Chapter 18: Exciting Stuff

Emergency Bakery’s counter was a whole of 1 meter long, facing the not-narrow, not-wide road. A long curtain hung from an awning to the ground, keeping the dust from the outside world from contaminating the not-good, not-bad pastries—and keeping the people not in-the-know from thinking there was a bakery here in the first place.

Kalender and Page stepped through the curtain. The old man sensed their presence.

“What’ll it be?” he said. His voice was gruff, like the middle management of a mafia.

Page smiled, but before her lips could part and impart her order, she jumped back as Kalender slapped down 20 Notes. “A bash of Hashlings, six beggars each of bizniz and crockeries.”

The old man huffed. “You know yer stuff.” He took the 20 Note bill and gave him 5 Notes in loose change. Kalender didn’t break eye contact while he swept the five into his purse, the coins plinking as they fell on top of each other.

Once the products landed in their hands, they left with nothing more to say. Page, however, had a lot of things to say.

“What was that!” she becried. Kalender practically scared her there, but upon detecting a second conversation beneath the un-pleasantries, it piqued her curiosity and taste for conspiracy.

Kalender grinned. “There’s a secret language for those in the know, y’know? If you know it, you get a 25% discount on damn near anything you please.”

The Cant of Pastries, thus far unknown to those outside of Clarinets. Any who professed it—behind the bakery’s closed curtains, of course—enjoyed a ridiculous discount. In the face of Kalender’s All-Language Fluency, such a thing was trivial.

In fact, he found the bakery by reading chicken scratches chiseled into some stones, which were actually directions to find this place. All-Language Fluency was just too powerful.

“T-that was amazing,” Page couldn’t help but remark. “I-I didn’t even know there was something like that there!”

Kalender grinned. “Conspiracies and secret pastry stores protected by layers of obfuscation and tacit agreements—ahh, I can’t get enough of it.”

I-is this man reading my mind?!

Kalender realized he was leaking this side of himself. He scrambled to repair his undoubtedly-ruined image, but when he looked at Page’s eyes, he saw neither disgust nor cringe.

[+1 Excitement]

He’s done it. He’s finally done it. Hopefully one of the Companion Skills would help with dealing with the charm effects, but maybe that was a long shot in itself. Excitement didn’t sound like it would give anti-charm skills—on the contrary, it might even do the opposite. How concerning.

Page herself scrambled to fix her image, but it was too late. She and Kalender met eyes, and they both understood that they’ve both seen a common side to each other that shouldn’t be revealed to the public—well, it wasn’t that bad, probably even something that was lower-leveled than their moms telling stories about how they wet their beds.

Still—better to keep quiet and not to have to explain anything.

They made their way back to the practice field, keeping quiet for most of the way. It wasn’t a nervous quiet, however—just an awkward one. Kalender tried to pass it off by bringing up Page’s pronunciation difficulties again, but the girl just couldn’t seem to say {bullet} at all.

It got to the point where she pulled out a cookie and pronounced, “Behold! {Cookie}!” which got a laugh out of Kalender.

Once they got back, they found Jyn talking to Lens near the equipment storage shed—they both noticed Kalender’s and Page’s more laid-back expressions compared to just a while ago. Lens smirked.

“Oh, you’re back,” Kalender called. “Any news?”

Page held the bag of brownies hostage, demanding that Lens stop smirking, while Kalender approached Jyn.

“Actually, I was looking for you,” Jyn replied. “Priestess Tak and I wish for your input on something urgent.”

“Oh? What is it?”

“Let’s take this to the barracks. Page?” Jyn faced her. “If we don’t return in an hour, please consider training over for today. Meet you here tomorrow again in that case.”

“O-of course,” Page replied.

She watched the two depart. Was it me laughing back there, or was it the curse?

She knew for a fact that Kalender and Jyn were involved in something big, and she wanted in. She wanted to any sort of chance to leave a mark in the world, in a big way.

She’d let herself be charmed for the sake of that grandieur. Even if she comes to unnaturally, unconditionally love Kalender, she at least had to—had to be sure that he was a real human being, who felt something real about her. If she was going on an adventure, she wanted to be treated fairly—seen for what’s in her heart, and allowed to be free.

***

Kalender opened the door, greeted by the sight of the Priestess seated on the couch, beside another woman he hadn’t seen before.

“Uhh, good morning, Priestess, and…”

“My name is Luceria.”

“Luceria.” Kalender offered a polite smile.

Jyn stepped in soon after, and Kalender closed the door after her. They sat together on the couch opposite the others, their hips just a fist apart.

