The Monday I Returned, Ready to Become a Business God
The sky was gloomy yet sweetly gray that Monday morning. Helen was as changeable, cheerful, bustling, and elegant as ever.
“Mmm-hmm~”
A twist tie held her hair in place. The smooth nape of her neck. A small scar sitting a handspan above her modest ankle socks, just below those slender calves. Her narrow hips twitched and wriggled in a way that was unbearably adorable. What a precocious little cutie!
“Hey there, Sterling Pro! Anything good happen lately?”
“Huh? Aww, not really~”
Helen answered the veteran worker’s question with a bright, full-faced smile. The working conditions were still abysmal with no sign of improvement—her hands were cracked and dark red, and black snot ran from her nose thanks to the coal dust—but uncontrollable joy still burst out of her from every pore.
“Got yourself a boyfriend or something?”
“Hehe. It’s not like that.”
Helen blushed and smiled, playfully denying it. But because she blushed and smiled so quietly and shyly, it somehow looked like a subtle admission.
“Anyway, good work today. Here’s your day’s pay.”
“Eh? What about the foreman?”
“Ah, that guy? He’s got some personal business, so he won’t be around for a while.”
“Really?”
Helen tilted her head, but that was all. Honestly, it wasn’t any of her concern. She was far more interested in the sticky byproducts pooled near the coke oven than in whatever trouble he was in.
The veteran worker noticed where her eyes kept drifting and jerked his thumb toward the coke oven.
“You taking that again today?”
“Of course! Thank you so much.”
“Normally we’d have to pay to get rid of it, so we’re the ones who should be grateful. But what the heck do you even use it for?”
The veteran worker shrugged, clearly baffled. Helen put on her signature mischievous expression and answered with light, playful flair.
“Umm… It’s a secret!”
“Hah, fine… Go on and take it. It’s heavy, so be careful.”
“Thank youuu!”
The moment she had permission, Helen dashed toward the coke oven that was belching hot steam and scooped up the sticky tar oozing from its base. The coal tar sloshing inside the tin bucket was unbearably hot. But compared to the boiling hope for the future surging inside her head, it was nothing. So it didn’t matter.
Once she left the factory, Helen wiped the sweat from her forehead and looked up at the sky.
“Nice weather!”
The sun had found a weak spot in the dark clouds. The ragged blue hole grew larger and larger, its edges beginning to glow with bright light. Helen stared at the sight in silence.
Only after the thick, bitter fog of despair she first tasted upon being abandoned in this utterly lawless romance-fantasy world had finally cleared from her eyes did she truly realize something.
The tears she had shed during the time she was discarded in this romance-fantasy world with no background whatsoever were mathematically equal, across every hopeless era, to the tears shed by all of humanity that had ever suffered cruel treatment. Yet the unfair and incomprehensible pain Helen had endured surpassed, in terms of ordinary perception, spiritual emotion, and sheer depth, everything she had ever experienced in her superficial previous life. That pain had been so full of sorrow it felt like an endless hand choking and twisting her throat. It had been the wandering of a soul lost in a maze filled with despair and sighs of resignation. But now, with time passed, that pain had become something so ridiculously simple when viewed from above that it was like the blueprint of Daedalus—utterly laughable!
“Mwahahaha!”
Helen let out a strangely familiar-sounding laugh and began trudging home, bucket of coal tar in hand.
…Anyway, Helen made it home safely and gradually regained her usual composure. From here on, she needed to act a little more dignified.
The backyard was a bit cramped now that she had crammed it full of the trash she’d collected, but it was still plenty spacious. The garbage piles even served as a natural fence, making it the perfect spot for her work.
“Hoo… First, dehydration.”
She tossed a single matchstick (so expensive!) she had bought from the nearby general store into the makeshift furnace she had built brick by brick. The iron pot she had scavenged from the trash heap began to heat up.
“Careful, careful…”
Before steam could rise from the surface of the iron pot, Helen carefully poured in the coal tar from the tin bucket. Freshly mined raw coal tar from the coke oven contained trace amounts of moisture and ammonia water; if she wasn’t careful, it could cause a sudden violent boil-over. Temperature control was essential.
“Good. Now let’s bring it to 100°C.”
Once the empty iron pot was full of coal tar, Helen adjusted the airflow through the intake she had made beneath the furnace. Of course, precise temperature measurement was nearly impossible. But thanks to that notoriously vicious professor from her past life, Helen had learned to gauge temperature almost perfectly just by observing gloss and ripple patterns, like a seasoned glassblower.
“Hmmm… Now!”
Watching the coal tar bubble and froth, Helen narrowed the air intake a little more with the clump of mud still stuck inside it. This was right around 100°C.
“Nice.”
Helen danced a little jig. With the biggest hurdle—the temperature problem—solved, her worries vanished and everything felt much brighter.
We’re skipping ahead a bit. I completely understand if you wanted to watch Helen’s informative and delightful chemistry experiment in real time, but it would have been far too long, boring, and even a little pretentious, so I skipped it on purpose. My apologies for that.
That said, for the vast majority of my intellectual readers who still wanted to watch Helen’s chaotic coal-tar processing process, I’ll leave a quick explanation below.
Raise the temperature of the dehydrated coal tar to remove the light oil components that reduce waterproofing performance—that is, benzene and toluene, which evaporate below roughly 170°C. Between 170–230°C, the naphthalene fraction is removed, and above that, creosote oil is extracted. It tastes terrible. After this process, a black, sticky residue remains at the bottom of the pot. This is coal tar pitch, the core ingredient of waterproofing agents.
