Today we would finally begin making paper.
I was brimming with enthusiasm.
The plan for today was to cut the wood I'd narrowed down based on what I'd learned at the lumber shop and what Lutz had heard from various people. Then I wanted to steam it at the riverbank, rinse it in the river once, and finish stripping the black bark back in the forest. The stripped black bark would be taken back to the warehouse and dried there.
Since we only needed to make postcard-sized trial pieces, I figured we wouldn't need that much material. But we had to steam it for several hours, so we'd need plenty of firewood.
If we worked in the forest, collecting firewood wouldn't be too difficult, and we could gather more before we ran out. Lutz would have it rough carrying the pot and steamer, though.
So I went to borrow the warehouse key early in the morning and fetched the pot and steamer. Since we'd be working in the warehouse again after returning from the forest, I'd told
Preparations were perfect, but things had gone awry in one unexpected way.
"Lutz, are you okay?"
"...Yeah."
Lutz's reply was simple enough, but with the pot and steamer strapped to his backpack frame, he looked anything but fine. He looked like he might collapse at any moment.
The cause was obvious.
I'd calculated the weight of the pot and steamer based on what Lutz could carry. He'd said it would be fine at that weight. But he hadn't accounted for carrying both at the same time all the way to the forest.
"Do you want me to carry just the steamer?"
"It's too heavy for you, Mine."
"...Okay."
If Lutz said it was too heavy for me, then it really was.
All I could do was encourage Lutz and try not to overexert myself on the way to the forest. As usual, Lutz and I headed toward the forest together with a group of other children.
"Lutz, what's that?"
"What are you going to do in the forest?"
The kids were curious about the pot and the unfamiliar steamer on Lutz's back.
"A pot and a steamer, to make paper."
His load must have been quite heavy. Lutz spoke fewer words than usual, and his answers were curt.
Even if he sounded grumpy, the curious kids paid no heed and kept firing questions.
"Huh? Make what?"
"You're gonna do something fun, right?"
"...No. Whether I can do this determines whether I can become an apprentice at a job. So don't get in my way."
"Oh. Got it. Do your best, Lutz."
I'd thought the barrage of questions would drag on forever, but the moment they heard that this was something Lutz needed to become an apprentice, the kids backed off immediately.
I didn't understand why they'd retreated so easily, so I asked Lutz about it later. Apparently, while it was common to land a job through a parent's connections, the popular positions drew a flood of applicants. When that happened, parents might try pulling strings elsewhere, but some places even had something like a selection exam.
Interfering with a selection exam was something children absolutely must not do. You might face retaliation when it was your turn, and if word spread that you'd sabotaged someone, it would be hard to find a job yourself.
I see, I see. Competition ratios go up when a workplace is popular — same as anywhere.
At the gate, I met
"Yeah, I'll do my best. Oh, Dad — I'm heading out!"
My father had been a bit sulky lately because I was always with Lutz, but when I waved, he turned back with a complicated expression caught between a frown and a smile. You could read his feelings pretty clearly: he wasn't happy about my close relationship with Lutz and Otto, but he was glad his daughter had waved to him.
"Whew, that was tiring. Heavier than I expected."
Lutz set the pot and steamer down by the river and rotated his shoulders.
"Nice work, Lutz. Want to take a break?"
"No, once we start steaming, we'll need to wait about the time it takes for a bell to ring, right? I'll rest then."
Even as he said this, Lutz's hands were already stacking stones on the riverbank, building a hearth to set the pot on.
That's Lutz for you. No wasted motion.
Lutz was accustomed to outdoor work, while I — even counting my memories from my previous life — was thoroughly indoor and had almost no experience. Being useless as always, in other words.
All I could do was pick up nearby pieces of wood and hand them to Lutz.
Lutz filled the pot with river water, set it on the hearth, quickly arranged the wood, and lit the fire.
"I'm going to cut some wood, so Mine, I need you to watch the pot while you rest."
"You're the one who needs a rest!"
"Until the paper is made, it'd be trouble if you got sick. Picking up wood scraps around here is fine, but don't move around too much. Also, if anything happens, scream. Got it?"
"...Okay."
Since Lutz was right, I obediently agreed to watch the pot. That said, it would take quite a while to boil, and I had nothing to do.
I picked up nearby wood scraps, carried them to the pot, and fed them into the fire.
