The Happy Days of Being a Factory Owner in London – Chapter 8
by MonoClever
Don’t you dare laugh, you bastards!
Just as the three of them were still chatting about the golden tools, an ominous creak sounded from the stairs.
The door burst open. Their landlady, wearing an apron, stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. “Gentlemen, I should think you’ve had quite enough time to discuss your miscellaneous affairs!”
Her finger pointed straight at Arna. “Especially you! Good heavens, child, you skipped lunch like a stray cat, and now you’re pale as a sheet,” she said indignantly. “Get downstairs this instant, before I waste that perch of yours!”
Holmes swiftly melted into his armchair, ducking his head and suddenly developing a profound interest in a stain on the upholstery.
Watson muttered something about “needing to check my case” and seized the opportunity to flee.
Abandoned by her allies and with no one to turn to, Arna could only stand up guiltily and trail after her aunt down the stairs.
“No, no,” she mumbled. “I just don’t like Stargazy Pie…”
“If you’re too proud to eat a proper Cornish Stargazy Pie,” Mrs. Hudson huffed, her breath coming through her nose like a dragon about to breathe fire, “then you had best deal with that damn fish yourself.”
“I will, I will,” Arna said meekly. She quickly entered the kitchen, where Mrs. Hudson watched her wash her hands thoroughly. Only then did she sullenly reach into the bucket, intending to grab the fish and rinse it.
But before her hand could touch the water, her wrist was suddenly seized by Mrs. Hudson.
Arna looked up, confused.
Mrs. Hudson, her face a stern mask, placed her hand on a plate on the counter.
It was a plate of hot butter biscuits, clearly fresh from the oven. They were perfectly warm, likely finished just before Mrs. Hudson had come upstairs.
Arna blinked, choosing to remain perfectly still until Mrs. Hudson spoke, adopting a posture of “complete obedience to orders.”
Mrs. Hudson maintained her stern expression for another moment before she couldn’t help but break into a smile.
“Go on, eat. I made them just for you,” she said. “Finish them, and then you can make dinner—I’m curious to see what you can come up with!”
Only then did Arna happily pick up a biscuit and begin to eat.
After finishing the entire plate, her Stamina Bar was completely full. She washed her hands again and started cooking.
Following a recipe from the System, she first marinated the fish with seasonings. When the time was up, she pan-fried it in butter, then added pre-cooked asparagus and potatoes. Arna had successfully made a dish of pan-fried fish.
She divided the final product in two, squeezed some lemon juice over each portion, and ladled out a bowl of Mrs. Hudson’s hot soup to go with it before carrying it upstairs for her two flatmates.
The time that followed was family time.
Arna ate a meal with Mrs. Hudson, complaining about the dilapidated factory and the poor little boy. After they had tidied up the kitchen, she said goodnight to Mrs. Hudson, who was planning to knit, and returned to the upstairs sitting-room to rest.
The fire in the hearth crackled and popped as Arna listened intently to Holmes and Watson discuss cases for half the evening.
And not a single random side quest was triggered.
Dammit. The stories were thrilling and the relationships intricate, but there was no role for Arna to play!
She sullenly pocketed the sweets she had filched from Holmes’s bookshelf and, making an excuse, prepared to return to her room to check her panel. “You two carry on. I’m exhausted, so I’m heading to bed.”
“Rest well,” Watson said considerately. “You must be worn out.”
Arna nodded, yawned, and trudged heavily toward her room.
The moment the bedroom door clicked shut upstairs, Watson turned to face Holmes.
“Have you finally lost your senses, Holmes?” he said, his tone heavy. He was clearly referring to the matter of setting a trap and waiting for criminals to fall into it. “That young man is barely in his twenties. He’s not the sort who is accustomed to danger. You know perfectly well that the gangs around Whitechapel can tear any naive soul to shreds. And you’ve been unusually excited all day.”
Holmes asked calmly, “Why do you say that?”
