My name is
On the way home, Mine and Turi were attacked by a strange man, and we'd just fled into the house of
"Otto, Lutz, what happened!? Talk within the bounds of what you can without breaking confidentiality!"
The Master came charging up the stairs and said that. Otto narrowed his eyes and glared at him.
"
"Aah, sorry, sorry. Lutz, ignore Otto and just talk."
We'd been walking home with Turi who came to meet us when we ran into Otto, who was searching for a foreign noble, and while we were talking with him, we were attacked. It seemed they were after Mine, but from the way they kept saying "Which one!?" I figured they didn't know much about Mine. Dame Erno held off the attackers, and Uncle
"Now that you mention it, it seemed like Mine was calling for help too," Otto murmured, and all eyes focused on him. That Mine had been calling for help—I, who had been running behind Uncle Gunther's back, hadn't noticed at all.
"There was a blood seal on the charm around her neck. Apparently, if things got bad, someone would come to help her."
"Too early! Damn it!"
Unlike me, who wondered what that was about, the Master seemed to know what it meant. He clicked his tongue, turned on his heel, and headed back to the store.
"Master, what exactly is going on...?"
"The highest level of confidentiality!"
I didn't know who he was talking to, but he spat the words out as he clattered back down the stairs. Not understanding what was happening, I bit down hard on my lip. Something this dangerous was happening, and there was nothing I could do for Mine. No matter how hard I tried, there were walls I couldn't overcome.
"See, Renate started crying from Benno's shouting. What a scary uncle. There, there."
At the sound of Renate's cries, Corina stirred, and Turi's tense expression began to soften. She murmured something about the rattle she was supposed to bring—she'd made it together with Mine for
Otto began bragging about Renate, and Turi countered with her own boasting about Kamil. Honestly, I was sick of hearing both stories.
"Turi, we're heading to the Temple now. Come."
After a while, Uncle Gunther came to get Turi, and his left arm had a horrible burn-like wound on it. At the sight of that dark reddish-black injury, Turi's face went pale.
"Father, what happened to your arm!? What about Mine!?"
"She's at the Temple. Let's go."
Uncle Gunther, who always smiled around his daughter, spoke in a low voice without so much as a hint of a smile for Turi. Behind him was Aunt
"Uncle Gunther! I..."
"I'll come explain later. Just wait."
No matter how close Mine and I were like family, I wasn't actually family, so I couldn't go to the Temple. All I could do was wait at the store.
"...I'll be at the store, or up on the second floor at the Master's place."
"The store, or the second-floor room, right? Got it."
I could only follow along for Turi's sake. There was no need for me to stay at Corina's house by myself. If sitting around doing nothing would only make me restless with anxiety, it was more productive to get some work done.
I left Corina's room with Uncle Gunther and the others, and just as we were heading toward the store, Uncle Gunther spun around and glared at Otto, who was holding and rocking Renate.
"Otto, you hurry back to the Gate too. Tell the Guard Captain that I went to the Temple on orders from the knights."
"Yes, sir!"
When I returned to the store, the Master and
"Shouldn't you just have the workshop guys handle that? If they make a mistake and lose money, that's on them."
"Setting up and running Mine Workshop's orphanage branch is practice for when we build the next printing workshop, so I can't cut corners."
"The next workshop? You, doing that kind of work?"
Leon's eyes widened in surprise. I nodded.
"If I don't learn to help the Master when he sets up a workshop, I'll be useless, and he won't take me to other cities. But if it's Mine's workshop, they'll forgive me for making some mistakes, so I was told to use it as practice. It's not favoritism."
"Hmm, a practice dummy, huh..."
I'd just about finished the paperwork and gotten the Master's approval when it happened. Suddenly, a ball of light came through from outside the window. It passed straight through the wall and the window as if they didn't exist and began circling around the room.
"Wh-what is that!?"
The Master, Mark, and I stared wide-eyed as the ball of light whirled above our heads, breaking apart into sparkling dust that began to rain down. The light falling over us strangely avoided Leon.
The now-tiny light slowly faded, and a silence returned as if nothing had happened.
"...What was that?"
"It avoided only me, that did."
