The six weeks had passed exactly on schedule, which the foreman seemed to consider a personal insult to his professional pride and mood.
"Wasn't supposed to be done till next week," he grumbled, handing over the keys like they'd personally wronged him. "Crew got ahead of themselves. Won't happen again."
"I'll try to be less impressed," Jake said "barely holding back a smirk", and the foreman's scowl deepened, which felt like the correct response.
He'd kept the twins in the dark about most of it on purpose — the estate's condition, sure, but also the tavern, which he'd bought and quietly begun renovating weeks ago without either of them knowing. It felt, in a small and slightly petty way, like the first real surprise he'd ever gotten to show anyone. He wanted to see their faces.
The Thornhollow Estate barely resembled the place he'd bought. The roof no longer sagged it was pristine and covered with "a fresh coat" of black paint. The shopfront gleamed with fresh-cut shelving, stocked with a modest starter inventory the guild had thrown in as part of the contract. Ivy had even been trained up one side of the stonework, deliberate rather than overgrown now, softening the place without hiding it.
Rem stopped walking entirely when they came around the last bend in the path and the house came into view. "This is—" she started, and didn't finish.
"This is ours?" Ram said, slower, like she was checking the words fit before committing to them.
"Yours to run," Jake said. "Mine to occasionally show up at and eat your cooking. "Compared Roswaal's whose is bigger?"
Rem's eyes had gone a little glassy, though she blinked it back fast enough that he pretended not to notice.
Then he took them two streets over, to the buildings he hadn't mentioned once in six weeks.
The tavern's sign — freshly repainted, the old faded lettering replaced with something crisp and legible — read Thornhollow & Co. in simple black lettering, a smaller line beneath it: Trading Company & Tavern.
Ram stared at it for a long moment. "You bought another building."
"I bought this one before the estate finished," Jake admitted. "Wanted it to be a surprise for you two. Figured you two deserved something that was entirely yours to build from nothing, not just inherited from whoever owned it before."
"You're an idiot," Ram said, which from her, actually sounded something close to thank you.
Rem didn't say anything at all. She just walked up and hugged him, quick and fierce and over before he'd fully processed it, and then stepped back like it hadn't happened, cheeks pink, suddenly very interested in the tavern's front door.
They went through both buildings room by room after that with Jake trailing slightly behind while Ram inspected the tavern's kitchen with the critical eye of someone already redesigning the layout in her head, and Rem ran her fingers along the estate's new shelving like she was testing whether it was real.
The training space impressed even Ram, who didn't impress easily. She stood at the edge of the underground sparring circle, arms crossed, studying the reinforced walls.
"Dampening stone," Jake said, before she could ask. "Foreman said it eats stray magic instead of letting it punch through into the neighbors. Should be enough for whatever you two throw around down here."
"Should be," Ram repeated, testing a small lance of frost against the far wall. It fizzled out against the stone without so much as a scorch mark. Something that might have been approval flickered across her face. "Acceptable."
Upstairs, Rem had already claimed a room by the simple expedient of putting a folded blanket on the bed, which apparently counted as a binding legal contract as far as she was concerned.
They finally ended up in the study eventually a small room off the main hall, a desk, two chairs, and a window that looked out over the three overgrown hectares and the crumbling shape of the old watchtower in the distance. Jake had pulled the paperwork from his inventory and spread them across the desk by the time both sisters filed in and sat down.
Out of a gamer's habit more than necessity, he pulled up his inventory first, to check what was actually left in the coffers.
[Inventory: Currency]
Holy Gold: 1,000
Gold: 1,847
Silver: 4,200
Copper: 4,850
He stared at the gold count for a second longer than he wanted to. Eighteen hundred? I had ten thousand a month ago. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. I bought an entire property portfolio like a reincarnated real estate mogul and now I'm down to "mildly comfortable" instead of "obscenely rich." Fantastic.
Well. Might as well simplify this before I forget how much of what I actually have.
