The White Cat That Swore Vengeance Was Just Lazing on the Dragon King’s Lap - Volume 5 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Hot Spring Completed

“At last! At long last! The hot spring is done!” Ruri exclaimed.

The long-awaited spring was finally completed. The path to this point had been indeed long. Planning, construction, personnel training—everything had been worked up from scratch, and the equipment for the amusement facilities had been crafted by hand. Granted, Ruri hadn’t done much herself—she’d hired others to do most of the work—but she had been waiting for this day on bated breath.

“We did it, Amarna-san!”

“Indeed, completed at long last!”

Ruri and Amarna took each other’s hands and rejoiced.

“All right, time for the inaugural bath!”

Ruri decided to take a bath to celebrate its completion. She extended an invitation to the slum children who had assisted with the construction. They had been helping out a lot ever since Ruri tasked them with inspecting the new equipment in the recreation facilities. As thanks for instating a lunch program in school, they would help out in any way they could when they found time between school and work. It really made a difference in the long run. Admittedly, though, some of them were probably just doing it for the sweets Ruri gave out as a token of appreciation.

In addition to the children, she also invited the construction workers and the various craftsmen responsible for the equipment. She had actually invited Heat to join as well, but he’d become disinterested once he’d learned that the women’s and men’s baths were separate. At first, he’d asserted that there wouldn’t be a problem since he was a spirit. But Ruri flatly refused, insisting she couldn’t allow a womanizer with the body of a man in the women’s bath. His situation was different from Kotaro’s or Chi’s.

She stepped into the Nation of the Dragon King’s first hot spring with everyone. Ruri lathered the heads of the slum children with shampoo and washed them. It seemed that this was their first time bathing and they were confused how it worked.

This raised a good point. If she didn’t write down any kind of instructions, the customers might get confused as well. After all, they didn’t even know how to use the shampoo or conditioner—both of which, as a note, had been imported from the Nation of the Beast King. Ruri had tracked down stores in the Nation of the Dragon King that carried them, but they didn’t sell well considering no one in the kingdom bathed. All the products had been sitting on the shelves for ages.

As she taught the children how to bathe, Ruri considered the idea of including an explanation at the reception desk. The women’s side was fine at the moment because Ruri was there, but she did worry about the men’s side...until she remembered. The man with more unbridled passion for hot springs than anyone else—the building manager from the Nation of the Beast King—was in the men’s bath. He must have been giving the boys a thorough lecture on how to use the spring.

“Lady Beloved, hot springs feel good,” one of the children commented.

“They do, don’t they?” Ruri replied.

The slum kids wore rosy smiles as they soaked in the perfectly hot water. Embracing the atmosphere, Ruri put a towel on her head. The children copied her by putting towels on their heads as well. As she giggled at the sight, water came splashing onto Ruri’s face.

“Wa—pft!” While some of the children soaked in somber silence, others mistook the large bathing area as a playground. They were swimming around and getting into splash fights.

“Hey, there! A hot spring is for relaxing, not for splashing and swimming!”

Ruri prompted the obedient children to soak in the hot water peacefully. Since she would always give them sweets, they had learned that they should listen to Ruri and so they complied.

Once the hot spring was open to the general public, however, more children might crop up, mistaking the bath for a big playground. It would be necessary to teach people bathing etiquette. She might also need to consider banning those with especially bad manners. No one likely wanted to be banned from an establishment built by a Beloved, so it should prove to be quite a potent strategy.

“Maybe I should put up warning signs all over the facility in addition to the explanation at reception. It would be good if they all behaved well, but it might be difficult at first because people who don’t know anything about the place will come here.”

Even in her world, foreigners with no knowledge on how to properly enter a bath had been a problem because of their manners. The same situation was to be expected here.

“Though, it’d be a good idea for someone to warn them or show them by example.”

She considered having the children fill that role since customers would be less likely to make a fuss if children warned them. However, they had work and school themselves.

“I guess I’ll wait and see, then.”

She didn’t know how much a Beloved’s power would correlate to the people’s manners, so she figured she could afford to wait and see just how bad they would be. If they ended up being too bad, a warning from Ruri herself was bound to straighten them out.

As Ruri pondered over that matter, she heard one of the children say, “Lady Beloved, my head’s starting to feel all woozy.” Her face was flushed red and she was obviously having a hot flash.

“Whoa, hurry and get out of the water! Everyone else too!”

It seemed the child had soaked a little too long. She wasn’t used to bathing in hot water. That extended to the other children as well, as they showed signs of lightheadedness. They didn’t know the limit since it was their first time, so Ruri hurried them out of the bath and gave them some water to drink.

She was relieved to see that none of the children got to the point of collapse. However, in the men’s bath, since they were keeping up with the hot-spring-loving manager, apparently many of the kids got heat exhaustion. Perhaps because he was teaching them how to bathe, even some of the adults got lightheaded as a result of sitting in the unfamiliar water for so long trying to follow his example. This was bound to happen if you stuck a bunch of rookies with a professional.

The lobby, where people could relax after their bath, wound up being a convalescence room for the heat-exhausted adults and children. Out of all of those that went to the men’s side, the manager was the only one doing just fine. The girls on Ruri’s side of the bath recovered quickly since their symptoms were only mild. They were running around handing out water to the heat-stricken boys.

