The day after I came home and finally relaxed, I headed to
The sky was flurrying with snow, but I had to go report my recovery and give my thanks before the snow piled up enough to trap me at home.
"Lutz, Benno's been really worried about whether the Guild Master pressured you into anything or whether you were stuck dealing with poaching attempts."
"Oh, maybe he picked up on all the times I silently cried out for help in my mind?"
When Frieda's family had surrounded me, I'd silently begged Benno for help several times. Maybe some kind of strange signal had been transmitted.
As I tilted my head in thought, Lutz glared at me with a dissatisfied expression.
"...What about me?"
"Hm?"
"Didn't you call out to me for help too?"
Looking at Lutz's pouting face, an indescribable, ticklish laugh welled up inside me.
I couldn't help but laugh, and Lutz's mouth curved into an even deeper frown.
"Why are you laughing!?"
"Because you did help me, Lutz. Properly."
"Eh?"
Looking at Lutz's stunned expression, like a pigeon hit by a bean shooter, I burst out laughing.
"You told Frieda that I'd get a fever if I overdid it, didn't you? Thanks to that, I got to rest properly, and I didn't even have to sit through dinner, so I didn't have to listen to any talk about poaching. It was a huge help."
"Hehe, really?"
Lutz grinned proudly and squeezed my hand a little tighter, then took a half-step forward. The wind hitting me decreased, and it felt like less snow was striking my face.
"Hello."
"Ah,
Benno's shop was bustling with energy and warmth. Spotting us letting out sighs of relief upon entering,
Even though snow had started falling, it didn't seem like any fewer people were coming and going from Benno's shop. Some of the more fastidious workshops had already closed up for the day.
Looking around the shop, I muttered something to that effect, and Mark smiled brightly.
"This shop does its best business in winter."
"Is that so?"
I'd assumed that winter meant more blizzard days when people couldn't go out, so everyone would hole up and try to spend as little money as possible. But apparently I was wrong.
"The nobles, who are shut in by the snow with nothing to do, will actually loosen the purse strings surprisingly easily for something novel to pass the time."
"I see, so entertainment goods..."
I couldn't make anything like a game console, but playing cards, karuta, hanafuda, sugoroku—familiar card games swirled through my mind. If I had the margin, maybe I could make some.
Lutz tugged at my sleeve.
"Did you think of something?"
"...It'd be better if I had paper, though."
Thin wooden cards might work for playing cards too. But cutting wood into cards of consistent size and thickness, as thin as possible, required real skill.
Having someone with woodworking skills make them would be easy enough, but I wanted to at least maintain the premise that "I come up with the ideas and Lutz makes them" until after the
Could Lutz make thin boards?
Also, I still hadn't seen any paint in this world. There had to be dyes somewhere, but coloring for cards and such probably wasn't something I could do at home.
Othello and shogi might be doable with boards and ink. But in terms of variety of games to play, cards were definitely the best.
While I was going "Hmm...", I was guided to the back room, and found Benno peering closely at my face.
"Myne, you've recovered, right?"
"Wha!? Y-yes. I'm sorry for worrying you."
Even as I said that while blinking, Benno just furrowed his brows suspiciously and wouldn't stop staring at my face.
"Benno, it's fine. Myne was just lost in thought—she wasn't feeling sick or anything."
"Oh, really?"
At Lutz's words, Benno finally seemed convinced and let go of me in one quick motion. He sat us down at a table near the hearth, then let out a deep sigh.
"Because that old man had collected all those things for his grandchild, he kept nagging on and on, so I wasn't sure whether the Guild Master would actually use the Magical Tool or not..."
"Oh, apparently he wanted to poach me from the Guild Master's shop. If he didn't have enough money to pay, he would have forced a transfer of my affiliation as payment for debt."
"As payment for debt... Well, I suppose so. But you did get the money, right?"
Benno smirked proudly, and I nodded while revealing the fact that the Guild Master and his group had been setting various traps behind the scenes.
"Yes. He told Benno that the Magical Tool's price was one small gold coin and two large silver coins, but apparently it was actually two small gold coins and eight large silver coins..."
"That damn old man!"
Benno scratched his head furiously and shouted.