Even though my palms had definitely been covered with the light dust moments ago, now it felt as though it had dissolved into me—there wasn't a trace of it left.
While I was tilting my head wondering why only Leon had been spared and what on earth that was, Uncle Gunther and the others returned to the store.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, Lutz."
Everyone had red, swollen eyes and dark expressions. I'd assumed they'd gone to pick Mine up, so when I noticed Mine wasn't with them, my chest lurched. It felt like once I asked, there'd be no going back, so I closed my mouth just as I was about to ask "Where's Mine?"
I frantically glanced around hoping someone would say something else, and that's when I noticed Uncle Gunther's arm—his horribly burned arm was back to normal.
"Uncle, your arm..."
"It was Mine's last blessing. When the light dust came down, it healed."
The anguish in Uncle Gunther's voice, as if he were grinding his back teeth, and the words "Mine's last" made me look at Turi and Aunt Effa. My body shook with dread, and my throat tightened. Before I could ask "What do you mean, 'last'?" Mark clapped his hands together.
"Then the light dust that came earlier was also a blessing from Mine, wasn't it?"
"...It came here too?"
Uncle Gunther's eyes widened slightly in surprise. I nodded lightly and reported that the light dust had flown in and, avoiding Leon, had rained down on the three of us.
"It seems it flew to the people who matter most to Mine. Enough to heal my wound. That was quite a powerful blessing."
Uncle Gunther smiled sadly. Seeing that resigned smile, I understood. Everything had already ended in a place my hands could never reach.
"...What happened to Mine? Why isn't she here?"
"Mine is gone. She was taken by the nobles. She's not here anymore."
As Turi's tears fell one after another, the Master furrowed his brow and narrowed his eyes.
"Gunther, let me ask one thing. Will Mine Workshop continue to exist as it is?"
"Master, what are you saying at a time like this when Mine is gone!?"
"Silence! This is important. If she's truly dead, then our store has to buy it out and keep it going. But if she's absorbed by the nobles, we'll need a different approach."
I couldn't quite make sense of the Master's words and tilted my head, but Uncle Gunther seemed to understand.
"...Benno, do you know about this?"
"I don't know the details, but Otto said he'd put a blood seal on a charm. So if Mine isn't actually dead, I know what happens. She's been taken in by Aub Ehrenfest. ...What will the new Workshop Head's name be?"
Uncle Gunther glared at the Master with fierce eyes.
"
"That's how it has to be..."
I was speechless, and Uncle Gunther gently patted my head—the way he would with Mine.
"To protect our family, Mine became a higher noble's daughter. By making the pretext that we were protecting a higher noble's daughter, both we and Mine's life were protected. In exchange, we've been forbidden by Contract Magic from interacting with her as family. You've all gotten too involved with Mine as well. You'd better be careful not to face punishment."
"I appreciate the advice."
The Master offered a brief word of thanks, then sighed and slumped his shoulders.
"Still, I thought we had about two more years of leeway. This was sudden."
"Master, Mine is gone!? She was absorbed by the nobles and we can't see her as family anymore, and you're saying what!?"
I was so furious at his words that I couldn't help but shout.
But the only response I got was a cold stare.
"Listen, Lutz. She didn't die. She'll live on from here as Rozemyne. Even if she went from a commoner to a higher noble's daughter, do you think her essential self would change that easily? With the power she now has, if she goes off the rails, it'll be even scarier!"
Mine was already prone to going off the rails, and if she ran wild with the power of a higher noble, there'd be no one left who could stop her.
"Besides, if only her name changed, then Rozemyne continues to be the joint investor in the Italian restaurant.
The book obsession that not even dying could cure wasn't going to be cured just because she became the higher noble Rozemyne. There was only one thing she wanted.
"Books!"
"Exactly. Whether the person's position or how we deal with them changes, all we have to do is one thing: business. Since we even have the Lord's official endorsement, our Gilberta Company will have to deal with Rozemyne whether we like it or not."
The faces of Mine's family twitched slightly.
"Even if you can't meet or speak with a higher noble, we can talk to Rozemyne as a business matter. There'll be paperwork. It would be easy enough to slip a letter in there. Lutz and Mine have already exchanged Contract Magic with that in mind. At the very least, we can communicate."