As the nearby scraps ran out, I gradually moved farther from the pot, gathering wood as I went. That was when I found a red fruit half-buried in the soil, looking just like a pomegranate.
"Huh? What's this? Edible? Or maybe it can be used for oil?"
Just about everything in the forest was bound to be useful somehow. I'd been in this world for roughly a year now, and my thinking had definitely shifted in that direction. Spotting something and picking it up on instinct — I never would have done that in
"I'll ask Lutz what this is later."
Using a piece of wood I'd been holding, I scraped away the soil around the red fruit with a rough, grating motion and dug it out. When I casually picked it up, the fruit suddenly grew hot in my hand.
Oh no! It was some kind of mysterious fruit with no explanation.
It seemed the red fruit belonged to the same family as those baffling ingredients that occasionally showed up in cooking. Honestly, I had no idea what might happen, and no idea how to deal with it.
Panicking, I threw the fruit as hard and as far as I could... or at least that was the plan — it barely flew five meters before plopping to the ground.
*Pop! Pop-pop-pop!* With the sound of something bursting, the red seeds scattered, and all around me, shoots began sprouting up from the ground.
Even while I stood there in a daze, they grew rapidly, reaching up to around my ankles.
What!? What is this!? This sprouting thing!?
On clear emergency, I scrambled away screaming.
"Lutz! Lutz! Lutz! There's something weird!"
"What's wrong, Mine!?"
Lutz, who must have been nearby, came running through the underbrush with a crashing sound.
When he looked in the direction I was pointing, his face went pale. He blew a sharp whistle — *peeee!* — producing a high-pitched note.
"A Trombe!"
"A what?"
"Explanation later!"
With that, Lutz swung his machete and began cutting down the plant. In the blink of an eye, it had shot past knee height to roughly the height of our thighs — clearly a dangerous thing no matter how you looked at it.
"Mine, get across the river! Understand?"
"Y-Yes!"
There was no time for words during an emergency. I did as Lutz told me and fled toward the river.
As I headed for the river, children who had heard Lutz's whistle came running from the opposite direction.
"What's going on... a Trombe!?"
"It's a Trombe!"
"Cut it down, quick!"
It seemed I was the only one who still didn't understand. The children who had gathered clearly knew what this sprouting thing was, and they charged at it with machetes and knives just like Lutz.
I sat down near the pot and watched as the children swarmed in, hacking away at the sprouting plant.
My excuse was that the opponent was just a plant, and maybe we could burn it if we had fire... but the truth was I'd gotten winded just from a short sprint, and I'd been unable to make it across the river like Lutz had told me.
"Are there any more that have already started growing?"
By the time I was sprawled exhausted on the riverbank, the children had finished cutting down the sprouting plant.
They were checking the area to make sure none were left behind.
"I think it should be fine."
"There might be more Trombes appearing, so gather carefully. Blow the whistle if anything happens."
The children scattered again to resume gathering, and Lutz came to my side.
"I told you to get across the river... couldn't do it, huh?"
"...Couldn't do it."
Despite having done all the cutting, Lutz was less out of breath than I was. Anyone watching would have assumed I'd been fighting on the front lines.
"Lutz, what was that thing?"
"It's a Trombe."
A Trombe was a tree that grew incredibly fast. If you didn't cut it down when it started growing, it would suck up all the nutrients in the area all at once.
And once it got big, cutting it down was so difficult that you had to request the knights' order to handle it.
So there was a knights' order here. Classic isekai.
"But that was strange."
"What about it?"
Lutz sat down on a riverbank stone, catching his breath as he tilted his head.
"Trombes appearing is a bit early. They usually don't come out until autumn."
"Huh..."
"It grew really fast, too. And yet, the soil around where it sprouted wasn't that disturbed..."
"Hmm."
"What's with you, Mine? Don't you think that's weird?"
Lutz looked displeased with my reaction and glared at me.
But asking me if I found it strange put me in a tough spot. It was the first time I'd ever seen one, so there was nothing to find strange or not strange about it. The very existence of that sprouting thing was what was strange.
"I've never seen anything like it before. You're saying it's different from usual, but I have no way to tell."
"Right. You only started coming to the forest from spring onward."
Lutz nodded several times in understanding, and at the same time, the pot began to bubble and boil.
"Lutz, what about the wood?"
"It should be scattered around over there..."
Lutz pointed toward the area where the Trombe had appeared and slumped his shoulders in defeat.
