Chapter 13: The Gun is Mightier than the Pen - 4

Previously!

After negotiations with Rio, I obtained selling rights in Millennium!

As a bonus, I also gained access to the Engineering Department!

And the next day, we visited Millennium again.

"That was fast."

"This is just the basics."

The day after obtaining the selling rights, in exactly one day, Rio had a suitable shop built for us.
With a black and gray base, it wasn't very large, but since we didn't have much stock either, you could say it was a suitable size.

[Nong Jang]

Looking at the hanging sign, an employee asked.

"What's that?"

"Wouldn't it be a bit lame to just write 'Farm'?"

"I think you made the right call."

Yeah. 'Farm' doesn't really fit this atmosphere. Well, it's pronounced 'Nongjang', but that doesn't matter.
The products for sale are assault rifles and their proprietary ammunition.

The selling price is cheaper than the market price, so if we sell a day's worth of stock, worth 150,000 yen, we'll make a net profit of about 100,000 yen.
Huh? Isn't the price a bit steep, you ask?

Currently, since Kaiser Corporation has a monopoly on most firearms in Kivotos, even trying to find a similar model for cheap would cost around 400,000 yen.
The more, the better. For now, until word of mouth spreads, we have to try selling at a low price.

Our current stock is twenty FAR-01 rifles and fifteen thousand rounds of ammunition.
If it all sells, that's roughly 900,000 yen.

There's no way it will all sell, but. Let's just be glad we've finally opened up shop.

Before starting business in earnest, I gathered all the girls and spoke.

"Everyone. We can finally do some proper business."

"It's been about two weeks."

"Right. Of course, we're small now, and we might not make much of a profit. But this business will grow. So, let's give it our all!"

"Yay~!"

"Understood."

And so, the arms factory 'Nong Jang's' first day of business began.

For now, our business mechanism is this.

1. Every morning, we send the stock made the previous day by truck to our new store, the 'Nong Jang Millennium Branch'.
2. If it all sells, that's about 250,000 yen, which we use to run the factory again.
3. Repeat this whole process.

"Three employees will manage the store. You, you... and you."

For now, the Goto sisters and I are excluded since we have important duties and need to refine the facility.
I picked three others who are usually better at using their heads than doing factory work.

"Yep."

"Got it."

"I'll do my best."

"Alright, call me if there are any problems."

Just in case, Arin was on standby, while Sarin, the remaining five employees, and I headed to the factory.

* * *

While the factory was in full operation, Sarin suddenly came running up to me.
And in quite a hurry, at that.

"Boss! We have a big problem!"

"What?! Did nothing sell? Did we get a difficult customer?"

"No, it's that..."

Without another word, Sarin handed me the phone she was holding.
It was a call from her annoying older sister, Arin.

"What's up, Arin?"

"Boss, about that..."

And the words I heard next. Were more shocking than I could imagine, and at the same time.

 

"We are out of stock."

They were joyous words.

"What did you say?"

"It's exactly as I said. One hour after opening, our entire stock of FAR-01s was sold out."

"...Are you kidding me?"

"I would hardly joke about something like this."

That's right.
For starters, the student population of Millennium is in the five digits.
On top of that, ever since the terrorist attack the day before the Millennium Prize, word had been spreading, and it seems 'Nong Jang' had become somewhat known among the students.

While the hype was building, what happened?
I had arrived in a truck, personally delivering dozens of crates of firearms.
The fact that Yuuka came to greet me was apparently surprising enough, but then Neru—the next leader of C&C, also known as Agent 02—personally took me somewhere. The students must have been dying of curiosity.

So they all flocked to our store when it opened the next day.
So, naturally, the store's inventory was completely wiped out.

"I really don't know whether to laugh or cry about this..."

"Indeed."

"Come back for now. Let's talk when you get here."

A short while later, after Arin and the employees returned, I gathered everyone for an emergency meeting.
Well, calling it a meeting is a stretch. It was the usual 'So, what do we do now?'.

"Our productivity is absolutely insufficient."

The stock we put out today was about twice our usual amount.
If twenty rifles weren't enough, how could we possibly cover the demand with the ten we can produce per day?

"Still, guns aren't consumables, so over time..."

"I saw over a hundred customers today alone. At this rate, we won't be able to supply all of Millennium by the time we graduate."

So what should we do?
It's obvious. We need to expand the factory's facilities.

"While we're at it, let's increase our production capacity and standardize the process."

"Will that be okay? The money..."

"Yeah. Don't worry about it."

