“I’m pretty sure that we won’t ever get as much luck as we did a few weeks ago.” Hasbel said with reluctant certainty.

  “Why is that?” I asked him.

  “It just seems like all of a sudden, people just realized that our insurance wasn’t very trustworthy yet.” he shrugged.

  It has been two weeks since I started trying to sell insurance in the town of Murgi alongside the teenage Hasbel, who I hired for his skills as the son of a merchant. While we did find some success at first, it petered out to merely a fraction of what it once was.

  “Why could that be?” I enquired.

  “Well.. I’ve heard people saying that they should wait until it's actually an established business and that they’ll just be scammed.” he said after a moment of idle thought.

  While I had a hunch as to the reason for the lack of demand, it still confused me. Why had the first attempts worked so well, while the succeeding ones brought significantly grimmer results. Perhaps there was some other reason for it, but either way I couldn’t afford to wait that long mainly because of the looming specter of the village’s distrust towards my match-making business. If I wanted to continue with my other venture I needed to ensure that I placated the people as soon as possible, otherwise it was all too obvious what would happen next if they weren’t.

  “How long will it take to change this perception?” I asked.

  “Around about, two to three months?” he said, uncertain.

  “That’s a bit too long for my liking.” I remarked. “We still have to pay the men we’re training as well as for the equipment necessary for them.”

  “Well… I think you have to find some other source of income or else you’ll have to slow down with the insurance company, unfortunately.” he said solemnly.

  With that final statement, he slowly sauntered off from the lot wherein I planned to turn into the base of operations for the insurance company.

  I really didn’t want to use the money that I earned from the match-making business to fund the insurance venture anymore than I already did, so I needed to diagnose the problem and solve it in order to get anywhere with selling insurance.

  As Hasbel said, the issue was mainly one of legitimacy. In my old world, most businesses’ legitimacy either came from the efficacy of their product or how they spread their reliability amongst the populace. My matchmaking business wasn’t too hard to prove to be legitimate since it was obvious to anyone with a matchstick and a pair of working eyes. However, since I purposely didn’t want to expose myself as the head of the insurance company, I wasn’t really able to exude trust in the fact that I would reimburse anyone.

  Despite this, Hasbel still somehow managed to sell a decent amount of insurance in his first attempt which really just spoke a lot about his charisma and convincingness in selling his product. In addition to that I know that he wasn’t the one doing anything out of the ordinary because my informant Mim, who I tasked with telling me about the going-ons in the group of future firefighters, hasn’t seen any unusual behaviour coming from Hasbel which made me suspect that it might have been an external factor.

  However while I could’ve gone making baseless suspicions for my lack of success all day, that still wouldn’t fix the problem. To remedy this issue, I would need to find someone or something to tie my business to in order to make sure that people had confidence in it. Presumably I wanted someone whom all the people know so anyone like Shur or people from the smuggling guild are out. Even if Shur had the utmost trust of everyone he knew, he was one to supply goods than sell them himself so I wouldn’t have expected him to be known by too many people. Piyan, my employee who worked to sell matches, was also out since I didn’t want to connect my insurance business with my match-making one since I was sure that it wouldn’t end well.

  I needed someone whose word held weight in this town, amenable to tying my product to their name, and who I could trust to keep their word. I pondered the options I had for a moment until coming to a grim realization, that I had only one viable option in this regard.

  The Yad.

  While I would prefer not to work with him solely due to the malicious feeling that I got from him, I couldn’t lie to myself that he wasn’t a good option to work with. As a matter of fact, he was the only person that I could use to make sure the insurance business went well.

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  Despite my intuition screaming otherwise, I needed to take this course of action in order to make sure that I kept what I had. Perhaps if I worked with him, he could dispel the rumours of the business’ untrustworthy nature that hindered it so. But if I wanted to use his good name for my own purposes, I needed something to give in exchange. Nothing came to mind yet, so I decided to figure it out with my meeting with the Yad proper.

  I made sure that everything was in order before I left to meet the Yad, noticing that the compound was more busy than usual. However, I ignored this oddity and strolled up to the bureaucratic center of the town as I did many times in the past, however what made this time different was that I was alone. In previous meetings, I needed to acquire the help of Qaton to make sure that my will was conveyed. However, now that I had a deeper grasp of the language, I could understand most of what was being said and make sure that the Yad knew exactly what I meant.

  As I walked in, I noticed a crowd of normal citizens patiently waiting along a bench. This was probably due to the fact that contrary to when I met with the Yad at odd hours of the day, this was the regular time for someone to meet with the Yad to discuss pertinent issues. Acknowledging the queue, I waited for what seemed like thirty to forty minutes before finally getting an audience with the Yad.

  The Yad wasn’t any different than how he’d usually be, a short and stubby middle-aged man draped in luxurious clothing. Preferring to keep things direct, we exchanged greetings then wanting to get straight into business I wanted to let him in on something that I didn’t want to get out to the public.

