NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 21
“Phew… I’m really tired.”
After the meeting with the Tojo family, I didn’t return to my assigned room but instead used the Moon Gate to head back to my home in Tokyo.
Although it was just past noon in the future world, in present-day Japan, it was already the middle of the night. The number of cars on the main street visible from below the building seemed fewer, perhaps due to the late hour.
“In that world, I’m at the top. A careless remark can set a lot of people in motion, so it’s mentally exhausting.”
I removed my indigo jacket, which resembled the traditional attire of the Fuji family, and draped it over the living room sofa. I loosened the tight cords around my waist and sat down heavily. Then, I turned on the TV in the living room.
Sighing deeply, I let out the air that had been trapped deep within my lungs and let my body sink into the plush sofa.
Though I felt no physical exhaustion, I could feel the mental fatigue settling in all at once. Even though the meeting had only lasted a little over an hour, it had drained my nerves. I was glad that it ended on neutral terms.
Originally, I hadn’t planned on discussing anything too deep in the first meeting. I was meeting the Tojo family for the first time, and while their relationship with us wasn’t exactly bad, it wasn’t great either. The meeting was supposed to be more of a formal introduction.
What surprised me, though, was that during the meeting, we got a proposal for a meeting between the Fuji, Tojo, and Mikasa families. They suggested we meet on Planet Hanami, which lay in a region controlled by the three families and was adjacent to their territories.
I had expected the first meeting to be just a simple exchange of pleasantries, a bit of a warm-up. So, I was taken aback when it turned into a much more serious discussion. The person taking the minutes seemed equally shocked.
The only ones not surprised were Kura, the head of the Fuji family, and Shuyoshi, the head of the Tojo family. It seemed like the decision had already been made before the meeting even started.
“‘Consider it positively’… I sound just like a bureaucrat.”
In the future world, my position turned out to be much higher than I had expected, and my words had enough influence to change the lives of many with a single careless remark. If I casually decided to do something, thousands of people would mobilize, and vast sums of money would be moved in an instant.
It was like driving a monster machine that, with just a slight push on the pedal, could go from zero to hundreds of kilometers per hour in seconds.
If I made a mistake while driving this machine, it could quickly spiral into disaster—not just for me, but for tens of millions of people. It was crucial to be careful with every word I spoke.
That’s why, even after a meeting that lasted just over an hour, I found myself so exhausted that I canceled all of my subsequent plans and returned to my room in Tokyo, which was empty except for KAEDE.
“This is, in a way, a test… though I think it’s a bit much.”
In both modern Japan and the Asphial world, my position was such that I had relatively easy access to the people I needed.
In modern Japan, I worked as a secret collaborator for the global powerhouse, the Saionji Group, while in the Asphial world, I managed a merchant’s guild sponsored by noble families, including the up-and-coming adventurer team I worked with. However, many of the staff came from Princess Heart and Sakakibara, so in practice, I was more of a hired manager.
My position wasn’t too high or too low. While I held some responsibility, my influence was contained within manageable limits. With true royalty like Princess Heart and Rey, the heir to the Castiano Marquis family, as my superiors, as well as Saionji and Sakakibara, I wasn’t in charge per se, but I had some leeway.
“If I think about the future, I guess the current situation isn’t so bad? There’s probably no other meeting as tense as this one, after all…”
For the immediate future, my goal was to make the merchant guild completely independent. While securing talented staff had been difficult, particularly because most of the clients were nobles or powerful merchant families in the royal capital, we had made steady progress.
There were about fifty employees at the guild, which was small compared to the money flowing through it. However, the skills required from each employee were extraordinary. Even though magic allowed us to communicate, creating reports that followed a specific format was essential, and being proficient with numbers—like bookkeeping—was also crucial. On top of that, they needed to have good manners and communication skills. Finding the right people who could fulfill all of these requirements was incredibly difficult.
Running the guild had been possible only thanks to the support of Sakakibara and Princess Heart. Without them, I would never have managed.
As a result, I had to lower the level of skill I was seeking in my staff and recruit independently. Currently, the staff could only do basic tasks, but I planned to train them to become the backbone of a future expansion into retail stores for regular citizens.
How much Princess Heart, the main sponsor of the guild, would be able to help with that remained unclear. If the retail stores were to become fully independent, I would need to negotiate directly with all the relevant parties. In that sense, the upcoming Five Families meeting could be great practice for future negotiations.
“…If I can get through this meeting, I’ll probably be able to handle even the toughest negotiations in Asphial with ease.”
If I could handle discussions that would affect entire planets and hundreds of millions of people, I would certainly be ready to deal with merchant-level negotiations in a single city.