“Heyo~ Katia-chan.”
“Mayu-san… and Onii-chan.”
Katia’s crew — elves in tow, mid-expansion on the house — happened to be on tea break.
I’ve had Katia running a long queue of projects, and just the other day… the smithy shed reached completion.
A serious facility with an attached forge — per Katia, it can handle full weapons-and-armor work.
We concluded ages ago that materials hunted in the Forest of No Return earn far more processed here in bulk and THEN taken to town, versus wholesaling raw to the Adventurers’ Guild.
So the smithy slots perfectly into that plan.
Long-term, I intend to hire dwarf artisans for weapons and armor work.
And nimble-fingered elves for pelt goods and other crafted products.
Anyway — today’s agenda is something else entirely.
As I raised my phone to broach the subject—
“By the way, Onii-chan?”
“Hm? What’s up, Katia?”
“The giant bath is the next big project, right?”
“Yeah — we’ll need to channel water from the river, so it’s a major undertaking. It also solves the household and agricultural water problems in one stroke.”
“Before that — Boku has a proposal.”
“A proposal?”
“Seeing that smartphone reminded me… Boku wants to renovate the bedroom.”
“Oh? Renovate how?”
“First — the giant communal bed should be upgraded to princess specification.”
“A canopy bed, you mean. Sure, that’s fine.”
“Also, it’ll cost a bit, but Boku wants to adopt the mirrored-ceiling-and-walls concept as well.”
”…What are you talking about, exactly?”
“And the clothes Mayu wears…”
“The blazer school uniform?”
“Mm. Boku wants one for every member of the household. Also… the healers of your world… ‘nurse uniform,’ was it? Those too, one per person. Plus an added walk-in-closet room, so everyone can change at any time.”
“What are you talking about, exactly, IN EARNEST?”
“And finally… this one’s a fairly large-scale modification, but—”
Katia’s eyes burned with craftsman’s resolve as she delivered it:
“—Boku wants to make the bed ROTATE.”
“THAT’S A LOVE HOTEL!”
And a Shōwa-era one, at that.
…Come to think of it, the other day she was hunched over my phone, visibly overheating, muttering “so THIS is an otherworld bedroom!”
It requires no great detective work to conclude she’d opened some love-hotel feature article.
To be fair — it’s clearly not prurient interest. It’s an artisan’s fascination with cutting-edge facility engineering. Probably.
“So — what did you need?”
“Right. About that…”
I showed Katia the phone’s search screen.
Katia can’t read Japanese, so I walked her through the text line by line.
“I see… so the other world PERFECTED alchemy. Well… maybe not the complete form, but — this will absolutely, definitely make money.”
“Solid fix for the cash crisis, right?”
“Mm!”