Reclassifying my business as a trade guild was an immediate improvement for everyone involved. I had to give up the old storefront and move into a larger warehouse to accommodate the respective work spaces for each of the members. That was a pain at first. I tried to set things up evenly for everyone, but then I found out some people needed more space than others. Takaa was the worst! He needed twice as much space as I gave him at first because he wanted some room to work on his motorbikes. Then Oogura's stall was always a mess because she had too much room. We had to rebuild the boundaries a little bit, but by the time we were done, everyone was happy.
...
I would say I had a hands-off approach to leading the guild. Everyone knew their jobs better than I did and they didn't need me to tell them how to do it. I would collaborate with Moruay at times when customers commissioned jeweled leathers. This wasn't uncommon in Resta City, where athletes and military officers would wear them in ceremonial occasions. Other than that, though, I mostly kept to myself and made new jewelry whenever I wasn't busy managing our production and action contracts. Otherwise, I only demanded that they keep their respective businesses profitable so we could keep the bills paid and left them alone.
...
Well, let's see. There was Moruay with her leather work and Oogura with her pen work, as you know. Takaa signed on as a machinist and mechanic. He used to be one of Ravager's only gunsmiths before he came to the mainland to expand his mechanical expertise. He probably made out better than any of us with all of those Royal Army contracts, but he always spent nearly everything he made training at SMU. He--
...
That's the Seres Machinists Union. They are at the forefront of engineering research in Resta, and they happily share their knowledge with anyone who can afford the study materials. With the Royal Army rebuilding after the Archknight Rebellion, Takaa was making more money than anyone else by far, yet he always spent each month broke because he was working even harder to expand his mechanical knowledge.
...
As for Saayuko, her role in the guild didn't make itself apparent immediately. She had always considered fighting and sneaking around her only skills, which you might imagine don't translate well to commerce. But when talking about how she could survive when the combat contracts went dry without any marketable skills, we discovered what she brought to the Phoenix Blade. She was a natural forager whose skill was in gathering what she needed. From that day on, I put her in charge of acquisitions and, every week she would come back to our compound with a wagon full of ores, herbs, and animal carcasses for us to skin and cook.
...
One problem that began to make itself apparent after everyone settled in was that we had not made much use of the herbs Saayuko collected and had to throw out too much of it. Oogura liked to crush them up to make her inks, but we started to consider finding someone else to turn our supply into medicines and balms.
...
We put the word out, but since we were so new, we found quickly that recruitment wasn't that simple. I had all but given up until I received a new investigation contract. Saayuko wasn't around for me to delegate to at the time so, as the only one with the necessary experience, I took the job myself. And by the end of it, I was glad I did instead of sending anyone else.
...
The Apex District's governor had hired me to find a young daughter who had run away from home after being rejected by some boy she was sweet on. After questioning the father, the boy, and a few of her closest friends, I was able to determine that she was hiding at a friend's house in shame. As it turned out, she had desperately purchased a beauty cream that she was assured would make her irresistible to the object of her affection. But when she used it, her face changed in a... less flattering way.
...
Oh no, the cream did exactly what the girl was promised, apparently. The boy told me that he had seen her after she took the cream and suddenly became more interested than her father had been in finding her. I get the sense that knowing this wouldn't have changed her mind about disappearing. As it was, I had no luck convincing her to return home in that state and I had been specifically forbidden from trying to force her into anything. In the case of her refusal to go home, I was only supposed to tell my client where I found the girl. But knowing the shame and terror of her dead-eyed and pale appearance, I could only imagine that choice making her situation worse. So, I instead began to question her about who sold her the cream.
...
Following this trail led me back to our old friend Bene. He was up to the same tricks he pulled in life, but with newfound magical components. His scams were starting to really hurt people and, even worse, I caught him in the act. I watched him sell the exact same crap to another woman then followed him all the way back home to the ramshackle apartment where he'd been making it. He immediately launched a desperate campaign to talk himself out of it; just hamming it up and trying to fool me into believing what happened to my client's daughter wasn't his fault. I knew him too well to buy his story at this point and, when I demanded that he reverse the damage he did to the poor girl, he immediately grew defensive. You'd think I was being oppressive for holding accountable. The tortured act grew old quickly, to the point where I unloaded into him.
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I tried to appeal to whatever morals he might have had. I asked him if he ever felt any responsibility to justify his decision to remaining among the living? Was he going to keep sticking around just to make everyone else's lives a little worse? But of course this didn't work. He never felt any sense of responsibility in life, and becoming an outcast didn't exactly help. So, I only had one recourse. I put the pressure on him by informing him of how important my client is and just who he had fucked with. He understood quickly enough that he had really stepped in it this time. I'm not proud of it, but I used what I knew as leverage to get the antidote I wanted out of him.
...
Of course I didn't trust him. He remained very reluctantly under Takaa and Oogura's supervision until the girl was back to normal and I was able to collect my pay. When I told Bene later how I covered for him, it was easy to convince him he owed me a favor for sparing him the consequences of his actions. So, I made a space for him in the compound and gave him a stern warning. He was going to start creating some actual value for people, or I would have the spellwarriors stick him on the next boat to Midania.
...
So we had acquired an alchemist who could work with the rest of Saayuko's supplies, albeit an untrustworthy one.
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