"Just barely enough with the money I had, so I was relieved. Frieda and the Guild Master seemed to think it wouldn't be enough—they were pretty surprised."
When I added that, Benno looked stunned for a moment, then muttered, "Come to think of it, I did raise the information fee," and grinned.
"If you gave them a run for their money, that's all that matters. But don't let your guard down around that family. Someone as naive and lacking in crisis sense as you'll get eaten alive in no time."
I should probably report to Benno about the mistakes I might have made—being the naive, crisis-less person I was. Even knowing that, I couldn't help but put off being scolded as long as possible, which made my phrasing indirect.
"So, Benno. I have a question—what kind of sweets are popular around here?"
"What do you mean?"
I flinched under his reddish-brown gaze, then explained while offering excuses.
"Well, where I live, sweet things are almost nonexistent. Honey, fruit, and winter paru are about it."
"Ah, yeah, that's true."
"...So, Benno, if I may ask, Frieda's house had sugar—is that something rare?"
Given that my family didn't have sugar for cooking, I figured it was mostly available to the wealthy class.
Even so, I wanted a reliable answer from someone knowledgeable about trade. Ideally, the answer would be that it was just that my family was too poor to buy it, and most of the town actually could.
Of course, there was no way I'd get the answer I so desperately wanted.
"It's still pretty rare around here. Foreign imports have only recently started coming in, and it's become quite popular among the aristocracy and in the royal capital. Wait—you didn't go and do something again, did you!?"
Given my extensive record of causing trouble, Benno caught on immediately, raising his eyebrows sharply.
"Well, I made these sweets called 'quatre-quarts,' and people got really into them..."
"Ah, those. They were insanely good. Moist, like they melted in your mouth, the first sweet taste I'd ever had... Wait, Myne!"
Sugar itself was becoming available to the noble class, but there wasn't yet a full-blown sweets culture with all sorts of confections. The quatre-quarts was a simple, classic cake, but I'd definitely overdone it.
Glared at by both of them, I genuinely realized I'd done something foolish.
"Why do you stick your head out of the bushes right in front of a carnivore!? You'll obviously get eaten in an instant!"
To think the quatre-quarts would provoke such fury—I quietly consoled myself that at least I hadn't made sponge cake or shortcake. I'd been worried about the scales and the wood-burning oven, but in the end, I'd been safe.
"Well, Frieda and I had made a promise to make sweets together, and I was trying to think of some way to thank her..."
"You don't need to! I paid her enough!"
Benno's words overlapped perfectly with Frieda's. For the merchants here, since they'd paid a fair price, anything beyond that was unnecessary.
"Ugh, Frieda said the same thing."
"Again!? What's the point of being told that by your business partner!? I've told you before to judge carefully whether someone's an opponent you can afford to lose to!"
Ohhh! I have zero ability to learn. But isn't it normal to want to properly repay someone who saved your life?
"I was thinking of her as the person who saved my life..."
"So you'd completely forgotten about being tricked by that damn old man, then."
"Ugh..."
That stopped me short. In the end, because I'd had the money, I'd only thought of it as a straightforward transaction. But if I hadn't had enough money and my affiliation had been forcibly changed from Benno's shop to the Guild Master's, my feelings would have been a lot more complicated.
"They're leaving you alone for now because you've got Self-Eating and they figure you won't last long enough for them to bother making a serious move. If they were actually determined, your affiliation would've been changed before you even noticed. Don't go out of your way to make yourself a target."
I understood a little. I'd been thinking it was strange that their poaching attempts had been so halfhearted despite all the traps they'd set.
Apparently, because the Self-Eating disease itself might kill me soon, or because I'd end up contracted to a noble regardless, they'd figured a few jabs here and there were sufficient.
"So, what happens to me before I even notice? How does the affiliation change?"
"The simplest way would be to approach your parents and fill in the outer moat. If they're asked by their daughter's savior, there's no way they could refuse. They could have promised to look after you and pressured your parents about post-Baptism affiliation, or their son could have become your fiancé without you knowing. They just didn't bother going that far because there's no point doing all that for someone who might not last another year."
"That's terrifying!"
