Bottles packed with colored ink stood in rows. I attached small wooden tags to each one, noting the oil and material combination. These I arranged in a shallow wooden box, and
Several hours of continuously mixing ink had pushed Josef and
Since my own writing board had run out of space, I'd borrowed
"The unpredictable colors are what make this so difficult."
"But when you look at everything like this, don't you think we're starting to see some patterns?"
Heidi peered happily over my shoulder at my writing board.
For work-related matters, Heidi could remember numbers and words, but she said she still couldn't read writing fluently. When it came to the color experiments, she had no choice but to memorize the results. That was why she'd been praising me with "You're amazing, Lady Mine!" every time she saw me writing things down. Personally, I thought Heidi's ability to memorize massive amounts of experimental results was the truly amazing thing.
"Unfortunately, Heidi's memory is only useful during experiments. That's far from amazing."
"...Just like Mine."
Josef and Lutz hit it off in the strangest ways and would periodically pat each other on the shoulder. It's nice when people find someone they get along with. It makes every day just a little more enjoyable.
"Well then, I'll have today's experiment results organized by the day after tomorrow."
"I can't write, so I'll need you to do it for me, Lady Mine."
Heidi and I laughed and shook hands before parting ways. I had been planning to head straight home to organize the results, but
"What is it, Gil?"
"
Gil looked down and murmured that quietly. Come to think of it, I had told him that once spring came, I'd have one made for him since he could now read and write.
"All right. Let's stop by
Since the forge was on Artisan Way, it wasn't far from the ink workshop. We'd be arriving just before the lunch break, so Johann might not be too pleased, but I headed for the forge anyway.
"Hello. Is Johann here?"
"Hey, little miss."
The master, who was serving another customer, looked toward the door with wide eyes, and the moment he spotted me, his face broke into a barely suppressed grin. Chuckling away, he gestured for me to take an empty seat.
"If you want Johann, I'll call him right now. Oi,
"Pfft!"
The master's teasing shout made Lutz and Gil quickly clamp their hands over their mouths. It seemed the name Gutenberg had completely stuck at the forge.
"I keep telling you not to call me that, Master!"
Gutenberg was a name to be proud of from my perspective, but Johann himself was clearly not fond of it. He protested tearfully at the master and came running out from the back.
"Hello, Johann."
"Ah, Myne-sama. Welcome."
"Sorry to bother you before lunch, but I have an order. Is that all right?"
"...I'm still working on your last order, though."
Johann looked uncomfortable—he was apparently in the middle of making the movable type letters I had ordered. Since the Chief Priest had shut down the printing project, the movable type wasn't all that urgent. I was fine with him slowly making a large batch over the course of two years or so.
"Please prioritize this order. It's for iron pens I've ordered before, but I need ones made for Gil."
"I'll do it!"
The moment I mentioned iron pens, Johann's face lit up brilliantly. He clenched his fist and thrust it upward. Eyes brimming with emotion, he murmured, "Ghh... It's been far too long since I had work other than movable type..."
...Sorry about that.
Johann, who apparently still had no patron besides me, had been endlessly making nothing but movable type. And while making movable type, the master and other artisans teased him by calling him Gutenberg. Maybe I should order different work from him from time to time.
"I'll be placing orders for things other than movable type soon."
For instance, an iron for making wax paper, an etching needle for hectograph printing, or a file for hectograph printing—several ideas came to mind for things I wanted Johann to help make. But no matter what I ordered, they were all tools for printing.
"I look forward to orders beyond movable type!"
I felt a twinge of guilt watching Johann accept the iron pen order with such delight. No matter how you looked at it, Johann was never going to escape the name Gutenberg.
After placing the order for Gil's iron pen and leaving the forge, the fourth bell rang out, signaling lunchtime.
"Myne, you're heading home, right?"
"Yeah."
"I'm starving and want to get back to the shop quickly. Sorry, but get on."
With that, Lutz squatted down on the spot. If he didn't hurry back, his share of lunch would apparently shrink.
When it came to rushing, I was a liability, so I quietly climbed onto Lutz's back. He sprang to his feet and broke into a half-run back toward the well plaza.
