Quantum Leap Vol 8 Harris Treaty July 29, 1858

C006 Let Us Walk The Grounds Then To Clear Our Minds

After explaining to them that they may need to travel alone with the merchants and then return alone here, some feared for their safety. Saika proposed for a Youkai Taijiya to accompany each Tanuki to and fro the journey and everyone felt elated having a companion on the return trip.

"It depends, however, if the load would be too much for a single one of you to lift, then it would be split so that 2 of you would be travelling together. The payment would also be split into two if you won't mind sharing the load and profit."

They confirmed that they won't mind as helping other Tanuki would be a pleasure to them. Furthermore, it's their kind and getting such an opportunity to earn more than what they normally get when they usually travel by rivers or streams to get passengers to get across or downstream, earning coppers at most.

"We have agreed, Harune -San. There's no turning back and they are willing to leave their settlements and settle here in this town. Would you mind if they accommodate somewhere or maybe take up a house to accommodate these 14 of them?"

"As for me, I would still be with Hoshi-sama and he would need to be around to disperse the energies of the protective barriers before each of them could take flight."

"That's alright. If they don't mind, we can accommodate them in the warehouse here temporarily as I will to the foreman of the building and construction to allocate a house just for our members if Fasuto Japan Airways."

With that, I summoned for Kayu-San over to join for dinner and discuss the plans for the relocation of these new aircrewmen. Kayu-San appeared sometime later as he was also on the way back home and we discussed to accommodate one long house with 4 households within them. It's going to be a permanent fixture for them and I told Kayu-San that we would readily pay for the house.

"Oh, that's a small matter," and he whispered me the amount and I was surprised at how low the cost of each house would be. The cost was as low as a warehouse since the facilities were built outside and shared with the other households.

I told him to wait a while as I entered the house and grabbed 2 bundles of coins and another 10 that I slipped out from the actual bundle. Since it is considered as loose change, I dumped the remaining into the charity box.

I passed him the amount and he told me he would gladly bring the new aircrewmen to their new house in about 4 days from now. Since the new Tanuki aircrewmen would accommodate the first warehouse, we won't be using it for our entry to the Realm of Mind in the Ops Room but instead plans to enter from Hiko-sama's living room for the time being.

"Since we have attended to the matters now, Haruto and Hoshi-sama would follow us to the trading district to get their accommodation needs first. As you all going to be our employees, you have a basic salary on top of the services rendered to the society."

"These basic salaries would be able to cover your basic needs for each month, whereas your incentives would be given to you once you had successfully returned here for your report. Would there be any questions?"

"No questions, Harune -sama." they chorused and felt delighted and relieved that they could earn a basic salary as well. "Haiya... Just call me Senpai like the others, skip the honorific or else there would be a need to note of what others would be calling me in the future. Just this alone would make me headaches you know."

"Yes, Senpai. We understood..." they chorused once more. "Alright, stay here after dinner and make yourself at home. This is the grounds of Fasuto Japan KabushikiGaisha and if you need to go elsewhere, please inform any of the guards that were manning these warehouses."

"Keep us informed of your whereabouts and at any given time, these two houses are out of bounds as well as the little room inside the warehouse."

"Anywhere else is accessible of any of you wanted to walk the grounds and see what this Fasuto Japan KabushikiGaisha has been up to for the past 4 months here in Kitakata Town, is that understood?"

"Yes, Senpai. We just wait for you here on your return." said a Tanuki by the name of Karachi by the identification tag that I had pasted on his front vest pocket.

With that, Hiko-sama, Haruto, Hoshi-sama and I excused ourselves while the Wonder 8 remained with the rest of the Tanuki and engaged in small talk, while the four of us headed towards the trading district after I had taken a bundle of gold coins along with me to buy the necessities.

I walked with a spring on my heels and felt ecstatic that whatever I planned in my mind had worked out so far. Now left is for the merchants to upgrade their mode of transport when they come over to purchase their choice of products from Kitakata.

Of course, the services rendered to them would be free and the cost of flight to and fro would be borne entirely by Fasuto Japan KabushikiGaisha.

=*=

After we had settled the shopping spree in the trading areas for the usage of the Tanuki to make their stay comfortable, we headed back to our home. Its been quite a while since we had entered the trading district at night.

From the distance, after we had passed the trading district, we can see the skeletal frameworks of the 3 storey community hall building that was underway. It was a towering silhouette that looms from the residential district that represents our landmark.

We had made proposals for the extension of the yatai service to our community buildings and they agree since they don't need to push their yatai much anymore to ply their trade to their customers. Now they could be at one place and operate on themselves or other representatives from their family members around the clock.

