Night Shift

While Edmund was in the midst of a conversation with his mother, a young kid barged into the kitchen as he ran towards Edmund while shouting.

"Brother! Have you brought them?" The young child jumped on Edmund's left leg as he asked.

The duo of mother and son were not so surprised by the child's behavior; they simply smiled as Edmund patted him on the head.

"Hey little fellow, you seem very energetic today, is it perhaps because I promised to bring you some sweets?" Edmund said as he ruffled his younger brother's hair.

The little boy seemed to not like being called a "little fellow" so he protested verbally. "I am not a little fellow! I am already a grown-up, I can even help mom do some chores."

"Ohh, I see, you are indeed a big boy now." Edmund looked at his mom, then back at Brian, and smiled as he continued. "Since you are a big boy, I don't think sweets are something you would want, seeing as they are mostly for children. Wait for a moment, I will go look for the neighbor's kids to give them yours."

Brian looked on in disbelief as his elder brother took a piece of fabric containing something in it from one of his pockets and pretended to make his way to the door of the house.

It took him but a moment to wake up from his micro-trance and run after Edmund screaming. "Noo, you can't do that, that's mine, MINE!"

Jennet looked on with a wide smile at her two sons as they played around with each other, feeling an immense amount of happiness, a momentary respite from their worsening conditions that had plagued them in the last few years.

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William sat at his desk as he thought about his sprouting business; he had just had a good idea about a way to expand his potential customers, yet implementing it would be slightly tricky.

He knew that tomorrow was going to be the day of the small celebration his father had organized; he knew that there were going to be many nobles there, none too powerful, which was good, yet many that he still had to deal with carefully.

His idea was simple; he just needed to make a variant of the soap that was of higher quality; he would probably need to give the soap some scent by mixing it with some herbs, which was the relatively easy part.

The challenging part was to not only give the sample to these nobles and hope they would like it, but he also needed to keep himself outside the picture.

He could introduce this product as simply a novelty he had discovered by chance that was made by a small company that had nothing to do with him, yet he knew that if he did that, all the political clout and therefore protection Edmund would have would be gone.

If the product does well and the nobles see potential in it, not only the general nobility, but even his father may want to get his hands on it, after all, this was his territory.

William thought about this whole situation for a while, yet still found no apparent answer; should he sacrifice a potentially invisible trump card for explosive growth? Or should he play it safe and let go of this opportunity instead and let his brand grow organically among the local population first?

These were the options he could come up with, for now; he knew that even the "organic" growth would only stay under the radar for so long, soon, not only his father but even other businessmen would learn of this very profitable new product and want a piece of the cake.

"Maybe I need to go public with this very soon, far sooner than I thought; what the hell was I thinking? Fooling my father in his own territory? Introducing a new revolutionary product that not only improves the overall health of the population but is also cheap and could bring in massive amounts of profits and hope to keep it to myself?"

William thought to himself, he realized that he was incredibly naive when it came to this subject and decided that it was better to inform his father now, and explain this whole situation as nothing more than him having invested his money in this small business, and them discovering soap by sheer "luck" rather than wait until thing becomes public.

Though it was still a bit ridiculous to use luck as an excuse, it was far better than having to go through the scrutiny that would no doubt be directed towards him once this whole thing blows up.

With his mind made up, William got up and headed to Edmund's house to agree on the same story should his father send for someone to question him. After which he was planning on going to his father's study chamber, hoping that this whole soap thing does not rise too much suspicion and blow up on his face.

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Once William and Edmund got their story to match, they went to business. It was already nighttime at this point? and they had to work on a prototype by tomorrow in time for the small celebratory banquet. William knew he will be late so he informed his father beforehand so as to not make him worry too much and promised to explain everything the next day.

So after giving Edmund an idea about what he wanted to make, they headed to the warehouse, this time William not bothering to hide his guards since it was nighttime, he did not have the time to potentially be bothered by a random robber or drunkard.

After reaching their destination, William first severely reprimanded the night guard who they found to already be asleep, and threaten to fire him then and there if he did not get his act together, after which they entered the warehouse and started work.

"Thank god we have enough ingredients in stock, otherwise I have no idea where we could find them at this hour" William commented.

He had instructed Edmund long ago to fill the warehouse with enough ingredients to produce a lot of soap, not only were these ingredients supposed to produce the standard kind, but he had also asked him to buy a small batch of herbs so that they could, later on, try to produce more advanced types of soap, especially scented ones which would be mainly targeted at wealthier clients such as wealthy merchants and the nobility.

It was almost midnight by the time they were done with their product making and the duo was absolutely exhausted, not only were they not used to staying up so late, but it was also very hard to do all this while only using candle lights.

The process of making scented soap was not too hard as they simply had to crush the plants and add them to the mix, this would have been so much easier if they had a stock of soap at hand, since they could just melt those and add the herbs.

Seeing as they had given nearly all their inventory for free, now they had to make soap from scratch, not only that, but by the next day after it dries up they still have to package it a bit to make it presentable.

Having taken care of the work, the business partners respectively made their way home, William escorting Edmund with the guards so as to avoid any potential incidents at this late hour, before he too went to the castle district, thanked the guards for sticking with him, promised them some compensation and went to sleep.

Tomorrow was going to be an interesting day.