CH 426

Mushroom Princess Mia Encourages

In reality, Mia had lost her desire to fight Shalloak.

Yes, she had come here to put him under so much stress until she breaks him. She had thought of all kinds of bad things to do to him on the way here, but when she saw him lying in bed tired and weak, she lost interest. He was a shady businessman with no morals, and he was her enemy. Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to kick someone when they were down. Also, she saw herself in Shalloak all of a sudden. Wasn’t the sight of this man, who was lying there because he ate too much and didn’t control himself, a glimpse of what would happen to her if she kept behaving in the same way?

No, I’m not going to end up in this bad of shape.

Even though she disagreed with herself, she couldn’t help but feel her stomach to be sure. She was glad to see that she had a long way to go before she could match his size.

Either way, she had a feeling, maybe even a gut feeling, that she shouldn’t fight this guy. It just didn’t feel right.

I almost feel sorry for him. He did nothing but eat a lot of tasty food and lie around a lot. So what does he get in return? If this is how the world works, then the world is wrong!

She started to care about Shalloak’s problem with F.A.T. because it made her feel angry for him. So, she decided what to do. She would wait for him to wake up. After she made sure he was okay, she would leave him alone.

Her plan was going well until, to her surprise, Tatiana chose all of a sudden to start telling everyone about his embarrassing past.

Tatiana, what in the name of the moons are you doing?! Are you sure about this?

The question was almost out of her mouth when she stopped and thought about something.

You’re…trying to make things as good as possible for everyone, right?

From that point of view, what Tatiana did made sense. Sometimes it was necessary to kick a fallen opponent until they gave up. If you let them get back up, the fight would go on longer and more people would get hurt. It was true for Shalloak. He was vulnerable to her right now, but if he was given time to heal, he would go back to being stubborn. So, they should take advantage of how weak he is right now and beat him up so badly that he stops being bad for good.

He will be better off in the long run if we make him stop plotting and retire. Isn’t that what you are thinking, Tatiana?

Mia stood up straight when she realized that much. Tatiana had been brought along as a favor at first, but the girl had certainly earned her place. Mia decided that she owed her at least some help because she was so determined to repay the man who had changed her life.

So it goes. I’ll be the bad guy then.

She made an evil smile as she thought about the bad girl in one of Elise’s stories.

“What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t go around planting seeds you can’t handle, but I guess my advice is too little, too late, isn’t it? Shalloak, you bring about your own death.”

After all that blustering and acting like he was better than everyone else, he turned out to be as cold and calculated as a doting uncle. The shame! Still, Mia turned her heart into stone and got ready to break the will of the guy she saw in herself. It was time for kicking!

Shalloak, this is for your own good! We’ll keep you healthy enough that you can spend the rest of your life just being a nice person.

She gritted her teeth and hoped that was a good enough reason for her to convince herself. Then Shalloak’s eyes opened just a little bit.

“Your Majesty… May I…ask you a question?”

“…Oh? What’s that?”

“Tell me, please…” He struggled to get up and sit down. “If you ever found yourself at the end of a road that had been wrong for a long time and you had no choice but to admit it was wrong… What do you do?”

Mia looked confused because the question caught her off guard.

What a weird and sudden question! I wonder if, by changing the subject, he’s trying to avoid the problem. Hmph, you’re not getting away. I’m going to beat all your fighting spirit out of you right now. You won’t be able to do anything but be an emotional old sop.

She blew out some air through her nose and replies.

“What would I do? Simple: I’d go back to where I was before I took my first wrong turn and look for the right way to go. What else can we do?”

Mia knew what to do if she ever got lost in a forest while looking for mushrooms. The right thing to do was easy: she should go back to the place where she started to get her bearings. She read this in a book that she had been reading over and over again lately. It was written by an adventurer who wrote about good foods. It was called “Hundred Mushroom Delicacies.”

If you know you’re lost, the last thing you should do is spend time thinking about how wrong the road was. Yes, you’ve come a long way, but you can’t let sunk costs cloud your judgment. The more you wander around without a plan, the more lost you’ll get and the more energy you’ll lose. The only way out is to go all the way back.

Mia knew this truth about picking mushrooms, and she thought it was true about life in general. She had tried to find mushroom recipes in the past, but she gave up when people around her told her not to. Before she even touched it, the door to her never-ending quest to perfect sautéed horse-shaped mushrooms and mushroom sweets was already shut.

But now she felt like she’d done something very wrong.

Even after everything, I still love mushrooms.

Reading One Hundred Mushroom Delights had made her more sure of her decision.

No matter what, I’m going to make Abel and the other members of the student council the best full-course mushroom meal ever! And I’m going to cook it myself!

She proudly announced to the world, in her mind, what she wanted to do by holding up a purple mushroom that looked like a royal crown. Even though there wasn’t anything obvious to see, it was an important moment when Mushroom Princess Mia took her first step toward becoming Mushroom Empress.

Okay, let’s get back to the important stuff.

“I see. Before you took your first wrong turn. What an interesting idea! If only I had that choice…” Shalloak muttered.

Mia stayed on the attack when she saw that her opponent wasn’t hitting back.

You think that saying strange things to yourself will get you out of trouble? You’d better change your mind! Now that I’ve answered your question, it’s my turn to talk. And I’m going to bring this talk right back to where we started and end it!

She crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a smug smile.

“It’s time, Shalloak, for you to face the cold, hard fact that she will bring you down. Tatiana is a seed you planted yourself, and she is a part of you that can’t be taken away.”

