CH 237

At Katharina’s suggestion, we decided to go down the river on our holiday. Today is the start of that holiday. I need to prepare in advance for various things, so I’ve been working on them until today. Yesterday, which is Saturday on earth, was also busy with the final preparations.

First of all, it’s obvious, but if you want to go river riding, you have to prepare a boat. The river that Katharina was talking about is the Havel River. Katharina’s suggestion is probably because she thinks it will help me in my work. I think it’s Katharina’s consideration that everyone will go down the river and I’ll inspect the Havel River and use it for future work.

So we have to prepare a boat suitable for going down the Havel River. We can’t bring the ships owned by House Caan here. All the ships we own are large, and it is difficult to go up the Havel River in its current state without any maintenance.

Even if I sent a letter as soon as I found out that it was a holiday and asked them to send me a boat, it would never have been possible to make it by today.

So what do we do? No need to think about it. It’s just a matter of procuring it locally.

I asked Caanza Trading Firm to prepare a boat that could sail the Havel River and would also let us go down the river together. It doesn’t matter if it’s for rent or purchase, so I asked them to prepare it quickly, and they seemed to have followed through. Of course, new construction would have been fine, but that wouldn’t be in time.

After school ended yesterday, we bought a small second-hand boat and bought various necessary items. I just need to pack my bags and go to the Havel River today.

“Then are you all ready?” I asked.

“Yeah!” Mikoto said.

“Yes,” Katharina said.

“We can go anytime,” Alexandra said.

“I forgot something… maybe not… I think?” Louisa said.

“No problems here,” Claudia said.

After listening to everyone’s reply, I carry my luggage and leave the Carruthers Residence. Helmut is also given a day off today, so the coachman is a different person. I’m sure Helmut will go to House Reingen today. Today is Sunday and school is closed, so Christa will probably be at home. I told them in advance that today was their day off, so it seems like they promised to meet today.

I don’t dare to do anything on my side because it seems that if I stick my neck unnecessarily into their business, it will actually make things worse. I think it would be nice if the two of them fell in love naturally.

The 6 of us boarded the carriage and headed toward the Havel River. The location is not the construction site in Charlottenburg, but the nearest dock that was already constructed there. The boat purchased by Caanza is moored there… or at least it should be.

No… I haven’t seen the actual thing yet, so I can’t say anything… however, since I asked to prepare a boat where all of us young ladies can go down the river while having fun, Hugo should understand. It’s not just a small boat, but it doesn’t make sense if it’s too big to go down the Havel River freely. The young ladies will be boarding, so you’ll need a roof and something like a cabin.

Not too big, not too small, just the right size of boat. Listen to such a difficult order and prepare the best thing in this short period of time. I’m sure Hugo knows what he’s doing! I would rather not leave it to someone else, but that’s Hugo’s job, so that’s fine.

So, if once we came to the nearest dock on the Havel River from the royal capital…

“Wow…”

“Is this the boat that Caanza prepared for us?”

“Probably… the boatman should have been ready, as well…” I said.

What should I say about the boat staying at the dock is…? Or should I say that the houseboat there is poorly built… well, in a nutshell, it’s a boat with a roof…

The boat probably did not have a roof when it was built. I guess it just got that recently. Yes… somebody said they needed a roof because the young ladies would ride on it, so they must have put it on in the few days since the order…

Well, speaking of Earth, it’s already October, so even though the sunshine has softened considerably, it’s probably not possible to expose the young ladies to direct sunlight on the river, where the water reflects light back at them. But maybe there wasn’t a boat that met the conditions I said, or maybe there wasn’t a boat with a roof around here, to begin with. After buying the boat, they must have put it on in a hurry…

“I have been waiting for you, Baron Caan,” the man who was to be our boatman said. “My name is Stanislaus, I will be your guide today.”

“I put myself in your care,” I said.