I shuddered, rubbing my goosebump-covered arms, while Benno watched me with a look of exasperation.
"You're only realizing that now? There are limits to how oblivious you can be. ...So, for those sweets, you just handed over the finished product?"
I didn't understand the intent behind Benno's question, so I tilted my head and told him about how we'd made them together.
"No, I can't do anything physical like baking, so I taught Frieda's family cook how to make them. They had plenty of pure white flour, sugar, and a wood-burning oven in their home. Amazing, right?"
"Yeah, amazing, amazing. So they got the complete recipe..."
Seeing Benno holding his head in his hands made me seriously uneasy. I never could have imagined that a batch of sweets made as a thank-you gift would cause this much fallout.
"Oh no, did I do something wrong?"
"Give away something you could sell to nobles for free? Are you an idiot?"
Honestly, I didn't know what was sellable to nobles and what was more common-sfolk. But I'd just learned that cake recipes were worth money. I needed to be more careful from now on.
"Ugh... Then couldn't we have our own cook make them and sell them? They haven't started selling them over there either..."
"Sugar is still hard to get."
When I suggested that we could sell them first, Benno made no effort to hide his displeasure.
But him making an unhappy face didn't help me. Acquiring sugar wasn't in my domain—it was more Benno's area, with his broad trading operations.
"Well, I guess there's nothing to be done then. If you have a cook who can handle sugar and an oven, I'll share the quatre-quarts recipe with Benno for free."
"...From the way you said that, I get the feeling there's more where that came from."
Benno noticed immediately and looked at me, but without sugar there wasn't much use for any of the recipes. Sharing them wouldn't matter.
Having just learned that sweets recipes were worth money, I puffed out my chest and declared proudly: "Anything beyond that will cost you."
"Use that pushiness on them instead."
"...I'll do my best."
His perfectly reasonable words deflated me. Having something I'd done out of goodwill treated as a monetary calculation was something I just couldn't get used to—but if that was the merchant world, I had no choice but to adapt.
"Is the report finished, then?"
"No, this is more of a personal matter, but I basically won't be going outside during winter, so I won't be coming to the shop until spring. Please don't worry."
After all, I had Mark and Benno here, both of whom had become overprotective after watching me collapse in front of them. The shop would run fine without my visits, but I didn't want to worry them about my health again, so I'd better make the announcement upfront.
"Not going outside?"
"If I go outside, I'll be bedridden."
"Huh? Didn't you say you'd help out
Apparently, Benno had been expecting me to basically come to the Gate throughout winter. But that was wrong. There was no way my family would overlook something that reckless.
"Well, on days that aren't blizzards, when I'm feeling well, and when my father is working the morning or day shift—given those conditions, I don't think I'll be able to go even ten times during winter."
"...Can you actually work after your Baptism?"
"I'm constantly worried about that myself."
Benno asked with obvious concern, but honestly, I was the one who wanted answers. Was there even work that I could do?
"I suppose I'll need to think about your work methods gradually. In the meantime, how will you deliver your handcraft orders during winter? Having some inventory ready for the spring Baptism Ceremony would really help the shop."
I'd originally said I'd deliver everything in spring, but that apparently wouldn't work for the spring Baptism Ceremony. The items that had been rushed for the winter ceremony had mostly sold out, leaving no stock.
Lutz raised his hand energetically.
"I'll check the weather and bring things over. Since mornings with clear skies are for paru gathering, I'll come on cloudy days?"
"Ah, paru. Takes me back. Paru juice was a real treat for kids back in the day."
Benno smiled fondly. He must have gone paru gathering too, back when he was young. Imagining Benno sharing his spoils with Corina made me smile a little, and Lutz next to me grinned dreamily as he thought about paru gathering too.
"This year, I'm definitely going to eat paru cake."
"...Paru cake? What's that?"
Benno looked puzzled.
I couldn't stop the cold sweat from trickling down as I thought about what would happen if the paru cake recipe got out.
"Ah, Lutz. You might want to keep that recipe a secret, okay? Otherwise you won't be able to get your hands on paru anymore."
Paru pomace was not something humans ate. It was animal feed. That was what people believed, which was why Lutz's family could get so much in exchange for eggs.
