The Happy Days of Being a Factory Owner in London – Chapter 18
by MonoThe Visit
The last one.
After Oliver walked out, clutching his dried apples, he still felt somewhat dazed.
There was no shock, no scolding, just… a flat “Oh.”
Aside from instructing him not to tell anyone else about the matter, Mr. Aisas hadn’t seemed to offer any other reaction.
For a moment, Oliver found himself worrying again.
In his eyes, Mr. Aisas was certainly a good person. Generous, kind-hearted, open-handed, and warm—there was nothing bad about him. The only flaw was that he lacked any real cunning… any scheming bone in his body. He seemed exceptionally naive.
Oliver had once snuck over to other factories during his break to take a look. There were children there, too, but their treatment was nothing like his.
They looked emaciated and exhausted, their faces streaked with grime. The overwhelming burden of labor, placed upon them far too early in life, had crushed them to the point where they couldn’t muster the strength to utter a single word.
They told Oliver that most factory owners were like that—those men wouldn’t rest until they had squeezed the last drop of marrow from their workers’ bones to sell for profit.
A kind and benevolent factory owner was merely a myth.
After all, adding a few more coins to one’s own pocket was vastly more important than the insignificant gratitude of laborers!
Though he had always been proud of Mr. Aisas’s good heart and pure nature, right now, Oliver wished he could scoop out a bit of the cunning from those bad men and install it into Mr. Aisas’s head.
He was incredibly anxious, slapping his own forehead. “Idiot, think!”
If he could just come up with a good idea and tell Mr. Aisas, wouldn’t that solve the whole problem?
Arna, the object of Oliver’s worries, was indeed fretting.
But she wasn’t fretting over Fagin or the problems he brought; she was fretting over something else entirely.
Arna knew that developers would slack off—they were game developers, after all. It wasn’t surprising when they messed things up, becausethe world is just a giant makeshift troupe1. Errors were commonplace; not making mistakes was the true rarity.
Sending out the wrong text, messing up thegacha pool2, flipping the safe zones around, making easy mode harder than hell mode…
But she truly hadn’t expected the developers to be this lazy!
Arna had already “randomly encountered” six other children that afternoon; the one currently standing in front of her was the seventh.
The deeply earnest little girl named Bella was one of the few in the factory who frequently went home. According to her, her mother had once worked as a weaver at the Aisas Textile Factory.
Her way of addressing Arna was also more old-fashioned, different from everyone else’s. She had likely picked it up from her mother.
But none of that was the point.
The point was that this little girl was currently lowering her voice, mysteriously declaring that she had discovered a grand secret while calling her “Master Aisas”!
“I heard it! My mother told me to hurry and tell Master Aisas,” she chirped. Her voice was light and crisp, her words tumbling out in a jumbled mess. “Someone said they’re going to show you a thing or two on Saturday—um, it seems to have something to do with those thieves! Mother told me to tell you right away!”
She paused, as if trying hard to recall what else her parents had instructed her to say, but she drew a blank. Frustrated and annoyed, she patted her head, as if the words were stuck in her throat and a good smack might dislodge them.
Arna crouched down and rubbed the girl’s head.
“Alright,” she sighed, speaking gently. “I know.”
The panic in Bella’s eyes was replaced by confusion.
“You know?” She blinked.
“Yes,” Arna said woodenly. “I know all about it.”
Her little apprentices had already repeated the same topic to her nine times throughout the day. With Bella standing in front of her, it was exactly ten.
Bella’s brow furrowed.
She reached into her pocket, pulled out a dirty, flattened piece of toffee, and solemnly placed it in the center of Arna’s palm
Arna sharply recognized that the candy was the exact same kind she had distributed to the children last week.
“For luck,” Bella said seriously. “Eating candy brings good luck.”
“Thank you, Bella.” Arna took the candy and ruffled her hair. “Go on back now.”
It was a good thing she had only recruited ten apprentices. Otherwise, an entire day might not have been enough time for all these kids to finish snitching.
It wasn’t until she returned to Baker Street, finished dinner, and rested for a while that Arna finally complained about the ordeal to her two flatmates.
“A full ten,” she said listlessly. “In a single afternoon, the kids were chasing me down even when I just wanted a drink of water or a bite to eat. It was like they were popping out of the woodwork from every direction.”
Holmes, fiddling with his violin, couldn’t even be bothered to open his eyes.
“Ten informants, really?” His mouth twitched. “Are you running a spy network? I must say, I am quite impressed. Usually, the pigeons raised by Scotland Yard aren’t nearly this enthusiastic.”
Watson, always the sympathetic one, glared at him and set down his pen.
“Ten children?” He poured Arna a glass of brandy, chiming in. “It seems you’ve become the most popular factory owner in Whitechapel, haven’t you?”
“I wish I wasn’t.” Arna snatched the glass and downed more than half of it in one gulp. “First it was Lucy—the kid with a talent for mechanics—then Dodger, then Oliver… and finally Bella. She even gave me a piece of toffee as a lucky charm.”
She spoke in a depressed tone. “This isn’t my dream.”
“Then what is your dream?” Holmes was still tuning his violin. “To become a confessional booth for pint-sized criminals?”
“I want to be a great factory owner!” Arna grumbled, her cheeks flushed from the alcohol.
