018: Those who are disciplined

Next morning, after Rumba stayed the night at the mansion. We skipped academic lessons and went straight to sword practice. It looks like Eleanora and Rumba will be practicing together, I wonder who I’ll be practicing with?

“Al, let’s do a father and son practice today.” Nord

It feels like there’s a slight maliciousness to my Dad’s smile this morning. We’re just practicing with wooden swords, right?

At the moment, we’re just practicing. Obviously, I’m at a significant disadvantage. My strikes can’t get close to hitting Nord. He blocks, parries, and knocks me to the ground.

“Father, is the practice a bit tougher than normal today?” Al

“Don’t worry about it, keep practicing.” Nord

Ugh. Is this about yesterday? Are you that petty? To me, I’ll assume the difficulty of the current practice is due to yesterday’s teasing.

How many times will I get knocked down in payback?

I’m just a kid, don’t be too hard on me Father.

“You two, do your best. Al, just keep picking yourself back up.” Elna

Elna is shouting encouragement from the mansion entrance. Is she not being weird too?

After that, I was outmaneuvered again and again, and was rewarded with a sword hit each time.

“Let’s wrap this up. I’ll give you my best.” Rumba

“Yes!” Eleanora

Looks like practice is wrapping up. Eleanora is getting crazy about defeating Rumba. I’ll soon be able to relax!

“Put up a fight, or you’ll get hit again.” Nord

Nord laughs and tries to provoke me to put up more of a fight.

Well then, perhaps I should try something.

“Dad, I don’t think I’ll ever forget about your Dragon Slayer title no matter how many times you knock me in my head.” Al

“…” Everyone

Hmm, wasn’t that supposed to be funny? Hadn’t this turned into an insult battle? Why didn’t I get anything back?

While awaiting Nord to react, he seemed to disappear, then my vision started to disappear and all I could see was the blue sky.

“What a fool…” Rumba

Rumba is saying something more, but I can’t make it out. What’s happening?

I saw that the sky is a beautiful blue today as my consciousness faded away…

“Oh, Al woke up!” Eleanora

As I came to, I noticed I was back in my room and Eleanora was looking worried beside me.

Huh? Where am I? Who am I?

Right, I’m now Alfred, previously known as Yuji Inaka… it’s coming back to me now.

“Hey, hey, don’t shake me so suddenly, take it easy.” Al

“All right” Eleanora

“Well, the right to spend the day tomorrow with Alfred belongs to me.” Rumba

“Grrr! I can’t stand it. How could I not land even one hit?” Eleanora

Rumba leaves the room while laughing.

“Al, I’ve got some soup and water for you, if you can’t eat them, I’ll feed you them.” Eleanora

“I think I can do it myself.” Al

“Chii” Eleanora

“Eh?” Al

Eh? Is that something you wanted to do? Or is this an act that girls sometimes do?

“Hmm, it’s nothing! Call me if you have trouble eating or something else happens.” Eleanora

Eleanora doesn’t want to watch me eat by myself. She is weirdly insistent on the her feeding me event. I’m worried that she might want to make it a habit and that would get weird. Not that the first time wouldn’t be weird…

“Yeah, it’s not that bad. Just a minor concussion.” Al

“Ok? I’m not sure what you mean, but I’m annoyed at Dad now.” Eleanora

By the way, “it’s nothing” is something of a red flag from the dictionary of women. It usually translates to “I’m unhappy about something, but I don’t want to admit it”. Other phrases from that dictionary follow. Every guy should study this dictionary thoroughly before socializing with women.

“Then I’ll be off” Eleanora

“Yes, thanks for staying with me Eleanora” Al

Eleanora waved her hand as she left, as I lay back down to sleep.

“The weak Al is so cute. I wanted to feed him” Eleanora

I’m not asleep yet Eleanora…

Next morning, Rumba came into my room and pulled me out saying “You’re good now, let’s go out!”

He wants me to give him a tour of the village, so let’s teach Rumba good points of Koriat Village. We walk down to the village using the usual road from the mansion.

“There is a lot of wheat grown in the village. In the fall, the wheat will turn into a golden carpet for the fields. This wheat welcomes visitors and sees them off when they leave.” Al

“Like a mother…” Rumba

“Possibly” Al

Rumba may have something with that reference…

By the way, we didn’t meet the farmer Roland on the way in.

“Ok, let’s visit the sqaure first. There should be many people there.” Al

“Oh yeah, Triela said that the village square is a big bartering spot.” Rumba

As you get closer to the village square, the houses get closer together. In the village, newcomers don’t have to build at the outskirts, but they can’t just build in the center. It may be to keep the center from becoming overcrowded. Because of that, the houses at the center are inherited from previous generations of village residents or businesses that need to be there like Celia’s restaurant.

“Oh, there’s more and more people as we continue, though the royal capital crowds are bigger still.” Rumba

When I think about it, I can only get some vegetables and plants at the village square, to say nothing about Herman’s furniture. Rumba seems to be excited about the square, but I’m often excited too. I like exploring the small details of the available items.

Apparently, the reason Rumba was so starved when he arrived at the village was that he gave his food stocks to some starving orphans he saw on his journey. It’s like he was some sort of hero or something. What kind of places did he go through on the way here?

