Chapter 7, Episode 41: A Calm Afternoon
Once morning had turned to afternoon and we had finished the day’s shoveling, Hudom and I found ourselves at the church.
“Hello,” I said as we walked in.
Bell, one of the sisters in charge of Gimul’s church, greeted us. “Welcome, Takebayashi, Hudom. Thank you for providing space, and all that food...”
“Please, you’re doing important work. Besides, the produce is all surplus from my experimental farm,” I explained.
Behind her, the children from the orphanage, which was attached to the church, were maneuvering bags upon bags of cookware, potatoes, and beans, using wagons and wheelbarrows of all sizes.
Our job for the afternoon was to help the church operate their soup kitchen, which would double as our lunch. From what I had been told, the soup kitchen had been set up on church grounds until this point. However, the influx of laborers had drastically increased the number of people lining up at the soup kitchen, to the point where the overflow had become a cause of strife in the neighborhood. When I heard this, I offered to provide a place to run the soup kitchen, help move the food and equipment to the new location, and help cook the actual meals.
I turned back to Bell. “I would love to get started, but...”
“Is something the matter?” she asked.
“I had planned to transport everything with space magic...but when I was discussing my plan to do so at the security headquarters so we could adjust our schedule, I had some volunteers who wanted to help.”
“I think that’s them coming now, chief,” Hudom said.
I followed his gaze. “Yes, that’s them.” Even from afar, I could see them. A two-line formation of well-built men, all a head or two taller than the others on the street, were headed towards us in a rhythmical jog.
“You can definitely pick them out of a crowd,” said Hudom.
“You can say that again...”
“Those are the volunteers?” Bell asked, sounding a bit taken aback at the hulking frames of the men en route.
I tried to console her. “They may look intimidating, but you’ll find them friendly.”
“Even I can feel overwhelmed by them sometimes... I can’t fault any lady for feeling that way.”
By the time Hudom had said so, the team had arrived at the church.
“Thirty-eight Brawny Boys, reporting for duty!” one of them announced.
“Thank you.” I turned to Bell. “These are the volunteers. We call them the Brawny Boys at security. As you can see, they’re all very muscular. They’ll take care of you.”
“Yes, that’s plain to see...” Bell said.
At this, the brawn at the front of the pack puffed out his chest and said, “Thank you. If it’s lifting, you can leave it to us.” He made a show of flexing his biceps, and the rest of the squad struck poses behind him.
“Well, if you don’t mind jumping right in,” I said, “can you carry all this stuff to the new venue? And if you could help with everything we haven’t brought out yet too—over there.”
“We’re on it!” they answered.
“All right, boys! Split up and get to work!” their leader called, and the Brawny Boys got right to work.
The children were shocked at first by their size, but soon realized from their uniforms and my presence that they were there to help. They began to show the men where to go.
“I’m sorry if that shocked you,” I said.
“Oh, no. It was rude of me, when they came out here to help... I notice the children recognize a few of them,” said Bell.
“Yes. They’re rather notorious...”
“Do you not get out much, Bell?” Hudom asked.
She nodded. “That’s fair to say. My days are usually spent managing the church. Even when I need to buy food or supplies, the older kids take turns going out for me.”
“It’s no wonder you don’t know them, then. They usually patrol the city, don’t they, chief?”
“That’s right,” I answered. “Like you were saying, they look strong and intimidating. I have them on patrol duty most of the time, as a deterrent for crime.” While someone’s stature didn’t correlate entirely to their strength in combat, muscle mass was a considerable factor. Besides, their looks alone provided a sense of security; these men had found their calling in crime deterrence. That being said... “Their team wasn’t formed with that in mind.”
“Oh? I would have thought so, from what you’ve told me,” Bell said.
“Well...it was supposed to be just a group of people who wanted to bulk up.” The Brawny Boys were participating in trial uses of the protein powder I was developing with Tint, one of the residents at the hospital. That was how they’d met, but they had actually been assigned to different teams at the security company. In fact, some of them worked at the trash processing plant. I had concocted the official title of the Bodybuilders’ Club for the group, but both the public and the members themselves preferred the Brawny Boys. The thirty-eight members who’d shown up today were only a portion of the Brawny Boys. Truth be told, I didn’t know how many there were now, because they accepted new recruits on a daily basis.
There were a few reasons for their popular demand. First, the supplement we created exceeded expectations, showing more drastic results in a shorter time frame than we’d expected, especially in ape or bull beastkin men, who’d had a very muscular build to begin with. Second, it’s common for beastkin to find muscular frames attractive—or they’re at least looking for a mate who does. Some members had even attributed new relationships to the protein supplements. Finally, with proper nutrition intake and physical care in addition to taking the supplement, many subjects reported that they felt less tired or sore after exercise. Word of this spread, and nowadays people often asked to join the trial to attain those practical benefits. The trials had always involved physical exercise, but the Brawny Boys had turned into a sort of workout gym where members pursued looks, health, and even romantic connections. There was even a gallery of housewives watching the proceedings. I had put some serious thought into just building them their own gym at this point.
“All cargo has been brought out!” reported Captain Brawny, the one who’d led the troupe here.
With the last of our supplies and the children in tow, we made for the venue where we’d host today’s soup kitchen.
When we were right down the street from it, Bell noted, “This area’s been cleaned up quite a bit.”
“You’ve been here before?” I asked.
