Chapter 20: Negotiations (4)
The chairs had been rearranged.
The sunlight filtered in at a gentler angle.
The chaos of the earlier meeting now felt like a half-remembered fever dream as Lucien sat with his arms lightly resting on the table.
Thalia Fey, the Everwind representative, sat across from him, her posture straight but not stiff, her practical clothes and leather-bound notebook making her seem more like an adventurer who had accidentally wandered into a boardroom.
“So,” Lucien began, “as I mentioned earlier, the apple harvest will be sorted into five tiers. The best of the crop, flawless apples, will be sold as premium goods under a new brand. The next-best tiers go to regular markets. The lower ones get used for pies, cider, or seeds. And whatever’s left, we’ll sell the wood from dying trees to places that use applewood for smoking meats and the like.”
Thalia tapped her pen once, then nodded slowly.
“Not a bad plan. You have clearly thought it through.”
She flipped through her notebook.
“One thing, though, you are banking on a strong yield from the orchard. What happens if a cold snap ruins the early bloom?”
Lucien grimaced.
“Honestly? Then we are screwed.”
He cleared his throat.
“But I think we’ll be fine. Vaelira and Terrin, the gardener, have done some good work reviving the orchard.”
“Still, hope for the best. plan for the worst,” Thalia said.
“How about this: if the harvest is lower than expected, we’ll pay more per apple to cover your losses. If it’s higher, you sell us the surplus at a small discount. That way, we both win or both bleed a little, depending on the season.”
Lucien blinked.
“That’s... actually reasonable.”
“We prefer fair over friendly,” Thalia replied with a small smile.
“Also, I’ll want some level of exclusivity for the highest quality apples. Not complete control, just priority access.”
“Fine,” Lucien said, nodding.
“But only by region. I am not handing you the whole continent.”
“Fair,” she replied.
“And for the grading system, who decides which apples fall into which tier?”
Lucien didn’t hesitate.
“Terrin. He knows the orchard like the back of his hand.”
Thalia raised an eyebrow.
“Does he know how to document that properly? We’ll need records, standards, repeatable methods.”
Lucien opened his mouth to say of course, but paused.
He glanced over at Sir Richardson and Vaelira, as if they might jump in, but both were too busy pretending not to eavesdrop while clearly hanging on every word.
Thalia continued, “I am not questioning his experience, just whether it can be used in a formal agreement. If we base the entire contract on his judgment, it needs to be more than gut feeling.”
Lucien frowned, then slowly nodded.
“Alright. Let’s ask him. He deserves that much.”
He turned toward Richardson.
“Sir Richardson, could you please go fetch Terrin?”
The man blinked as if pulled out of a dream.
“Terrin? Yes. Of course. Right away!” And just like that, he was off, nearly tripping over the corner of the rug as he dashed out.
A moment of quiet followed.
Thalia scribbled a few notes in her book.
“For the record,” she said without looking up, “this is already better than half the estate negotiations I have sat through. Most nobles try to sell me dreams with no dirt under their nails. At least you are honest.”
Lucien gave a half-shrug.
“I suppose ours is a dream as well, just planned and prodded enough for it to resemble a business pitch.”
Thalia finally looked up.
“That would explain it.”
Beside him, Vaelira sipped her tea and gave him a sidelong glance.
Her thoughts, however, were far from her calm exterior.
‘If he was even a tenth as good with a sword as he is at negotiation…’
She mused.
***
As Lucien leaned slightly forward, continuing his discussion with Thalia over pricing tiers and logistical contingencies, Vaelira sat back in her chair, cradling her teacup in both hands.
Her face remained composed, the very image of noble decorum.
But inside, her thoughts moved with amused sharpness.
‘He is absurd,’ she thought.
‘That same man, flailing a sword like it was a broom handle at the blacksmith’s forge just days ago, is now negotiating trade structures with the Everwinds like he was born to it.’
She recalled the moment vividly, Lucien swinging a training blade with such awkward footing that the blacksmith had winced.
He hadn’t so much attacked the training dummy as politely tapped it with increasing frustration, pausing between each attempt to grumble about "center of gravity" and “why this thing weighs so much.”
And then there was the time on the estate grounds.
She had caught sight of him alone with a practice dummy, shoulders hunched, legs stiff.
He had muttered something like “This should be just like in that one anime” before immediately overbalancing and nearly smacking himself in the shin with his own blade.
The only thing remotely dangerous about his technique had been how close he came to impaling his own foot.
‘He has no instinct for it,’ she thought.
‘No natural rhythm. No sense of body alignment. And yet…’
And yet here he was, eyes focused, speech precise, pushing back on an Everwind representative with the calm determination of a veteran merchant prince.
