Chapter 43

About two weeks after Takahashi Workshop had been launched, somehow managed, and kept running.

A ship from the Bax Company arrived at the harbor, and that Cole stepped down onto the pier with an affected gait.

However, when Cole saw the boxes of magic stones piled up on the pier waiting to be loaded onto the ship, he was clearly shaken, and when he looked at the documents we handed him, he was even more surprised, his gaze going back and forth between my face and the papers three times.

“Is this stock Nodon had been hiding?”

“No, we set up our own workshop, and the craftsmen have been working very hard for us.”

Cole was plainly suspicious.

“You are… hmm.”

The way he straightened his back until his chest nearly jutted out and put a hand to his chin was truly theatrical, but it was amusing because when someone like Cole did it, it somehow suited him.

“You did not merely drive Nodon out. You even planted poisoned needles for me.”

When the gold coins paid to the Bax Company were lined up, letters insulting the gods rose to the surface.

By creating a situation where it seemed we might have set up such a trick, we had succeeded in forcibly turning Cole and Nodon against each other and making Cole stand on the side of our allies.

“It matters not. Demand for magic stones is high. But if the amount is going to increase too much, inform me in advance. I must prepare the gold coins on my side as well.”

“For us, it would also help if it could be offset against imported goods.”

At that, Cole shrugged.

“I would very much like to do that, but mining tools and the like fall outside my jurisdiction.”

The Bax Company likely was not a unified front either, and the various nobles probably each held their own territories over goods and competed over profits.

“Well, this ship is mine, so it serves those fellows right that they have to pay me a hefty freight charge. In that sense, I must thank you again as well.”

When I returned a polite laugh, Cole finished signing the paperwork for the magic stone transaction and handed it back to me.

Then he made a somewhat displeased face.

“I am glad your business seems to be going well, but there is a problem.”

“A problem?”

“You people have started placing outrageous quantities of orders every single time, and the sailors are full of complaints. The amount of work has increased, and they are being held up for days at the port of a remote island like this… and so on. I myself had business in the provincial capital this time, so I brought a ship to return on.”

I understood at once, and it was not an unfair complaint in the slightest.

“You mean the unloading, right? I am very sorry about that…”

I had been so occupied with running Takahashi Workshop that I had left the company side entirely in the hands of Yoshu and the other assistants.

Even so, things had been running properly, so I had let my guard down, but in fact a problem had arisen at just that moment.

“Trade has increased too much, and we cannot keep up either. We are trying to find some way to resolve it, so please forgive us…”

When I apologized deeply, Cole nodded and let out a conspicuous sigh.

“This time, I shall overlook it in celebration of your appointment as head of the company. From next time onward, however, I will have the transport costs increased. You have no objection, I trust?”

I could hardly say no.

The only things at the port in Jirenu Territory were local fishing boats, and every large-capacity ship capable of traveling back and forth to the provincial capital belonged to trading houses on the provincial capital side.

“Please go easy on us…”

That was about all I could say.

Yet perhaps my humble attitude had worked, or perhaps he was simply in a good mood because more cargo meant more profit, but Cole patted my shoulder as though to comfort me.

“It is nothing. It seems you and I can do good business together. Let us cooperate with one another.”

It was the sort of typical line spoken only when one was confident of one’s superiority, but for the moment Cole was the only one I could rely on. He was absolutely not someone I could trust with all my heart, but it could not be helped.

“Please.”

“Mm, mm.”

Cole nodded in satisfaction and dropped his gaze to the boxes packed with magic stones.

“Even so, there really are a lot.”

I found myself wondering a little what sort of face he would make if I told him there was still stock left at the workshop.

“L-Lord Yorinobu! There has been a cargo collapse in the company warehouse—”

The words shouted by the errand boy who came running into the workshop on the day before the transaction with Cole were just that.

I threw down my quill and stood up, and when I rushed back to the company in a panic, cargo had already been carried all the way out to the eaves, and the loading area visible from outside was in utter chaos.

