19 - Peach Rice

"Tame...Tamimo..."

Kana struggled to say the nonsense this guy spouted as his name, and he simply repeated himself as though it wasn't complicated in the least.

"Tamomimu Mame!"

Mamimumemo?

Kana did her best but defaulted to probing for an easier nickname. I don't blame her, even a Japanese person would fumble with a name like that.

"W-what do your friends call you?"

Tamomimu Mame glanced up at Kana from his bowed position, and his face flushed. He quickly stood at attention and crossed his arms, faking a proud stance.

"Assassin's don't have friends! We only associate with the shadows...and our employers! And we..."

This is hard to watch by anyone's standards.

I decided to cut him some slack and save the day.

"What about just Tamon? Where I'm from it could be written as rice field and peach."

Mame is no good because I can't handle calling the guy 'beans' all the time.

Kana clapped her hands. Toast, who had dozed off under the counter, shot up at the sound. He looked around, and after confirming there was no danger promptly went back to sleep with a heavy sigh, as though we'd annoyed him.

"Yes I love that! And you fit right in with the food crew!"

She briefly explained that all our names had meanings of food related items. Tamon seemed a little happy about this as he poorly hid a smile.

"Now then! We still have a bit of time before I'm finished with the doll I've been working on. Mitsuta, can you show Tamon the extra room upstairs?"

As much as I want to, I can't refuse a direct request from Kana.

I trudged outside and up the stairs with the 'greatest assassin' skipping along behind me. Toast tried to follow us after the bell on the door had woken him up, but Kana grabbed him and put him in air jail.

Tamon was clearly filled with joy about his fortunate circumstances and hummed a tune as we made our way up.

I reached for the doorknob of the room, and realized I'd never actually fixed this one up. I couldn't help but get a devilish grin as I anticipated the look on his face to see the dilapidated mess. I swung the door open and gestured to our new 'friend's' quarters. There was a hole in the wall leading straight outside, and a Watori (a mouse-sized but chicken-looking monster) fluttered in panic and left through it, abandoning its nest on the collapsed bed frame in the corner.

I turned back to him, expecting horror, but instead he had his hands clasped together and a look of pure delight. 

"Oh! It's fantastic! I've never had my own room before!"

He cleared his throat and switched back to his noble demeanor.

"I-I mean, this will suffice. Assassins don't require much. All we care about is the mission."

"Sure, dude. You know, you can drop the act with us. If you're going to stay here we have a rule about always being honest with each other. And it's already pretty clear to me you're not the rough and tumble type."

He looked at me with a stunned expression, like he was so certain his assassin act was convincing. I put a hand on his shoulder.

"Just relax a bit. We don't judge. I'll fix your bed and the wall before the evening."

With that I left him in his doorway, and I can't be sure but I think I heard him say a hushed 'thank you' as I descended the stairs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another few weeks passed and Tamon had settled in as though he'd been here from the start.

I'd eased up on my attitude towards him when it became clear he had a soft spot for shy Maja, and my beloved Kana was safe. It seems he had no interest in anyone his own age to my relief.

"Older women are a divine blessing on us all!"

Pinnea tried to capitalize on that sentiment real quick. Apparently a slim and mysterious younger man was just her type, so once she sniffed out that an eligible one had moved in next door she started visiting more often, despite her advances always being rejected.

Similarly, each time Tamon tried to shower his affections on Maja, she would ignore him or blatantly run away. Kana and I had great fun watching the odd love triangle develop.

Our deliveries had taken off as a separate kind of business venture. Kana was still making quick and easy lunches, and mending and crafting various things, but now we had customers coming to us asking for parcels and gifts and such to be taken to farther areas of the city. Despite how he looked and acted, Tamon was incredibly fast, likely due to his assassin school training. He could make it from our shop to the southern gate of the city and back in under an hour, so his skills were in popular demand.

Maja had accidentally made a good-tasting potion that was similar to an energy drink from back home, and we had customers lining up on days where she made fresh batches. I jokingly called it 'Beast', but the name never took off.

I'd fixed up Tamon's room like I'd promised, and he had since turned it into a small kitchenette. We ditched his bed frame since he preferred sleeping on the floor, and it freed up enough space for a large table for him to make some desserts on. The hole in the wall became a vent for a small brick oven that one of Kana's construction customers showed me how to build, and he started making cookies and small cakes to sell at the counter with Maja's drinks. Our shop had become a proper little shop.

I had been relieved of 'Mimi's delivery service' thanks to Tamon, and redirected my focus to guild quests with Toast while I contemplated what I wanted to do long term. 

Because Toast was so powerful we completed all the entry level requests quickly and there were days where the guild wouldn't have anything left for us. Most of the adventurers had partied up and ventured out to deal with the Boss Monsters so we didn't have much competition for the leftovers. I think we'd become a little famous, which was no surprise if you didn't know us; all you'd see was a plausibly high-level adventurer with a Spirit Partner only taking on F, E, and D-rank requests. This ended up leading to farmers and citizens coming to Silver Bounty directly with hunting and gathering requests to save on the fee.

Unfortunately I think this is where the problems started.

The guild was still sending the occasional recruiter for Maja, but now we also had the odd adventurer sniffing around. None of them were customers, and always left after looking around without saying a word. Then they started causing trouble. 

I'd caught them redirecting our customers outside to the guild or the church, saying we were closed. Some of them would loudly badmouth Maja's drinks while people lined up waiting for her restock, implying they were snake oil and not worth the coppers. They'd accuse Tamon of not safely delivering goods, or blatantly lie and claim he stole things from them because items had never arrived. It was always in front of customers that they acted like this, growing more belligerent as time passed. Our shop window was broken twice in one week by "accident".

Finally I'd had enough when one of them dared to question the deliciousness of Kana's bento, and I approached two armoured brutes with Toast in tow.

Toast was getting better at understanding me since he started trying to talk with Telepathy, so when I angrily called out to the men, he was the perfect backup, growling and baring his teeth.

Of course, thinking he was a Spirit Partner, Toast was terrifying to most, adventurer or not. The two men shrieked and ran off before I could question them, but not before one of them yelled back at us 'The guild is watching you!'.

Yeah, no duh they are. The question is why? Do they want Maja that badly or is it for Toast?

The cloth strung over our broken front window fluttered in the breeze, and my temper flared. I entered the shop and told Kana I was going over to the guild to demand to speak with the guildmaster.

"Mitsuta please be careful! Great City Linna is the largest city in the country, and the guild has so much power here. I don't know if it's a good idea to go up against them..."

Maja finished serving a young woman, and turned to us to add her two cents.

"There are a lot of rumours about the guild master in this city. Some say he's a retired hero."

The woman added in that she'd heard he had shady dealings with the black market shops in town. Another customer joined in, and then another, and soon everyone in the shop was murmuring about the guildmaster, and I couldn't make heads or tails of whether he was a good guy or a bad guy. But he was messing with our shop and my family, so in my head he was a bad guy, and I was going to talk to him.

I picked up Toast and made sure his collar and the Goddess' emblem was visible, and we set out for the center of Linna to insist on an audience with the infamous and mysterious guildmaster.