Tomkin’s Tavern and Inn

I started working after about two weeks. I hadn’t fully recovered from my wounds yet, but I could move around okay and do basic tasks without hurting myself, and the time Blanche spent bringing me food and keeping me company was starting to feel more like an indulgence than a necessity.

Not that I minded at all. I was perfectly happy to indulge.

Blanche was very kind to me, and she was fun to be around. She also had an amazing singing voice. She would sit and sing me songs sometimes from her homeland in the South. It made me wonder how she had come to Leauland in the first place.

It turned out, she wasn’t the only immigrant at the inn/tavern. Mister Tomkin and his wife Anya were originally from a country up North called The Frozen Lands, which didn’t sound all that inviting to me. Maybe that was why they decided to leave it behind and make a new life for themselves and their two children. I wasn’t the only one on my second go at life, it seemed.

I met Klaus and Klara, the Tomkin twins, many times during the two weeks that I was bedridden. They had a lot of questions to ask me, almost as many as I had when I first arrived in this world, so I did my best to try to answer them. There was still a lot I couldn’t say, of course.

Klaus and Klara were young enough that when they got it into their heads that jumping on top of me would be fun there was no stopping them, but old enough that their weight was too much for my wounded body to bear. Between the two of them they opened up the gash on my right side a solid four or five times.

The one member of the tavern crew who was a true Leauland native was Romy Klein, the barmaid. She was short, but didn’t give off the impression of being small. With her neck-length, wavy maroon hair and provocative off-the-shoulder dresses, she exuded the impression of the mature twenty-something woman she was, even if physically she looked even younger than Blanche.

Romy didn’t come back into the inn rooms often, so I only saw her once or twice while I was healing. It was hard to get much of a vibe from her with how little we had interacted. I looked forward to getting to know her better.

Not as much as I looked forward to spending more time with Blanche, though.

Finally, the time came that my bed could no longer confine me. I started with taking short walks around the room, then up and down the halls. I practiced lifting and setting down large objects to make sure I was up for it. And then, I asked Mister Tomkin to put me to work.

I was done with lying around. It was time to make myself useful.

***

But first I had to be fitted for new clothes. Mister Tomkin’s wife took my measurements, which I would compare with those of my previous body if I had ever been measured back then. I usually wore simple unisex T-shirts in Japanese size large.

It sounded like my beastkin shoulders were fairly broad, based on Miss Anya’s reaction, but I couldn’t say for sure.

The clothes Miss Anya made for me were similar to what her husband wore, though obviously smaller. I may have been larger than before, but I didn’t have anywhere near Talon Tomkin’s level of bulk. I chose to keep my vest buttoned up so I didn’t match with the tavern keeper too much.

My first job was as a cleaning boy. Washing dishes, stripping sheets from beds, scrubbing floors, the kind of menial labor you give to someone with no notable talents. It was grueling, but much better than lying around uselessly. And as I started to improve at each task, the work got faster and easier. It felt good to see the tangible evidence of my growth as a laborer—almost like I was leveling up.

Mister Tomkin advised me to stay out of sight as much as possible while I worked. Beastkin like me were apparently sold as slaves across much of the Western Continent, especially to the South of us in the Holy Empire, and though the slave trade was abolished in the country of Leauland a few decades previous, many people still didn’t look on my kind favorably. It would be better for me (and for Talon Tomkin’s business) if the tavern patrons saw as little of me as possible.

He seemed to know what he was talking about, so I did my best to perform my tasks with subtlety.

Occasionally though, when I was able, I would listen in to conversations that were going on in the tavern. I had yet to venture out into the wider world that I had been reincarnated into, so everything I could learn about what it was like out there was deeply interesting to me. It was like reading the item descriptions in a video game. Not necessary to the experience at all, but full of fascinating world building for those who took the time to look.

As an example, there was one time when I was mopping floors in the hall that led from the tavern back into the inn rooms, that I overheard a group of men chatting at a table near the hallway entrance. My cat ears were very sensitive, so I could hear what they were saying without having to pause to press my ear against the door or anything. And this particular conversation caught my attention right away, when I heard one of them mention magic.

“…Feels like reports of black magic in the city have been pretty sparse lately. Used to be we’d hear tell of some rogue black mage showing up every couple weeks or so, but the last one I can remember had to be at least several months ago.”

“True. Kinda makes things a bit less exciting, don’t you think? The threat of danger gives life that bit of spice it needs to stay entertaining.”

“I’m happy to be nice and safe, thanks.”

“To each his own. I do wonder where they’ve all gone to, though. The black mages, I mean.”

So far I had only heard two voices conversing with each other, but when that question was posed, a third man chimed in.

