28 Hey wanna be my shopkeeper?

With their limited free time, several months passed without much being actually done about the shop they were planning to build. Most of the time was just spent waiting on various paperwork to arrive at the official places who would then grant permissions and licenses.

Lady Amelia had sent them a local shopkeeper, who already had experience with setting up a shop and all the required forms to fill and things to consider and with his help, things progressed smoothly, although at a slow pace.

After several weeks, the group was once again sitting together and looking through the things they still had on their to-do lists.

"Myra, we got a piece of property in the city and Aaron said he will look for workers to take care of the shop, but we still need to find a source for the materials we will need." Nell looked through their information and then pointed out several suppliers that they had contacted before.

"Do we really have to buy the materials from them? Those prices look expensive for just some common materials."

Myra disliked those suppliers. They paid their workers next to nothing and still expected their customers to pay a fortune just for materials that did not look rare to her at all.

"Common materials? Those are rather hard to find. Do you have any alternatives?" Nell was curious what Myra would come up with. She always seemed to suggest the oddest things and their shop would likely be odd as well, but this did not mean that all of her suggestions were bad. They just needed some fine tuning.

"Why not find those resources on our own and then pay someone to gather them for us?" Myra had no idea about the process of doing just that, but it should be easy enough to find them.

"Well, if you can find us some of these materials in large enough quantities, we can likely pay for the property and have someone mine or gather them for us if we give them a share of the materials. It would require a source of material that is still not known to anyone else though. No one would just let us claim some property for cheap if they know that there is a source of something valuable. Liam you think you can help Myra with this?" Nell handed out tasks like cookies, like a commander would give missions to his soldiers. No one argued with him though, as they were just happy to have someone who would give them some direction and an idea of what they should do.

"Sorry Nell, but I won't have time this weekend. It will have to wait until next week." Liam declined the task this time, which was rather unusual.

"No, problem, we can have Alyn help Myra then." Nell quickly rearranged things in his mind.

"Uhm, sorry, but I also don't have time this weekend." Alyn answered and for the first time Nell stopped in his pondering and looked at the two of them.

"What are you two up to?" he asked then and looking at their blushing faces, he had a feeling that something was off about this.

"We're visiting mom and dad." Liam admitted after a moment of trying to avoid the topic.

Now Myra got curious as well. "You're both visiting your parents Liam? You mean, Alyn as well?"

Liam just nodded and looked at Alyn shyly.

"That's amazing! With you two always being so quiet, I'd never have guessed that you are up to something!"

Alyn did her best to hide somewhere, totally embarrassed, but there really was no way for Liam and her to escape being questioned by the others.

"When are we meeting your parents Aaron?" Myra inquired in her usual curious way. "You're my boyfriend for nearly half a year now and I still didn't meet them!"

Aaron grumbled a little bit. "Well other than feeding me vegetables, we're really just a couple in name. Just look at these two they are even holding hands. We didn't even have a date yet!"

Myra stared at him for a moment before she started to laugh happily. "You're jealous!"

"Well, what if I am. Also you can come meet my grandmother if you like, but my parents passed away several years ago."

"Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't know that." Myra calmed down again, but in her heart she decided that it was time to get to know a bit more about Aaron. In the past, he was just a good excuse for some hugs. A lifelike pillow to not be alone during the nights that had come out of nowhere. Over time though, their relationship had become more and more important to Myra and she no longer wanted it to stay the same it had been for all this time.

"So we had no date yet, fair enough, what would you like to do?" Myra was kind of curious what Aaron was interested in. She did not really have a clue what a good date might be like. Where would they go, what would they do?

"Causing some rumors others would have to act on" - "What? What do you mean?" - "Oh, forget about it, just something I just remembered."

Their discussion about their business soon drifted off and became a discussion about dating and what they should do during their date. Liam and Alyn added some ideas as well, obviously having been in the same situation before.

Once again, everyone stared at the couple. No one said a word, but one could just tell their thoughts from their expressions. Those looks definitely said 'Since when were you two a couple and why did we never notice anything?!'

--

Once again classes were over and the students were happy about it being the end of the week. Weekend would mean free time and free time would mean that they could go out into the city and have fun.

Aaron and Myra on the other hand were busy with finding people for the shop. So far, they were not really happy with the people they found. None of them seemed very reliable and to Myra it was more important to find people they could trust, than someone who was well known or had experience. If people were not trained, they could train them, but if people were not trustworthy they could do nothing about it.

