CHAPTER 11

A few minutes passed since Henry and his men left.

Dustin was definitely still anxious but he had to hurry to his restaurant as it was already seven o’clock by then. He forgot to take Ulmer with him.

“I’ll go out and take a look around the neighborhood,” Ulmer said.

Robin only allowed him to leave after he wore the local clothes so that others wouldn’t be able to easily tell if he was an outsider or not.

On top of that, Robin told Kale to accompany Ulmer.

Kale just nodded in return.

“Why doesn’t he say anything?” Ulmer asked openly.

“Uh, about that…” Robin smiled and said, “he can’t speak. He’s born that way.”

“Oh…” Ulmer suddenly felt foolish for not approaching Kale to talk with him. Just because Kale was silent, he assumed that Kale didn’t want to speak with him.

“But he can use sign language,” Robin added and then spoke with Kale using signs.

Kale smiled back.

“What did you just say?” Ulmer asked.

“I told him he can introduce you to his friends,” Robin said. “He’s happy about it.”

Ulmer somewhat smiled. “Let’s head out then.” He waved his hand at Kale who hesitantly came to him. Seeing them walk out together, with Ulmer’s hand on Kale’s shoulder, Ayana and Robin felt very happy.

Ayana then washed everybody’s clothes. She also washed Ulmer’s clothes, and she found the bank card that did not have any person’s name written on it. “He already got himself a universal card?” She looked surprised. “This card itself costs 1 gold coin. Since he took this card, he must have come here to do some kind of trade or business,” she thought. “I’ll give him as much support I can.”

Meanwhile, Kale took Ulmer to a park, and a lot of small birds and squirrels came to him and picked the rice grains and seeds out of his palm.

Kale looked happy spending time with these animals, even though they were just doing their business, which was to eat from this human friend.

Kale began to talk with Ulmer using signals. He was trying to introduce some animals to Ulmer.

It took Ulmer a little while to understand that these were the actual friends of Kale that Robin talked about.

Ulmer pursed his lips and sat next to him and tried to get friendly with the animals. Kale gave him some seeds and grains, and Ulmer fed the birds.

They spent almost an hour. And time passed very slowly there, but Ulmer didn’t hate spending time for something like this as the atmosphere was very bright and soothing between seven to eight in the morning. And there were some birds that Ulmer hadn’t seen before. So, overly, it was a fun experience for him.

Then Kale signaled him that they should head to the restaurant.

Ulmer somehow understood it and responded by signaling him back, which pleasantly surprised him.

“How do you know sign language?” Kale asked through signals.

Ulmer himself looked surprised because he ended up using the signal language without even being aware of it. And then he understood that it was Dove’s doing. And Dove helped him continue talking with Kale in sign language.

Kale got so active as a result, and he kept talking a lot, and he praised Ulmer, saying that he was very good at sign language and was so much better compared to her parents or siblings.

Ulmer took the credit on the surface, but in his heart, he felt grateful toward Dove for his help.

Soon, they reached the restaurant.

It only had four tables with sixteen chairs allotted for customers, not including the three extra chairs used by the staff members. It was a much smaller restaurant than Ulmer expected.

There weren’t any customers inside right now, and Dustin looked nervous right now.

“Is everything alright, Father-in-law?” Ulmer asked.

“It’s been an hour since I opened the store,” Dustin said. “Normally, by now, we would have received at least ten customers, but not a single person came. Don’t you think this is odd?”

Ulmer’s expression changed. “You think that guy Henry is behind this?”

Dustin frowned. “He has so many friends in his neighborhood. It’s not hard for him to secretly tell those families to stop coming to our hotel.”

“Do you want me to go and ask them?” Ulmer asked.

“No, no, no, we cannot force our customers to come to our shop,” Dustin quickly said. “That would badly hurt our reputation.”

“I wasn’t thinking about using force,” Ulmer explained himself. “I will just query.”

Dustin still shook his head. “No. It’s not safe for you to do such a thing. Henry’s friends might take this as an excuse and fight you. I think that is part of their goal.”

“But we can’t let this continue, can we?” Ulmer tried to reason with him. “Otherwise, we’ll be forced to shut down the hotel.”

Dustin softly said, “There are no customers, so both of you go home. I’ll see if things change or not, and if they don’t, I’ll come home in the afternoon.” He then told Kale to tell Robin to not cook anything for lunch as they could just eat the food they made in the restaurant.

Kale obediently nodded. He was definitely saddened by all this, but he didn’t express himself freely like Ayana or Suki did.

And then Kale and Ulmer were returning home.

When they were passing by a big banyan tree, there were a group of young men playing poker in the shade of the tree. One of them looked at him and said, “Why don’t you play a game with us, Outsider?”

Ulmer heard them but kept walking.

“He seems to be in too much of a hurry to go back home and lick his wife’s feet,” that man said, making others laugh.

“Dustin isn’t home, either, so he can lick Robin’s feet, too,” another man said, making the rest laugh even more.

Ulmer stopped.