He was supposed to have cut the wood into pieces while the water heated up, but the Trombe had made him drop everything and rush over.
"Hey, Lutz. Since we've got plenty of it, why don't we try making paper with the Trombe? There's a lot of it, and since we cut it while it was just starting to grow, the fibers should be soft..."
"Good point. Gathering more right now would be pretty rough."
We loaded the Trombe into the steamer, and Lutz set it on top of the pot. For now, we just needed to keep adding firewood to maintain the heat.
Lutz kept an eye on the flame while occasionally tossing in the wood scraps I'd been collecting.
"Mine. Sorry, but can you watch the fire for a bit? I'll go pick up the wood I threw down."
"Sure, okay."
After a short rest, Lutz had recovered enough. He went to retrieve the wood he'd abandoned when the Trombe startled him.
Left in charge of the fire, I held a piece of wood in my hand and stared at the flames. I'd gotten a little better at adjusting the fire, but if I looked away even briefly, things would change too much and I'd mess up.
Gas stoves — so convenient. Nowadays, IH and microwave ovens were practically magical.
While steaming the Trombe, Lutz began gathering. The forest at summer's end, just entering autumn, apparently had lots of edible things.
We took turns watching the pot, and I picked whatever caught my eye.
"I got a lot, Lutz. What do you think?"
"Let me see... Mine! Show me everything! I need to check if any of it's safe to bring home!"
After looking at my haul, Lutz's face changed, and after he inspected it, about thirty percent of what I'd gathered turned out to be poisonous.
"This one's no good. Eat it and your limbs go numb, and you can't move for three days. This one's no good either. Eat it and you foam at the mouth and die. Same with this one — you'll suffer abdominal pain for two days. ...Mine, if you don't remember these properly, you're not going to get sick — you're going to eat something poisonous and die, you know?"
Yeah. You'd really die if you didn't remember properly — not just me, but my family too.
Since we were living here, learning to identify poisonous plants was a skill I needed to master immediately. There were no field guides or anything, so I'd have to learn by seeing the actual things.
"I'll do my best to remember, so please teach me."
"Yeah."
I could faintly hear a bell from the direction of the town, so I took the steamer off. The steam made my face hot, but I couldn't tell just by looking whether the steaming time had been right.
"Is it okay?"
"I'm not sure, but I'll soak it in the river and try peeling the bark."
I gave it a rough rinse in the river and peeled the bark while it was still hot. It came off smoothly, without breaking into pieces.
Easier than I'd thought. I might have found a good material.
"This Trombe might actually be suited for papermaking."
"We don't know when it'll grow, and we might not be able to harvest it before it matures, you know?"
"...Yeah, that's no good."
I thought back to today's events and sighed. It would be a great material if we could cultivate it, but that was too bad.
"Hey, Mine. Is today's work done for now?"
"Yeah. Next we need to dry this bark."
"...Got it. Then I'll clean up the pot — that cool with you?"
Lutz left the bark-peeling to me and went to wash the pot and steamer in the river.
Peeling bark while sitting down was actually pretty enjoyable, and I happily stripped the bark in a good mood.
When it was time to head back to town, I put the black bark and a few of my gathered items into a basket. Lutz steeled himself and strapped the pot and steamer to his back again. With the gathered items on top of that, the return trip was definitely heavier than the way in.
Lutz and I both staggered our way back to town, then broke away from the group and headed to the warehouse. Lutz unlocked the door and unloaded everything inside.
"Ugh, that was heavy!"
"The return trip had all the gathered stuff too. I wish I could have carried more..."
I was barely managing just to carry my own haul. I didn't have a shred of energy left to help Lutz.
Sitting in the warehouse, Lutz pulled out the black bark he'd been keeping in the pot and held it up, letting it dangle.
"Hey, Mine. You said to dry this — where and how exactly?"
"Huh? Um... how should we do it?"
In my mind, I was picturing something like drying rice straw, but we didn't have any extra sticks.
I looked around for something we could use, then tapped Lutz on the shoulder.
"Lutz, sorry to bother you when you're tired, but could you hammer some nails into this shelf board at even intervals? I'll hang the bark to dry on them."
"...Fine."
I hung the black bark on the nails Lutz hammered in. It worked because there wasn't much, but if we started producing in bulk, we'd need a proper drying area.
