Control Comes from Within

I managed to get out of the Society building with just a few bruises, and all things considered, I got off lucky. If that melee was a regular thing that happened every day, I would need to wake up a bit earlier to get ahead of it. I felt somewhat bad for the employees there like Ennin who had to deal with the aftermath, probably cleaning up blood and teeth. Among other things…

I was expecting the registration process to take up the whole day, maybe having to stand in long lines, or go from one department to another, but I was pleasantly surprised. Altogether it took maybe, half an hour? Although most of the explanations, like how to actually apply or even do jobs, were skipped over and postponed.

Now that I unexpectedly had some free time on my hands, I decided to just make my way back to the inn. I turned around, looking at the front of the Workman’s Society building, and the emblem and motto depicted there.

Now that I was somehow capable of reading it, I could appreciate Gillen’s, or more likely his mother’s or sister’s take on how it meant anyone and everyone could join. The motto simply said, ‘For the People’. Succinct, easy to understand, but with layers to it if one was willing to look deeper.

On my way back to the inn, an idea popped into my head and I immediately acted on it. I approached one of the city guards and asked if there was a bathhouse nearby. He said there was one for commoners on a side street off the main road, right on the next corner. It was only a few streets away from the inn, so I made it a priority to visit it regularly, provided I had enough coin. I probably reeked of sweat and dirt, and aimed to fix that as soon as possible.

The bathhouse was somewhat modest compared to the Society building that drew one's attention; it was only a single floor, but wide enough to occupy space meant for seven normal sized buildings. Its construction was reminiscent of the buildings in the anime Attack on Chitin with the tiled roof and small windows everywhere. I approached the entrance, a large archway with two attendants on either side sitting behind a podium. The man on the right seemed to handle any entrants, and the guy on the left waving off those exiting.

I approached the man on the right, and saw a sign I hadn’t noticed before hanging from the roof above and behind him. In large letters, it said the entry fee was one square per person, entry was free for children under five every eighthday (or maybe it was eighth day, I couldn’t tell), and private suites were a triangle.

I handed the attendant a square, which he took from the podium as soon as I dropped it, and he gave me a square wooden token with the number 144 on it. I was about to ask him about what it was when he said in a bored tone, “It’s the key for a storage locker. Open it with the key, put your stuff in, close it with the key. Now hurry up, kid, other people are waiting.” He shooed me off again, so I just nodded in thanks, moving into the building.

I walked down a small hallway connecting the entrance with the main building, and the resulting sight was, well, what one would expect of a bathhouse. Half of the building was an open bathhouse, emphasis on open. There was no roof, nor were the genders separated into different areas. It was just a large rectangular pit full of water and people, along with grime and dirt and whatever else washed off people’s bodies. Shallow stairs lined the rim of the bath, allowing some elderly folks to sit down there, and the majority of people to walk into the interior. The sight of the…muddied…water made me hesitate, but then I saw something magical: a white line, faintly glowing, passed from one end of the bath to the other.

As it did, it looked like all the dirt and muck was eliminated upon contact with the line. Once the line passed, the people continued bathing as usual. It seemed like a regular feature, as I heard one person complaining that it took too long for the enchantment to clean the water and the bathers simultaneously.

The other half of the building must have been the advertised privacy suites that cost a triangle. The communal bathing pit was stopped by an opaque wall, with maybe twenty doors leading further inside. But on the far left side of the bath was something that contributed even further to the ‘open’ concept here: toilets.

Now, I had been in this world for a good week now, with most of that being on the road. While I was traveling with the convoy guards, I just did my business off the side of the road, out of earshot whenever possible, or behind some bushes if not. The situation demanded it.

But this? This was borderline nightmarish for me. The growing need to relieve myself warred with my desire for privacy while performing my ablutions. In the end, biology won over psychology, and I heeded the call of nature among other men and women, who were chatting with each other while doing so. I just did what I had to and got out of there as quickly as I could. I learned that the cleansing enchantment in the bath pit was also applied to the toilets, and I vehemently thanked every god in existence.