"Stay home this afternoon and organize today's results. I'll be checking on Mine Workshop after lunch and need to report to my master too. Don't go outside."
After setting me down at the well plaza and placing the writing board in my hands, Lutz dashed off toward the shop without delay. Lunch was clearly weighing on his mind.
After seeing Lutz off, I turned my gaze to Gil and
"...Gil and Damuel-sama, thank you both as well. I won't be going out again today, so please return to the
"Ahh, you'll be coming to the Temple tomorrow, right?"
"Yes. I'd really like to go to the ink workshop, but if I slack off on my feytool practice,
I put Lutz's writing board in my tote bag, climbed the stairs alone, and returned home.
"I'm home."
I tried to open the front door as quietly as possible. Even so, the hinges still creaked with a grating sound.
Slipping inside, Mother called out to me. "Welcome home, Myne. You're back early." Judging by where she was standing in front of the hearth, she was preparing lunch.
"Mother, where's Camille? Is he sleeping? Did he not wake up?"
"Yes, he's fine."
I asked while glancing toward the bedroom, and Mother smiled softly and nodded.
I crept into the bedroom so as not to wake Camille, peeked at his sleeping face, and set down my things. After that, I washed my hands and began eating lunch with Mother.
"Hwaa, hwaa..."
Midway through the meal, Camille began crying in a thin voice. Mother hurriedly finished her own food and rushed over to Camille.
"Myne, sorry, but could you clean up?"
"Sure."
I washed the dishes for myself and Mother and tidied away. Then, sitting at the kitchen table, I began copying the day's experimental results from my writing board and Lutz's writing board onto paper.
When I organized the results—which had seemed to have no pattern whatsoever—into a table, a few patterns began to emerge.
Linseed oil tended to shift toward blue, mish to green, paede to red, eise to yellow, and tuulm changed irregularly but produced pastel colors.
"Hmm, there are some results that break the pattern, but I think I'm starting to see a general trend."
The combination of materials could surprisingly produce quite a few colors. If I put these color-shift tendencies into a table, it looked like I could make more colors than I'd expected.
"Myne, what are you doing with that serious face?"
Mother had returned from the bedroom with Camille strapped into a baby sling made of cloth wrapped around and around. Finished with nursing and full, Camille had his eyes wide open.
"I'm making a picture book for Camille. To do that, I'm making pretty colored ink right now."
"You're making everything from scratch? That sounds like it'll take forever."
"Yeah, I think it will. Camille, are you in a good mood today?"
I stroked Camille's face as he sat snugly in the sling. He stared at my face without even blinking.
"Camille, Camille. I'm your big sister Mine."
After spending some time interacting with Camille, he began to nod off again. I watched Mother take him away to put him to sleep, then stared hard at the table I had made.
"Huh?"
Looking at the oil names, I noticed that Paru oil—a material I was very familiar with—wasn't included.
"I wonder how Paru oil would work? Maybe I should take some to the workshop. I also need to check whether the ink changes color when painted on paper, whether it holds up over time, and how layering works."
I jotted down ideas one after another. I'd need to ask Heidi about these and try them out.
The next day, I went to the Temple for feytool practice and to assist the Chief Priest. In the afternoon, I accompanied Delia, who would soon have free time once Dirk went to the orphanage. I also asked Lutz to bring back paper and brushes from the workshop so I could actually paint with the ink the following day.
On the day after that, I brought the last of the winter Paru oil along with paper and brushes, and headed to the ink workshop with Gil, Damuel, and Lutz.
Heidi must have been waiting impatiently, because she was pacing around in front of the workshop. Spotting us, her face lit up and she waved energetically.
"Good morning, Lady Mine! I've been waiting!"
"Good morning, Heidi. Here are the organized experiment results."
The moment we entered the workshop, I showed Heidi the paper with the summarized results. She leaned in with great interest, furrowed her brows as she examined the table, then slumped in defeat.
"I can sort of recognize some of the materials, but I can barely read any of it."
"Oh, and while I was organizing the table, I thought of some things I'd like to test..."
As I listed what I wanted to try, Heidi's eyes lit up and she nodded vigorously.
"Paru oil is only harvested in winter, so I didn't count it among the oils. Since it comes from a magic tree, the results might be interesting. Let's try it right away!"