⟨ Mwahahaha! ⟩
Once cooled to room temperature, the pitch left at the bottom hardens into something as solid as a rock. To turn it into a brushable waterproofing agent, it must be processed via hot blending or cold blending. Mwahahaha. Here, for the consumer’s convenience, Helen mixed the molten pitch with the creosote she had deliberately set aside during distillation in the proper ratio so that it would remain a thick liquid even at room temperature. It can be applied easily with a brush like paint, and once the solvent evaporates over time, only a hard waterproof coating remains. Delicious.
Anyway, after making the waterproofing agent through this and that process, Helen felt confident. Even though it was homemade, it was still perfectly usable. Finally possessing a driving force in her life, Helen kept showing up for work to steadily increase her inventory. She secured a stable supply of raw coal tar and continued making waterproofing agent right up until the day before the weekend.
And then the weekend arrived. It was finally time to test the value of her homemade waterproofing agent in the market.
Street stalls lined up in a row along the harbor. In the most remote and damp corner among them sat Helen. On a mat where she had solemnly arranged the preservative cans that felt like her own children, she shouted with all her might.
“W-waterproofing agent… C-come and get it…”
Okay, that was a lie. Helen, who had zero talent for business, found hawking her wares an incredibly cruel punishment.
“W-waterproofing agent… It’s cheap… Never used…”
Helen mumbled while staring into the distance. Even she felt so frustrated she wanted to die, but what else could she do? She had to at least try. It would honestly be easier to show up at the lab wearing shiny silver sequined Jordans and a Nike windbreaker just to praise that late-blooming professor.
The mountain of beads that had piled up vanished like a mirage because of one ridiculous little mistake, and along with them, the respect they had shown him disappeared too.
“Alright, if you’ve lost everything, get lost.”
“Look at this punk’s attitude? I’m a VIP here! How many years have I been coming to this place?!”
“You need money to be a VIP. And I hate to say it, but… just stop coming. You have no talent.”
“You finished talking?! This place is full of gambling dens, what kind of nerve do you have to say that to me?!”
“Yeah, yeah~ Then please kindly get lost over there~ I’m begging you~”
Bang!
“Goddammit.”
The lowly deckhand who was the protagonist of this chapter scratched his head in front of the firmly shut door of the private pachinko parlor. Let’s set aside the question of why the hell there’s pachinko in a romance-fantasy world that looks like it’s stuck in the late 18th century. Anyway, the lowly deckhand plopped down on the side of the road and chain-smoked for a while before covering his face with both palms.
“Haa… I’m so fucking screwed.”
The deckhand let out a deep sigh. Just as he said, he was completely screwed. The money he had blown in an instant was a huge problem on its own, but the fact that it had been public funds made things even worse.
“Thirty shillings…”
After rummaging through his pockets to check the remaining balance, the deckhand made a grim face and came to a decision. The Captain had given him a whopping ‘8 sovereigns and 12 shillings’ to buy thirty cans of waterproofing agent, but that had now shrunk to a mere thirty shillings. Objectively speaking, it was more appropriate to just admit his crime and accept a suitable punishment.
“Hmm… Let’s run.”
Of course, that only applied to normal adults with conscience and morals. What guilt could a man possibly feel after blowing someone else’s public funds on trivial entertainment? Personally, I agree with the old gentlemen who used to smoke long pipes. Human nature is evil.
“Someone once said that even the seven deadly sins are nothing but minor faults in the face of original sin. At my level, I’m just a cute little degenerate.”
The deckhand, who had begun verbally preparing a marine corpse stew, left the street and wandered toward the harbor. Since it had once been like a hometown to him, he probably wanted to savor the scenery one last time.
“Thirty shillings… Well, that should be enough for two last cycles at the brothel.”
That was also a lie. There was no way a gambling addict who had already forgotten what it meant to be human still had any sentimentality left. Anyway, having set his destination, the deckhand headed toward the downtown area.
So the deckhand trudged toward the brothel while planning his future. Then he heard a voice.
“Come and get it… Waterproofing agent… It’s cheap… Never used… Please…”
“Huh?”
Waterproofing agent? The deckhand walked toward the voice as if possessed. The sales pitch was so pathetic that he probably would have missed it if his nerves hadn’t already been sharpened by all his worries and anxiety.
“How much?”
“Waterproofing agent… Sniff… Yes?”
“I asked how much.”
The deckhand pretended to calculate the price while timing the moment the little merchant’s gaze shifted away. If he grabbed two cans and ran, she would probably chase after him crying. Her legs were short, so she would be slow. That would leave the spot empty. Then he could come back and steal all the rest of the—
“A-are you a customer?! I made it myself! Hehe…”
“So how much is it?”
“Well, this is different from the usual ones… Aha! One shilling and five coppers each!”
“Yeah, yeah, one shilling each… For real?”
“Yep!!!”
“What kind of nonsense… With the war driving prices up to five shillings, you’re selling it for that much? You sure this isn’t a scam?”
“What are you saying, sir! I guarantee the e-effect. If it doesn’t work, I’ll give you a full refund.”
“Is that so?”
The deckhand’s eyes narrowed. The seller was far too young and the price was far too low—there were more than a few suspicious points. But… well, as everyone knew, the situation had already gone as far as it could go. Why hesitate now? She was just a kid anyway. If it was real, great. If not, he could always come back and beat her up. With that thought, the deckhand kept twiddling his fingers.
“Damn it, I should’ve gone to Sunday school. Let’s see… Thirty shillings should buy about how many…”
“Twenty-one cans!!!”
“Huh. It adds up perfectly. That’s exactly how many I need.”
“Really? Then…”
“What are you dawdling for, little merchant? I’ll go get a cart, so get everything ready.”
“Yes!!!!!!!”
When the little merchant bowed deeply and cheered, all the passersby turned to look at them at once. She was so overjoyed it was almost impossible to comprehend.