The aforementioned storage lockers lined the walls, partially built into them. I put everything I had on me into my locker and closed it with the key. The wooden key itself had a large cord tied through it, likely meant to be worn on the neck while bathing. I put it on, then got into the bath, awkwardly smiling or nodding back to the people around me.

I stood there for a while, just letting the heat of the water relax my body, ignoring the social discomfort. It was a good temperature, the perfect amount of heat without being scalding. With no soap, shampoo, or towels, I rid myself of the dirt as best I could in a short time.

Feeling, and smelling, much cleaner than when I had entered, I got out of the bath, putting my dirty clothes back on again and grabbing my rucksack. That would be my next priority: getting some decent clothes. I left the bathhouse, giving my wooden token to the guy on the exiting side of the building’s archway who took it from me and placed it with a bunch of others in a basket.

Sometimes a hot bath and a hot meal are enough to change your perspective.

I don’t know where I heard it, but the quote seemed apt enough. I made my way to the inn for a meal, unsure whether they would be serving lunch yet. The sun seemed pretty high in the sky to me, but I couldn’t tell if it was noon yet or not.

As it turned out, lunch was being served. There were a few guests already eating in the inn as I entered, devouring their meals quickly before heading off to their own destinations. I went to the bar again, ordering lunch and water. No juice for me this time.

It brought a smile to my face when the server tapped his card against mine, and I could read the text displayed there. It may have just said ‘meals: 45’, but it was enough to make me smile. The food was pretty good, too. Some kind of sandwich, an oversalted meat pie, and creamy soup.

Now, everything I could do was taken care of. I wanted to minimize my expenses as much as possible, so I couldn’t buy anything I needed yet, like clothes. I had a grand total of 2 circles, 2 triangles and 24 squares on me. While I was tempted to just spend the circle on some items right now, it was probably better in the long run if I saved up.

I assumed Ennin would come here later in the day so we could talk. . That meant I had some free time right now. She called it the Treehouse, right? Given that the inn was named the Thirty Teas or something like that, I figured it was a nickname referencing the wood theme that the inn was playing up.

I went up the stairs to my room, locking the door as I did so. The smell of my clothes was more noticeable now that I had bathed, and I resolved to find out how people cleaned them. Or maybe I was meant to clean them in the bath itself? I wasn’t that focused on other people while I was in there. I’d try it out next time I went there and see if I was allowed.

I sat on the floor, and tried to decipher what I could about the increasingly weird situation.

I couldn’t read until my blood interacted with my Workman’s Society ID card. Me and Khime, ugh, I mean Khime and I, were able to understand each other’s speech without any prior experience, but that could potentially be chalked up to his translation spell and mind-reading. Assuming it’s the same language in spoken and written formats, then the common factor is me. Not my blood, as convincing as that assumption might be, but me specifically. There must be something about me that gave me the ability to read without learning it. But there’s something else that’s weird that I never stopped to think about.

When I was on the road, the guards could spot the voranders coming from a decent distance away, enough to prepare. But last night, I summoned that goblin vorander and nobody noticed. Somebody should have noticed, right?

And I get the feeling that voranders aren’t meant to be tamed in the first place. Which begs the question, again: what is different about me that allows me to do this? And for that matter, where did the vorander go when I tamed it, or dismissed it?

Another thing that makes no fucking sense. I really need to buy that notebook. Okay, focus. Focus. FOCUS.

Summon the vorander, give it a drop of your blood, see what happens, then dismiss it. If someone notices, dismiss it immediately and act shocked. I really don’t want to find out how vorander tamers are treated here.

I took a deep breath in, then a deep breath out. I tugged on the singular tamer link I felt, and the vorander popped out from thin air. It was still and silent, but kneeling on one knee now, like a peasant being knighted by a king, its head down and eyes closed. I took out my bone knife and poked the tip of my finger so a drop of blood came out, then I dropped it onto the vorander’s head, seeing if anything would occur.

After a few minutes of waiting…. nothing happened. It seems like my blood didn’t affect it in any way. I ordered it to open its mouth, and I flung another drop of my blood into it. Still nothing. I even hesitantly sensed its intent, trying to see if maybe there was any way the change was subtle, but there was no reaction.