“Al! I’m hungry! Let’s find something to eat!” Rumba

“Ok, let’s visit Celia’s restaurant. Do you have any money?” Al

“Oh yeah! I brought a gold coin with me for today!” Rumba

“We don’t see gold coins here often. Maybe it’s a problem of making change? Are you planning on eating that much?” Al

“Huh?” Rumba

“Well, I think Celia’s will be fine. They’re doing pretty well with cashflow these days.” Al

“What’s causing the village restaurant to increase their profits?” Rumba

“It’ll be obvious when we get there.” Al

Soon, we can see the restaurant with the sign reading “Celia’s Cafe”

“It looks pretty big, the other village restaurants were smaller.” Rumba

“There’s a reason it’s become so big.” Al

With that, we’ve arrived at the restaurant. I open the door with a worried smile.

“Ah, awww. I lost again! My tamagoyaki!” Roland

So that’s where Roland was, is this his second house? I wonder if he was betting on Reversi or Shogi today? Roland is a man that doesn’t have strong discipline around gambling. Anyway, Roland is a pretty fun guy, especially with his friend Logan. They’re two peas in a pod.

“What’s happening?” Rumba

“People come by to play Reversi or Shogi. That causes increased foot traffic and increased food orders. Since there are more people coming by, they had to expand the restaurant.” Al

“Reversi? Shogi? Is that those things that Triela was selling?” Rumba

Triela was given the license to produce Reversi last year. The Slowlette family is given a percentage of the profits in exchange. Interestingly, patents are strictly enforced in this world. It seems that if they weren’t enforced, magical craftsmen find it hard to survive.

“Oh, so you haven’t played the game yet? Want to start with a game of Reversi?” Roland

“How do you play this?” Rumba

It seems that Roland has noticed Rumba and thought he would be an easy mark.

“I see, this seems easy to play!” Rumba

Rumba was motivated after hearing the rules from Roland.

“How about a friendly bet, maybe a tamagoyaki for the winner?” Roland

Really Roland, are you trying to bet with a complete beginner?

“What’s a tamagoyaki? Does it involve eggs somehow?” Rumba

“It’s a dish like this.” Roland

Roland points to his order that Celia had just delivered.

“Let me try a bite.” Rumba

“Well, ok. Just one bite.” Roland

“Ok” Rumba

“Let’s get to playing already” Roland

“Ah!” Roland

“Oops, I ate the whole thing” Rumba

Speaking of which, Rumba was moving on to eating a dish of spaghetti.

“You said just one bite?” Roland

Maybe Rumba misunderstood, he does have a large mouth.

“You should get a Roland-style tamagoyaki.” Roland

Ah, I heard about that recently. It puts in a mix of mushrooms and some wild plants. It looks pretty bad, but tastes good.

“I’d like another one of those.” Rumba

“Let’s play a game of Reversi first, it’ll take a while for Celia to get out the new orders.” Roland

“Al, where would you rank him?” Roland

Roland was little worried about Rumba’s determination, but I assured him that Rumba hadn’t played Reversi before. At first, Rumba was frustrated since he couldn’t eat more tamagoyaki, but he got more invested in the game as it progressed.

“Woah, I can’t place a disc anywhere.” Rumba

“So, that’s a pass.” Roland

What’s wrong?

“As usual, Roland drops in to the restaurant.” Celia

Next to me is the restaurant owner, Celia.

“He shows up most days, and just about every night.” Al

“It’s true, he gets all fired up at night after a few drinks. It often turns into a quarrel.” Celia

“What?” Al

“What do you mean?” Rumba

Eh? What is Celia saying? She’s one who can keep her husband, the village militia’s captain in line, why would Roland be a problem?

“I guess there are sometimes quarrels. Heh” Al

I’ll try to play it safe with my words, I don’t want to be the target of Celia’s wrath. She could intimidate the pirate king.

“Well, if that happens, my husband will take care of it for me.” Celia

She mimes a bit of boxing, with a right straight like shadow boxing.

“And then if he gets out of line, you give him some of his own medicine.” Al

“That’s right, if he starts staring at another woman too much, or doesn’t pull his weight with the chores… Alfred, where is this conversation going?” Celia

Celia smiles, then takes me to the kitchen for some chores.

Eh? Did I say the wrong thing.

Men are looking at me like I stepped on a land mine. Stop! I’m not that bad off. After that I was forced into washing the dishes.

Celia’s daughter Carla is cooking further down the counter, she gives me a look of pity, like “I guess you got disciplined too, huh?”

“Hey, Roland. Why does Al get into trouble like that? Is he stupid? Yesterday, he did the same thing to his father.” Rumba

“Oh yeah, most people think he’s got a bit of a problem there. At the same time, he thought of tamagoyaki and it’s frying pan, Reversi, and Shogi.” Roland

“Well, sometimes people say madness and genius are two sides to the same coin.” Rumba

“Generally, we regard it as one of the seven wonders of the village.” Roland

“That’s pretty good. What are the other wonders.” Rumba

“Well, there’s those fancy stone houses that just appear randomly without any villager building them? People around the village say that a Spirit makes them.” Roland

“Huh? Isn’t Al building those?” Rumba

“He’s responsible for another of the seven wonders?” Roland

“What are the other wonders?” Rumba

“In a minute, Rumba. Before that, let’s wet our whistles.” Roland

“Sounds good.” Rumba

“Another round of drinks over here!” Roland

Translation

Good Job!

Do Better!

Chapter

Love It!

What?

FFS!

Really?