“You blokes have heard the rumors, right? About the hero who’s been going around hunting down black mages.”

A pause.

“…No, we haven’t. Tell us more.”

“They say he’s an adventurer, or maybe a bounty hunter. Only works at night, so no one has seen his face. Least no one who’s still alive. He’s got some kind of a personal vendetta against practitioners of the black arts, so he tracks them down, slits their throats, and leaves their corpses out in the streets as a warning to keep their type from daring to pass into the city walls. And based on how often we hear about black mages lately, I’d say it’s working.”

“That’s gruesome, that’s what it is,” The first voice shuddered.

“Well I say good riddance to them. The fewer of those murderers we have skulking around our city the better.”

“I just wish he wouldn’t make it everyone else’s problem by leaving the bodies in public places. It’s disturbing.”

“It’s exciting,” The second voice said. That guy had some twisted sense of adventure.

That said, as grim as the subject matter was, it was kind of exciting to me, too. I didn’t hear much about magic while I was working at Tomkin’s Tavern, and my boss and coworkers didn’t have a lot of answers to the questions I had about how the arcane arts worked in this world. It seemed the existence of magic was common knowledge, but details of its application were mostly the domain of scholars and mages.

Here’s what I did manage to pick up from odd conversations. Magic was divided up into three categories: white, black, and chroma, or elemental. The third category had divisions of its own based on what element you were manipulating, namely earth, water, fire, and wind. Most mages specialized in one of the four chromatic elements, and priests of the Holy Empire used almost entirely white magic.

No one seemed to like black mages much. The way people talked you would assume they were all criminals—the dregs of society. But as far as I could tell, using black magic wasn’t technically illegal. More so culturally frowned upon. However, it was considered bad enough that you could still be arrested for it, under suspicion of other, less savory activities.

Talk about black mages was sparse, almost taboo, so I had to piece together a majority of that information on my own.

Miss Blanche was the one who shared most of the general magic concepts with me. I got the feeling that she was a bit better educated than the Tomkins or her coworker Romy. Was the educational system in the Holy Empire just generally better than in Leauland, or was it possible that her upbringing was of a higher standing than the others? If so, what was she doing here, working as a maid?

Miss Blanche tended to be very busy in the evenings, when men would come to get a drink after a hard day’s work and lodgers would turn in for the night at their rooms in the inn, but in the morning she worked with me on the cleaning instead. I was happy for any amount of time that we got to spend together. It beat the companionship of stinky old prison inmates, that’s for sure.

The two of us both stayed in spare rooms in the back of the inn, so often Miss Blanche was the first person I would see in the morning.

The first time I encountered her in the hall before breakfast gave me quite a shock. I had just dressed and left my room when the door next to mine opened and out stepped Miss Blanche, yawning and stretching with her arms above her head. Her hair was down and uncombed, so it fell over her shoulders like pastel waves of roses.

She was wearing a simple nightgown, which shouldn’t have been enough to get me going, but it was the first time I had seen her in anything other than her maid uniform. I caught myself staring at her exposed arms and the places where the shape of her body showed through the garment. Fortunately she wasn’t awake enough to notice.

“Ohhh, g’morning, Seiji.”

Her voice had a slow, drowsy drawl to it that was seriously cute. I didn’t know if I could stand to hold a conversation with her in this state. It was almost too much.

“G-good morning, Miss Blanche,” I stammered.

“You don’t hafta call me miss, silly. Just Blanche is fine.”

That wasn’t going to happen. It was already embarrassing enough that she (and everyone else at the tavern) called me by exclusively my first name. That’s what I got for introducing myself as just Seiji.

“Did you sleep well last night?” I asked in an attempt to naturally change the subject without breaking the flow of conversation. I was out of practice with things like that.

Miss Blanche shook her head.

“I kept hearing this moaning from the room next to me that made it hard to fall asleep. Was that you, Seiji?”

“It’s not what you think!”

It’s true that I had been moaning, because the wounds I received from the jackalope still ached, particularly at night. It wasn’t so bad that it kept me from working, but a life-threatening injury can leave lingering effects even after it’s healed. I could only hope that, given time, the pain would go away entirely.

Miss Blanche cocked her head to the side cutely. “Hm? If you say so, I guess. But I wasn’t thinking anything dirty, if that’s what you mean.”

Despite her words, the tips of her pointed ears blushed pink.

“No, of course not! I would never assume that a lady like you… um, what I mean to say is… we should probably get started on our work, huh?”

Stifling another yawn, Miss Blanche nodded in agreement.

“Let’s go, Seiji.”

With that, she started to shamble down the hall toward the kitchen.

