Um, you know that I’m already busy working on the rice millers, right, Haruka-san? I also still need to make more rock climbing tools, and I need to work on improving them too. You can’t be serious about making more orders, right? Sure, I really appreciate that your party provides me with work, but still! Ugh. Oh well. I can’t really turn down commissions from my best customers, so I guess I’ll just nod.
“Good. You see, we were thinking that it’s about time to order some white iron chain mail for them. That’s why I bought this up with you. Would it be better if we discussed it with Gantz-san instead?”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll pass your message along to him,” I said. “I don’t know who’ll end up making the armor, though—me or Gantz-san.”
Whew. This new order will just be business as usual—easy enough. I’m sure Gantz-san will help me out. Or rather, I’ll ask him to help me, so everything will be fine. He’ll probably make me participate too, but it should be much easier than developing new products on my own.
“Yeah, we’ll leave the details to you,” said Haruka.
“Thank you for your order,” I said.
Man, I still can’t believe that adventurers can just casually place orders for armor that’s worth millions of Japanese yen. That said, I don’t really want to become an adventurer anymore. I’ve come to realize that Haruka-san’s party is really an exception in terms of success.
“Also—” Haruka began with her usual composed expression on her face.
“D-Do you really have even more work for me?!” I desperately interrupted her. “I’m afraid I’m already at my limit! I really can’t take on any more!”
It was true that they were my best customers, and I was willing to accommodate most of their requests to a certain extent because I’d profited so much from this relationship, but...
Haruka chuckled and waved her hands to reassure me. “Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t work related.”
“I see. Whew...”
Well, I guess being too busy is better than having no work at all and being bored.
“We’re actually planning to host a flower-viewing party soon,” said Yuki. “We figured right now is just about the perfect time of year. It’s been a year and a half since we first started this party, so we wanted to take this time to celebrate all sorts of stuff. Like, for one thing, the fact that we’ve survived in this world.”
“Do you have the time and the inclination to attend, Tomi-kun?” Natsuki asked. “We’ll be serving some fancy food, but apart from that, it will be nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Of course! I’d love to attend!”
Thank goodness it was just a casual request. And there’s no way I would miss out on an opportunity for food made by Haruka and the rest! It’s not like “Might as well take what I can get”—it’s the main attraction as far as I’m concerned! Sure, the food at The Slumbering Bear is decent, but the food Haruka and the others make is on a whole different level. I don’t know if it’s because they put more money and effort into cooking or if we just have similar tastes as former Japanese people. Regardless, I’ll make sure I have time to attend!
“Whoa, it has been a while since we first got transported to this world, huh?” I said. “I haven’t even thought about that until now.”
“And yet all of us have somehow managed to survive,” said Haruka.
“We’ve been through all sorts of crap, but we’ve managed to make a life for ourselves here in Laffan,” said Yuki.
“Yeah, you guys have gone through a lot more than I have,” I said. “I owe my survival to all of you.”
At first, I had wound up in the middle of a forest, where I’d basically been at the mercy of two dumb guys—although looking back, there really hadn’t been much difference between them and me. Regardless, I’d been able to survive because I’d met Haruka-san’s party. I had never been in danger since then, while Haruka-san and her friends put their lives on the line constantly to build a new life in this world.
But the girls actually shook their heads after they heard me muse about my luck.
“You’ve worked quite hard to establish a life here, Tomi-kun,” said Natsuki.
“Yeah, ’xactly,” said Yuki. “We only gave you a little bit of help to get you started. And you’ve helped us a lot since then, so we’re even.”
I would have said they’d given me way more than “a little” help. The first hurdle I’d had to jump was becoming a blacksmith’s apprentice. That had only been possible because Haruka-san and her party had earned Gantz-san’s trust. Touya had gone out on a limb to vouch for me too.
They’d also given me a lot of work. Most apprentices without a background in blacksmithing could only do things like assist the master with simple tasks, and they barely earned enough money to get by. But the orders from Haruka-san’s party had paid well, so I’d never struggled for money. I could even afford alcohol. In fact, Gantz-san reminded me all the time how lucky I was, and honestly, I agreed completely. But I knew that if I said that, the girls would probably try to argue, so I just lowered my head and thanked them again.
★★★★★★★★★
Now that we’d come up with the strategy of soaking the rice ahead of time, the problem of how to split it evenly was actually pretty easy to resolve. I was kind of irritated given how much I’d struggled with it. After a little testing, I determined that you had to soak the rice in water overnight, so you couldn’t ever cook it right away, but the girls didn’t mind at all. I’d successfully completed their order, and they gave me an extra reward in the form of some salted onigiri.
They were absolutely delicious. The rice wasn’t as good as the rice back in Japan, but it had been so long since I’d had anything like this that nostalgia covered up the difference. Another plus was the fact that these onigiri had been made by the hands of beautiful girls, so— Ahem, my bad; I should say, it’s the fact that I put so much work into the machine that polished the rice.
I wished I could eat rice on a regular basis again, but it sounded like it wasn’t available on the market here in Laffan. The girls didn’t have a lot with them either. I’d asked if they were willing to share some, but they’d only had a little bit to give me. They’d apparently found it someplace they couldn’t routinely visit to go shopping, so I planned to work my way through what they’d given me slowly.
As for the white iron chain mail that Haruka-san’s party had ordered for Mary-san and Metea-san, I ended up being the one who made it rather than Gantz-san, but I was pretty familiar with the process by now; I had already made mail a few times before. It took some time to finish, but the work itself was easy enough, so I completed that order before I started on the rock climbing tools.
The carabiners and the square spindle posed no problems, so I just produced more of those. The bolts, spikes, and pitons were all structurally quite simple, and I didn’t have to worry about the special resin, since Haruka-san’s party was going to take care of that, but the rope ladder actually took me a bunch of time to complete. I had never made one before, and neither had Gantz-san—he even asked, “That the kind of thing blacksmiths make?”
Safety was my top concern, so I used metal wires for the ropes. Normal rope would be too chancy if Haruka-san’s party got attacked inside the dungeon. The wire was more durable than the wire for the chain mail, so it probably wouldn’t snap even if monsters bit it. I gave the rungs a pipe structure so that they wouldn’t break even if someone like Touya-kun stepped on them in heavy armor. However, when I focused too much on durability, the ladder started getting too heavy for practical use, so I tested all kinds of different combinations of materials and structures and ended up destroying a lot of designs before I finally found the right balance.
All that was left was to actually make the ladder. This part wasn’t easy either. According to the specifications from Haruka-san, it had to be at least ten meters long. If there were any sections with defects, my friends would fall all the way down. I couldn’t afford a single mistake, so I worked carefully, and as a result, time passed in a flash. That was around the same time the date of the flower-viewing party arrived. At the party, I discovered a new path to hope: liquor.