She stressed the point to make sure that Shalloak wouldn’t try to brush it off as a mistake made by a young person. No, what he did for Tatiana had to be an important part of who he was.

“Huh?” Tatiana said, blinking in shock.

“She is the one who saved your life!”

“Wh-What? That’s not…” Tatiana was so scared that she shook her hands and head. “No one’s life was saved by me. Also, this isn’t something that’s easy to cure. Oh, but…”

Tatiana got a hold of herself. She looked at Shalloak for a moment, then said, “If you eat a lot of sweet or fatty foods and don’t exercise… These things will make your health worse. The heart has to work harder when a person is overweight, which makes it easier to pass out. There is a chance that your situation could get worse. So, I think you should really pay more attention to what you eat.”

She finished her advice to Shalloak, who couldn’t say anything. Mia spoke up a second after that.

“Tatiana is being humble, just so you know. When you fell down, she was the first person to come over and help you. Even as you fell on her, she held your head in her arms so it wouldn’t hit the ground. From my point of view, she saved your life, and that’s all there is to it.”

Tatiana’s lack of attention to detail hurt her attacking power, which just wouldn’t do. Mia was very clear and specific about the fact that Shalloak owed his life to the girl. That made her next move possible.

“Let me share a short story with you. Tatiana’s father was a doctor, but he died when she was still a child. She wanted to become a doctor so she could honor her father. But she didn’t have any money, so she had to give up on this dream. Oh, what a sad story! Doesn’t it make your heart break?”

Mia spoke a little more loudly and melodramatically as she spoke to make her point.

“But wait! Something came along just in time and helped her out of her trouble. This was a program for giving out scholarships. Your program for scholarships, Shalloak! The one that didn’t even make you a penny!”

The man who acted so tough and said he only did things for money and would even take advantage of other people’s bad luck to make money for himself was saved by a foolish act of kindness he’d done in the past.

The tougher he acts, the more this kind of thing hurts, and he has been acting pretty tough. Honestly, if I were him, I would die of shame.

She put her hand on his back.

“Look, you’ve been doing this for a long time. Don’t hold on to it. You tell everyone that money is the only thing you care about. That money is all that matters and that it is your god. But in the end, the fact that you spent money saved you. Shouldn’t you accept that there’s more to life than money?” From her smile, it looked like pure kindness was coming out.

“All this plotting, scheming, and planning… It makes no sense. Even more so when it’s cutting your life short. Stop and take a break. Tatiana will be happy to help you if you need it. Listen to what she says and get your health back. Am I understood?”

When she said that, she heard Shalloak’s weakening will snap. At the same time, she gave Tatiana a way to repay him for how he had changed her life. She gave one last word of support in silence, with the look of someone who had just done a great job and knew it.

Do get better, Shalloak. Let’s take care of ourselves and make sure we both live long, healthy lives.

It was a sincere message to someone who had gone down the thorny road of F.A.T. before her.

—

“Ah… Aaah… I see.”

The voice of Shalloak shook. He did make a mistake. Everything in his life had gone wrong. But…not everything had been wasted.

There was a guy in the future who was known as the Merchant King. Because he was so determined to make money, he thought that many things, including the words of the weak and needy and those who were sorry, were not important. Shalloak was finally able to hear those words, which he had tried to ignore in the past.

“Oh, is that it? I didn’t know that it was so easy…”

He only had to go back to where he was before he got lost. Instead, he had covered up his self-hatred with a thin layer of self-reflection. Which after a while, he decided to accept himself the way he was, but he was really just giving up. Eventually, the fact that he was lost started to slip from his mind. He would sometimes wake up and realize that he was completely lost in the middle of a strange forest. Every time, though, he would laugh sarcastically and keep moving forward because he thought it was too late to go back.

Mia, on the other hand, didn’t agree. She found him in the woods and told him to go back, even though she knew how far off the road he was. He was wrong to think that money was everything, so before he gave in completely, he should just go backwards until he found the right way.

He thought back to a time when he left his boss to become a merchant on his own. Then a lot of things happened quickly. Children with bright eyes played with strange toys from faraway places. Young women were amazed by quilts with designs that looked foreign and beautiful. Husbands are eager to try smoking pipes from other countries because they are curious. People were happy because of the things he carried, and when he saw their smiles, he felt a little bit of pride.

Then, when he finished his first big job successfully, he was so happy that he wanted to do something good for the world. Because of this desire, he set up a scholarship program, which made his fellow traders laugh at him.

I was so naive, but I was also so honest. I was happy to do my job because I really liked it.

When did everything change? When did the money become more important to him than the work itself? And his pride, not because of his job but because of his money? Most likely, it didn’t happen all at once but over a period of time. Over time, the stresses of being a merchant shifted his focus from making customers happy to making more money. A basic rule of business, he used the idea of minimizing costs and maximizing results in every part of his life. If he was trying to save money, could he also do less work? And if the goal was to get the most money back, what about happiness? Before he knew it, he had tied his happiness to the money he made from his job, not the work itself.

“Master Shalloak…”

When he looked up, he saw that Tatiana was looking right at him.

“Don’t get discouraged. You can still get better; it’s not too late. I will help you, so let’s both do our best.”

She probably meant that his health could still get better, but Shalloak took it as a deeper message that he shouldn’t give up on himself and that it wasn’t too late to go back and find a new way to live.

“It’s not too late, right? I can still…”

With his eyes closed, he took a slow breath in and felt the air fill his lungs. He thought it was the first real breath he’d taken in a long time. He let it out, and a weight that he couldn’t see went with it.

He opened his eyes again and Shalloak felt a sense of clearness that he hadn’t experienced in a long time.