Otome Game Mob Villain - Chapter 7
Chapter 7: Find A Merchant
Translator: mayora13
The day after I had a discussion with Father, three of our family gathered in the dining room for breakfast. Mother couldn’t join as she was too sick to leave her room. I heard from Garn that she was very sorry about not being able to come. Even so, Mel was delighted.
Father watched us talk as we ate, and I felt like he was losing his composure a little.
He stopped observing us and joined the conversation with that stern, frightening face of his. “Meredy. Is it alright for me to call you Mel as well?”
All of a sudden, the air in the dining room turned strange. Garn was grinning, but the maids were round-eyed.
Mel was unfazed, however, as she replied in a clear voice. “Umm, well. Father’s not allowed! You still have to call me Meredy. The only ones allowed to call me Mel are Mother and Nii-chama who stay by my side!!”
“… I see.”
I thought, ‘Oh no.’
Father closed his eyes without breaking expression, but I could tell he was feeling awfully dejected and gloomy. He was probably crying inside.
Meanwhile, Garn’s shoulders were subtly shaking, and the maids were pinching each other’s sides as if trying to hold something in.
With a dry cough, I called out, “Father. I’d like to look around our territory today.
May I?”
“… Very well. Bring at least two escorting knights with you. And ask Garn to prepare a carriage.”
“I understand.”
Mel, who was listening to our conversation, raised a hand with a smile as she cried, “Mel wants to go too!!”
“Mel is still small, so let’s go after you grow a little bigger.”
Mel took out the ‘spoiled child’ card in response. “Whaa!! Nooo.”
Unfortunately, though, I couldn’t take her out as I had something important to do for the day. I convinced Mel to stay by promising to read her picture books after coming back.
“Now then, it’s time to go.”
When breakfast was over, I got what I needed and boarded a carriage to head for the largest city in Baldia’s territory. The city was near our mansion; only 10 minutes away.
Although Baldia’s territory was known as a remote region, that was only because it was far from the Imperial Capital. Looking at it from a different angle, our territory was located in the middle point of the Imperial Capital and other countries.
Incidentally, for some products, there were cases where the assortment of goods was better than that of the capital city. Even the scale of villages in Baldia was far from what you would call the “sticks”.
Holding the advantage of having more land that could be freely used compared to the Imperial Capital, Baldia had independently succeeded in producing olives brought from other countries and was now selling goods such as essential oils to the capital and neighboring countries.
The production of olives was apparently proposed by Father. He carried it out with the idea that prosperity of the land would lead to military power, and therefore act as deterrence against countries next to us.
At the beginning of the olive business, though, there were people who didn’t think well of the idea and ridiculed Baldia as “a remote region you can experience tree-planting in”.
Apparently, even after the business succeeded, people continued to maliciously gossip about our “tree-planting territory” and its lord, “Count Tree-Plant”.
By the time I passed the olive fields visible from the carriage, the city came into sight.
Peddlers were waiting for their turn at the checkpoint near the city entrance.
My carriage pulled to a stop for the moment, while one of my escorts outside ran by himself over to the gatekeeper who was inspecting the traffic.
A little while later, my escort came back and said, “I have spoken to the gatekeeper. Let us go.” And the carriage immediately resumed moving.
I realized then that the son of the Lord had priority over the city entry. Glancing at the long line at the checkpoint, I felt slightly embarrassed and sorry about entering the city,
so I inwardly muttered an apology to all those people waiting.
After stopping the carriage at the villa of the Baldia family in the city, I decided to go around exploring on foot. Although I had a different objective, it was my first time coming to a city in a different world. I couldn’t control my curiosity as my eyes were drawn to the stalls and shops I had never seen before.
“Rid-sama, please be careful not to go too far alone.”
“Diana is right. There are many people in the city, and we don’t know where danger might be lurking.”
My two escorts warned me as I was looking around with shining eyes. Their names were Rubens and Diana, and they both had brown hair and blue eyes. Apparently, they were childhood friends.
“Mhm, I got it. Then can I ask you two to call me without honorifics? ‘Sama’ will make it obvious I’m a child of aristocracy or the like.”
The two were perplexed at first, but they eventually relented in understanding.
We changed clothes at the villa, so everyone was wearing something rather plain. I mostly saw humans while walking around the city and looking around, but there were other races such as beastmen and elves too. The scene made me realize anew that this was a different world.
As I kept walking with such thoughts in my mind, I reached my intended destination.
“… Is this really the right place?” Diana asked dubiously.
The place we arrived at was a store with a signboard that read “Christy Co”.
Diana probably thought her mission was to escort me while I was shopping. I answered, “Mhm, there’s no mistake here.”
Upon opening the door, the bell attached rang, announcing a customer’s arrival.
I heard someone call out hello from the back along with the sound of footsteps. “Welcome!! What might you be looking for?”
From the back of the store came out a black-haired, doe-eyed girl with cute car ears and a tail. Even as I felt nostalgia from her black hair and eyes, I couldn’t my eyes from going to her ears and tail.