Heidi and Josef each mixed different materials into the Paru oil I had brought. Heidi added a red material and Josef a blue one, and they kneaded and stirred vigorously, but no unusual color shifting occurred. The ink came out in exactly the colors intended.
"Both Paru oils produced the expected colors. Amazing."
After seeing so many inks shift colors in bizarre ways, I was genuinely impressed that the colors simply came out normally. I gazed at the ink on the marble slab with wide eyes.
Heidi also looked at the finished ink and let out an awed breath.
"The colors are vivid and really beautiful. As expected of a magic tree. ...If only we could harvest it outside of winter too."
"Indeed."
Paru oil, which could only be gathered during winter clearings, was not a convenient material to use. It was good oil, but not suited for mass production. What a shame.
While Heidi and I lamented, Josef was already moving on to preparations for the next step.
"Next, shall we try painting the inks we've made onto paper?"
Heidi helped Josef hustle over and bring all the inks we had made so far. Watching them prepare, I turned to Lutz.
"Hey, Lutz. Can Paru wood be made into paper?"
Since Trombe, a magic tree, served as material for high-quality paper, maybe Paru wood could become quality material too. Asked with hope born from the quality of Paru oil, Lutz gave an immediate answer: "No way."
"That's the kind of wood that melts away when you throw fire at it. It vanishes just from being steamed, so there's no way you could peel the bark off."
"...It's that weird of a wood?"
I had never been to the winter forest, so I'd never seen a Paru tree. I'd heard stories about it being a mysterious, beautiful tree that appeared only on clear winter mornings, but I still had no idea what it actually looked like.
"Lady Mine, we're ready."
Heidi called me over, so I told Gil—who was poised with a brush—to paint the inks onto paper. I had brought a few failed sheets of both Forin paper and Trombe paper. I didn't expect to make picture books on Trombe paper, but I wanted to see how the colors reacted regardless.
"...Whoa."
The colors actually looked different depending on the type of paper. Trombe paper showed the ink almost exactly as it had been made, but Forin paper made the colors look slightly muted. They were only slightly muted, so unless you put them side by side with Trombe paper, it wasn't all that noticeable. I told myself it would be fine, but as the ink dried over time, the colors shifted even further. They kept getting more and more muted.
"We might want to test other types of paper as well."
While I compared the Trombe paper and Forin paper side by side and groaned, Lutz gave a light shrug.
"For now, we'll only be using Forin paper, so why not just make colors suited to Forin paper?"
Lutz had a point. The only paper produced at Mine Workshop was Trombe and Forin paper. Since I'd be making the picture book on Forin paper, it made sense to center the colors around that.
"This red, for instance, was originally incredibly beautiful, but once painted and dried, it turns into a rather dark brownish red. It'd be perfect for drawing bloodstains."
"Who needs ink with that kind of limited use!"
I shrugged at Lutz's retort. There was a chance it could be useful—myths sometimes included scenes of bloodshed, after all.
"This really is difficult... I can see why art workshops keep their paint formulas secret."
Heidi gave a shrug of her own.
As for paints, no Contract Magic had been established, so any workshop could make them however they wanted. But the formulas were completely proprietary and closely guarded, and
For the nobility, workshops apparently took custom orders and delivered directly. Rosina, who had once been a Shrine Maiden attendant, had told me that. Since you couldn't get the same colors unless you ordered from the same workshop,
"Lady Mine, let's investigate why the colors shift!"
"The results are what matter."
I understood that basic research was important, but since I wanted to make a picture book for Camille, I felt it was a waste of time to dig into the underlying causes. I wanted ink that worked, and quickly.
"Well then, shall we try layering colors? Gil."
"Yes, Myne-sama."
Gil drew a smooth blue line over the various colors that had already been painted. The overlapping area immediately turned dark. Not pure black, but a dark shade—none of the colors remained vivid at all. "Do not mix. Dangerous"—so this was what that meant.
"...What do we do with this?"
We all stared at the paper Gil held up with its eerie dark discoloration and let out a collective sigh. The result was so far beyond expectation that no one could find words immediately.
Josef shook his head back and forth.
"It seems paints should basically be used one color at a time."