According to Hugo’s report, the original owner of this boat seems to be this man, “Stanislaus.” It seems that he was originally a sailor who ran a water transportation business on the Havel River, but he was unable to make a profit due to debts. By chance, Caanza was looking for a boat and decided to buy Stanislaus’s boat.

After giving up ownership of his boat, Stanislaus was able to pay off most of his debt, but he also lost his livelihood. He had been a sailor all his life, but with the loss of his boat, Stanisław had no way of earning any more money.

Caanza decided to hire Stanislaus as the boatman alongside the vessel itself. It’s hard for us to go down these rivers by ourselves. Even if we can steer the boat, there’s a high risk of us running aground because we don’t know anything about this river.

That’s why we leave the steering and the route down the river to Stanislaus, and we board his boat. We don’t have a clear purpose, but since we’re going down the Havel River, I’ll add an inspection of the river as one of my goals for the day.

Of course, the first goal is to have fun playing in the river with everyone. Although it’s gotten a lot cooler lately, it’s still a little hot at times. However, the air temperature and water temperature are not high enough to play in the water. It gets a little chilly in the mornings and evenings, so I plan to go down the river in the morning and come back before sunset.

“Huh… this isn’t bad, is it?” Mikoto asked.

I feel like Mikoto would be fine with almost anything as long as it’s outdoor stuff…

“If it’s to this level, I can keep up with you,” Alexandra said after I took a quick glance at her.

She seemed to like it. Since only the boat is rocking, there is almost no strenuous exercise or movement you need to do. In this case, even Alexandra, who is all for the indoors, seemed fine.

“Ah! Look! It’s a fish!” Louisa cried.

“Hmm… I ate it during camp training, but it didn’t taste good,” Claudia said.

“Is that so? If you remove the organs and clean out the mud properly, you can eat it, right?” Louisa said.

Louisa and Claudia are going strong… it seems that they are always thinking about whether the fish tastes good or not, even though we are cruising the river. It’s true that even on Earth, most river fish are unrefined and inedible. The river fish in the upper reaches and clear streams are probably delicious, but the ones that burrow in the mud tend to have strong tastes, and you’d have a clear divide of people who are all for them and all against them.

Everyone enjoys the scenery while being rocked by the currents, and the conversation is lively. It’s a relaxing time, and it’s soothing and calming. It’s completely different from the daily work of clinging to a desk and wrestling with piles of papers, or cutting trees and digging holes covered in dirt and mud.

“If we cross over there, we’ll enter a lake. There are many lakes in this river,” Stanislaus said.

“Huh,” I said.

Did I forget my other goal while listening to commentary from our boatman, Stanislaus? What size ships can pass through? If you are going to make a canal, where should you be careful and how should you construct it?

“That’s the only place where the water suddenly becomes shallow,” Stanislaus said. “Lots of boats run aground there over and over again.”

“I see……”

Even if you look at it from here, you can’t tell that it’s shallow water at first glance. If you’re a seasoned local fisherman, you probably know about it, but it’s unavoidable if you don’t notice it if you’re on a boat that just passes by once in a while.

“Mr. Stanislaus, you are very knowledgeable,” I said.

“Yeah, well… I’ve been sailing on this river for a long time…” Stanislaus said.

And as he gazed at the water with a sad look, I suddenly remember Hugo’s report.

Stanislaus seems to be quite a skilled sailor on the Havel River. He was trusted by other sailors and seems to have been the face of the sailors around here. However, Stanisłaus did not seem to have any business acumen, and his water transportation business did not go well.

No matter how good a sailor you are, it doesn’t mean you’re good at business. It seems that Stanislaus, who was a sailor first and foremost, worked for people even if he suffered a loss, and even if there was a good job, he would refuse it if he did not like the client.

Since he was doing business like that, he ended up in debt because his jobs and profits decreased, even though he was self-employed. Maybe he doesn’t even know if the debt is really legally his. I don’t know the details because he doesn’t talk about it, but there seem to be some suspicious debts mixed in.