“You’ve never shown an interest in such minor cases before, especially when you have more complex ones at hand. You always gravitate toward the more challenging, more difficult case with fewer clues, remember? Like that old woman we met before—if she hadn’t been here begging, you would never have agreed to help find her eloped daughter,” Watson analyzed slowly. “Most importantly, Holmes, since when did you start planning social reforms?”
He sat down and poured them both a glass of brandy. “Any explanation?”
Holmes accepted the glass.
“Doctor, you’ve learned the method now, haven’t you?” he joked, downing the drink in one gulp and setting the glass back on the table. “Alright, I admit to a certain interest in our new friend of unknown origin. He’s like a puzzle wrapped in cloth. The moment of unwrapping it is sure to be delicious.”
This statement did nothing to win Watson’s approval.
“That’s enough, Holmes,” he said, slamming his glass onto the table, furious. “This is not one of your puzzles! Those East End gangs—”
“Oh, come now, Watson,” Holmes interrupted, turning lazily in his chair and lounging like a black panther. “You’re overlooking the main point.”
His eyes glinted like frost. “Think, Doctor. The ‘child’ you speak of, barely in his twenties, was able to break the ribs of two East End thugs without batting an eye or changing his expression. As easily as cracking walnut shells, perhaps. I’d wager Aisas didn’t stop until they begged for mercy.”
He rose from his chair and drifted like a ghost to the window, gently parting the curtains to watch the shadows of the gas streetlights dance on the road.
“He then robbed them in return,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards. “And afterwards, there was no exhilarated pleasure from the violence, nor any trembling fear. He simply returned, sat on the sofa, and complained about how hard it was to make money.”
Watson’s anger subsided somewhat, but he remained skeptical. “You mean to say…”
“Most interesting, isn’t it?” Holmes said softly. “After all that, he still had the opportunity to sell that troublesome piece of land to any number of poor factory owners in the East End. Why lure the criminals?”
He turned around. “After I proposed the plan, his attention went to those children, not to what the factory could produce to make a profit. You know, most men view those little scoundrels in the East End as either pests or sacrifices for their own conscience.”
He murmured to himself, “But our young friend saw leverage. A contradiction, isn’t it? He reminds me of someone.”
Watson paused, running through a mental gallery of criminals with varying faces.
“Who?” he asked.
Holmes said leisurely, “Mycroft Holmes.”
Watson blinked, stunned. “What?”
He… he didn’t see it at all. Had he truly missed some crucial clue?
“Not in intellect,” Holmes continued, “but in audacity.”
Watson let out a sharp breath.
“People have their secrets, Holmes,” he said, partly annoyed and partly amused by the absurdity of it all. “But I hope you’re not implying our new flatmate is a criminal. Mrs. Hudson would be heartbroken.”
“No, no, not a criminal,” Holmes said, wagging a finger. “A survivor.”
“But since you’re so concerned for his safety,” he said slyly, “and given that I still have those difficult cases on my hands, I’ll leave the rest to you, Watson. I hope you’ll bring us some interesting clues.”
“I’ll do my best, but don’t get your hopes up, Holmes,” Watson said irritably. “I don’t think Aisas is the type to take kindly to being followed.”
The subject of their discussion, Arna, was oblivious to the debate outside her door. She was staring intently at her own panel, lost in thought.
Why does this damn game even have a Child Labor Training Module? Is that even appropriate?
She clicked open the child labor employment interface. It showed that she had to provide the child workers with a sufficient amount of meat at least once every two days, their daily working hours could not exceed six, and their study time had to be no less than three hours—basically consistent with what she had just said.
Furthermore, if she wanted the System to certify these child laborers as basic workers, she would need to hire a teacher to lead their classes.
The System didn’t even put this much effort into training me, the Factory Owner! Can’t it show me some love too? Where’s my new map gift package?
After grumbling internally for a bit, Arna tentatively clicked on the teacher selection interface and scrolled down.
Her own name appeared prominently in the list of teacher candidates.
Oh, nice! Doesn’t this save me another expense?
Overjoyed, Arna quickly assigned herself to the position and then manually typed 【Brawling】 into the course curriculum below.
A second later, a red notification popped up from the System.