Not domineering, not arrogant, just... grounded.
Unshaken.
Surprisingly deft in the way he took Thalia’s counterpoints, processed them, and shaped his responses.
‘Is this what he’s actually good at?’
Vaelira wondered, studying him anew.
‘Not swordsmanship, not estate management... but this? Talking. Weaving plans. Turning conversations into weapons and contracts into shields.’
It was jarring in its contrast, and oddly... reassuring.
‘Quite a bundle of delightful surprises you are. Lucien Crowley.”
Her gaze lingered on Lucien for just a moment longer before she turned back to Thalia, her expression cool and unreadable once again.
***
To anyone watching, say, the other two half-holding their breath in the background, Lucien Crowley looked like a man completely unfazed by the high-stakes negotiation unfolding across the table.
He leaned slightly forward, spoke with calm precision, and met Thalia Fey’s sharp gaze without so much as a flinch.
If anything, he looked… comfortable.
At ease.
Like someone discussing logistics over coffee and not fencing with a representative from the most ruthless economic syndicate on the continent.
Why?
Because Lucien, in a twist so cosmic it bordered on divine comedy, had no idea who the hell he was talking to.
Everwind?
Sounded like a high-end hairdryer brand.
He had heard the name, sure, everyone threw it around like some kind of whispered warning, as if invoking it too loudly might summon interest rates with teeth.
But he had chalked that up to noble melodrama.
Aristocrats had a flair for turning ordinary things into opera.
In truth, if someone had stopped the meeting to say, “Hey Lucien, by the way, you are negotiating with the equivalent of a shark that learned accounting,” he probably would have started sweating blood on the spot.
But no one said anything. And ignorance, as it turns out, was powerfully liberating.
Lucien wasn’t intimidated.
He wasn’t overthinking.
He wasn’t stammering through flowery honorifics like every other noble nitwit who had probably grown up hearing Everwind bedtime horror stories.
He was just doing what he used to do best.
Negotiate.
Back in his previous life as Kim Jihoon, he had taken up a long string of part-time online jobs.
But the one that had stuck, oddly, lucratively, and to the eternal confusion of his friends, was his work as an after-hours insurance negotiator.
It was, in his words, “being paid to argue politely with unreasonable people who owned boats.”
He had learned to keep a straight voice while hearing the most ridiculous claims from half-sober callers scattered across international waters.
There was the Brazilian businessman who demanded compensation because his yacht party had been “attacked by mermaids,” who, upon closer questioning, turned out to be naked snorkelers from a bachelorette cruise.
Or the wealthy retiree who claimed a hurricane had turned his beachfront condo’s flamingo lawn ornaments into “ballistic projectiles,” damaging his marble fountain and traumatizing his Pomeranian.
Or the retired Scottish expat in Thailand who claimed his pet iguana had eaten his neighbor’s Rolex, and that the watch’s stainless steel backplate had given the poor lizard a tummy ache, thus demanding reimbursement for both the Rolex and a year’s worth of gourmet iguana feed.
He had spent three hours on that call.
By the end of it, both parties agreed on a 40% payout, a veterinary apology letter, and a non-binding mutual acknowledgment that the iguana was a "good boy."
And of course, there was the infamous “pirate incident,” where a German shipping magnate wanted a full damage claim after his yacht had been boarded by cosplayers during a Caribbean festival.
The invaders had, apparently, "confiscated the rum" and replaced the captain’s hat with a Pikachu beanie.
“Emotional distress,” the claimant insisted.
He had talked that one down to a drink voucher and a commemorative photo package.
Then there was the Australian guy with the parrot who called in at 3 a.m. to ask if his policy covered “acts of God,” and when pressed for details, clarified that the act in question was his parrot reciting eldritch phrases after a lightning strike hit the boat’s Wi-Fi antenna.
Lucien had talked him down to a deductible and a referral to an exorcist.
Probably.
Compared to that?
Thalia Fey, deadpan, professional, frighteningly competent, was an absolute delight.
She asked about risk mitigation, he answered with tiered harvest strategies.
She pushed on grading standards, he pulled in Terrin.
The back-and-forth had rhythm, like jazz, if jazz wore a necktie and carried a calculator.
He was in the zone.
His domain.
This wasn’t a duel, it was a customer service call, and baby, Lucien had scripts.
The best part?
He didn’t even realize he was tap-dancing across a bed of nails.
Everyone else in the room was holding back panic sweats while Lucien confidently pushed terms and capped regional exclusivity like he was dealing with a moderately pushy vendor at a farmer’s market.
He wasn’t brave.
He was blissfully, gloriously uninformed.
And it was working.
***