Aircrewman or affectionally known as ACM will be able to forge new business ties and spread the influence of Fasuto Japan KabushikiGaisha throughout Japan, using the willing Tanuki as part of the floating gourd as our latest mode of transport.

We passed the items needed by the Tanuki and they gladly accepted it. When we arrived the Wonder 8 took their leave while Riko showed the Tanuki their temporary holding area while waiting for their new home to be ready.

.....

Over several days, we had received quite several responses from the cosmetic shops that we had not contacted them and they hailed from Aizuwakamatsu, Yonezawa, Shibata and Tochigi, Yamagata, Miyagi, Gunma, Saitama and Ibaraki Prefecture.

The total number of 225 cosmetics shop owners would be arriving in stages over the next few days and we were ecstatic over the overwhelming responses that we had. Even if our ACM would account to only 15 and all from Kitakata, we won't mind it because of the travelling distance between one Prefecture would only take about slightly 5 hours.

Shouldn't be too shabby in adding our value-added service to our customers. Furthermore, since this would be their first trip, we have to set aside several logbooks just for cosmetics for these prefectures.

We wondered what kind of overwhelming responses we could get from these cosmetic shop owners since we had not been attracting them with our products much especially the new ones that we had recently begun manufacturing.

We sat down in the garden after informing the Tanukis of the meal timings and so on, as right now there was not much for them to do except to wait for the customers to acquire their air freight services. It would be a revolutionary way of travelling now, thanks for the Tanuki.

"Come join me for a cup, kid. We have made tremendous advancement in this business and I didn't know you would be able to think so far ahead of everyone. If not for Haruto and Hoshi-sama, we would be able to achieve this feat."

"Yup, sure... Thanks for the offer. It happened on our first expedition. Haruto didn't mention to us that he could transport us easily to our destination and we were in the door and made 5 stops altogether. After the first encounter with the turtle Youkai, then did he mention about transforming into a floating yellow gourd to reach to our second destination and then head back thereafter."

"When I was just sitting and thinking how to get the merchants to travel back safely and quickly, I remembered about Haruto, that's why I summoned them both. Luckily there is a family of Tanuki that lives here in Fukushima, and if one exists here, then there might be several around in Japan too."

"We let these first 15 to become the first pioneering air freight transports, once the other Tanuki saw, we might as well pooled them in as Fukushima being our base of operations."

"I agree, kid. It's one of the fastest modes of transport if you asked me. You don't need to follow the trail, you just made a beeline directly from point A to point B. With an accompanying Youkai Taijiya that is under our payroll, at least the Tanuki would feel safe and avoid encountering other hostile Youkai."

"Uh-huh... That's right. At least we have such a huge deposit account and it's not being channelled anywhere. By the way, how much have we achieved so far?"

Hiko-sama took out the corporate deposit book and when I saw at the end of the entry, I was in for a shock of my life. If this is in dollars, we had already been millionaires and the total was more than 16,000,000 gold coins altogether...!!! Just within 4 months coming to 5, we had hit that much of a savings and achievement...!!!

I handed the corporate accounts book back to Hiko-sama and my hands shook a little. I didn't realise that we had managed to accumulate so much wealth before and was thinking it was like 4,000,000 or something. But the figure came above 400%...no wonder the Emperor was very pleased and could pass down the Decree without many hoots.

.....

"We had so much in the corporate accounts already? Waaaahhh... I thought we had a little over 4 million gold coins by now... But I never expected that we had gained so much already... There's no need for us to save this much right now... 16 million gold coins... This would make the entire residential districts to be able to upgraded...!"

I was thinking that it would be High time to upgrade the residents' lives for those who lived in the outermost districts. At least better-living conditions would have better health benefits too.

No sense at all having so much money since we won't be able to finish that wealth even if we splurge it for ourselves. My God... 16 million gold coins... No wonder the smile on the Mayor was from ear to ear... Hahahaha.

I sat down with Hiko-sama and from his findings from his sketchpad, we had hit slightly over 75% Operational status for all the production lines. Just about 1250 more new employees to fit into all the 36 warehouses for the 3 shifts would bring about 100% of the operational status.

I checked that the average salary on the employee's had now had reached 6 golds and 7 silvers across the board with the occasional 3 extra gold coins as their quarterly bonus despite those new or present employees.

"Let us walk the grounds with me, Sensei. I need to check on somethings first."

"Sure, kid. I think I can envision what you had in your mind right now. But I just bring my sketchpad along with me then."

As we walked along with the residential cluster that made up of 12 layers of the district. Each innermost District would have at least 45 plots per layer and it made up of approximately 540 households for the families of the militia, Imperialist and so on.