【”Brawling” is not a valid course. Please select a course from the provided categories for instruction.】
“What’s wrong with brawling? Isn’t brawling useful?” Arna said sullenly. “System, you’re being unreasonable now.”
She opened the course categories and browsed the dazzling array of titles.
Mathematics?
Cross that out, cross that out. Who wants to learn math in a game? Teaching it is out of the question, too! Mathematics and I do not share the same sky1!
Latin?
…What even is this? No, no, I can’t even read it myself. I won’t inflict it on the students.
She scrolled for a long time before finally finding a subject to her liking.
You’re the one! This looks useful—Mechanical Assembly!
The next morning, Arna got up early and went out fishing.
She planned to save up some money, and once she had enough to match the market rate, she would repaint the factory herself before starting operations.
Thus, by the time she had sold her fish and returned to Baker Street, it was already nine in the morning.
In the sitting-room, besides Holmes and Watson, stood a group of small figures.
“Ah, it seems our absent friend has finally returned,” Holmes, dressed in his morning gown and holding a coffee cup, gestured toward Arna. “Our new colleagues require your talents, Wiggins2. A strategy for dealing with Whitechapel.”
A boy with sharp eyes looked over and winked at Arna.
“From Greenland3, are we?” he said, sizing her up.
Seeing Arna’s confusion, the boy named Wiggins grinned. “From Greenland. In slang, it means you’re new to the place. I figured as much. Only a fellow like you would attract bees swarming to honey.”
Holmes smiled. “Precisely. Wiggins, you will spread two stories. First, that the new factory owner possesses the typical cowardice of a countryman, one who only knows how to hand out wages from his wallet, but fails to notice things disappearing from his factory. Second…”
He leaned forward, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. “He doesn’t know how to run a factory, only knows carpentry, and he goes around showing off his heirloom golden tools. He also provides a hot Mutton Pie for lunch.”
Wiggins snorted. “That’ll draw a swarm of flies in the blink of an eye. Fagin’s little dogs will be sniffing around by the weekend, looking for a hole to crawl through.”
He hesitated, then said with uncharacteristic gravity, “Some of ’em are alright. Just hungry.”
Arna, who had been zoned out waiting for the cutscene to end, snapped back to reality.
“What, you’re hungry?” Hearing the keyword, she subconsciously pulled out the leftover biscuits from yesterday. “Want one?”
She began to hand out biscuits to each of the children.
The smallest girl held her biscuit, looking as if she was questioning where on earth she was.
She stammered, “Thank you, S-Sir.”
But Wiggins, their leader, started to laugh.
“You may not be very clever, but I hope you’ll always be a good, kind man, Sir,” he said. “May God bless you.”
After speaking, he and his little division clattered away down the staircase, just as they had arrived.
They left Arna standing there, holding the biscuits with a bewildered expression.
“Hey, how am I not clever?” she demanded, annoyed, taking another bite of a biscuit to replenish the Stamina Bar that had decreased from fishing. “Isn’t anyone going to speak up for me?!”
Watson chuckled under his breath and gave her a consoling pat on the shoulder.
The author has something to say:
Arna: That’s enough! So what if I didn’t put any points into Intelligence? What does a player need a brain for!
- Adrenaline was only discovered in the early 20th century, but I feel like someone as brilliant as Holmes would have been able to observe that some criminals derive satisfaction from acts of violence (averts eyes).
- Wiggins is the leader of the Baker Street Irregulars from the original books.
- The “Greenland” bit is London street slang from the original Oliver Twist. I tweaked the phrasing a bit 🤭. The original line is something like: Where from? Greenland. It just means the person is a newcomer, a greenhorn.
Footnotes
- From the Chinese idiom 'bù gòng dài tiān,' meaning 'to not live under the same sky.' It describes a hatred so profound that two enemies cannot coexist in the world.
- Wiggins is the leader of the Baker Street Irregulars, a group of street urchins who act as intelligence agents for Sherlock Holmes in the original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.
- As the author's note explains, this is 19th-century London street slang from 'Oliver Twist,' meaning a newcomer or greenhorn.
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