But if word got out about its use, the price of paru pomace might skyrocket. That would cause problems for everyone who depended on it as winter feed for their livestock.
"Yeah. It's our little treat, just for us."
"Right, let's keep it our little secret."
By the time we left Benno's shop and started heading home, snow had begun to pile up at the edges of the street. Seeing the arrival of proper winter—the kind that would keep me trapped inside—I let out a light sigh.
"Looks like the days of not being able to go out are about to begin."
"...Yeah."
Lutz glanced at the accumulating snow with an annoyed expression and nodded quietly.
Even my mother
"Hey, Lutz. Come over to my place every two or three days, bringing your study tools and any finished hairpin parts."
All I could offer Lutz was a small bit of breathing room. Every day would probably just increase the tension with his family, and without a reason he'd have trouble coming over anyway, so timing it for when he'd made a bit of progress on the hairpin would be ideal.
At my suggestion, Lutz's face brightened just a little.
"Yeah, I'll do that. Thanks."
As blizzard days increased and fewer people walked the streets, people would stay indoors to endure the cold and spend their days at home.
Father was a Soldier stationed at the Gate, so his work didn't stop just because it was winter, same as last year. Even on blizzard days he had duty and was rarely home.
At our house, Turi found spare moments whenever she could to diligently make hair ornaments. Knowing for certain that they brought in money, she was more serious about it than last year's basket-making.
Mother showed interest in handcrafts as well but had to prioritize making clothes for the family. Since I had my Baptism Ceremony this year, she said she'd start with my Festive Clothing first.
"Can't we just alter Turi's Festive Clothing from last year?"
Turi had grown another year taller. The Festive Clothing she'd worn last summer must have been getting tight. So wouldn't it make more sense to alter the dress she'd barely worn, saving both time and effort?
"Turi and Myne are way too different in size—altering would be really difficult."
Mother said that with a troubled smile. Normally, Festive Clothing wasn't something you made repeatedly. Especially for sisters, wearing hand-me-downs was standard.
But Turi and I were completely different in body size. Turi, who had just turned seven but could pass for eight or nine at her Baptism Ceremony, and me, who looked four or five—there was honestly no way we could wear the same clothes.
I tried it on in front of the stove, but the shoulders and sides were baggy, and the knee-length dress now reached all the way to my ankles.
"Hmm... But what about the hem? If you gather it like this, you could disguise the length, and it'd make pleats that look cute! And what if you added little flower decorations at the gathering points?"
"Myne, that's not an alter—it'd end up looking way too fancy."
Turi laughed at my suggestion of gathering the hem into pleats.
When sizes were completely different, apparently "altering" meant unsewing all the threads, cutting the fabric to my measurements, and sewing it back together. My idea of just gathering here and there and disguising it with decorations was apparently heretical.
This was definitely one of those patterns where I should stop talking.
"Okay. If it looks too fancy, maybe I shouldn't. I was thinking that if I just did the gathering alteration, I could detach this part and reuse it when I grew bigger, but..."
Having extra fabric to play with was a luxury only those with comfortable finances could afford. Pleated clothing was basically for rich people, and you couldn't afford extra decorations either.
That was exactly why Turi's Festive Clothing had fit perfectly. Even if it was for alterations, if I wore a pleated dress it would stand out unbearably.
Thinking that, I kept my mouth shut—but mother suddenly got fired up. She grabbed both my shoulders firmly and beamed.
"...Let's try it your way, Myne. If it doesn't work out, we'll just do a normal alteration. Right?"
Oh no. Mom's on fire.
...She won't stop even if I tell her a normal alteration is fine, will she?
I was already busier than last year with making my own hair ornaments, tutoring Lutz, and being the family cook.
Of course, there was no way I could escape from a mother who'd gotten motivated.
Even though it was just in front of the stove, wearing only my summer Festive Clothing, I spent so much time discussing pin-tucks and pleats with mother in various spots that my frail self ended up catching a proper cold.
*ACHOO!* Reporting to Benno has wrapped up the Frieda-related events for now.
Next up is hibernation.
Getting a fever while holed up at home is just part of the deal.
Next time: the completion of the Festive Clothing and hair ornaments.