/
I sold the rental house to Butler, then bought the house beside it.
It’s better if the proprietor is different if it’s going to serve as an escape route, so we decided to do this. If the assaulters are meticulous, they’ll definitely check the owners and residents of the surrounding houses, right?
Butler sweetened the deal by taking all the beds along with the house, so I made a bit of profit. Well, it’s actually Retze, Dean and Chris who bought their beds. They’re totally thinking of bringing those with them when they move out, apparently. I brought the materials inside the house and assembled the beds inside the rooms, so it’ll probably be a hassle to bring them out, though.
Butler got a recommendation from the Adventurer’s Guild because he participated in the expedition and subjugation as a Silver ranked adventurer — I thought he registered at the same time as Ash, but it turned out that he’s a Silver all along. The person in question just waved it off by saying it’s part of his youthful follies.
Nobody objected during the Commerce Guild’s deliberation since they discovered that Ash also helped make the medicines for macular disease. Plus, the outflow of people in that particular district was quite bad, so they also wanted to fill it with more people.
The Gold-ranks’ hangers-on already left, save for a few. The Commerce Guild were probably troubled too since they won’t be able to fill the rooms up for a time even if they rent them out temporarily.
I’m always doing renovation stuff, huh. Well, I guess it’s fine since I like doing it, after all.
They requested me to do the wet area, so here I am doing a bit of grinding to fix the walls. We have shared walls so I can’t do a total overhaul, but all those crevices are so
 Well, I guess they hang tapestries to prevent drafts.
The wall on my side of the house has traces that a window had been previously installed
Er, actually, they just covered the entire window frame with plaster. It’s really sketchy, kinda like something straight from a horror movie or some crime scene. Ugh, wish they stopped doing things like this.
I scraped away where the window was then installed a shelf on it. Seems like this house was also built on this street later on — probably forced into place, too — leaving traces on the neighboring houses on both sides.
I sold all the remaining furniture here and left the house completely empty, then redid the windows to match the louver style I have in my house. I’m also doing the same construction job I did back when I renovated my rented house. The difference is that I removed the stone wall in the attic using『Zanzenken』(yeah, cheated for a bit), but because the hole was too smooth, I had to chip it here and there to cover up what I did and make it look more natural.
A meter-square hole opened up. I installed the cabinet with a lower shelf that can be opened in front of it.
If Dinosso’s family won’t live here, then the plan is to make it so that it can only be opened from Ash’s side.
I tested the jib door while carrying the materials for making an identical cabinet to the other side. Then I went down and entered Ash’s house through the front door.
「Sorry for the intrusion. 」
「Mm, come inside. 」
「We’ll be troubling you. 」
Butler and Ash guided me to the loft.
「It’s a jib door so we can’t put a lock on it, so are you going to lock the room’s door instead? 」
「Indeed. 」
I asked the thing that’s bothering me on our way up to the third floor.
「I don’t really like locking rooms
」
「Why? 」
「There’s the feeling that I’m going to be locked up. 」
It’s very rare for Ash to speak about things she doesn’t like. When I asked her about it, she told me that it’s because she had been locked in her room at night when she was a child. It turns out children of this world already sleep in their own rooms, even if they are still infants, and once they reach a certain age they won’t be allowed out of their rooms at night. Well, it’s the norm for families with huge houses, or should I say nobilities, apparently.
「How about the toilet? 」
「I had my wetnurse or the nanny at the antechamber
」
Then what about those families who didn’t have houses that huge?
 Eh, wait, yeah, they have their chamber pots inside their own rooms.
Ladders are the norm to access the attic. That’s also the case here in the rented house, so I want to do something about it. It’s dangerous when carrying things up, after all.
「So you’re already done with the other side? 」
「Yeah. I just have to assemble this one here. 」
This might sound pretty obvious, but the width and the sizes of the cabinets are the same since they’re placed back-to-back.
I explained the structure while they helped me assemble the cabinet. The shelves are heavy and the back panels are thick so that they wouldn’t slip into the hole in the wall.
「Whoa, it’s really well-made. 」
「It’s pretty great for a cabinet. 」
「I kept it simple because it’s supposed to be placed here. The back panel slides along the wall, so maybe you should put your stuff around three inches away from the wall on this side of the shelf. It might be hard to decide on what you’re going to put on the bottom shelf, I guess.”
They would want to hide their escape from their neighbor, so it wouldn’t be good for them to just hurl their baggage over there.
「Perhaps I might put an old blanket inside a basket. 」
「I see. 」
Let’s just leave this matter to them.
Still, both houses share a wall, and even the house behind them is sticking right next to each other, so windows were only installed facing the street side and also the courtyard. Ash’s first house and Retze’s rented house have an alley between them, so those houses have windows on one side, too.
Should I put a rooftop window in my house and in the rented house? What do you call this — is it a dormer window or something, the type of window that’s jutting out from a sloping roof? It’s just for the sake of having a window.
Will Tina and the kids be happy once I change the stairs to the attic and turn the place into a garret bedroom, kinda like a secret base? Nah, maybe I find it fascinating because I’m Japanese. Anyway, I want to make it, so make it I will.
Maybe I can make the stairs narrower, and you can enter by lifting a trapdoor in the ceiling — yup, it’s fun making it myself. Ahh, but then it might get too hot in summer and too cold in winter.
Never mind the cold, they didn’t have air conditioning here, so it might be too hot. But then, I got a feeling that Madam’s spirit might be able to do something about it

Whatever, I should renovate my house’s attic first.
_____
T/N: The terms I’m using to distinguish Jean’s houses XD remember, a person can only own up to two houses, so he had to sell the rental house so he could buy the other one.
My house – house given by deities
Rented house – smokescreen house, first one he rented, renovated and then bought
Rental house – he rented this out to the Retze, Dean and Chris, but ultimately sold it to Butler
Newest house – the house beside the rental house that has a shared wall with the rented house