If we did go into mass production, I'd ask
"I have to dry this black bark completely. If it's not dry, mold will grow on it. Tomorrow I'll take it to the forest and dry it in the sun."
"So tomorrow you're just taking the bark — no other work, right? Then I should be able to do normal gathering. There's still a lot of stuff I need to pick up, so that helps."
"Yeah, I want to pick lots of mushrooms and make dried mushrooms. I'll use them for dashi."
"...Mine, you need to learn to tell the poisonous mushrooms from the safe ones."
The next day, I took the black bark to the forest, hung it from the rim of my basket, and dried it in the sun while gathering huge quantities of mushrooms.
Twenty percent were poisonous.
This wasn't right... something was off...
After several days of sun-drying, the black bark was completely dry. I wasn't sure exactly what "completely dry" meant, so I dried it until I thought it might even be over-dried.
With the stiff, crisp black bark in hand, I headed out to the forest again. From here, it would need to soak in the river for over a full day, so the weather mattered.
I built a ring of stones in a spot in the river that was inconspicuous enough to avoid attention, so the bark wouldn't float away, and placed the bark inside.
"Is this right?"
"...Probably. Let's check on it on the way back."
I had no experience, so I couldn't be certain, but it felt like it should be right. As I thought this, I looked down at my feet in the river.
...Of course, I didn't have rubber boots or gloves.
Today was still hot enough that wading in the river was fine, but as the seasons changed, entering the river would become a life-or-death matter.
"Lutz, before it gets cold, we might need to prepare more than just the Trombe — we should bring other types of wood here, too. Once we can't enter the river anymore, it's over."
"...Yeah. The water's already pretty cold, actually."
Lutz must have been thinking about what work would be like once it got cold — he grimaced and agreed with me.
"Let's cut wood today and hide it somewhere, like we did with the clay. Tomorrow we'll be carrying the pot and steamer — we can't bring the wood too, right?"
"That's right."
That day, we searched for and cut wood that could serve as papermaking material, bundled them by type, and hid them under low bushes.
While gathering, I occasionally went to check on the black bark. Floating within the ring of stones, the bark hadn't washed away — it had absorbed water and swelled slightly.
"I'm worried about leaving the forest, but it looks like it'll be fine."
"...Yeah."
Even after heading back with reluctance, I couldn't stop worrying about the bark I'd left behind.
What if a flash flood hit upstream and the water rose, washing it all away? What if bandits showed up and took it, thinking they'd found treasure? Whenever I let my mind wander, all these strange thoughts kept popping up.
The next day, I went to the forest in a state of nervous flutter, but there had been no flash floods, and bandits hadn't set their sights on it. When I went again the day after that, the black bark was still right where it should be.
"Thank goodness. It's still here."
"...So what do we do with it now?"
Lutz picked up the waterlogged black bark — limp and swollen — and tilted his head.
"We peel off this outer bark with a knife and keep just the inner white bark. But first, let's start steaming yesterday's wood. We can work on the bark while it steams."
"Got it."
The stone hearth I'd made last time was still standing. I did a bit of repair work, then set up the pot and steamer.
Once that was done, Lutz and I sat on a large, flat stone by the river where we could keep an eye on the pot and began peeling the outer bark with our knives.
"This way, the dried ones can be stored for a while. Let's finish the white bark while it's still warm."
"Yeah."
*Scrape, scrape, scrape... skrii, skrii, skrii...* With the black bark on the stone, I scraped away the dark outer surface to get down to the white inner bark. It was like removing the sinew from chicken breast. The bark wasn't that tough, so it broke into pieces here and there. There was probably a more efficient method or tool, but this was the best I could do.
*Scrape, scrape, scrape... skrii, skrii, skrii...* "Hey, Mine. This isn't impossible, but..."
"Yeah, we really need a table."
The sound of knife scraping against stone echoed through my whole body, and I couldn't stop the goosebumps. I desperately wanted something like a cutting board for this bark-peeling work.
Even when I tried to picture and list the tools I needed in my head, the actual work revealed gaps I hadn't anticipated. Things I thought I understood turned out to have so much I didn't know. I'd have to fill in those gaps bit by piece as I worked.
Tears welled up as I peeled the bark, and the relentless goosebumps drove home just how important experience was.
Thanks to the mysterious plant, papermaking is going smoothly.
I hope we can keep pushing forward like this.
Next time, Mine makes a painful mistake.