“Kalender,” Jyn explained, “this Luceria is a resurrected Hero of Rem.”

Kalender shifted and straightened his back. The discussion was serious right at the start.

Jyn explained everything they knew, from Luceria’s task of passing on a message to Kalender, to the contents of the message itself. Kalender himself was frozen still, absorbing everything.

One could imagine him performing 1000 calculations per second, but those would be all wrong—because there was a very simple solution to all of this on his mind.

“… I could just convert the Affection stat into something else before it even hits 100, though?” he said.

“You say that as if it’s easy,” Luceria replied.

“Hm, well, I just did it a while ago, too.”

“Oh? For Page?” Jyn said, just barely keeping herself from giving a light applause. “It was about time. Did she get Respect as well?”

“Er, no… She got Excitement.”

This earned pointed looks and suspicious gazes.

“No, see, it’s because, uh—” This was embarrassing. “—we visited a secret bakery a while ago, and—”

“A secret bakery? What nonsense,” Tak dismissed his claim with a tilted chin. “M’lord, I am quickly losing respect for you.”

“Priestess, such a bakery actually exists,” Jyn explained.

“How can I believe you? You are also charmed by him.” Tak faced Kalender. “Although I am tasked to support you by my goddess, I am not inclined to assist in your worldly endeavours.”

“Priestess, the physical location of the bakery never changes. I can show you the way and answer your concern.”

Tak squinted at her. “Alright.” She stood up. “Lead the way.”

The two left, leaving Kalender with Luceria. They held eye contact—Kalender’s more awkward, and Luceria’s more inquisitive.

“… So it survived,” Luceria said with a gentle tone.

“Sorry … what?”

“That bakery’s name is ‘Emergency Bakery,’ is it not?”

“Yeah! That one!” Kalender exclaimed, almost to an ovation.

“That not-good, not-bad taste…”

“The discount!”

“Absolutely! The discount!” Luceria outright stood to ovation. “I can’t believe it. You also know the Cant of Pastries?”

“Wait, wait, how would you know about the Emergency Bakery? Jyn says it’s only in Clarinets.”

“What?” Luceria sat down, hanging her head in disappointment. “To be reduced to one branch in a farflung town…”

Luceria looked to Kalender. He was looking to her for answers.

“In my time,” Luceria explained, "a great many famines swept as the Demon Lord’s army approached. In such a dire time, one of my comrades, the Hero Merchant, joined hands with the Hero Farmer and Hero Logistician to create the Emergency Bakery.

“It didn’t taste great, but just okay. It wasn’t expensive, but you can’t say it was cheap. Finally, it was loaded with all the vitamins and nutrients a peasant needed to rise above starvation, but not enough to keep them alive. It was a crucial stepping stone for those too reduced to bones to eat proper food without dying from the shock.”

A look of reminiscence and melancholy drew across Luceria’s face.

“Sounds horrible,” Kalender remarked.

“It was,” she said, “it really was. I think the people today are lucky.”

I wonder if that’s true. “I don’t think this’ll last for very long.”

Luceria looked up to him. “What do you mean?”

“There’s a lot of things going on in the background, I think. This curse thing is a pretty major part of it, so unless it can be fixed—stuff’s gonna happen, I think. I’m not sure what, though.”

He saw a fiery look flash across Luceria’s face. “You don’t have to deal with it,” he interrupted before her emotion could flare. She looked at him like he was insane—Rejecting the help of a Hero? Unbelievable!—but he explained, “There aren’t any crazy demon lords to fight off. It’s just people and all their imperfections now. It’s not so difficult that this world would need an overpowered Hero to save it, y’know?”

“What if you need overpowered?” she countered. “Even if I’m only resurrected, I’m still a Hero at heart.”

“Were you happy last time?” Kalender asked.

No—she wanted to say, and it was the truth, but she didn’t want to give this guy any ammunition to work with. “I’m a Hero. It’s duty before my personal feelings—”

“You weren’t, huh? I guess that’s why Minimine felt sorry about resurrecting y’all.”

Huh? “What do you mean?”

“Hm? I don’t think Minimine or her sister are evil. If they put you through something hard, then they’ll also think that they owe you something good and easy, don’t you think?”

“I … understand what you mean.” I’ve heard it before. I deserve happiness after all that I went through. It’s still so hard to accept, but we won in the end, after all. We won.

“Maybe you should go see it. Emergency Bakery, I mean.”

Luceria looked to him, asking with her eyes, why?

“It’s a good thing there’s only one of it left, right? The world’s hard, but people aren’t starving. The sugarfree brownies might knock that fact into you better than I could.”

