Chapter 66: Yuhwa’s Test (2)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 66: Yuhwa’s Test (2)
I opened a cat café in the 6th District, Edenvar.
Buying a whole building seemed premature, so I decided to lease one for now.
It's in a prime spot where shops are clustered together, with great accessibility from the street. Of course, the rent is just as high, but it's a price I have to pay.
I don't have much time. If I opened a shop in some corner, it would take ages to attract customers.
In fact, it's such a good location that it's hard to get even with money, but Bolt helped connect me with the landlord. I've been indebted to Bolt in many ways since coming to Vestia.
After leasing the building, all that was left was to bring in the necessary supplies and finish the interior.
“Welcome.”
“Oh my, the atmosphere here is lovely. The cat people are wearing maid outfits. What kind of place is this?”
“It's a cat café. A place where you can drink beverages while playing with the cats.”
The first floor is an ordinary cat café.
It's a spacious area where the cat people can lounge around and customers can sit and relax. You can enter by paying an admission fee.
The drink menu consists of simple teas and coffees that anyone can make. It's not easy to find staff and ingredients right away.
Despite that, the prices are slightly higher than a regular café. That's because I need to make a profit on the drinks.
But there's one product more important than the drinks.
“A warm milk for one silver…? Manager, why is this milk so expensive?”
“Ah, that's a drink for the cat people.”
“Are you telling me to pay my own money to give milk to your staff?”
“It's just a way to quickly close the distance with the cat people. You don't have to buy it to enjoy your time here.”
“Hmm…”
The woman hesitated.
Just then, a cat person approached her. It flopped onto the floor, licking her hand and acting cute.
“Nyaa.”
“Oh my, you must be hungry. Alright, it's only one silver. One warm milk, please.”
“I'll bring you some fresh milk right away.”
The first floor was a place for lazing around with cats like this.
The real key is the second floor.
“Ooh, right there. Just there.”
“Does this feel good, nyan?”
“Haaah… that's nice. Absolutely the best. I've never had such a refreshing massage.”
“Tell me about it. The manager came up with a brilliant idea.”
A space filled with a pleasant aroma.
Customers lying comfortably on beds.
And cat people kneading their backs.
The second floor is a massage area, linked to the first floor.
If you raise a cat person's affection level and get chosen, you can receive a massage on the second floor. They give customers back massages by kneading them.
Naturally, there's a separate charge.
Since it's a massage, it's much more expensive at 20 silver.
A vicious double-billing system.
You'd think it wouldn't be very popular, but that's not the case at all.
Just looking at pretty bits of data is enough to make people want to spend real money. But a chance to get a massage directly from a cute employee?
That's something no one can resist.
It's gotten to the point where we already have regulars trying to ‘collect them all,’ hitting on this cat person and that one. Need I say more?
Not only that, but competition often broke out among the customers.
“Rona is definitely the cutest.”
“What are you talking about? It's obviously Nero. Can't you see this sleek, glossy black fur?”
“Hah, this lady clearly doesn't know what she's talking about. How can you say that after seeing Rona's fluffy tail?”
“You have terrible taste for a man. Right, Nero?”
“Nyaaang~”
Talk amongst yourselves, I don't care.
Nero and Rona rolled around with looks of pure bliss, eating the treats the customers gave them.
I feed my staff with the customers' money, and the cost of the treats becomes pure profit. It's practically like printing money.
As I was looking around the shop with a pleased heart, Seira approached me.
“I'm seeing it with my own eyes, and I still can't believe it.”
“Haha, if that's a compliment, I'll take it.”
“I wasn't talking about you, I was talking about them. Why on earth are humans pouring money into this?”
Seira asked a very fundamental question.
A cat's pickiness is number one among all animals. There's a reason people say they would have gone extinct if they weren't cute.
And yet, humans pour money into them just to get a moment of their attention. They can be standoffish, but the moment a cat rubs its face against them, the humans are overjoyed.
“You just don't get it. That's the whole appeal of raising cats.”
Even after I said that, Seira still looked like she didn't understand. It was the difference between humans and beastkin.
Just then, the shop door opened and Bolt walked in.
“Hey, Karami. I've finished everything you asked for.”
“Really? That was much faster than I expected. You did it anonymously, right?”
“Of course. No one will know you're the manager.”
“Thank you.”
“Honestly, the more I see of your business acumen, the more amazed I am.”
As Bolt and I exchanged words only we could understand, Seira shot us a suspicious look.
“What kind of scheme are you plotting now?”
“It's nothing special. It's just…”
I said, looking at the shop that had begun construction across the street.
“…that people really love to compete.”
*
Two weeks after the cat café opened.
The shop had stabilized quite a bit.
I was able to hire staff to sell high-quality tea and coffee, and I brought in a few more cat people.
It was quite a sight to see the real-time expression change on the male customer who had reached a state of enlightenment, saying, ‘Finally, I've collected them all. I have no more regrets here.’
And yet, there he was again, in the middle of trying to woo the new cat people.
I just gave the newcomers a little tip: giving in easily is a disgrace to all cats. They'd figure out the rest on their own.
Customers of all ages and genders came in steadily. I thought it was turning into a smooth-sailing tycoon game.
“Get the owner out here!”
Until one day, a commotion erupted outside.
