“Are you ever going to make your delivery?!”
I blinked when I heard the yelling outside of my wagon.
“You’ve been here all morning with this damn oversized wagon screwing up traffic. This ox has damn near eaten my entire lawn.”
I blinked once more and looked at the roof of my impromptu bunk. Despite hearing the yelling, I couldn’t piece together the events. I had slept hard. Like I wasn’t even sure what year I was in at the moment. It was like one of those afternoon naps where you just wanted to sleep an hour and then you wake up questioning your very existence.
What ox? Why does my truck have fabric over my head? Where the hell did I p…..
“Oh!”
I sat up quickly once everything rushed back into my brain. I grunted and twisted around so I was on my knees. From there, I could poke my head out from behind my bench and take a look at the person who was yelling. There was an angry little man who was red faced and threw his arms up in frustration once I peeked my head out.
I gave him a little finger wave, smiled and spoke with a loud yawn. “Hello there.”
“It’s about time. You were here before I even came in this morning. Why would you sleep so long if you knew you had to deliver a product to me?”
The man was still shouting, and I climbed across and sat on the bench and rubbed my eyes. “Alright, alright, calm down. I wasn’t quite expecting you to yell ‘Ah, General Kenobi!’ to me, but this is still feeling just as hostile.” I muttered to the man and shook the fog from my brain.
I was used to dealing with upset shippers and receivers from my work, so him yelling at me in his frustrated state didn’t really bother me as much as it might have when I was still new to trucking. I climbed down from the bench now and ignored the little yelling man. The fact that he was still little once I was on even ground with him wasn’t lost on me, but for the moment I still ignored him.
He only came up to about my chest and was well dressed in silk robes. Deep colors of blue and purple. The merchant was bald but had a big bushy beard and carried one of the paper umbrellas to block the sun. I figured he just didn’t want his bald head to burn in the summer rays.
I walked up to Betsy and put my hand on her head and had a soft rub.
“Mrrr…” she gave me the feeling of happiness and contentment when I rubbed her head softly.
“You couldn’t wake me up and tell me we were here? Or that it was daylight?” I admonished her. The feeling of contentment evaporated quickly and Betsy glared at me before she let out a long exhale and glared.
I nodded my head and grinned at Betsy. “You’re wonderful, you know?” I leaned in and kissed the ox on top of the snout. When I pulled back, the ox smiled, nodded its big head, and I again felt the spirit beast’s contentment.
I looked over at the little man who was red faced and had his free hand on his hip. When I walked over to him, I raised a placating hand and stood next to him, putting my other arm around him like he was an old friend. I ignored the glare the man gave me as he looked up at me.
“I’m sorry sir, we had been driving through the night, you know? Once I got to sleep, I just couldn’t wake up. I really wanted to get here as soon as I could,” I explained to him.
He didn’t really seem like he was interested in my excuses and he pulled away with a more than necessary movement to throw my arm off of him. “I don’t really care what you had to do. You should have been here yesterday.” He scowled at me and made a waving motion. It was just a moment before a kid walked over and handed him a clipboard.
I frowned and looked at him. “But I just got the product and left yesterday? And it was late when we left?” I crossed my arms over my shoulders.
The man’s face only got redder and the boy who delivered the clipboard disappeared about as fast as he came. The boy obviously feared the wrath of his boss, and maybe father? I didn’t get good enough of a look from the boy, so I couldn’t be sure. I thought I saw the same features, though. The pointy nose the man had and pointed chin. Honestly, the guy looked like a bad guy from an old black and white movie and the kid shared some of those features.
“You’re bringing sauce from the Okakura soy producers, aren’t you?” He eyed me.
I raised a brow and shook my head. “No sir, I have tea from the Imai Tea Company in Sunjin Village,” I told him flatly.
The color drained from his face, and he flipped through the pages on his clipboard. “You shouldn’t be here till the day after tomorrow at the earliest. I thought?”
I shrugged. “Like I said, we rode through the night and Betsy is a wonderful ox that knows it’s better to be early than on time.”
“Yes, uh…” he stumbled and looked at me, then at the ox. “Well, alright then. You still shouldn’t have been parked right in the way. What if the soy sauce had shown up, and you were there blocking my door?”
Well, now the guy was just looking for reasons to stay angry.
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I shrugged. “Then I guess we should get these bags of tea off loaded as soon as we can, huh? Get me out of the way?”
“Yes, uh… quite,” he said as he looked off into the skyline. I guessed he was looking for the missing driver. He looked back at me with a worried expression. “You didn’t see anyone else heading this way, did you?”
I frowned and shook my head. “No, the roads were pretty empty last night. We stopped for dinner at a rest area and then just headed here. Didn’t see much of anyone.”
Now he frowned, but he turned and whistled and waved his hands around. Like magic, a few guys showed up. They all looked like rough dock workers. Each of them were big men who clearly were very used to doing manual labor and carrying heavy things around warehouses.
I went over and opened the back flap to the covering and after the first couple of large bags were removed and I had room to, I hopped into the wagon. I pushed over and helped the guys unload stuff while making sure I didn’t mess with the crates I had tied down. Those had to go elsewhere, and it was my job to make sure they didn’t get accidentally delivered here.
