CH 225.1

I was wondering if I would be able to keep running my general store while managing another completely different project on the side. However, although I was feeling a bit anxious, it turned out with the help of many others, surprisingly everything worked well for me. Whether it was setting up a tent, cooking, making products, serving the customer at the shop, there was no need for me to do everything by myself. 

By utilizing some of the revenue from the shop, I could hire people to do those jobs for me. The “Wolf’s Cub Village” project didn’t have anything to sell so the project wouldn’t be able to get any sales revenue. However, we could allocate the donation from Bavarian-sama and other people to cover the labor cost. In addition, we also had free manpower (volunteer) so it seemed we would be able to get by somehow by making use of all those resources. 

But eventually I hoped the Wolf Cub’s Village would be able to somehow generate its own income to ensure the continuity of this project. In the business and investment world, there was a saying that went like instead of giving them fish, teach them how to fish. And that was what I wanted to do. 

Within Japan’s compulsory education program, there was almost no education about money. Children naturally assumed their parents would always provide them with money and food. They took everything for granted, thinking that earning money on their own wouldn’t be that hard. They grew up into adults with that kind of misconception in mind. (Maybe things had already changed by now but at least, things were like that when I was still in school.)

How difficult is it to earn money?

Because they grew up into adults with that kind of mindset, they ended up taking student loans without knowing the severity of that debt. They started their professional career with several million yen worth of debt. Generally, a fresh graduate earned around 200.000 yen after taxes. Just imagine how many years it would take them to pay that debt off. 

In other words, what the children under the protection of Wolf Cub’s Village needed was not ‘fish’ but ‘how to fish’. Which means, they needed education about money. Like how to earn money and how to manage their money. 

After teaching them the basic arithmetic operations along with how to write and read, we could finally move on to the next course. Which was the basic foundation to earn money, buy low and sell high. 

This was what we would teach to the children. 

In addition to that, we would also teach them how to make a product and sell it, lending money to someone and earning money from the interest (investment). For example, they could learn how to gather medicinal herbs, make potions from it and then sell the potions. 

With that kind of approach in education, we could break them free from the negative cycle that they had learned from the bad adults around them, like taking other people’s stuff (stealing) and snatching other people’s money (pickpocketing). 

Currently, the people from the commercial guild would send people to us free of charge. They could take up the role of teachers for the children to learn the basic education. 

However, we couldn’t immediately jump into our plan straight away. 

Most of the children under our protection were extremely malnourished due to the harsh cold winter and from hunger. First, we needed to provide them with sufficient rest and food. Depending on their condition, we also needed to treat them first. Only relying on purchasing potions for the sick children would strain our budget so I started making the potion myself too. As a result, my alchemy skill reached level 10. 

Speaking of the children’s medical treatment, the town doctor, Kishuu-sensei, started coming to our place in between his break to conduct medical examinations and treatment on the sick children. There was a child with a pretty severe condition but thanks to Kishuu-sensei, the kid managed to survive. I also wanted to gain more knowledge so whenever Kishuu-sensei came to visit, I would make sure to observe and learn from his techniques. 

As we continued our project in this fashion, filled with trials and errors here and there… The number of children we took care of in our village exceeded 20 by the time we realized it.

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T/N: I guess in a medieval setting like this, just surviving must be very tough to do. They don’t have the convenient technology we have now after all.