“Not often, but occasionally, when I need to run an errand for the church.”
“I see.”
We were walking down what looked like an average residential street in what had once been the slums. Bell seemed to notice the newly built houses and newly paved roads: fruits of the zone improvement, a joint project between us and the government.
When I explained as much, she asked a little nervously, “Forgive me for my ignorance. What do you mean by ‘zone improvement’? What happened to the people who used to live in this neighborhood?”
“Don’t worry, we didn’t force them out. A local leader by the name of Lible helped relocate them into one of three different living arrangements—with the residents’ approval, of course.”
Those who didn’t have a proper home in the slums, those living on the street or squatting in abandoned structures, were moved to a group home that the government had asked me to build. Out of those who’d owned a home in the neighborhood, those who were willing to relocate moved to the newly developed areas—this was similar to the process of urban land pooling on Earth. For those who’d adamantly refused relocation, I had merely demolished and rebuilt their homes on the same plot. There was the occasional conflict or disagreement, but Lible’s mediation and governmental aid had smoothed things out. For many who’d been unenthusiastic about moving at first, it had been for a specific reason—for example, a leg injury that had prevented them from walking up or downhill—so we had been able to make note of their needs and cross reference the zoning plans to move them to an appropriate location. The clerk’s office had even opened a department dedicated to this aspect of the process; many residents had come forward to say that their new homes were in more convenient locations than their old ones.
“That sounds wonderful,” said Bell. “Does that mean that you’ll soon be building a house on the land we’re using today?”
I was taking us to one of the empty lots that had come as a result of the rezoning, but...
“Maybe down the road,” I replied. “We can’t feasibly turn every open plot of land into a comfortable residential area, and there are other construction projects that have higher priority. So we have a few empty lots on our hands that we haven’t decided what to do with. We’ll be going to one of them today, and you can run the soup kitchen there for the foreseeable future.”
Before rezoning, I’d bought each resident’s old land and the land they would move into, and afterwards I’d sold the land back to the new residents to make things easier. That meant I technically owned the empty plots, so I didn’t have to seek anyone else’s permission to host the church’s soup kitchen.
Our conversation made the walk fly by. When we arrived at the plot, the Brawny Boys had already started setting up, and the kitchen was ready to fire up. We went straight to cooking.
“Where should we start, Bell?” I asked.
“We’ll be making a lot of bean and potato soup today. Nothing too complicated. We need to wash the potatoes first before peeling and dicing them. Then we’ll boil them with the beans, add thin slices of cured meat...then simmer and season.”
“I’ll get those potatoes washed.” Hudom grabbed a few sacks of potatoes and headed to the water station. An orphan girl ran over to help, but Hudom gently declined, stating that the cold water would be rough on the girl’s hands. Very gentlemanly of him, but I couldn’t help but notice a piercing look from a boy standing by a wagon nearby. Both the orphan girl and boy were only a year or two older than me.
The troubles of adolescence... I decided against interfering and turned to Bell. “By the way, I made the things I told you about. Would you like to see them?”
“The convenient tools you were talking about?”
“Yes. Here they are.” From the Item Box I produced something most people on Earth would have recognized: a set of food slicers. Personally, I’d always considered them a staple of late-night shopping channels. I’d used the hardening solution board (like I had for everything else) for the handle and attached a metal blade to it.
I reached for one of the cured meats we were supposed to thinly slice and demonstrated the gadget.
“So that’s how you use it,” Bell noted.
“You can do more than just slice, though. By simply swapping out the blade compartment, you can julienne. Just glide it over like this, and it’ll cut everything from meat to vegetables. You do need to be careful not to cut yourself, but it’s safer for children than using a kitchen knife. But wait—there’s more! I have another one like this, but with blades at the end of a cylinder. Just throw a peeled potato into the cylinder and pull the lever, and...voila! The whole potato is chopped in one motion. Children can use this too.” My shopping channel spiel was met with no reaction from Bell, as she was deep in thought, but the orphans who had been watching the demonstration, particularly those who were about my age or younger, went nuts.
“Wow! We can use that to help cook too?!”
“Miss Bell! I want to help you cook!”
“Well... I had thought it too early to let you use knives, but this may be safe enough.” Bell looked at me. “But they could still cut themselves, right?”
“I won’t deny that. But any tool has some sort of risk, if used incorrectly.”
“That’s true,” she admitted. “All right, everyone. Be very careful when you use these tools.” As soon as she gave the green light, the kids cheered in excitement. Bell added to me, “Thank you for keeping the young ones in mind.”
“I just happened to know of something they could use.”
From what I had been told beforehand, I knew that the orphans were supposed to attend the charitable works of the church as much as possible. However, there were plenty of things that the younger kids couldn’t take part in: using knives and fire, for example. There were other tasks, like carrying ingredients from here to there or fetching water, but there was only so much weight the young ones could carry. As a result, the younger orphans usually ended up waiting around during the cooking portion of the soup kitchen. When I’d been told as much, I’d thought of the food slicer. So I’d discussed and prototyped it, then built the ones I’d brought in today for their debut in the field. I had told Bell about some of them, but now they were all approved by her to be used by the children.
Happily wielding the food slicers, the children began prepping the food as told. After seeing those smiles, I felt like the time I spent making the food slicers was well worth it.
I should get to work too. I joined Hudom at the potato wash. There were plenty of things to worry about, and precisely because of those things, I vowed to relish these calm afternoons.
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