Although you’d think it’d be easy to tell the difference between the large sacks of tea leaves to the tied down crates, mistakes are easy to make. I’ve been to enough places and dealt with enough people who didn’t care enough and seen plenty of mis deliveries.
The men carried the sacks into the back of what appeared to be a medieval-looking sort of warehouse building. It was big and plain, with large swing doors. Over the doors, I saw a stylised crest of a golden dragon head on top of a blank area with what appeared to be kanji. The dragon sprawled out around the characters and when I pointed at it and asked the angry man what it was, he looked at me like I was an idiot.
“It’s the Sasuke Family Crest. Since this is a military warehouse, what crest did you think it’d be? And how do you not know?” He berated me.
I raised my hands up in defeat. “Sorry, I’m new here. I, uh, haven’t seen that style of the family’s crest before.”
The angry little man just shook his head and waved me off before he went back to directing his workers what to do and where to put the sacks of tea.
When the dock workers walked in, I could see people milling around and sorting various crates of goods and bags of things. It looked kind of a busy place, and I was surprised there weren’t more carts or wagons delivering goods. I was very interested in seeing and learning how this sort of stuff worked in Japanese Fantasy Land.
Once the men took the sacks into the warehouse, I jumped down and walked over to the… foreman? Manager? Or didn’t they call everyone an attendant in this sort of place? I don’t know, anyway. I walked over to the once angry little man and smiled.
“Very good Mr…” the man looked at me expectantly, waiting for my name.
Sure, now the guy is going to be nice since I’m not the late one and am apparently very early. I forgot the first impression of him and chalked it up to him having a busy and rough morning.
“Michael, just call me Michael,” I say with a smile.
“Alright Mr. Maikeru,” he said before I held up a hand.
“Just Michael, no need to call me Mister or anything,” I said with a firm nod.
He seemed a little taken back by this, but he recovered with a quick smile and soft bow of his head. “Very well Maikeru, thank you for being so prompt with the tea.” He said and flipped through papers on his clipboard.
“The military always gives its suppliers whatever the going rate of goods sold is to make sure they sell to us,” he explained.
I stood there and wondered about how much I was actually going to get paid when he pulled a coin purse from a pocket in his robes. “I’ll give you the amount based on the market value of when you were expected to be here. If you’re owed anymore, I’ll deposit in Mr. Imai’s account and let him know. If you don’t have an account with Sasuke Central Bank, I’d get one.”
He looked up from his paperwork, and I nodded my head at him. “Sure,” I said simply, still not even sure how much it was or where one of the banks was so I could set up an account.
He gave a quick nod and then removed a few coins from his little purse before he handed the rest over to me. “Here you are then, fifty dou. Have a good day Mis…..” he paused. “Maikeru.”
He gave me a strained smile and then frowned. “I’m sorry about my attitude when I woke you up,” it seemed to hurt him to say it.
I waved the apology away. “No worries, you’re stressed, and it’s hard when people don’t show up on time. I get it, and thanks for the money.” I smiled at him. The urge to look into the little pouch to see exactly what a dou was strong, but I didn’t want to appear too eager to look at my new gains in this world.
“I appreciate it,” he said with another soft bow of his head before he talked away briskly.
He was barely turned away before I opened the pouch and looked inside. It turned out dou were small solid round copper coins with some symbols carved into them around a hole in the middle. So dou was copper. I wondered if there were silver, gold or platinum coins. Silver surely was more on the top end of the coins, though? Even if it wasn’t, I did now have fifty copper coins, so that had to be a pretty decent haul.
I turned back around and looked at Betsy and waved my bag of money around like an idiot happily. She gave a small bellow and rolled her eyes at me. The ox even shook her head at me a little. I narrowed my eyes at her and shrugged. She couldn’t have. I must have imagined that. Could oxen roll their eyes?
“Fine, you be a stick in the mud, but I’m happy for our take,” I mumble as I walk over and climb back on top of the driver’s bench. “Means I’ll be able to make a better seat for the wagon, and maybe some more comfortable straps for your yoke.”
She gave a soft ‘mrr’ of appreciation and I picked up the reins.
“Alright then, let’s uh….” I look around. “How’d you get us back here?”
We were in a small alley behind the warehouse. The warehouse’s land was sectioned off with wooden walls that separated it from the properties around it. There was a path to the main road on the other side of the warehouse. I could hear the traffic. Wagons rolling, hooves clopping, and people shouting. General early day commerce sounds from a busy shopping district in a big city.
Now a bellow of annoyance as she took off to the left of the warehouse and down the alley that we barely fit through. Once we came through, we found a bustling road filled with carts being pulled by both farmers and children. There were only a few being pulled by horse or ox and I didn’t see any wagon type vehicles like I had.
The thing that really confused me was that it didn’t seem like we’d fit down this road, either. Not without some serious work. I leaned up and back at my wagon and then back at the bustling road. It seemed like this warehouse was in the middle of a busy market and seemed to be a location for large farms and sellers to sell their product through. It was much bigger than the individual stalls and makeshift areas, where more independent people sold their wares.
“Well, shit. I guess it was a little less busy last night when we got here, huh?” I asked Betsy, who gave a kind of scared bellow in response.
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