Chapter 57: 58: Secure

“Work here?” asks Basil, somewhat surprised.

Fresh leans over towards her. “Yeah!” The girl rubs her head. “Jubilee and I can’t keep up with the work on our own forever. It’s really exhausting.”

Basil fidgets, looking around the store uncertainly. “I’m not really… I’m not really trained in anything like this,” she says.

“Neither am I!” beams Fresh. “We’re just kind of making it up as we go along!”

“That's one way to say it” says Jubilee, rolling their eyes.

Basil thinks. Fresh takes the opportunity to explain more. “We can pay you fifty Obols a day -” The priestess’ eyes widen and her tight posture loosens fairly quickly.

Jubilee adds on. “- Plus two percent of daily sales.” Basil’s legs seem to weaken just a little, as she sinks down for a moment, but then catches herself, locking her knees back straight as she regains her saintly composure. “You’d only be working the counter, ideally as often as possible. But we’re willing to leave some wiggle room on your hours, given your day job.”

Basil clears her throat. “I appreciate the offer, but…” she fumbles with her hands. “I’d feel bad about accepting more charity.”

Jubilee places a hand on their hips, pointing at Basil with the other. “It’s not charity. What do you think this is, you soft-bodied, cloister-dwelling, kook?” Fresh twitches together, looking nervously at Jubilee. “We’re running a business and offering you a job, we expect you to work.”

Fresh clears her throat.

“What Jubilee is trying to say is, we can’t manage on our own forever and we need someone to help us.” She shoots a scowl at Jubilee who sees it, but ignores it entirely. “We need someone to work for us and -” She fidgets, wondering if this is a crass thing to say so directly to the likely still mourning woman. “- You need work.”

Basil thinks. “It’s unusual for a priestess to do anything other than healing.” The woman sighs, apparently thinking, as she looks around the shop. “I’ll have to ask for permission.”

Fresh smiles, reaching out her hand. “So you’ll do it?”

Basil looks at her face with a somewhat unsure expression. “…Are you just trying to get me to like you again?”

“Yes!” says Fresh plain as day, smiling brightly as she pushes her hand out further towards the priestess who relents with a weak smile and takes it.

“That’s very honest of you to say,” remarks the priestess, laughing.

“Let’s work hard together, Basil!” says Fresh loudly and clearly.

Basil smiles, nodding back. “Let’s.”

Fresh looks at the translucent window floating behind Basil, that disappears a moment later, much like the one that had appeared when she jinxed the man from the merchant’s guild. Though neither of them seem to notice it. Exchanging a few awkward pleasantries with each other, Basil leaves to return to the church and the two of them set to work, as the occasional customer continues to trickle in, asking for a repair or soul-potions. Their swords are selling well today however.

“Would you like a bag with that?” asks Fresh to a man buying one of them.

He looks at the long sword, then back to the bag through the slits of his metal helmet. “It’s uh… I don’t think that’s going to work out.”

Fresh looks down at the small cloth bag herself. “Oh.” She tilts her head. “Yeah, you might be right.” Laughing, she takes the man’s coins and gives him the change.

Sold: 1 [Bone-Sword](Normal) for [{147} Obols] !

“Congratulations,” says the man with a nod to her as he walks away with the sword, heading straight towards the dungeon.

“Ah, thank you, come again!” calls Fresh after him, looking at her window as it vanishes. She must have heaps of skills and abilities backlogged to unlock by now. If only she could get a level up again soon. Fresh smiles. Well, soon enough. Hopefully with Basil here, she’ll finally be able to convince Jubilee to take her down into the dungeon again. Life would be so much easier if she had some higher stats.

“I’ll take over the counter,” says Jubilee from down next to her. They point back behind themselves with their thumb over their shoulder. “You take care of the door on the stairs.”

Fresh thinks for a moment. “But we don’t even know if Basil will be allowed to work for us.”

Jubilee shakes their head. “There’s no way the church will let her say no. This is their opportunity, since they were watching us anyway. It’s guaranteed.”

She nods quietly, not sure herself. But if Jubilee is this certain, then she can place her trust in that. Besides, even if Basil wasn’t coming back, the door would be another thing to slow down the threat of whatever or whoever is stalking the nights. The girl runs up the stairs into the pantry to get out some of their wood and materials, sparing a moment to look down at the hole beneath the shelf. Apparently, there are rats in the city. But they’ve gotten very good at avoiding people after losing generations upon generations to bored adventurers, eager to test out new spells and weapons.