He converted the silver and copper coins over the system which made short work of it, folding four thousand two hundred silver and four thousand eight hundred copper down into a clean 630 gold on top of what he already had. He left the holy gold alone entirely; those thousand coins weren't for spending, not yet at least.
[Inventory: Currency — Updated]
Holy Gold: 1,000
Gold: 2,477
There. Now I actually know what I'm working with.
"Alright," he said, sliding two separate stacks of documents across the desk — one toward each of them. "Let's finish this properly before I leave."
Rem picked hers up first, scanning the top page. "Tavern deed and operating authority," she read aloud, "under my name?"
"Yours," Jake confirmed. "You run the tavern. Full stop. Menu, staff, pricing, hours — your call, not mine. I don't want you having to run anything past Ram first, and I don't want her having to run trading company decisions past you either. Separate books, separate authority."
Ram flipped through her own stack, brow rising slightly. "This says I have sign off power. On contracts. In your name."
"You do."
"For any contract?"
"For any contract you decide the trading company needs," Jake said. "If a supplier wants an exclusive deal, if you need to lease a second warehouse, if you want to fire someone or hire twelve people at once — you don't wait for me. You sign it."
Ram set the papers down slowly, like she was making sure she'd actually read them correctly. "That's a great deal of trust for someone who buys buildings behind my back as a surprise."
"Different kind of trust," Jake said. "That one was for fun. This is for making sure neither of you spends the next however-many-years asking my permission to run your own business."
He pulled the reinforced coin pouch from his coat and set it on the desk between them. "That's everything left, minus the holy gold. Split it however makes sense — tavern needs versus trading company needs. If it runs out, tell me when I'm back, and we figure out how to make more. I'm not going to be here to signing off on every decision, so I'm not going to try."
Rem's hand hovered over the pouch without quite touching it. "Jake, that's most of what you have left."
"I know."
"If something goes wrong — if we misjudge a hire, if the tavern loses money for a season, if—"
"You won't,"Jake said "stop doubting your self and trust me". "You run ledgers better than anyone I've met in either of my lives, Rem. I trust your math more than I trust my own judgment most days."
"That is not comforting," Ram said flatly, "given the general state of your judgment." "Heyy-"!, But still "Fair I guess that's true."
"The trading company's got three names on payroll so far," Ram said, scanning the ledger. "All human, all cheap labor the previous owner left behind. Not exactly inspiring."
"Then let's inspire something better," Jake said. "Both of you — when you're hiring, actually hiring, not just keeping whoever's already there — I want you looking at demi-humans first. Not as charity. As good business. Half this town won't hire them properly, which means there's a whole labor pool out there that's skilled, motivated, and criminally underpriced because nobody else will pay them what they're worth."
Rem tilted her head. "And if it costs more than the going rate?"
"Then it costs more than the going rate," Jake said. "Pay them fair wages. If they need housing to make the job work, we handle housing too — the estate's got room, the tavern's got room upstairs, and if that's not enough, we build more. I'm not running a business on the same cheap unfairness everyone else in this town's built theirs on."
Ram gave him a long, assessing look. "That's a costly principle to hold," she said, quieter than usual.
"Yeah, well." Jake shrugged. "I've got the gold for it. Might as well spend it on something that actually matters instead of just more furniture."
Rem tapped a name on the roster with the end of her quill. "There's a woman who's been asking around town for work — beastkin, strong, good with logistics. Frederica, I think her name was. Used to manage a household for a noble family before ending up here. She'd be wasted running errands for whoever's currently underpaying her at the tannery."
"Bring her in," Jake said. "If she's got management experience, that's exactly the kind of person who should be running the trading company's day-to-day."
"If we're doing this properly," Rem added, more carefully, "should we — do you think we should keep our horns covered? For the trading company, at least. It might make some of the human clientele more comfortable, and—"
"Absolutely not," Jake said, before she'd even finished the sentence.
Both sisters looked up at him.