The girl asked confusedly, “Is there a problem?”
“… Excuse me. Actually, I sent a letter to Christy-san the other day. Is she available today?”
“Ah!? I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were Master’s customer. I’ll go confirm things right away!!”
The store clerk briskly retraced her steps to the back of the store.
In the meantime, I looked around the products in the store. The goods were displayed beautifully, and the interior of the establishment was lovely too. I supposed this was proof of the store being firmly managed.
While I was looking at the products available, a beautiful woman came out from the back of the store and called out to me. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Rid-sama. I am Christy Saffron, president of Christy Co.”
“I’m Rid Baldia, the one contacting you by letter. Nice to meet you.”
Christy had transparently white skin, pretty golden hair, and green eyes, which all combined to give off a very mysterious vibe. And what stood out most were her long, slender ears poking out of her hair. She was the only woman in Baldia’s territory who was running a company as an elf.
The next day after I told Father about wanting to do business, I learned about Christy Co when I consulted Garn if there were any good companies around. At the time, the challenge was to find a company with the promise of developing sales promotion routes to various places in and out of the Empire.
Garn had thought about the matter a little before telling me he had a good idea and telling me about a company headed by an elf, Christy Co.
Immediately afterward, I sent Christy a letter that expressed my wish to consult her about the business I wanted to do.
“Well then, I’ll guide you to the reception room,” Christy said.
“Yes, please.”
The reception room I was led to was unbelievably neat and elegant when considering the appearance of the store.
I sat on the sofa in the room at Christy’s urging, feeling nervous at the thought of starting the talk.
I said, “Rubens, Diana. I want the two of you to wait outside.”
“… Understood.” The two glanced at Christy and saluted before leaving the room.
Christy seemed slightly surprised at they were following my instructions.
I said, “Then allow me to say it again. Nice to meet you, Christy-san.”
“Yes, a pleasure to meet you. But is it alright to send your escorts outside…?”
“Yes. I want you to keep the contents of our conversation as confidential as possible until the time comes, you see.”
“I see… I don’t mind if that’s the reason.”
“Now then…”
Christy recalled a recent event as she watched the boy sitting nervously in front of her. She had received a letter from “Rid Baldia”. When she understood its content as ‘wanting advice related to business’, she had doubted her eyes at the absurdity of it.
The son of the Margrave was known to be still very young, and what did a child know of business? So Christy couldn’t help tutting inwardly. “A child’s self-indulgent is impossible to deal with…”
Christy was the eldest daughter of the president of a company in elven territory. She had an elder brother, and their parents taught the siblings to do business without discrimination. The eldest son had plenty of business acumen, but Christy was even more capable than him. However, due to the hereditary system in the company, the eldest son was to be the heir.
Christy knew that her brother would eventually inherit the company. Her wish was to support the company together. Despite that, though, opposition to his status of heir rose from an unexpected place. Voices of dissent emerged, saying that Christy deserved to inherit the company as she had both the ability and the track record.
These voices gradually grew louder, until finally, Christy left the family company for fear of it breaking apart, and she decided to start a new company of her own.
At the time, the location she had for the company in mind was somewhere that didn’t overlap with her family company’s trading area and almost had no elven companies. In the end, it was the Baldia territory that fit the bill.
Christy returned to reality from her thoughts and gazed at the boy called Rid, inwardly muttering, ‘I never imagined being forced into humoring the play of an aristocratic child after coming here. Not when I chose this place to avoid getting involved with my family. Well, I suppose I’ll give a casual listen and use this chance to make a connection to the Baldia family…’
Christy flicked a switch in her mind as she began thinking about a way to end this conversation as quickly as possible while also benefiting from it if even a little.
◇
I found out something interesting after researching the books in the family mansion’s study, as well as interviewing the maids—there was almost nothing in this world that had a resembling concept of hair rinse or skin lotions. According to what I heard, cosmetics did exist, but not the idea of skin care after makeup.
The start of it all was the “aloe” I came across while reading a book on plants in the study. Upon finding that the aloe vera plant existed in this world as well, I muttered to myself, “Come to think of it, there used to be aloe vera skin lotion in the old days.”
Danae, who was nearby at the time, had curiously asked, “What’s skin lotion, may I ask?”
I gave the maid a simple explanation of skin lotion, to which she asked a series of questions in surprise. “Eh… What do you mean by caring for your skin? How is it different from a face wash? Rather than that, though, how do you know something like that, Rid-sama…?”
I thought this was common sense, but it seemed to be a different case in this world.
I continued talking with Danae in detail about skincare, and I learned that she had never heard of products such as lotions. I had never thought about caring for my skin in my past life, so I didn’t expect the idea would draw such interest from her.
Just out of curiosity, I asked where in Baldia’s territory I could get aloe, and to my surprise, Danae told me that they could be found on the premises of the mansion. Apparently, it was left over from Father’s investigation of imported plants before he started working on olives.