“Hmm, maybe we need a warning to tell people to soak in moderation.”

Once everyone had recovered, Ruri began to make food. She was making takoyaki, the dish she planned on serving once the spring officially opened. Since she hadn’t been able to get octopus yet, she put cheese in the batter instead.

The children looked at the strange griddle riddled with holes with great interest—as did the adults, who clapped at the sight of her flipping the dough with the awl.

“What an odd shape.”

“I’ve never seen food shaped like this.”

The Nation of the Dragon King was a nation of many races and creeds as well as an international port city with a wide variety of different foods and ingredients. One of those ingredients, Ruri discovered, was a seasoning that resembled Japanese katsu sauce. Praise be to this great melting pot of a nation! She never imagined she would encounter katsu sauce in a different world. Not only was takoyaki possible now, but so was everyone’s favorite smorgasbord of batter, cabbage, and meat—okonomiyaki.

After Ruri finished grilling up the balls of batter, she finished them off with a layer of sauce.

“Oh, these are delicious.”

“I could see myself packing a few of these away.”

The taste was generally well-received, but Ruri found it lacking. She was used to the real deal. However, as long as there was no octopus, there was no choice but to go with cheese for a while.

Discounting the mass hot flash, everyone enjoyed the hot spring. Ruri determined that the nation’s people would like the experience too.

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

It was time for the grand opening, and it wasn’t long before people started to trickle in.

The day before, Ruri had paid the slum children to walk around town with signs. Maybe the advertisement had helped because there was a satisfactory number of customers for the first day. There was even a group that stayed all night—a group of passionate hot spring lovers who hailed from the Nation of the Beast King. They ran to the hot spring as soon as it opened to the public.

The children she hired as personnel seemed to be doing well too. She looked at the child working the reception desk, and despite there being some room for improvement, there were no problems so far. She even went to check on the child in charge of cooking to see they were doing a good job of both serving the customers and cooking as taught.

However, there was a bit of a problem at the amusement facilities. Not a huge problem, of course, but the kids there were pretty swamped with customers. To Ruri, the hot spring was the main attraction. But that didn’t register with the Nation of the Dragon King’s people, who weren’t accustomed to the concept of bathing. A great deal of people came out of curiosity since it was the first day, but it was fewer than expected. The people flocked more toward the entertainment facilities.

Amarna was ecstatic to sell so much merchandise due to the massive influx of people. She was even more excited than usual. On the other hand, the kids were feeling topsy-turvy and couldn’t handle things all that well. The crowds were pretty big, and the kids were trying to serve customers, even though they were sniffling and tearing up.

This was bad news.

Facilities like these were a rare commodity in a nation where sources of entertainment as a whole were scarce. Adults and children alike were flooding in to play pinball and bowling. Some were cutting in line and yelling for people to hurry up. If things kept up like this, it could develop into a massive commotion.

Ruri took out a whistle she had for just this occasion, took a deep breath, and blew into it, producing a loud tweeeeeet.

The uproar stopped all at once. All eyes curiously turned to Ruri.

“Line up properly! No cutting in line! If you can’t wait patiently, you’ll be barred from entry!” That was Ruri’s final say on the matter, and there wasn’t anyone around who would still raise a fuss after hearing a Beloved’s warning.

Once they had quieted down, Ruri decided to move up the scheduled time for sports in an attempt to thin out the number of people. She went to the plaza in the center of the building, between the hot spring and the recreational facilities, and drew a simple line in the ground. The children that Ruri had asked to participate were all standing in a row, dressed in clothes with numbers on them. Little by little, people gathered to see what she was up to.

“We’ll now be playing a game. Since it’s one that doesn’t exist in the Nation of the Dragon King, I’ll first explain the rules.”

Ruri gave a brief explanation of dodgeball and asked the kids to put on a demonstration. The rules were simple: if you were hit, you were out. They were so simple, in fact, that the children picked up on them immediately. Seeing how it was a game that only needed a single ball to play, it could possibly spread within the Nation of the Dragon King, mainly among the younger generation.

Ruri asked for participants for the next game, but mainly just the children raised their hands. Some adults also participated, but they took the game more seriously. Whenever they pegged a child with a ball, the other children would meet them with a chorus of boos.

In a world where entertainment was scarce, it was safe to say that the grand opening was a rousing success. However, Ruri decided to add more little by little so that people didn’t get bored with the still-limited number of entertainment options. Sure, there was better entertainment in Ruri’s world compared to this selection, but there was also a limit to what she could recreate. She was a little worried that she would run out of material.

After a few days, it was clear that the hot spring didn’t attract as many people as the entertainment facilities. The trade-off to all this was that they gained a dedicated fan base, and there were quite a few regular customers that frequented every day—the building manager from the Nation of the Beast King among them. He apparently had his own bath at home, but the spring must have been leagues better. Ruri didn’t want it to get so popular she wouldn’t have time for a dip herself, so it was probably for the better that it was a little empty.

“Maybe I should invite Chelsie-san too, while I’m at it,” Ruri said aloud. She wanted Chelsie to experience the hot spring she so painstakingly created. There was no better time than the present. Instead of just pondering, Ruri rushed off to Jade to ask for his permission.