The Makings Of A Sweatshop Boss

“Mmm! Now that’s the stuff.”

She ate with such relish that the people watching found themselves swallowing along with her. Dong-hui slurped her noodles down happily, then stopped and lifted her head. Dozens of eyes were fixed on her. Every face in the room was watching Chloe with worry and curiosity tangled up together.

“You are not eating? Shall I have it all taken away again?”
“Ack! No, not at all!”
“Thank you!”

At Dong-hui’s words the workers set their forks moving, as though they had been waiting for it. The temporary dining hall grew loud with the clatter of forks against bowls and with the slurp of noodles drawn up in imitation of Chloe. Grown men, not children, eating ramyeon with forks made an awkward sight, and an oddly novel one.

“Ow, hot!”
“Waaah! It’s really good!”
“It’s so spicy!”
“It’s spicy, but I can’t stop.”

Exclamations over the ramyeon and the chime announcing another rise in favorability burst out from every side, without a moment’s pause.

Off to one side, even while the workers ate, the ramyeon went on boiling without a break. The head cook and the assistants stood over the hot hearths, drenched in sweat, and yet their faces were full of enjoyment. Making the food with their own hands, and handing it out freely and in plenty, felt to them like a great comfort and a great reward. This would be the most rewarding day of the several years they had worked at Grace Castle.

Outside the temporary dining hall a good many more stood waiting in a line of their own. The good smell drifting out of the hall filled every face in the line with anticipation. Plenty of them had already eaten their fill of the dishes made from Dural and had queued up purely out of curiosity about a food they had never laid eyes on. Word had gone round that what her ladyship was handing out today cost nothing, and they looked to have resolved to eat until their bellies burst while the chance lasted. The small children were the most pleased of all, stroking the bellies that stuck out round on their thin little bodies as they waited their turn.

“This is the most delicious food I have eaten in my life!”
“It is truly delicious.”

The spice brought the sweat out in beads on their noses, and still the workers scraped their bowls clean, broth and all. Unsurprisingly, the work went far better once the midday break was behind them.

Hey, I’m no sweatshop boss.
Ramyeon happens to be the most delicious food in the world.
I only wanted to feed them something killer good.

She poured out her sense of injustice, and the status window hurriedly changed the subject.

The status window had been stingy until now; all at once it had grown bold. The word ‘Wink’ tacked on at the end grated, but she thought she could let that much go.

Five hundred points, though.

Dong-hui opened the Hidden Shop in a hurry, before it could change its mind.

— Frrrrrrip!

Just as it had last time, the status window unfurled the whole range of goods the Hidden Shop had for sale, item after item in order, with a great clattering racket. Heart fluttering, Dong-hui ran her eye down it.

She had the same thousand points as before, and yet two entries had appeared that she had not been able to see last time. Acquiring Terrain Information Level 1 must have unlocked them. Dong-hui’s eyes flew wide at the new lines.

Agriculture and construction.

A little excited now, she went carefully back over the list and settled on buying whatever looked likeliest to help the estate develop.

I’ll buy the knowledge for the fields of agriculture and construction.

Her original plan had been to expand the Inventory space, but over the long run it seemed better to put the fundamental things right first. She could hardly go on spoon-feeding them forever.

Dong-hui gazed at the status window with a swell of satisfaction.

She remembered saying yes last time with no idea what was coming, quite defenseless, and the horrible headache and nausea that had racked her for it. It frightened her a little, but she could bear side effects on that scale any number of times. The pain had a fixed end, and an enormous reward came once it was over.

Going through Forced Acquisition here, though, might mean making a spectacle of herself in front of people who were happily eating. Dong-hui got quietly to her feet, and Handsome the butler, who had been standing at her side, moved with her, along with the two attendant knights.

“I shall go and rest in the carriage a while. You are to eat and rest here yourselves.”
“We shall attend you.”

Dong-hui was about to tell them there was no need, but the carriage was something of a walk away, so she left Handsome where he was in the middle of his ramyeon and set off with only the two knights.

As Chloe moved, the eyes of the people of Morta moved with her, warm with nothing but liking.

— Ding! Ding! Ding!

The chime announcing a rise in favorability sounded on without a break. For the people of Morta, apparently, simply looking at Chloe was enough to push the number up now. If she could keep it up a little longer, the crash into the minus that came with opening another village might not hit so hard.

Dong-hui walked to the carriage as slowly as she could manage, bent on enjoying the chance while it was hers. She had never once imagined a day would come when she enjoyed being looked at this much. She felt like a celebrity.

The carriage she stepped into was pleasantly warm. On that first day, the day she had ridden out to inspect the estate at Morta, the cold wind had come whistling in through the shut door, and the window had never closed properly, so the chill had come straight through. Today the temperature had dropped further still, and yet the inside of the carriage was warm through. Delma had put well-heated stones in to warm the air, and Builder had repaired the worn places so no draft could get through. She had said nothing to Builder herself, thinking him frantically busy with the village works, but Scrooge must have gone to him separately and asked.

Dong-hui sat in the warm carriage and took a careful look around the neatly mended interior. Warm furs and blankets that had not been there until quite recently lay on the seat. She ran her palm over the creamy, downy fur spread across it, then drew a deep breath.

“Open the Hidden Shop for me.”

The question she had not been able to finish because of the move rose up in front of her eyes again. Dong-hui drew a deep breath and nodded slowly.

Dong-hui stared with a worried eye at the letters sprawled across the floor. The ones the status window had put out squirmed along like living bugs. Never in her life had the sight of writing frightened her before.

“Ugh!”

Just looking at them was enough to start the nausea rising. She braced herself tight, waiting for it to begin, and then the squirming letters came flying up and drove in between Dong-hui’s brows with a long whooshing sound.

“Urp—!”

The ramyeon she had eaten a moment ago felt as though it were coming straight back up, but Dong-hui screwed her eyes shut and fought not to be sick. She was not going to be sick, hideously, all over furs that had been laid out for her sake. Nor did she fancy bolting outside to throw up where everybody could see her.

“I have to hold it in. Urp—!”

Her fingertips trembled with the effort of holding on.

If I’d known it would be like this, I wouldn’t have eaten the ramyeon!

A maddening nausea and a headache like her skull splitting came driving in all at once, until she felt her whole body being worn to tatters.

“Uuuuuuugh.”

Dong-hui clamped her mouth shut so no sound would leak out of the carriage, and screwed her eyes tight shut as well.

I have to hold it in.
Just a little longer and it will be over.

Between her brows came a feeling both cool and oddly slippery. The thought of touching it came to her, but she held back hard, afraid that if she did the Forced Acquisition might fail. Perhaps because she was taking two things at once, the nausea and the headache tormented her for rather longer than last time before they began to subside.

“Uuuurgh!”

There was no strength left anywhere in her, as though her whole body had been beaten, and a cold sweat ran off her in streams. It had run longer than last time, and it had unmistakably taken more out of her for it.

“From now on I shall do these one at a time.”

Putting two through at once really did seem to have made it twice as hard, and Dong-hui shook her head firmly and made herself the promise.

She had not expected Level 1 agricultural knowledge, got with a little over five hundred points, to be anything remarkable. Still, she had thought she might at least come away with the basics she needed right away. But the knowledge that had poured into her head with such a commotion was a little different from what Dong-hui had imagined.