"I mean it," he said, firmer now. "Neither of you are to hide anything about what you are or who you are. Not for customers, not for nobles, not for anyone who's uncomfortable doing business with an oni, who's doing better business than they are. Same goes for Frederica, or anyone else we bring on. Nobody covers up who they are to make somebody else more comfortable. Not on my payroll."
Ram's expression shifted — something sharpening behind her usual dry composure, close to real approval. "Mildly impressive," she murmured, mostly to herself. "For a horny moron."
Rem, for her part, had gone a little pink, staring very intently at the ledger like it had suddenly become the most interesting object in the room.
Before they got much further, Jake found himself glancing over at Ram, something more careful working its way into his expression.
"Hold still a second," he said. "I want to check something."
Ram raised an eyebrow but didn't argue. Observe.
[Observe: Ram]
Level 16 (Recovering)
HP: 88/88
MP: 155/155
Oni Bloodline: 74% Restored
Horn Regeneration: Stage 3 of 4
He exhaled, releasing some tension he hadn't fully clocked easing out of his shoulders. Six weeks ago her bloodline had barely cracked past half. Seventy-four percent, climbing steadily — whatever the potion she had taken and the mana-rich atmosphere of the Leyline around Thornhollow were doing, it was working.
"Well?" Ram asked, arms crossed, watching him watch the readout.
"You're healing faster than I expected," Jake said. "Bloodline's most of the way back. Horn's almost done regrowing." He hesitated, then added, more quietly, "I wanted to make sure this place was actually helping. Not just — housing you both while you got worse."
Something in Ram's expression flickered, just briefly, before she covered it with her usual dry composure. "You checked my stats mid-business-meeting because you were worried."
"I can multitask."
"You're an idiot," Ram said, though it came out softer than the words alone would suggest.
Rem, watching the exchange over the top of her ledger, said nothing — but she was smiling, like she'd just confirmed something she'd already suspected for a while.
By the time they'd worked through everything — the split, the coin, the hiring policy, Frederica's name added to the roster, Ram's stats double-checked and approved — the light outside had shifted into golden rays that streaked across the study desk. Jake realized, with some surprise, that this was the first time in six weeks the three of them had sat in a room together doing something that wasn't fighting for their lives or negotiating with someone who wanted to eat them.
"That's everything," he said finally, gathering the last of the signed papers into a neat stack. "Both businesses, both of you, full authority. I trust you."
Ram studied him for a moment, that same assessing look from before. "You say that like it's simple."
"It is simple," Jake said. "I just also happen to mean it."
He stood, tucking away his own copy of the paperwork away, and the three of them made their way back out through the estate — past the newly restocked shopfront, past the training yard, out to the front gate where the last of the afternoon light was catching on the ivy the guild crew had trained up the stonework.
Rem lingered a moment at the door, looking back at the house like she was memorizing it. "It doesn't feel real yet," she admitted. "Having something that's actually ours."
"Give it a week," Jake said. "You'll be arguing with Ram about the colours of the building before you know it."
"I do not argue," Ram said. "I simply make correct decisions and Rem eventually agrees with them."
"That is not what happened with the curtains."
"The curtains were a design failure on your part, Rem, not a disagreement."
Jake let them bicker, some quiet part of him just enjoying the sound of it — two people who'd spent weeks flinching around each other now settled enough to argue about curtains like it was the most natural thing in the world.
At the gate, Ram walked him the last few steps, close enough that only he could hear her. "Do something like that again," she murmured, "and you might actually earn yourself a reward, next time you come back she whispered before bitting his ears and leaving him flustered feeling weak in the knees." A short, deliberate "sharp" pain from his ears jolted him back to now. Then she pulled back, arms crossed, that same dry smirk settling into place. "Horny moron."
"Working on it," Jake said, ears warm.
Rem just gave him a small, genuine smile — the kind that didn't need any commentary attached to it — and said, "Come back safe."
"I will," Jake said, and meant it.
With one last look at the two of them, standing together in the doorway of a home and two businesses that were finally, properly theirs, Jake pulled up the system and activated the return function.
[Scenario Complete: First Summon]