“… By the way, is it also unknown that aloe is good for wounds?”
“Eh, this gross plant has such an effect…?”
I certainly did find aloe growing in the place where Danae showed me, and quite some fine specimens they were.
I took the challenge of creating a prototype lotion using the aloe in the mansion, and I believed the result was passable. I gained some confidence after having Danae try the prototype. “It’s wonderful!!” she said.
Aside from that, I made some hair rinse out of olive oil using the faint memories of my past life. I had no idea how to make shampoo, so I gave up on that for the time being.
However, soap already existed in this world as a luxury item, so I figured that as long as I prepared hair rinse, it would sell well among the aristocracy. I made a test product with that thought in mind.
Incidentally, I had learned all the information about these things from my past life while watching videos to kill time.
I consulted with Christy of Christy Co about the future development of these two products, and her reaction felt better than I thought.
Her eyes weren’t smiling at all when we first started talking. She probably thought it was a waste of time listening. I would definitely have thought the same if a child came up to me wanting to talk business, aristocrat or not. The normal reaction would be to simply hear what the child had to say before having them go home.
But when I talked about the idea and usage of lotion and hair rinse, along with a product recipe, the look in Christy’s eyes changed a little.
I asked, “Have you heard of similar products or concepts existing within the Empire or in other countries?”
“… No, I have not. This is the first time. If such things did exist, I would definitely have known about it.”
I was relieved to hear Christy’s reply. As I had thought, it was clear that nothing like the products I had proposed was made nor known in this world. It seemed like I had a good shot at making my idea work.
Christy said, “But without a prototype or anything of the like, it’s merely a pie in the sky…”
“Oh, but I did bring a trial product.”
“Eh…? You already made one?”
I nodded in response, then put the trial products of “olive rinse” and “aloe lotion” on the table in a leisurely manner before continuing to speak.
“… They’re prototypes, so I think there’s still room for improvement in commercialization.”
Christy’s eyes twinkled as she looked at the goods placed on the table.
“… Can I test them?” she asked quietly.
“Yes. Will you be using them yourself, Christy-san?”
“I’ll try the aloe lotion. As for the hair rinse, I can’t use it here according to its usage instructions, so may I hold on to it?”
“I understand. I’ll trust you regarding the hair rinse then. Please keep it a secret for now.”
“But of course. Then without delay, I’ll try the lotion on my hands.” Christy picked up the prototype lotion on the reception room table and squeezed some of it on the back of her right hand, then used her left hand to spread it all over and evenly. She held up both hands to check their difference in appearance and feel.
Christy’s face lit up and her eyes shone.
“… This is good. This stuff! It’s great!!”
I was startled by her reaction, but nevertheless, I replied, “Thank you very much.”
Christy leaped onto her feet in high spirits, delighted by the effect of the prototype lotion. It was only after she met my eyes that she let out a small exclamation before shyly sitting back down.
Christy took a deep breath, regained her composure, and cleared her throat lightly before saying, “I’m ashamed to confess that I’ve been slightly troubled over my dry skin for a while now, and I never even dreamed a product like this could exist, so I couldn’t help being moved.”
“So that’s what it was. Well, I’m glad it turned out helpful.”
It felt like the introduction of lotion and hair rinse went well.
Christy exclaimed, “Rid-sama!! This is going to sell!!”
“I’m glad you liked it, Christy-san. I tried it myself, but I wanted to hear the opinion of a woman, you see…”
“Rid-sama, please call me Chris. By all means, no actually, let’s commercialize this for sure!!”
“…!! Yes!! Let’s make this work!!”
And so it was decided that I would be doing business with Chris of Christy Co.
I had wondered how it would go at first, but I was feeling relieved inside at the end of the conversation.
With the subject of cosmetics and hair rinse out of the way, I consulted Chris about the road map I had in mind. This was actually my main objective. I wanted to create personal assets, and I still had many ideas. I also wanted Christy Co’s help to get my hands on medicinal herbs that could be processed into a special medicine for Mana Deficiency syndrome.
Unlike how she was at first, Chris listened to me seriously.
“… Rid-sama, you are one frightening person. The concept and trial products of cosmetics and hair rinse were surprising enough, yet you have more ideas? And a special medicine for Mana Deficiency syndrome? If that could be realized, well, that’d be worth a public award alright…”
After listening to what I had to say, Chris gazed at me like I was some unfathomable thing.
I told her, “It’s not like I want public acknowledgment. Anyway, there’s something I want you to look for.”
“… And what might that be?”
“Luthe Herb and Moonlight Grass. Do you know about these two?”
“Hmm… I haven’t heard of either. But I’ll look into it.”
“Please. Thanks for today.”
“The gratitude is mine. It was a very meaningful talk. Thank you very much.”
I got up from the sofa and held out my hand for a handshake, and she unhesitatingly took it with vigor.
After leaving the reception room and joining up with my two escorts, I left Christy Co right away. Chris and her clerk bowed their heads toward us in front of the shop until we were out of sight.