They were just on their way to yet another place, when they noticed a commotion in one of the shops at the side of the road.

An older man was standing outside one of the larger shops, obviously upset about something. He was holding a bag in one hand, while he held on to the small hand of a young girl with the other.

"We have no need of you anymore! Don't bother returning tomorrow!" an arrogant young man standing at the doorway of the shop shouted, before turning around and walked back into the shop, leaving the old man and the girl standing outside.

"What an asshole!" , "How could he cheat his customers like this! What kind of owner is this to treat us this way? Now he even cancelled the contract of the honest shopkeeper just because he didn't agree with the owners schemes of scamming his customers." the crowd outside the shop was in an uproar.

Usually Myra and Aaron would have ignored the commotion and just moved on, but today they were looking for someone to help them with their shop, so they paused for a moment and listened to the discussion.

It was easy to figure out what was going on here. The owner of the shop, obviously used underhanded means to trick his customers, by selling goods of inferior quality, for the same price as the regular items. The shopkeeper working for this shop, did not agree to this and was thrown out.

"The man is too old and the girl is too young." Aaron mumbled to Myra. "They wouldn't be able to handle the work."

"Aww, who cares about their age? The girl will grow up and I can help the grandpa a bit with his constitution. Also it's easy enough to find some extra help just for the muscle. I'm more worried about finding someone to help us organize those people who provide the muscle."

"Fair enough, you have a good point there." Aaron agreed in the end. They really just needed someone to take care of the shop. Extra helpers would be easy enough to find.

"Hey, wait a moment mister. Yes, you!"

The old man turned around and looked at the young woman, wondering what she wanted. He already lost his job and it would be hard enough to find a new one at his age. He didn't have much choice though as there was no one else to take care of his granddaughter.

"How can I help you miss ...?" - "Myra, just call me Myra." - "Miss Myra, what do you want?"

"I'm planning to open a shop and I'm looking for a shopkeeper."

"Why would you want an old man like me as a shopkeeper?" he already knew that if this girl was serious about the offer, then he would not have much choice, no matter what conditions she would offer him. A low paying job was still better than none at all. He did not want to be tricked and taken advantage of, so he was a little suspicious why this girl approached him. It was easy enough to find younger people after all who also had experience with handling those tasks.

"You seem to be an honest person. I like that." Myra answered right away. She would never speak in a roundabout way. Direct, blunt and honest was her typical approach.

"If you really do open a shop and would offer a position there, I would be happy to discuss more about it. My name is Yannis, this is my granddaughter Zora."

"Let's go have some lunch and talk about the position." Aaron suggested and they quickly left the crowded street looking for a place to get some food.

Myra was her usual happy and outgoing self, while Aaron was stoic and didn't say much.

"Oh this one looks nice." Myra finally entered a restaurant that looked like it would have decent food. Aaron followed right behind her and Yannis hesitated for a moment, but joined them a moment later.

"We plan to open a little shop on Central Square and want to sell some high quality gear there." Myra began to explain. "It's mostly a weapons and armor shop, but I plan to add some accessories as well later on. Currently we have the property, but we still have to get rid of the old building in order to make a new one."

"Miss Myra this seems to be a rather odd combination. How are arms related to accessories?"

"It's basically all enchanted items, it's more of a magic shop rather than a normal blacksmith that she has in mind." Aaron interjected.

"A magic shop? I don't have a lot of experience with magic items." while Yannis knew that magic items would sell really well, he had no idea about those famous shops that would sell those wondrous things. He was worried that he would not be able to do a good job selling something that he did not know a lot about.

"Don't worry, I can teach you about it. You don't need to appraise the things and all the items I make will be custom designs anyways, so not many would know about them."

"This sounds like a really nice place. What would be my compensation and what are you expecting me to do exactly?"

"Well, as for what to do … sell the items? Open and close the shop and help with this bookkeeping stuff? Organize the helpers and decide who stays and all that. We can get you helpers for carrying things around and do all of the menial work. We will also have an area at the back of the shop to make the items, like a forge and some worktables. Aaron, what would be a good wage for this task?"

"I don't know." Aaron's reply did not exactly help Myra. "Ah, whatever, I can pay you a gold ingot each month? Or you can have a 10% share of the profits?"

"A gold ingot … per month? That's quite a lot of money, are you sure you only need me to handle the everyday business of the shop?"

"Sure. We should be fine organizing the people creating the items. I need to teach them anyways."