Chapter 59 (1/2)

Chapter 59

Chapter 59 – The smell of a catgirl is a schoolgirl

“Good morning, Boss! Today I put in my all and got up at 5 in the morning to make lunch boxes. As your first disciple, I’ll do my best to make sure I don’t embarra.s.s you! Also, Papa said he’d drop by to greet Boss when he has time!”

“Oh… okay.”

First thing in the morning and Etowa was very excited.

We had planned on meeting up outside the guild at 9am for the first day, but she had been waiting for an hour earlier. For someone who is good at numbers, she sure is wasteful.

Today Rebecca-san had things to do at home, so it was just me, Diana and Marina at the store. After what happened yesterday, things were a little awkward with Diana.

“By the way, Etowa, your clothes are really cute. Where did you buy them?”

Yesterday she wore a modest one piece dress with a leaf pattern, but today… to put it simply, she was wearing a ‘sailor uniform’. She wore a short-sleeved white sailor s.h.i.+rt with geometry embroidered on the collar and cuffs in a dark navy blue. The tie was sky blue. The skirt was a pleated miniskirt, also in dark navy blue. No matter how you look at it, it was a sailor uniform. While I hadn’t seen anyone wear something like this here before, maid uniforms existed, so I guess sailor uniforms were also possible… right…?

“Thank you very much. This is the ethnic clothing of the Canaan. Typically we would only wear it on special occasions, but Papa said to wear it because it’s my grand debut today.”

Ethnic clothing! Sailor uniforms! …What’s with this other world?

No, stop. Don’t think about it. A cat in a sailor uniform (school uniform) was like, you know, that. No matter how you looked at it, it was that.

“Etowa. Try saying ‘Don’t look down on me’.”

“Don’t look down on me?”

Hmm. The nuance was a little different. It had to be a more delinquent-like sailor uniform. First of all, the length of the skirt was different. She couldn’t be a ‘Na*neko’ like this!

“Joking aside, it suits you. I’d love to have my girls wear the same.”

However, since the design was nearly identical to a sailor uniform, I could ma.s.s produce these here and sell them in j.a.pan to make a fair profit. I could make duplicates of the famous j.a.panese uniform to sell too… No, that is too risky. In many ways.

…At any rate, it seemed much cheaper making it here than in j.a.pan, so it was a good idea to consider going in that direction. I had sold a few pieces of second-hand clothing through net auctions already, so it should be alright to create new clothes and put them up too.

The store was gradually gaining regular customers, and everything was going well in general.

I had been controlling my business so that I didn’t make too much profit (mainly focusing on dealing in plain cotton and small trinkets), but now that Etowa was here I could start to move on the offensive. It was still a street stall for now, but I could rent a proper storefront and deal in high quality fabrics and wool items. I didn’t have enough money for a storefront yet, though.

After putting Etowa to work, it was evident that she was quite handy as she quickly learned about the products and how to cut fabric. At this rate, I should be able to leave her to manage the store herself pretty soon. The only thing I was worried about is leaving a 13-year-old girl alone in a corner of this flea market… whether or not she is a wereperson.

The daily sales of this stall had reached roughly 1,500 el, after all. With one gold coin and five silver coins, converting it into j.a.panese yen amounted to around 220,000 yen. The products th

emselves were of quite value, and if something happened Etowa probably wouldn’t be able to handle it herself. Hostage situations, kidnapping, abduction, torture… such risks should be taken into consideration… Since this place isn’t j.a.pan…

…That was what I initially thought, but in reality the safety in this town is rather good, so it was troubling. The furthest I had been abroad is Hong Kong for a school trip, so while I didn’t know how bad the safety was in other places, Erishe itself isn’t much different from j.a.pan.

For the record, I made sure to keep the profits in the bank. Rather than a bank, it was more of a service offered at the guild by using the guild card at the window. It had always bothered me how the guild card was more technologically advanced than everything else. This was totally like a cash card. Though there weren’t any ATMs.

“Etowa, what’s the public safety actually like around here?　Erishe seems very safe from what I’ve heard, but I don’t live in the middle of the town, so.”

“Public safety? It’s very good. My Papa is a member of the military police and he said that it’s so much better compared to 20 years ago.”

“So thieves, pickpockets, muggers and the like don’t appear often?”

“They don’t appear around here, at least. I don’t know if that’s the case once you leave the town and reach the more deserted areas, but at least here it’s safe during the daytime.”

It was one straight road from the market to the guild. There wasn’t any deserted streets to pa.s.s through, and the stall closed before it got dark so there wouldn’t be any walking involved at night.

Hmm… If that was the case, it might be okay to leave it to Etowa one day. Though that was my original intention.

In the afternoon, Etowa’s father actually came to greet me.

Etowa introduced her father to me, who politely greeted me in a rougher voice than expected.

“My daughter may be a little rash at times, but please take care of her.”

His appearance wasn’t much different to Etowa, but he was apparently over 30 years old with a height of about 150cm and—more importantly—he was a cat. They say that cats don’t age in appearance, but apparently that applied to Canaan too. It seemed like Canaans could tell each other’s age by appearance, but it was impossible for humans. It might be inappropriate to say this, but they were just plain cute.

The sales on this day was 1,220 el. I was able to teach Etowa various things as we went, so it wasn’t a bad number. I splurged quite a lot buying Marina’s equipment the other day, so I had to save up little-by-little once more.