Casual Heroing

Some want money, some want fame, some want power.

Everyone wants something. That’s a tautology for you – it means, in the original sense of the word, it’s a truthful statement by its very definition. Therefore, it’s useless.

In English, the most common use of ‘tautology’ is to define saying the same thing twice over. It’s like saying, ‘this should be adequate enough,’ or ‘a beginner who has just started,’ or a ‘smelly Frenchman.’

See, the bottom line is that tautology is an obvious statement.

Tautologies are essential, though, when you want to point out something at the fringes of these statements. It is true and tautological that everyone wants something, but it’s also an excellent opening to explain what you want differently.

So, while everyone wishes for gold, a royal title, or an overpowered artifact, I look for something else. To be precise, I’m looking at a lovely woman across the table, and I have what some people would describe as ‘macabre thoughts.’ I’m not thinking of killing this sweet lady, obviously. I’m just trying to fit her image in my simulation of the next sixty years of my life.

I use a whole host of questions and criteria to individuate the perfect candidate for my imminent marriage. The first one - as you already know - is the ‘zombie apocalypse’ scenario. That’s the golden standard. The second one changes based on many factors. What are those factors, you ask? I don’t remember; I have a terrible memory.

But right now, this is what I’m thinking:

I want a woman—a wife I can visit at the cemetery. Unfortunately, since I’m an idiot, I won’t remember which flowers were her favorite, and that will make me feel incredibly guilty. Therefore, I will bring multiple flowers every day and lay them across the tombstone, hoping that one of them was indeed her favorite.

One day, I’ll visit the grave, and I’ll find that every flower wilted overnight. Every flower but her favorite will tell me that my wife is still looking at my wrinkled muzzle from above.

“Joey? Joey? Are you there?”

“Huh?” I look at my date.

Her name is Decima, which in Latin means ‘tenth.’

It is a weird name, I know.

“You spaced out,” I hear her say.

That checks out.

“I was thinking about work,” I lie with a smile printed on my face.

I can’t really tell her that I was thinking about her future death and forgetting which flowers she liked, can I?

“By the way, what are your favorite flowers?”

“I don’t really like flowers.”

That’s a red flag.

“Who doesn’t like flowers?” my mouth widens.

“I don’t.”

“You do?”

“I don’t,” she laughs.

“So,” I say, hoping to change the topic of our conversation, “how is work going?”

“Being a [Waitress] is not much fun,” she shrugs again.

I wait for her to elaborate, but nothing comes my way. Come on, lady, give me a hand!

“And what do you do when you get back home?”

“Nothing much. I sew, sometimes. I made this dress; do you like it?”

I look at a cute purplish piece of clothing, and I nod appreciatingly. That’s some skill right there. Possibly, a real ‘skill,’ if you catch my drift.

I like the ancient Roman feeling I get from my dates. It’s very imperialistic. I think there’s something in the Italian part of my blood – I mean, my parents are both Italian, now that I think about it. So, my blood should be full-Italian. But I guess that eating burgers for so many years put the ‘American’ in Italian American. Anyway, this style entices my Italian ancestry quite a bit.

“Is it true that you bought almost the entire district in front of the Adventurers’ Guild?” she asks out of the blue with some urgency in her voice.

“I think so? It’s been what, five months since the Dungeon fiasco? This whole 27/9 system is really messing with me. I have not yet understood how months work.”

“Oh, I can explain that!” she says cheerily.

“Nu-hu, I’m not learning it. I’m good, thanks.”

She giggles at that. I guess she already knows some stories about the quirky Human baker. Not [Baker], though, even if most people don’t know that detail.

“So, what are you doing with the place?”

“What place?” my brain is still tired from working overnight with Stanimal on our special project.

“The houses and shops that you bought.”

Oh, right.

“Yeah, I made a boatload of money. I had to make a couple of trips to that cursed place. I swear people want me to die there. But the bakery is doing really well. Actually, Clodia and Camilla told me they would murder me if I moved my shop one inch closer to theirs.”

“Are you talking about the owners of Happy Bakery and the Three Roses?”

Shoot.

My brain just farted.

What’s this girl's name, again?

Oh right, it was funny because its Latin meaning is ‘tenth.’ Decima, then. Catastrophe averted.

“Yeah, those two. They are haunting my place at night, hoping I will sell them more recipes. I told them I wanted a share of the profits if I showed them something really cool. But they don’t seem keen.”

“People say that your recipes have already made them a lot of money,” Decima says.

“Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s what others have told me too. But they say I make too much money and that they shouldn’t make me richer,” I pass the last part as a joke, but I see a sparkle in this girl’s eyes.

See, I’m not really offended by girls interested in money, as long as they like my personality too. I couldn’t care less about how much I make, even if I tried to. Actually, I thought that by now our revenue would have gone down, if not almost negative. You would think that people would copy our recipes and take away some of the business.

However, multiple factors helped to prevent that.

First, my clientele is mostly adventurers. Now that I’m a stupid Goldie, they respect me and want to learn stuff from me. People even come to my place asking me to join their next expedition. Second, Stanimal is a madman; if I hadn’t stopped his gangster-ish approach to business, we would have put half the bakeries in Amorium out of business.

How?

The man had sent the formerly homeless people, who are now super loyal to him and me, to threaten people who copied our recipes. See, these dear ex-homeless men had lived on the streets for a long time. They know what hardship is like, and once you convince them that they have value and can live a normal life, they don’t want to ‘go back to being losers.’ Their words, not mine.

So, yeah, I basically pulled a Mussolini, but instead of injured WWI veterans, I recruited swarms of homeless people. The Watch interrogated me on two separate occasions to make sure I wasn’t forming a criminal organization. I mean, the fact that they called me and not Stan is really telling of how dumb Drusillus is.

Me, organizing crime?

Sure.

I don’t even organize my own finances, for God’s sake!

Can’t I have a modicum of respect and be left alone?!