“H-hold on! Miss Blanche, wait! You’re still wearing your…”

The sleepy girl paused and looked down at herself. Her ears changed from a color matching her hair to bright red.

She dashed back down the hall, past me, into her room, and slammed the door. I heard rustling as she started to change out of her nightgown.

Oh man, I should not be listening in on this!

My cat ears picked up way more detail of what she was doing than was at all decent. Even through the door I distinctly heard the moment her nightgown hit the floor. Was she wearing anything underneath? I had never studied fantasy world underwear in history class. I could only imagine—

Argh, no! I shouldn’t have been imagining anything! I had to get out of here before certain parts of me started acting up. I would hate to have to explain that to her once he came out of her room again.

I was about to make my retreat when Miss Blanche’s voice called out to me through the closed door.

“Hey, Seiji?”

“Y-yeah?”

“You didn’t see anything, right?”

“Nope! Nothing at all!”

From the context of my previous life, that was mostly true. Her nightgown would have been a fairly conservative sleeveless dress in modern Japan.

“Good!”

The door opened and Miss Blanche exited her room, attired in her full maid uniform this time. She was smiling brightly as she worked on braiding her long pink hair. All her prior drowsiness had made way for her usual prim, friendly demeanor. She must have been shocked back into her senses when I pointed out the state of dress she had originally walked out in.

Too bad. I kind of missed her cute sleepy face.

“Well? Let’s go!” she said, nudging me playfully in my good side.

I followed her halfway down the hall before she stopped again, for just a moment.

“Seiji? No one needs to know about this, right? Promise you won’t tell.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Like I said before, call me Blanche.”

***

After about a month, Mister Tomkin let me start helping out in the kitchen, and not only on dish washing. I hadn’t ever made food for myself, so it was a learning process, but he was patient in his instruction, and before long I started to get the hang of it. I really enjoyed cooking, enough so that eventually I took over the job from Talon pretty much entirely.

I don’t intend to brag too much, but Klaus and Klara were big fans of my cooking. The first time they tried it, all four eyes between the two of them widened with awe.

“This is twice as good as when daddy makes it!” Klara announced.

“No, it’s three times as good!” Klaus had a habit of trying to one-up his sister in everything they did or said.

So I was put in charge of making food for the family as well. Miss Blanche and I would eat with them when we had time, which we often did in the mornings and afternoons. There was something almost nostalgic about sitting down with everyone for family meals, which was strange because I had never had that experience with Shino and my sister.

By the way, Miss Blanche enjoyed the food I made as well. Just saying.

“Wow, this is the best stew I’ve had since I came to Leauland!” I recall her saying at one point. I had to check myself to make sure I didn’t get too prideful after hearing that.

Romy had her own residence elsewhere, so she didn’t generally join the rest of us for meals. In fact, even after I started working I still had very few chances to really interact with her. She was busy pouring drinks and flirting with guys at the bar during all the time she spent at work, and once the tavern closed for the evening she would head straight home to get some sleep.

I suppose that’s how normal employees work, but with how close I was growing to Miss Blanche and the Tomkin family, it felt like a shame that Romy and I were still essentially just acquaintances.

When I say that I didn’t get many chances to interact with Romy, that doesn’t mean she didn’t have ample opportunity to do so with me. Well, rather than interact, poke fun at might be a better way of putting it. She was a good-natured person, but the moment she noticed how much time Miss Blanche and I were spending together, any degree of restraint in her teasing went right out the window.

When she spotted us cleaning floors together, it would be, “Chores aren’t usually my first choice for a date, but to each their own.”

During lunch, “What did you make for her this time, Seiji? Something sweet for your sweetheart?”

And that one time I slipped and ended up with my hand on an unfortunate part of Miss Blanche’s body, Romy was right there to say, “Really you two, in public? Even taverns have rules about these kinds of things you know. At least take it to one of the rooms.”

If it weren’t for her sly smile that made it clear she was joking, she would have driven me crazy by the end of the first week.

Weirdly though, I actually appreciated her teasing. Call me a masochist, but since I didn’t get to talk to Romy much, I was glad that she felt comfortable behaving toward me in such a casual manner.

Then again, she acted like that with all the guys who came to the bar, so maybe it was just her personality, or her work persona. Either way, I’d rather be noticed than ignored by the people I worked with. Even if I had to endure relentless teasing as a consequence.

Overall, I liked my new life. I was starting to feel like I really fit in at Tomkin’s Tavern and Inn. I had friends, a good job and steady income, and the radiance of Miss Blanche’s smile that made me feel good about being alive every time she turned it my way. It wasn’t perfect—I still had yet to go anywhere farther than the yard around the tavern—but I was starting to truly believe that I might just be able to get a fresh start here.