"But if you can't layer them, you can't draw pictures. There must still be some secret to the paints used in the painting workshop."
As Heidi said, if layering different paints turned everything dark, there was no way you could create the paintings displayed in the noble district. There was undoubtedly some secret hidden in those paints that I didn't know about.
"Let's call it a day. No matter how many colors we make, if they change so drastically over time and can't be layered, they're useless."
I slumped in defeat over the stalled ink-making, wondering if there was some way to sneak into the painting workshop and uncover their secret.
Since the ink couldn't be used right away, the colored ink project was essentially a failure. I trudged home and, while cooking dinner with Turi, reported on the day's results.
"So that's how things hit a dead end."
"Turning black when you layer colors is a real problem."
"Yeah, it really is. You can't print with that."
I pursed my lips in frustration while stirring the soup. Mother, who was nursing Camille while watching us cook, tilted her head in puzzlement.
"Aren't you using any fixative?"
"...Fixative?"
In my old life as Ehrenfest, there had been fixatives for photography and painting, but I had no idea what kind of fixative was used here.
Glancing at me as I tilted my head, Mother looked down at Camille at her chest and spoke.
"Fixative is a liquid used to set colors. When dyeing cloth, you use it to prevent the color from changing further..."
"Mother, tell me more. How do you make fixative?"
When I looked at her with sparkling eyes, Mother groaned.
"Is it all right to tell you?"
"I'll look into whether it runs into any Contract Magic issues myself."
"...Well, if Mine can look into whether it's permissible to make on her own, then I suppose it's fine."
With that, Mother told me.
Apparently, fixative base was made by taking the sap of a tree called Gnade, adding the stem of a flower called Hiline, and boiling it down until it thickened. When actually using it, you diluted it about twenty times with hot water.
"It might work differently on cloth and paper, so be careful."
"Thank you, Mother. I'll try it."
Now that I knew fixative existed, I immediately asked Lutz to gather the materials. Lutz didn't know about fixative either and looked impressed.
"I had no idea that existed. Good thing Aunt
"Yeah. Once the materials are ready, I want to try making it. Mother told me exactly how..."
I was humming happily at this ray of hope when Lutz and Gil both stopped me at the same time.
"Myne, just tell us how to make it."
"Right. We'll make it. Myne-sama mustn't do the work."
If it was being made at Mine Workshop, I wasn't allowed to do the work myself. I pursed my lips at being left out, but nobody came to my defense.
I looked up the Contract Magic at the commercial guild, had Benno track down the materials, and preparations to make the fixative were complete. That morning, both Lutz and Gil were buzzing with excitement about the new challenge. All I did was hand them a wooden tag with the detailed instructions, and my role was over.
Feeling a bit sore about being excluded, I told Rosina about the colored ink after my feytool practice and complained about being left out.
"So that's why I'm the only one excluded today, while Gil and Lutz are making the fixative."
"Oh my. So Myne-sama didn't know about fixative."
It wasn't my being excluded that caught Rosina's attention—it was the fact that I hadn't known about fixative. Her eyes went round.
"Fixative is essential for painting. Without it, you can't paint at all."
Apparently, fixative was well known here too. It was something you apparently couldn't paint without. However, Rosina said she had only ever used the finished product and didn't know how to make it.
"...Perhaps Myne-sama doesn't know how to use fixative either?"
"I don't. Please teach me."
When I immediately asked, Rosina let out a soft laugh.
"You paint fixative onto the paper beforehand and let it dry. Then when you begin painting, even if you layer colors, they won't discolor. ...Myne-sama knows such surprising things, yet doesn't know what should be common knowledge."
"I've never painted with paints or ink before."
"You're right, I suppose," Rosina murmured. Then she clapped her hands together and smiled brightly.
"Once fixative and colored ink are ready, why not have
"I'll think about it."
I gave a vague reply, not wanting to lose any more free time. Some small part of me whispered that since I was set to become a noble's adopted daughter in two years, it might be worth doing.
By learning how to make fixative from Mother and how to use it from Rosina, I could now paint without the colors fading or turning dark when layered.
The colored ink was complete.
And so, the colored ink was finished.
Next time, I take on wax paper.