“What… is happening? Are there any injured!?”

When I stepped into the loading area, where the clouds of dust had still not settled, I saw beyond the people clearing away the overflowing cargo some who were holding their foreheads with dirty rags or lying limp.

No matter how much I wished otherwise, I was reminded of the time, back when Nodon was still here, when someone had died after being caught in a cargo collapse.

My heart pounded so hard it hurt, and my breathing grew shallow.

“Yorinobu-san.”

The one who called out to me was Torun. He was the one who had actually been caught in a warehouse collapse and broken his leg.

His leg still had not fully healed, but there was plenty of work at the company tying up cargo and the like, and since he had knowledge of cargo handling, we had had him return to work.

“You look awful.”

Torun gave a wry smile and, like the strong-willed boy he was, explained things as though this kind of commotion was nothing at all.

“Luckily, nobody’s dead. But there are a fair number of injured people, and more than that—”

Torun looked toward the warehouse in the back.

“The place is stuffed full of cargo. The incoming and outgoing shipments aren’t being handled fast enough at all. Unless we increase the number of people, there’s nothing we can do about this.”

The company had been busy even when Nodon was here, but this place I was seeing again for the first time in a while was on an entirely different level.

“Why are there so many goods? Is something being held up?”

At that question, Torun shrugged in exasperation.

“It’s because of you, Yorinobu-san.”

“Because of me?”

“You’ve been throwing money around all over the place, Yorinobu-san, raising the prices you pay for goods and wiping out debts, right? Thanks to that, every guild is putting up for sale all the goods they’d been hiding instead of selling until now, and the people whose debts disappeared are overjoyed and buying up goods like crazy.”

Nodon had bound the economy of Jirenu Territory hand and foot with violence and debt.

I had released those chains, and the pent-up supply and demand that had pooled there like magma had erupted all at once.

“So the purchase orders to the Bax Company are enormous too. Kengo-san is still hurrying us about mining-related goods as ever, but the Bax Company’s ships are already fully loaded through the next, the next after that, and the one after that. Unloading is backed up too, so the unloading crews are getting some really nasty sarcasm from the captains, and it’s only a matter of time before extra charges start getting imposed.”

The word logistics weighed heavily on me.

The warehouse was already at its limit, with cargo piled high in heaps. Even if we cleaned up the place now, another accident would happen soon enough.

And if an accident happened, the work would be delayed even more, and if the work was delayed, more cargo would pile up still.

“The warehouse… securing another warehouse, right?”

“That too, but we also don’t have enough hands. And on top of that, those guys won’t be able to come to work for a while.”

What Torun pointed at were the people sitting in a corner of the company, those who had seemingly only just been rescued from beneath the collapsed cargo.

“What about hiring? There should be lots of people who want to work, shouldn’t there?”

Labor costs accounted for no more than a small fraction of the profits.

Even if they doubled, we could endure it. More importantly, the workshop was going incredibly well, and the export volume of processed magic stones had more than easily doubled or tripled.

Yet at those words, Torun pursed his lips.

“There are, sure. You increased our pay, right, Yorinobu-san? No matter where I go, people tell me they’re jealous, that it’s unfair, and that I should buy them drinks. But…”

“But?”

Torun looked at me and shrugged.

“Most of them are guys old man Nodon fired. Honestly, they’re all rough types I don’t want to work with. They handle cargo roughly, and they act all high and mighty.”

That was right. Or rather, had I not already had the same conversation with Marks?

Thanks to the overpowering personality that was Nodon, this had become a strangely comfortable workplace.

Put another way, the ones who had been fired from here were also the ones who did not fit into the current atmosphere.

“Old man Nodon was trash, but he showed no mercy to fellow trash, so in that one respect he was a good guy.”

It sounded like a riddle, but I understood exactly what he meant. It was one of the reasons I had never been able to hate Nodon completely.