I sighed, contracting the link, as once again the monster disappeared into thin air. I could sense it through the link, as it leeched off my essence to sustain itself, but I couldn’t tell where it was or what its surroundings were like. I stopped focusing on the link, and it went dormant, becoming a passive sensation instead of an active one.

So, blood is not the be-all, end-all for my oddities. Maybe it’s a catalyst for something else? Well, mark it down for something else to research at the academy.

I couldn’t think of anything else I was capable of experimenting with at the moment, so I tried to resume my meditation breathing exercise that improved my essence somehow. The improvement was incremental, but my gut feeling, again, was that it would be helpful in the long run, so I stuck with it until I heard a knock on the door.

“Hi, um, mister… villager? It’s Gillen, from before. You asked me a lot of questions, do you remember? I was–”

I got up and opened the door, eager to cut off any verbal momentum the kid would otherwise build up.

“Hi, Gillen. And yes, I do remember you. We spoke in the morning, and you helped me out a lot. Thanks again for that. Now, why did you come to my room?” I knelt down as I replied, just so we could talk face-to-face.

“My sister is downstairs, and she told me that she talked to you today and helped you regi-star. She told me to come and ask you if you two could talk now. She was a little angry that I told you about her and mommy fighting over sweets, so she tickled me until I couldn’t breathe and then said she’s gonna do it later when we go home. Why would she be angry that I told you that?” He paused for breath in his monologue, and I seized the opportunity.

“How about we go downstairs and you can ask her yourself?” I asked him, as I got up from my kneeling position to lock my room, walking towards the stairs.

We walked down to the main room, and I saw Ennin in a corner talking to a woman that could have been her older sister. It’s probably her mom. She did say that they looked alike, but geez. Ennin noticed Gillen and I walking down the stairs and waved us over. Her mother saw me and smiled, turning to Ennin and whispering something that made her blush. They engaged in a whisper-shouting debate for a few seconds before Gillen and I got to the table. Ennin was about to say something before her mother just shouted over her, standing up to greet me.

“Well, hello there, young man! It’s a pleasure to meet you! I’m Evelyn, and you already know my kids. Now, I’ve been told your name is Rhaaj? Sigh, I truly pity your father, to have wronged his wife so badly she named you so. You know, my husband once told me he overheard a noble lord and lady in an argument, threatening to name their firstborn after a,” she paused and looked around before whispering, “vorander.” She shuddered and resumed her speech at a normal volume. “Apparently, the man was a degenerate philanderer, meeting with over a hundred women! One hundred! How she tolerated it, I have no idea!” Evelyn kept going on for a bit, and I could tell that getting off-topic and going on tangents were indeed common familial traits among the three.

“Yes, hi, my name is Rhaaj, and I was hoping to ask Ennin some questions while she had some free time. I hope I’m not keeping you from anything.” I turned to ask Ennin.

“No, not at all, please, sit! My mother just came to pick up Gillen before they left.” She waved off my concerns and gave her mother a pointed stare. Apparently, the message was conveyed as Evelyn picked up Gillen, holding him on her hip.

“Of course, darling! You two have your little talk. Rhaaj, just know that you’re welcome at our home whenever you wish. Ennin, sweetie, don’t stay out too late.” She said her goodbyes then left with Gillen, and I could hear him asking his mommy how come something, then their voices trailed away as they walked further and further.

Ennin chose a good time and place for our talk. It was past sunset, so the inn was nearly empty, the employees at their stations, the guests either in their rooms or out in the city. We were seated at a corner away from the stairs, the entrance, and the bar, making it less likely for us to be overheard, and thus exposing the extent of my ignorance.

Now, I didn’t totally trust Ennin. Hell, I barely knew her, but I didn’t need to trust her to get some basic info. The other, more sensitive topics could wait until I reached the academy. It was finally time for some answers.

I wouldn’t be a ‘village idiot’ for much longer. Well, at least when it came to basic knowledge.