[2,420,000¥]

Including the additional 900,000 yen we just earned, my bank account is fuller than ever.
So this is why everyone gets into business. The money comes in so fast.

"Then will you go to Kaiser and request facility maintenance?"

"Sis, are you stupid? There's no way Kaiser would help us!"

"For once, you're right, Sarin. So, what is your plan, Boss?"

Just as Sarin said. Right now, Kaiser stands to gain if we fail or cause some kind of incident.
They might remain bystanders, but expecting them to help is asking too much.

But I anticipated this. That's why I already paid a visit yesterday.

"Let's go to Millennium."

"But we don't have any stock right now?"

"We're not going there to sell anything."

What I got from Rio yesterday wasn't just the right to sell.

"The Engineering Department. Let's pay them a visit."

Ah. That's right.

"Sarin. Did you bring that thing?"

"Yep!"

"Take good care of it. It's as important as our factory equipment."

What is it?
You'll find out soon.

* * *

Among the many clubs, the reason I chose the Engineering Department was simple.
Because they're insanely competent!

What kind of obstacles might we face running our factory? New product development, factory expansion, facility maintenance, equipment shortages... the list is endless.

And the Engineering Department alone is the key to solving all of these problems cleanly.

As for any accounting issues, we have Arin, who's more competent than even Millennium's future treasurer.

"Is this the place?"

"Ooh~ There's so much stuff!"

"Don't act like such a hick, S."

"You're a hick too, Boss!"

"Be quiet."

And so, Arin, Sarin, and I arrived at the Millennium Engineering Department.
Because we all wore matching masks and sunglasses on the way, we drew a ton of attention before we even went inside, but I guess we can consider that a good thing.

"Ah, you're here. The staff from Nong Jang."

Inside, countless students were building, observing, and researching all sorts of things.
The sight was so overwhelming that for a moment, I thought, 'Now *this* is a real factory'.

We slowly approached the girl with long purple hair who had called out to us, Shiraishi Utaha.

"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Utaha."

"Nice to meet you too!"

"It's a pleasure to meet you for the first time."

"It's nice to meet you, too. I heard about your situation yesterday. You want to get your facilities serviced?"

"To be precise, it's systematization and expansion."

"Our current production speed is woefully inadequate for the number of orders we're getting. We would be grateful if you could help us resolve this."

"Ah, I heard. They said you opened this morning and sold out in less than an hour? That's a shame. I wanted to buy one myself."

Utaha chuckled as if joking, but her expression soon turned serious.

"Do you have any blueprints? I think I'll need to check them first."

"We don't have blueprints, so what should we do?"

"What do you mean, 'what should you do'? There's no other way but for me to go to your factory myself."

Right. That makes sense.
In the long term, my plan is for Utaha to form a close relationship with our factory, so her visiting wasn't a problem.

However, it's a bit of a shame to leave as soon as we arrived.
There are other things I want to talk about besides factory equipment.

Without hesitation, I looked at the bag Sarin was holding and spoke.

"S? Take it out."

"Yes, Boss!"

"What's that?"

"Something for you to research from now on."

There's something I gave to Sarin as soon as we returned from Millennium yesterday.

"What's all this?"

"Your new toys."

"...Huh?"

What I handed her were Kaiser-made pistols, submachine guns, sniper rifles, shotguns, and machine guns. Ten of each.
They're all major firearm types, though perhaps not as popular as assault rifles.

Kaiser, our competition, doesn't just sell assault rifles, so I gave her the task, thinking we would eventually need to expand our own range of weapons.
Of course, since Sarin was primarily an assault rifle user, she didn't seem familiar with other types of firearms.

"Ugh, I feel like I'm close..."

"There's smoke coming from your head, Sarin."

"Be quiet, sis! Ah~ If I just carve the rifling a little deeper here..."

"Will that even work?"

"Hey, if you can't even fight, just get out!"

In the end, she had to face today without being satisfied with her results.

Then, when I said we were going to the Engineering Department, Sarin got excited and packed these guns, probably thinking she'd get better results by talking to them?
It was a damn good idea, so I fully supported it, and that's the bag she brought.

"Ah, I see what you want. So, when should we go to your factory?"

"It's 2 PM now, so... around 5 PM?"

"Okay. Who made this?"

"Me! It was me!"

Perhaps because she'd met a kindred spirit, Sarin excitedly approached Utaha, while Arin and I just watched.

"She looks just like..."

"An excited puppy."

"Aren't you a little too harsh on your little sister?"

