? Is it something lewd?”
“No.” I grabbed a piece of paper and pen off the counter and drew a blueprint, explaining my idea.
“Huh? Whoa…I get it.”
“Well, what do you think? If you got your artisan friends to build this—”
“This is a stroke of genius!” Paula exclaimed. I could almost see her visions of riches appearing in her eyes. “I can feel it… A revolution is coming…!”
“Oh, please.”
“I’ll go talk to my friends.”
“Great. I’ll get the icy gel ready here.”
“If your blueprint works, I can manufacture these ‘rotating coolers’ and sell them to aristocrats for an arm and a leg… I’ll be rich! Tee hee hee!” Paula giggled.
My icy gel would sell faster too. It’d be a win-win situation for the both of us. Back on Earth, I’d have described this rotating cooler as a collaboration of sorts between the drugstore and tool shop.
“But will it really cool things off?” I wondered.
✦ ✦ ✦
When I heard the cost of the rotating cooler prototype, I nearly fell out of my chair. “I-It was that expensive?”
“Yup,” Paula replied. “After this, we’ll either be on a one-way trip to spectacular failure, or we’ll have it made.”
“So there’s no turning back,” I mumbled. Paula should’ve checked with me if the prototype was going to be this costly.
I poured some room-temperature water from a pitcher into a metal container; Paula drank what was left. “Ugh. It’s lukewarm,” she cringed.
Spreading icy gel on the container’s outer surface, I finished preparing the cooler by pouring two packs of gel into the box that held the vessel. “Your friends made sure the metal was thin, right?” I asked, putting the container inside the box.
“I stressed that element,” Paula replied. “It should be fine.”
“Here we go, then.”
Paula gulped. I grabbed the box’s handle and started to rotate it. The gel-coated container inside the box likewise began to spin.
“Whoa,” Paula murmured. “Will this really work?”
“It…should.” I couldn’t help but feel my confidence fading a tad.
After I cranked the handle for a while, I let Paula do some of the work. Then I pulled out the gel-coated container. “Should be about ready… Jeez—it’s cold!”
Paula touched the vessel too. “Eek! It’s freezing!”
Removing the container lid, I poured the water into a cup. “Wow. It’s pretty chilly.”
Paula gestured to me. I nodded, handing her the cup of water. She took a sip. “It’s frigid! And all we did was turn the cooler’s handle a few times!”
I sipped the water as well. Sure enough, it was as cold as freshly melted snow.
Paula and I exchanged high fives, crying out, “We did it!”
Meanwhile, Mina and Noela silently peeked into the room, obviously wanting to know what Paula and I were up to.
“Come on, girls, give this rotating cooler a try,” I called to them. “It makes things really cold.”
“W-wanna chill this.” Noela held the orange juice Mina had bought her yesterday. Since the fridge was full, we’d put the orange juice elsewhere, and it’d warmed up.
“Try it out,” I encouraged her.
“Groo!” Noela poured her orange juice into the container. She cranked the handle as hard as she could, making a tremendously loud racket.
“Noela, you don’t need to put that much elbow grease into—”
“Wanna freeze it!”
Well, then. “Stop, fluffball!”
My cry finally gave Noela pause, and I showed her the right way to crank the cooler handle. When I flipped the container upside down afterward, however, no liquid poured into the glass.
“Huh?” I mumbled. “It’s not coming out.”
“Juice…gone?” The development reduced Noela to a state of shock.
“Wait a second…” I smacked the vessel a few times, and an orange object slid out. “It turned into sorbet!”
“Amazing!” Mina exclaimed. “So, this is a sorbet-making machine?”
Noela was silent, but her eyes sparkled.
“N-not quite,” I replied. “I guess that’s what happens when you crank the cooler as fast as possible, though.”
“I think this design will sell like hotcakes, Rei Rei,” Paula predicted. “I’m going to loop in more artisans and mass-produce these suckers! The easy life awaits us! Bwa ha ha ha ha!” Cackling loudly, she left the drugstore.
✦ ✦ ✦
I wound up selling the rotating coolers at Kirio Drugs. I explained how the machines worked to each and every customer, but people complained that they were too pricey. The coolers cost 30,000 rin each. Taking into account the production and material costs, that was about as low as we could go.
Paula was in the same boat, and rotating-cooler sales at the tool shop didn’t go particularly well either. Guess it is what it is, I thought.
Cue Elaine’s arrival at the drugstore…
“What’s this, Sir Reiji?”
Before I could explain the machine to Elaine, Noela took over. “Look, Drills! Spin. Chill.”
Elaine seemed confused. Noela hadn’t given her much of an explanation, so I stepped in and described the rotating cooler, showing her how it worked.
“This is amazing!” Elaine declared. “It’s so neat!”
“As long as you’ve got icy gel, you can chill as much juice, water, or liquor as you want,” I noted. Noela nodded along in agreement.
“I’d love one of these in our mansion!” Elaine told me. “I’ll take it!”
Paying in cash, the young noblewoman took the rotating cooler straight home with her.
Partly due to Elaine’s positive word of mouth, the cooler became quite a hot topic among the nobility. Increasing numbers of aristocrats visited Kirio Drugs to purchase one, and those same aristocrats then became familiar with the drugstore’s standard lineup.