“They do say it is harder to get employees off a bus than onto one.”

“…A bus?”

To Torun, who asked back dubiously, I rephrased it like this.

“Would it be better to say it is like putting a rotten fruit into a box of fresh fruit?”

“That’s the worst. It’d be covered in mold in no time.”

I wanted to preserve the good parts of this company that Nodon had left behind just as they were.

More than anything, I did not think I could scold people the way Nodon did.

If that was the case, then I had no choice but to hire people I would not need to scold.

“Ugh… if we’re talking about people who could judge who seems suited to this company, who would that be?”

Torun blinked, then tilted his head.

“Old man Trass, maybe… no, or maybe big brother Carton. If those two chose someone, I feel like there wouldn’t be any mistake. They both look after people well, so everyone listens to them.”

“Then please make those two the hiring officers.”

“Huh, wha?”

“If those two say someone is good, hire them. However, after that, based on how they work, if several people in the company… yes, let’s say five people, say they are not suitable, then fire them without discussion.”

Torun was stunned.

“No, this is your company now, Yorinobu-san, right? Is that really okay?”

I did not really understand what he meant.

“The ones who will work together with the people you hire are all of you, so don’t you want to choose them yourselves?”

More than anything, I did not think I had a good eye for people.

If I had possessed something like that, the game development team back in my university days would not have fallen apart.

“…Yorinobu-san, you really are weird.”

“Huh?”

When I looked back at Torun, the boy gave me a mischievous smile.

“You come to check on me when I’m hurt, and you’re not high and mighty at all or anything.”

He grinned at me, and I could tell that at the very least he did not have a bad impression of me.

“But I’ve got no idea how many people we’d have to hire before we catch up.”

Looking at the people still busy cleaning up the cargo even now, Torun muttered in a gloomy tone.

The harbor was surely in a frenzy as well.

Even if there were as many workers as we wanted, Jirenu Territory was an island territory, and the flow of people was limited. If the only ones coming in search of work were people who had once been fired, I could not imagine hiring progressing very far.

Moreover, it seemed word had spread that the wages had been increased, drawing a strange sort of attention as well.

That was probably not a plus; if anything, it would likely attract nasty types who were only after money.

I thought for a while, and then one particular scene suddenly floated into my mind.

It was the group of remarkably skilled cargo carriers I had seen only recently.

“There’s something I want to ask.”

“Hm?”

“Well, um…”

When I explained the idea that had occurred to me, Torun kept opening and closing his mouth like a fish for a while.

But little by little he began to come back to himself, and when he eventually drew his brows together thoughtfully, in the end he wore a sardonic smile.

“I really like that part of you, Yorinobu-san.”

Apparently, what had occurred to me was not a bad idea.

“Still, we were just scolded by the Magic Stone Processors’ Guild too, so we really need to make sure about all sorts of things before we know whether it’ll truly be okay, right?”

“Ahh.”

The workshop had worked out in the end, but there was no guarantee this would too.

Still, the company’s logistics problem needed to be solved as quickly as possible.

“Do you know who we’d need to talk to about it?”

“Hmm… well, yeah. I’ll go around and ask a bit. Leave it to me!”

Propping himself up on his homemade crutch, Torun headed out of the company at once.

After seeing the boy off, I visited the injured, told them the company would take care of their living expenses for a while, and then caught hold of someone who could read and write to a certain degree and asked them to arrange a new warehouse. They were startled and said such an important contract was far beyond them, so I encouraged them, saying they could do it, it would be fine, and if they failed, we could just rent one more place.

Besides, more beneficial than avoiding failure was the fact that if he became able to make contracts, then he in turn would be able to teach someone else how to make them.

There were far too few hands if we wanted to keep expanding the company.

At any rate, no sooner did one hardship pass than another arrived.

Like Iiria, I had to admit that elegantly running a company while making board games was still something for far, far later.