Starting Today, I’ll Work as a City Lord - CH 87

Liu Feng hadn’t expected that Weya would faint just by knowing that she was wearing his clothes. He thought that it was partially because Weya hadn’t fully recovered and partially because of the stimulation from the knowledge of wearing his clothes that caused her heart to beat too fast for her to handle, leading her to faint.

“It seems that I’m actually pretty handsome for a girl to faint from the excitement of wearing my clothes.”

Liu Feng’s narcissism made Anri cover her mouth with her hands to prevent herself from bursting out in laughter. She knew that the actual reason was that Weya had been in a constant state of shock and excitement, so her heart had been beating rapidly the whole time, and that had caused her to faint. Well, she wasn’t going to tell Liu Feng that though.

They could only head back to the City Lord’s Mansion after Weya fainted. Mina carried Weya the whole time, and Weya had woken up halfway but had pretended to still be unconscious because she was too embarrassed to see Liu Feng.

What do I do? I’m not pure anymore, am I? Weya had constantly been thinking about that problem. Mother said that before she gets married, a girl must be clean and pure. A girl can’t hold a boy’s hand, can’t let a boy see her naked body, and ca- can’t wear a boy’s clothes!

Weya had always remembered the 108 boy-proofing styles that her mother had taught her, which had apparently been created by her mother and father together before she was born.

“It’s over! Weya, you’re not pure anymore. You will definitely get pimples on your body. Mother said that if you touch something from a boy, you must wash your hands or you will get pimples.” Weya then thought about how she had been wearing Liu Feng’s clothes for the whole night. My body must be full of pimples now, right?

Thinking this, a shiver ran through Weya’s body, and her head felt a bit dizzy again.

If Liu Feng knew what Weya was thinking, he would be sighing about how innocent the people in this world were.

“Well, Anri was just playing a joke on you. The clothes are all brand new. Young Master has yet to wear them.”

Weya turned her head to the source of the sound and saw Mina.

“Really?” Weya asked in a small voice.

“Really!” Mina nodded her head. She remembered that when she was little, her mother had told her that girls shouldn’t let themselves be taken advantage of by boys, and one of the things that her mother had taught her was that girls shouldn’t wear boys’ clothes. As such, she could understand Weya’s feelings, and she thought that it would be fine to tell her a well-intentioned lie.

Most beastkin families teach their daughters that to prevent them from being “abducted” by boys. Since most beastkin girls have extremely curious hearts, their parents could only try to keep them “safe” from boys by scaring them.

“Phew… that’s great!” Weya breathed a sigh of relief.

Mina tilted her head, and the corners of her mouth lifted into a small smile. This rabbit girl is unexpectedly cute. Well, I guess it’s more like good parental protection. Most beastkins who have been out in the world for a few years will understand that those teachings were just parents scaring their daughters to not fall in love too early in their lives and more importantly, to prevent a certain forbidden behavior.

This was basically the other world version of theft prevention from the next door neighbor boy!

After returning to the City Lord’s Mansion, Liu Feng went to the study, while Nicole, Mina, and Anri took Weya away, saying that they were going to get to know each other better.

Liu Feng frowned as he looked at the financial statements of Xi Yang City.

There are too few sources of income for Xi Yang City- close to none. The small amount of wheat outside of the city is impossible to support Xi Yang City alone. It was previously possible to earn copper coins by selling wheat, but now that Liu Feng had taken all of the wheat into his possession and prohibited the sale of wheat to other cities, it was impossible to do so.

“It seems that I need to find something that can cover the loss of profit from prohibiting the sale of wheat. Otherwise, Xi Yang City will have a shortage of raw materials.”

Liu Feng pondered about what he could do. A city can’t close itself up. It must trade with the outside world, or it would be difficult for the city to develop.

He immediately removed the option of selling wheat from his mind. Even if he did sell wheat, he would sell processed and refined wheat, or wheat made into other products to maximize profits. After all, a catty of rough, unprocessed wheat would hardly make him any steel coins.

Since food wasn’t up for consideration, the only other thing up for consideration was man-made products and crafts. Liu Feng decided to go with the clothing industry- the production of linen.

The linen in this world was slowly woven using their hands- they didn’t have any spinning machines. What they did have, however, were sewing machines. The sewing machines didn’t have great performance and the clothes they made had linen threads of different sizes and would continuously scratch the skin.

The clothes that nobles wore were made from linen threads that were carefully selected with about the same size. This made the cost of the clothes rise up by a lot, making it impossible for commoners to afford them.

Many commoners couldn’t even afford regular linen clothes- some just wore animal hides or clothes made from grass. It was fine in the summer, but in the winter, many of them that wore grass clothes or had no clothes at all would freeze to death.

Otherwise, there was no way a noble like Tory would want to buy Liu Feng’s clothes- one of their objectives was to study the clothes to see if they could learn anything.

Clothes were indispensable for people, and the commoners that could afford to wear a complete set of clothes could be said to be living a pretty decent life. Most of the commoners would only have 2 sets of clothes for one family.

A while ago, when Liu Feng had been on Earth, he had seen an interesting piece of information on the internet. A family with multiple men that only had 2 sets of clothes would have the clothes be used exclusively by the 2 men that would be out working during the day. The other men would wait until nighttime before going out to work, as that way, no one would be able to see that they weren’t wearing clothes.

The information was a bit exaggerated, but it was pretty accurate in this world. Many of the kids- only the boys- would be out naked.

Well, the root cause of this problem was the low production and high cost of linen in the industry. Just a square meter¹ of linen would cost dozens of copper coins, and the clothes made from that linen were too expensive for most families to afford.

The reason that Weya’s parents had scared her into not wearing a boy’s clothes was because of how expensive and rare linen was. As such, wearing a boy’s clothes was basically an acceptance of the boy’s love.²

If a boy got home naked (assuming that he went out wearing clothes), there were two possibilities. The first was that the boy gave his clothes to the girl that he loves for her to take home, and the girl’s family would use the clothes to judge how good the boy’s family was doing financially. The other possibility was, well, the boy was robbed and stripped of his clothes.

Not only could linen clothes be used for wedding proposals, but they could also represent a person’s face as it shows how well off they are. As such, families that could afford to buy new clothes were the envy of their neighbors.

Author’s Notes:

Felt groggy after waking up in the morning. I didn’t even get the chance to brush my teeth before I started to write. (￣▽￣).

Translator’s Notes:

¹ The author does not say whether it’s a square meter of linen or a meter of linen thread.

² Those of you that thought the forbidden behavior mentioned earlier was something else (you know what I’m talking about), raise your hand, go over to the reflection corner, and reflect on your thoughts.

For some reason, part of my house has no electricity and the other part of my house has electricity. Also took a 3-hour nap cause no alarm to wake me from my nap due to no electricity, so here I am up translating past my bedtime.