Outside the shop was a group of middle-aged women.
“What seems to be the problem?”
“Are you the owner here?”
“I am, for now. Who are you?”
“We're from the Beastkin Protection Group!”
An immutable truth has existed since ancient times.
Groups with ‘Protection’ in their name are generally not normal. I got a bad feeling.
“We know everything. We heard you kidnapped and are abusing the cat people.”
“Excuse me?”
“Kidnapping those poor things and working them to the bone. Can you even call yourself a person? Have you no heart?”
“…?”
What is this? Did I make another mistake?
Just like how freeing a beastkin slave is considered abandonment, is taking in a kid wandering the streets considered kidnapping?
I glanced back into the shop. While the customers looked bewildered, the cat people—who clearly felt no camaraderie with my plight—were sprawled out on the floor, munching on snacks.
Is that how a kidnap victim is supposed to act?
‘Ah, I wish someone would kidnap me~’
My wish would come true if a pretty older woman or a cute girl kidnapped me. They'd feed me and give me a place to sleep without me having to do anything. Huh?
“The parties in question seem to be doing just fine.”
“That's because they're too timid to express their true feelings!”
Ah, fuck. They're cat moms.
I was in deep shit.
Did Rin's misfortune just activate?
It seemed best not to escalate things and to handle this smoothly.
“Let's just say you're right. …What is it that you want?”
The moment I showed my willingness to negotiate, the women's expressions changed completely.
It was as if all their previous anger had just been a build-up for this moment. It was like watching a scene from the WWE.
“Release those children! Set them free!”
“That's called abandonment here. I'll get arrested if I do that.”
“How is that abandonment! You're bestowing freedom upon them!”
What?
My train of thought got tangled for a second, but I quickly sorted it out.
Okay, let's break this down. First, spouting nonsense is a basic passive skill for these kinds of groups. They're the type to package sophistry in plausible-sounding words and shove it down your throat.
Here's the key part.
Their sophistry meshes perfectly with Vestia's bizarre values.
In a world where freedom equals abandonment is common sense, the protection group's abnormal way of thinking is, by my standards, normal.
A negative times a negative equals a positive!
“Right. You're right. What you ladies say is a hundred percent correct. How could releasing them be abandonment? It's giving them freedom, so of course it's a good deed.”
“Huh? Oh… r-right. You're more reasonable than I thought.”
To finally meet someone who makes sense.
Wouldn't Archimedes have felt the same way I do now when he shouted 'Eureka!'?
“So you'll release them?”
“No, I can't do that.”
But not right now.
I need to make money.
“You won't release them? Then at least give us an adoption and responsibility fee!”
These cat-mom bitches are finally showing their true colors.
I took in these unkempt, dusty kids, cleaned them up, and made them healthy and pretty, and now you're claiming ownership? If they were so precious to you, you should have taken care of them sooner.
You people are hopeless.
“Persi, come here.”
I called over Persi, who was sitting like a haughty princess. Persi was the most popular cat person in our shop.
In the back alleys, she had been nothing but a grimy vagrant, but once she was cleaned up, she became as beautiful as a princess.
“What is it, Manager?”
Kyah, "Manager." Has a nice ring to it.
Anyway, that's not what's important right now.
“These ladies want to take you with them, Persi.”
“What?”
“They're telling me to send you back to where you came from. If you want to go, I'll let you.”
“Young lady, don't be cooped up in a place like this. Come with us, okay?”
It was shocking that cat moms existed in this world too, but the environment here was different from Earth.
What I mean is…
“No way. Why would I go with you ladies?”
“Huh?”
…the cats here can talk.
Persi's eyes narrowed sharply.
“I remember your faces clearly. You used to come to the back alleys and take my friends, didn't you? None of the kids who were dragged away by you ever came back. Where did you take them all?”
“W-what are you talking about? You must be confusing us with someone else. We…”
“Don't even think about denying it. You can't fool our noses.”
The cat moms flinched.
Their pupils darted to the side.
I looked back and saw the cat people inside the shop glaring fiercely in our direction. A dozen pairs of cat's eyes glinted murderously.
“Hmm, since you seem to want it so badly, I'll release the cat people as you wish. Ah, but if they decide to harm you, I won't take any responsibility. They won't be my employees anymore, after all.”
“N-no, that's fine. I-I mean, it's okay. It looks like our children are doing well enough, so we'll let it slide just this once. W-we'll be going now.”
The cat moms scrambled out of the shop. As they fled with their tails between their legs, they tripped, fell, and got back up repeatedly.
Is this the effect of the misfortune?
Well, it's all a matter of perspective. I'll choose to interpret it as good luck.
*
“Manager, it's an emergency!”
Persi, who had seemed so reliable just yesterday, came looking for me in a panic.
“What's with the sudden fuss?”
“O-outside… Outside…!”
I went outside with my employees. Across the street, where that construction had been going on, a new shop had opened.
[Dog Café]
“They opened a dog café knowing full well our cat café is right here! This is a clear provocation, nyan!”
“Manager, shouldn't you go over there and say something?”
“That's right, meow! Go give them a piece of your mind, meow!”
“Haha… I'm a bit of a coward, so I don't know about that…”
The cat people stared at me with looks of utter disappointment, but there was nothing I could do.
Because that's my shop, too.