The thought that they had a rat in their pantry, where they keep all of their food is beyond nauseating for her and she makes a note to do something about it as well. Rats are just as unwelcome in this house as the bogeyman or foot-demons, as far as she’s concerned, and the girl promises herself to make sure that that statement becomes very clear to all parties involved. Grabbing a heap of wood under her arm, she sets to work, building a simple door at the top of the stairs.

Her initial idea and construction are pretty simple. She simply takes a thick board and saws it in half, lengthwise.

Placing each half on one side of the corridor, she fastens them to the adjacent walls with metal fastenings and then one board lengthwise between them on the top.

Pushing against the empty frame, she checks to see if it holds and it seems to do so quite well. Nodding with satisfaction, she sets to work making the door itself. Taking two large sheets of wood, she lays them on top of each other and uses some of their glue to bind it together and then saws out a piece about the size of the gap in the frame. Only after she’s finished, she realizes that maybe she should have sawed the wood and then glued it together and not the other way around. Now there’s an extra piece that‘s stuck together. She rubs her head, looking down the stairs. Jubilee doesn’t seem to have noticed.

Quietly she gets up and sneaks into the pantry, hiding the glued wood leftovers, together with the rest of their wood, before Jubilee can see it and yell at her for wasting any.

Lifting the door against the frame, she fastens two swinging hinges to it, one on the top and one on the bottom, and fastens that whole piece to the frame she had built before.

Satisfied, she pushes it open and watches as it swings outward, out over the stairs. Fresh looks at it for a moment, confused. Out over the stairs? That seems really impractical. But…

Oh.

Laughing quietly, as she sees Jubilee watching her from below, she unfastens the door again and this time, places the hinges on the right side of the frame. Testing it, she’s satisfied that it now swings inwards, towards the upstairs corridor.

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“Jubilee! I did it!” She calls down in excitement.

Jubilee sighs and shakes their head. “Where’s the handle?”

“The handle?” asks Fresh, looking back at the door.

“Yeah…? The… you know, handle. For the door.” They tap their head. “A ‘door-handle’, if you will.”

Fresh looks back at the door, realizing that Jubilee has a point, a snarky point, but a point and so she returns to her work, doing her best to make a crude door-handle, like the ones downstairs, out of some of their iron-bars.

“Jubilee! I did it!” calls down Fresh in excitement an hour later, ready to be praised for her hard work and excellent craftsmanship now. She holds her arms out to the door, presenting it with a bright smile and a glowing face, feeling very proud of the stable construction, given that it was her first time making such a thing. Jubilee looks up towards her.

“…Where’s the lock?”

Fresh opens her eyes. “The what?”

“The lock, goo-brain.” Jubilee rubs their mask, just above the bridge of their nose. “That was the whole point. A door. With a lock.”

“A lock…” mumbles Fresh to herself, looking down at the door and then back to Jubilee. “Jubileeeee?”

“What?” asks Jubilee, tapping against the counter with their fingers.

Fresh scratches her cheek. “I don’t know how to make a lock.” Jubilee’s eyes twitch, but they don’t respond any further as some customers line up to pay for their things. Fresh puzzles with herself, wondering how to make a lock. Reaching into her pocket, she takes out the key to the adventurer’s guild and looks at it, shrugging to herself and setting to work to make something that could be considered a lock.

Two hours later, wiping the sweat off of her brow, she beams with pride at the metal keyhole pressed into the wooden door. “Jubileeee~!” she calls down the stairs.

“What?”

“I made a lock! Look!” The girl takes the adventurer’s guild key and sticks it into the door, turning it to show the piece of metal moving from side to side as she twists it.

Jubilee sighs, deeply exhausted. “…Is that the key to the adventurer’s guild?”

Fresh looks at it and then back down to Jubilee. “Yes?”

Jubilee stares at her for a moment and then takes a deep, long breath, extending their hands outward to calm themselves, closing their eyes for a second. “You made the lock for our door with a key to the adventurer’s guild?” they repeat.

“Mm!” nods Fresh, not sure what the issue is now.

“A key that half of the schmucks in this city have an exact copy of?”

Fresh tilts her head, looking down at Jubilee and then down to the key. “Oh,” says Fresh, understanding now.

“Oh,” repeats Jubilee, dryly.

The room is quiet.

Fresh looks back up to her friend. “Jubileeee~?” she pleads.

“What?” asks Jubilee, annoyed.

“Can we just buy a lock?”

Jubilee groans.

Razmatazz

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