"Thank you for the compliment."

Sarin and Utaha were deep in a conversation, speaking words we couldn't even begin to understand.
Every now and then, I'd catch a word I could understand, like 'rifling' or 'shot grouping', but that was it.

"Hey, A. I'm suddenly curious. Why were you guys acting as sukeban?"

"That is a very sudden question."

"Anyway. You're quick with numbers and accounting, and S sometimes has better instincts than my own sister. It just seems like you could've gotten by just fine without becoming sukeban."

"Indeed."

To my thoughtless question, Arin unexpectedly seemed deep in thought.
Even though I couldn't see them through her sunglasses, it was obvious that her eyes held a deeper conflict than I had expected.

 

After about five minutes, Arin glanced at me from behind her sunglasses and continued speaking in her characteristically emotionless voice.

"It was... because we were weak, I suppose."

But within that emotionless tone, I could clearly sense a murky aura.
Yes. It was the kind of aura I only ever felt from my own sister—one of being worn down to the point of giving up.

"As you can probably see, S is like a child. Perhaps because of that, she caused a lot of trouble growing up."

"I figured as much."

"Right? Anyway, the academy we attended was a small one on the outskirts. Never mind Gehenna or Millennium; it was an academy so small it would have been dwarfed by even Shanhaijing or Hyakkiyako."

In reality, Kivotos doesn't only have large academies. In fact, the ones we typically think of are few and far between—the ones with student populations in the four or five digits.

The problem is that such academies are weak, and are inevitably targeted often.

"One day, on my way to the academy as usual, we were attacked."

"The Helmet Gang?"

"Yes. Thanks to them, both S and I were badly injured. But the problem was... after that, it was as if she got some strange idea in her head. S stopped going to school."

"Isn't that a bit extreme?"

Still, skipping school is a bit much. No, there must have been a reason.

"Looking back now, I was the one who got hurt back then, and I think she blamed herself for it."

"I see."

"It seemed she was planning to get revenge, as she gathered a few comrades before I knew it. As her older sister, I had no choice but to go along with her."

"Honestly, didn't you enjoy it a little?"

"I won't deny it. Anyway, after about three months of wandering, we all realized that something was wrong."

Most students think sukeban are just common robbers, but the reality is quite different.

They have nowhere to live and are unwelcome wherever they go. Of course, they can't dream of getting a job, so they can't earn tuition money. They end up expelled from school, whether for failing to pay tuition or for their crimes.
As I've already exemplified, a student without a school in Kivotos is practically a non-person. It's obvious how long an endeavor started so thoughtlessly could last.

"Nearby gangs kept targeting us, and in the meantime, our life with no money continued."

Their abnormal tenacity when I first met them now makes sense.
Having lived through that living hell, of course they'd be close.

"In the midst of that, we found a decent empty office building."

"And that was our factory. Right?"

"That is correct."

This was the first time Arin had spoken at such length. She's usually a girl of few words.
Anyway, it wasn't a particularly dramatic or tragic story.

It was just a story of ruin from a single misstep, a story shared by a number of students in Kivotos equivalent to the population of a moderately-sized academy.
That's why I can say this with certainty.

"This 'story of school and youth' is bullshit."

"I agree with that sentiment."

Of course, for some, it might be a story of school and youth. Going to the academy with friends, enjoying club activities, with the occasional event popping up. That kind of story.
But for those who aren't included in that 'some,' it's just a hell with clear skies.

In short, people like a student who ran away from home because of a failing academy and a useless, overprotective older sister trying to hide its state, only to end up a slave a year later.
Or people like a pair of siblings who fell into a vicious cycle after one act of youthful bravado.

"Sarin and the other employees might be staying at the factory because it's comfortable and safe, but I'm a little different."

"How so?"

"You are strong, Boss."

"There you go again."

"I mean it. And being strong also means having the power to protect."

As she said that, Arin's voice sounded sadder than any I had heard since I left home.

"I failed to protect S, and if you hadn't been here, Boss, we would still be living in a gutter. So, Boss..."

"Hey, shut it. Enough with the clichés."

I'd already made that resolution when I started this company.

"I'm going to protect everyone. At least, my own people."

"...Understood."

After those words, the two of us just stood there until Utaha and Sarin finished their work.
But in that silence, we could both clearly feel that the distance between our hearts had closed.

Nong Jang. The name of our company.
They say a farm's fence exists to protect the crops, don't they?
For the first time, I started to like this name, 'Nong Jang'.