Luceria smiled as thanks—then slowly turned to him again. “Did you say ‘sugarfree’? I don’t remember that.”

“Ah, well… I think Emergency Bakery’s still around because it’s the perfect food to munch on without feeling guilty about the price. A bunch of the stuff they make also perfectly fit in pockets, for some reason.”

A bit of quiet passed between them. “By the way,” Kalender asked, “what’s with the Cant of Pastries? I mean, I like it, it’s cool, but who thought of it?”

“Ah.” Luceria thought back. “Another comrade, the Spy Hero, hijacked the continent-wide distribution network for wheat and bread to pass on information and host his clandestine cells—”

Jesus Christ, that’s amazing.

“—If I remember correctly, there were actually two Cants: one for ordering bread at a discount, but another slight variation that was used to pass information to the baker in broad daylight.”

“Wait, wait, so what’s the chicken scratch?”

“Ah, the carvings and such? Those were for indicating safehouses and target points.”

“Miss Luceria. Thank you so much.”

“A-are you crying?!”

Just then, the door opened. Tak came in with a defeated look. “I-it’s actually real…” Jyn stepped in behind her, all very smug.

They both quickly noticed Kalender’s tears of joy. Luceria moved to pat him on the shoulder.

Jyn dashed forward and swatted Luceria’s hand away. Another woman’s status is saved from the Companion System.

Everyone eventually calmed down. Now that Tak believed Kalender, he was finally able to come to the actual point of his proposal.

—Get Minimine’s incarnations to fuse back together so I can calm down the normal Minimine and manage her Companion status normally.

“True. If the Affection progress can be interrupted simply by changing it to something else far less damaging, there would be no need to reshape the landscape through never-ending legendary battle.” Jyn supported the idea, if only because it just seemed so calm and normal.

Tak shook her head. “That is so. However, we do not know what it will change into. So far, this Miss Page’s Excitement stat sounds suspicious as to what kinds of Companion Skills it will yield.”

Kalender had nothing to say about that. It was true. Then again, there’s just a simple solution to this one, too.

“Then, can’t I just push Page’s Excitement to 100, then we’ll all check what sorts of Companion Skills it’ll give?” If there’s nothing suspicious, then it’s all good, right?

“You make it sound so easy…” Tak sighed.

“Will you be alright, Kalender?” Jyn asked.

Kalender replied with tilde eyebrows. “Why’re you making it sound like I’m going into a warzone?”

“That is—to bring her Excitement to 100, you would need to take her on repeat dates all around the town, wouldn’t you?”

““D-dates…”” For some reason, Tak and Luceria were synced on this.

Kalender’s eyebrows were still tildes. “I don’t think Page is that kind of person. The sort of excitement this stat talks about is of the more … adventure-y type,” he said, completely omitting all talk of fascination with conspiracies and secret organizations.

Jyn thought about it long and hard. Neither Tak nor Luceria could comment about someone they hadn’t met.

“I see. We can bring her out of town on basic adventurer quests, opposite the direction of the undead.”

“Ohh! I haven’t done any of the sort, either!”

Jyn squinted at Kalender’s childish excitement, connecting the dots as fast as a master calculator would use an abacus: like how he came back with Page just earlier and they were both quite relaxed with each other, and Kalender’s mention of their trip to Emergency Bakery being the trigger … Okay, it was just two dots, but it was all she needed to conclude that they were likely both excited by the same things—for example, basic adventurer quests.

Jyn stood. “Alright. We still have a few days before reinforcements from Tak’s fellow sisters arrive. I suppose Kalender and I have until then to bring Page’s Excitement to 100 to gain confidence that applying the same treatment to the goddess will be just as effective. Hero Luceria, will your comrades be fine until then?”

“We resurrected are not constrained by the flesh. They cannot win, but they cannot be drained of stamina, and cannot lose.”

Jyn nodded. “Priestess Tak, is my outline to your liking?”

“My goddess will suffer eternally, otherwise. I approve of this plan.” She stood and faced Kalender, giving a deep bow. “I apologize for doubting you, m’lord.”

“It’s okay,” he replied. It’s actually pretty good that you’re not some blind follower, what a relief.

***

Everyone parted ways. Jyn and Kalender went to collect Page first, before entering into a dark alley. It wouldn’t do not to tell mom what you were doing.

“W-why are we here?” Page asked.

“Oh no, Kalender you foolish man, another one?” Jyn deadpanned.

“Not again,” the guy shook his head.

A sigh escaped from the shadows. Page jumped and hid behind Jyn, but as soon as the Inquisition agent revealed herself—

[+10 Excitement]

“… What is it, this time?”