Unable to locate any biscuits, she abandoned the idea of throwing one at him. “And if I can’t be that, I at least don’t want kids ducking under tables to tell me Fagin’s going to do this, or Fagin’s going to do that.”
“Then, our prospective Magnate,” Holmes said, finally looking up, “we can deduce a far more obvious fact from this affair. Fagin’s reputation and grip are clearly slipping. In my era, those children would have been dead before they could whisper a word.”
Arna curled her lip, scoffing at his affected world-weariness. “Your era? What, last Tuesday? Or today?”
Watson massaged his temples, finally finding an opening to interject. “The real question is—what do you plan to do? You can’t just…”
“Improvise?” Arna waved a hand lazily. “I don’t see any problem with it, seeing as Fagin’s brains don’t seem to be working too well if he let his plan leak out like this.”
“No,” Holmes chuckled. “He merely failed to consider one thing.”
“What?” Arna looked at him. “To consider that plans should be kept secret?”
To be honest, the secrecy of Fagin’s plan was entirely uncommendable.
“To consider that children can talk,” Holmes supplied the rest of the sentence. With a slight movement of his arm, he made the violin sing out a single note. “Especially when they are well-fed.”
He even offered a word of comfort to the worried Watson. “Relax, Aisas’s creativity in solving problems is to be trusted. Besides, statistically speaking, it is far more likely that Fagin will end up in the River Thames than in that safe.”
Arna leaned back, crossing her arms. “Exactly. Relax, Watson. I actually have a plan.”
Holmes perked up. “Does it involve your axe?”
Arna: “…No.”
“The Golden Sword?”
Arna said woodenly, “That would be a waste.”
“Fishhook?” Holmes guessed again.
“No, and fishing rods don’t even have that kind of function!”
Holmes’s eyes narrowed as he looked her up and down. “…Then what do you intend to do?”
“I plan to pretend to be drunk. When they make their move, I’ll knock them all down, grab them, and tie them up.” Arna clenched her fist, looking at the other two expectantly. “And then I’ll call Scotland Yard over and collect a bounty. How does that sound?”
Wasn’t this plan perfectly flawless?
Holmes’s bow stopped abruptly with a sharp screech.
His eyebrows shot up, rising so high they nearly vanished into his hairline. “Ah, the classic ‘let the criminals commit a felony and then beat them up’ strategy.”
He spoke with measured slowness. “It is exceptionally brilliant in its simplicity. It has only one flaw: making a mistake during execution will very likely result in death.”
Watson sighed. “You can’t be serious, Aisas… Look, Holmes has said these men are vicious criminals.”
“Especially Sikes. I have seen him once,” Holmes added cheerfully. “He has a robust physique and could snap you in half the moment you meet.”
Arna sneered. “Actually, not a single one of them can fight.”
She gestured. “And I have a plan. A surprise.”
“That’s not a plan; that’s a suicide note,” Watson remarked. “Holmes, say something.”
Holmes pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Ah, yes, let me summarize.” His voice was dangerously calm. “You intend to feign unconsciousness from anesthetics and alcohol in a room full of criminals, or worse—at the very least, they will outnumber you by quite a few. Immediately following that, you plan to single-handedly subdue them, tie them up, and finally summon the authorities? Did I miss any part? For example, are you planning to detonate some pre-arranged explosives, or bring a gun?”
Arna considered this seriously for a moment, then said regretfully, “That was very comprehensive, except I didn’t buy explosives or a gun.”
And those guys’ combat power was probably lower than twoslimes3.
Single-handed and easy as pie!
Watson made a choked sound. “Christ, Aisas. That isn’t what Holmes meant—”
“Shh,” he said. He set the violin on the table, crept over to the window, and gently pulled back a sliver of the curtain.
His eyes gleamed as if he had spotted something highly amusing.
Curious, Arna sidled over and stood beside him to look down.
With just one glance, she froze.
Watson looked at Holmes, then at Arna, and finally, unable to suppress his curiosity, he followed them over.
When he saw the woman hurrying down the street toward 221B Baker Street, his eyes went wide.
“That’s… that’s Miss Nancy,” Watson murmured.
“Yes,” Holmes said, dropping the curtain. “It seems we now have eleven informants.”
He raised his hand, silently counting down the numbers in his head.
Three. Two. One.
A knock sounded on the door downstairs.
This was immediately followed by Mrs. Hudson’s footsteps, and the creak of the front door being pulled open.
“Oh my, Miss Nancy!” Her voice was warm, though tinged with confusion. “What a surprise! Come in, dear. Though I’m afraid the gentlemen might have already retired for the evening…”
“Actually, I’m here to visit you, Mrs. Hudson. I wanted to talk to you about something…” Nancy’s fingers gripped her shawl tightly as she spoke with polite restraint. “Perhaps somewhere a bit… quieter.”
Footnotes
- A Chinese internet slang term (cǎotái bānzi) literally meaning a 'makeshift theatrical troupe.' It is used humorously to express the realization that many systems, companies, or even the world at large are poorly organized, fundamentally chaotic, and run by amateurs.
- In gaming terminology, a 'gacha pool' refers to the set of available characters or items a player can receive from a randomized, lottery-like draw mechanic.
- A basic, gelatinous monster found in many role-playing video games, famously known for being one of the weakest enemies a player can encounter.
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