  “I’ve started a venture, one that I would prefer to keep a secret. Could you do that?” I asked in a hushed town so as not to be overheard by any passing bureaucrat.

  “What kind of business?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “I need your word first that this remains among us.”

  He looked at me as if he was trying to decide whether it would be more beneficial to agree or disagree, but ultimately he seemed to think that playing along would work out best for him.

  “You have my word.” he said firmly.

  “I’ve started a sort of insurance business.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s essentially a guarantee that I’ll recompense people for any fire in exchange for a monthly fee.” I explained.

  “Don’t you own that matchmaking business?”

  “I do.”

  He pressed further, “Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”

  “It is.” I admitted.

  A wave of understanding hit him as I revealed my reason for requiring his secrecy, he flashed a sly smile. One which showed that he understood how much I needed what I told him to stay hidden from the public eye.

  “That’s ********** that you’d do good to hide. No wonder you wanted my silence.” the Yad said.

  “That’s right.” I nodded.

  “What gave you the idea to start ********* like that?”

  “It’s a response to what you told me a few weeks ago, something about the town not appreciating that my matches were used to burn down some houses.”

  “I remember that, so you’ve been ****** on this ever since then?”

  “I have.” I said proudly.

  “Makes sense.” he nodded. “So what ****** you here other than to just catch up?”

  I stared into his eyes and plainly said “I need your legitimacy.”

  He turned his head and asked “Why would you need something like that?”

  “I think it would be wise to have you connected with the business to show that it has your trust.” I responded.

  “That ******* would be a good idea… for you.”

  “I’m guessing you want something in return?”

  “You’re right. I’m not exactly oblivious to what happens in my ****, so I already knew about the insurance ****** and had a ***** it was you. I also heard about some men you had recently hired to fight the fires of your ******. It would be a nice gesture if you were to use this ***** to take care of all of the fires instead of just the ones of your **********.” he said, with a coy grin.

  As he revealed all he knew, I tried my best to give off the impression that I was unfazed despite how internally shocked I was that he knew all of that.

  I knew that this wasn’t a very good development. In fact, this was very, very bad. I had underestimated how much the Yad knew about what was going on in his town, so I thought that I could take the initiative in making a deal with the Yad. However it seemed like he was already prepared for this even before I even thought about speaking with him, which told me that I would need to be more cautious with him going forward.

  “So, I would be doing this for free?”

  “Of course not, I would put my **** in your little ******** to help **** support for it. That would do wonders for you, would it not?” he said with confidence and a hint of condescension.

  While I didn’t like how the deal was being presented, I didn’t think it was all too bad. That just went to show how valuable the Yad's support was on this. However, I needed some time to think it over to make sure that it was worth it.

  “I’ll think about it.” I responded.

  “I don’t think we have to prolong this, so I would prefer if we did this here and now.”

  “Sorry, but I don’t agree.” I protested.

  He seemed unexpectedly annoyed by my resistance, until something came to mind which brought back his confident demeanor.

  “This may be unrelated but a source of mine told me about a strange observation that they noticed.”

  “How is this related?” I asked, irritated.

  “Let me finish. They found the carpenters guild ************ in the plot of **** that used to be Halel’s, which is strange since that land should **** under my jurisdiction since he lacked any ******** to ******** it to.”

  “That is definitely strange.” I responded nonchalantly, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of an emotional response.

  Despite the air of confidence that I tried to project externally, I was once again baffled by how much the Yad knew. I had yet another problem that I needed to deal with and once again, the Yad had the upper hand. To put it rather crudely, the Yad had me by the balls.

  “I’ll let it slide if we have our agreement, and no one will ever take issue with it again. So, deal?” he said as he offered his hand.

  Seeing that I had no choice, and that agreeing was the best way out of this, I shook his hand despite how much I was annoyed by how much dirt the Yad had on me and how well he used it to get his way.

  “Fine.” I said, annoyed by the fact that I had no choice but to agree.

  And with that we concluded our brief meeting, then went our separate ways. I got what I wanted, the Yad’s support, but felt like I lost. I would have to make sure that next time didn’t turn out the same way it did today, and that I would be more prepared next time.

  After a moderately lengthy trek, I finally reached the compound to find the whole gang of smugglers preparing for something. Everything was being loaded into nondescript wooden crates to prepare for a journey of some sort.

  I found Qaton and Darat also participating in this strange behavior and, puzzled, I wanted to know what was going on.

  “What is the group preparing for?” I asked Qaton.

  “We finally found the source of the disturbances, we’ll be gone for a while.” he responded.

  This wasn’t a great time for this to happen, since I had Hasbel, the Yad and the insurance business to deal with without the support that I would normally have. However, I knew that I would persevere and make do… hopefully.