Then the company that had been running the water transportation business with debts went bankrupt, and in order to pay off the debts, he even gave up his boat. He may be too good-matured, stubborn, and has no talent for business… but he’s a first-class sailor on the Havel River.

That’s probably why Hugo introduced Stanislaus as today’s boatman. If I like him, I should hire him. And just from the information so far, I understood Stanislaus’s personality.

From now on, we will carry out canalization of the Havel River and water transportation using the Havel River. Then, naturally, someone familiar with the Havel River is needed.

“Let’s take a rest at the lake ahead,” I said.

“Right,” Stanislaus said. “By your order.”

After entering a lake, we took a lunch break. Even in this world, there are more people who live on two meals a day. Some people take a break or have a little snack at noon, but poor people mostly only have breakfast and dinner. However, it is not always the case for those who have luxury and different lifestyles.

For example, the school has a lunch break and you can eat lunch in the dining hall. Many wealthy families such as nobles and merchants eat something for lunch. Farmers also eat things harvested from their own fields. It seems that there are cases where they eat simple things because the hard labor and physical labor of farming is hard on the body and they are hungry.

Huh? In that case, quite a few people are eating lunch…? You might think so, but that’s not the case. Poor farmers can’t afford to eat lunch, so it’s only in the morning and evening. Nobles have lunch at school, so they seem to have acquired that habit and will eat lunch even after graduation. After all, I once again thought that habits from childhood have a great influence.

“What are we doing for lunch? Catch some fish for it?” Mikoto asked.

“Mikoto…” I muttered.

Why is she so keen on survival tactics…? Of course, they’re swimming around in such large quantities, so if you want to catch them, you might be able to catch them, but there’s no need to go out of your way to catch them, right?

“It takes time to get rid of the smell, and there are also herbs needed, you know?” Louisa said.

“I see……” Mikoto said, disappointed.

But why does she want to be a survivalist so much? I have no idea how Mikoto feels. Is it because I’ve been an indoor person since my previous life?

“I have brought a boxed lunch for today…” I said.

“Really?!” Mikoto cried. “If we have your boxed lunches, Floto, you should have said so! Let’s eat!”

What an easily bribed… well, it’s fine.

“Mr. Stanislaus, please take this too,” I said, offering him a boxed lunch.

“Huh!?” Stanislaus cried, puzzled. “Ah, no… I’m…”

I would be confused if someone I didn’t know suddenly offered me a bento.

“Don’t be shy. This is what I prepared when I heard that we would have a boatman. If you don’t eat it, Mr. Stanislaus, it will just grow cold and be too much leftover.”

“That’s… thank you,” Stanislaus said before he finally took it.

If everyone is eating, but only one person is watching without eating, even the food I brought would taste bad. If you know that someone will be there, I want them to eat properly even if we don’t sit together.

That’s why we all had lunch and discussed what to do in the afternoon.

“Are we going back in the afternoon?” I asked.

“I want to go out as far as we can!” Mikoto said.

A carriage is also coming with us, so in the worst case, you can switch to the land route at any time. Up until this point, it was downhill, but if it goes too far downhill and goes uphill, there is a possibility that we won’t be able to make it back in time. But on the contrary, Mikoto insisted on going further because we could return by carriage at any time.

“It doesn’t matter which one we pick, so let’s decide between Floto and Mikoto,” Claudia said.

The other members don’t care… Mikoto says she wants to go down as far as possible. At that time, the conversation seemed to run parallel to what would happen if we returned in the afternoon as originally planned…

“Baron Caan!”

Then a horse rushed over with a soldier astride, as if they had been going full tilt. It’s one of the men from House Caan’s soldiers from Oliver’s unit. It must have been quite a big deal for him to be in such a hurry.

“Koenigsvelg… Koenigsvelg is surrounded by the Kingdom of Polsky’s soldiers!”

“-!”

When I heard the report, the tension ran high.