Even if she couldn't face-to-face call them family, surely writing letters hadn't been forbidden, either. There were loopholes in Contract Magic, and the Master twisted his lips into a smirk.
"Lutz, if I write a letter, will you deliver it?"
"Leave it to me."
At Turi's words, I nodded firmly. There were still things I could do for Mine. At least she wasn't dead, so it would be okay.
We left the store and headed home. From here on, Mine was dead. The moment I got home, I'd have to hold Mine's funeral.
"Lutz, Mine was killed by the foreign noble who entered the city. Explain that to the family. We'll start preparations right away too."
Uncle Gunther stared into the void, his brow deeply furrowed. Because a foreign noble had entered, Mine had no choice but to become a noble. When I thought about it that way, Uncle Gunther's explanation wasn't a lie.
"Got it."
When I got home, I reported to my parents that Mine's funeral was being held and wolfed down my dinner. Having finished eating first, my parents wrapped black cloth around their arms and hurried out, and I had
"...Why did Mine die? She was doing well recently, wasn't she?"
"I heard from Uncle Gunther that she was killed by a noble, but since I didn't see the scene, I don't know the details either."
In the well square, neighbors with black cloth tied around their arms gathered, just the same. Normally, the body would be placed on a board so it could be carried to the cemetery, but with no body, Mine couldn't do that.
What lay before everyone wasn't a body, but a small wooden box. Inside were a single set of Mine's clothes and the one hairpin she always wore. That was all.
"No body? What does that mean?"
The gathered neighbors stared at the unusual funeral. Uncle Gunther grimaced in pain and looked down.
"Mine was... attacked and killed by a noble who entered from outside, and her body was stolen."
"...That's a terrible misfortune."
Things taken by nobles never came back. The people in this neighborhood knew that Uncle Gunther was an overprotective father who doted on the frail Mine. How painful it must be to not even have the body returned—there was no need to ask. Since nobles were involved, no one could ask any further questions.
"She'd only just gotten healthy again..."
As they stared at the wooden box, the neighbors recalled Mine's
It was said that the door to the land of the dead opens at dawn when the
But there wasn't much to say about Mine, who had barely interacted with the neighbors.
"...Lutz, you were close with Mine, right? Say something for us."
I thought about the two and a half years I'd spent with Mine. Mine, who couldn't walk to the Gate. Who wanted books but had no paper or ink, so she wove grass fibers and made clay tablets... Even after she finally made paper, she couldn't make books right away.
"Whenever Mine did something, she'd collapse right away. But she worked incredibly hard for the things she wanted. Mine, who used to get out of breath just going to the well, was able to go into the forest."
"Now that you mention it, she was always fiddling with soil and carving wood and doing strange things, wasn't she?"
"Didn't she boil wood in a pot together with Lutz?"
"...We were making paper."
"Mine's cooking ideas were delicious."
"Mine helped Gunther with his Gate work while learning to read and do arithmetic, then she taught our Lutz. She was clever."
"Heh, I didn't know that."
After the Baptism Ceremony, I became a merchant's apprentice, and Mine became a Shrine Maiden Apprentice at the Temple. Being a Shrine Maiden Apprentice at the Temple had a bad reputation, so people avoided mentioning it openly. That's why very few people actually knew the Mine who existed after the Baptism Ceremony.
Mine had built a workshop at the orphanage, made ink, and created books. She'd become
...I wanted to say that, but I couldn't. When it came to bookmaking, I didn't know how much I was allowed to tell.
"Mine was frail and slow to develop, and I was so worried she could die at any moment that it was unbearable. When she started insisting on doing things herself, Turi was only two or three, but Mine was around five..."
How unfair Turi was, always so energetic—how unfair that she could go outside—Mine had done nothing but cry about that, Aunt Effa murmured. She'd been resented for not giving birth to a healthy child, and as a mother, it had been painful for Aunt Effa too.
That was probably the old Mine. My Mine never cried about things being "unfair." She fought to build up her stamina. She spun her wheels plenty, but she poured everything into it just for the sake of reading books.
"By the time the tantrums about unfairness finally died down—about when she started being able to go to the forest with Lutz—she'd turned into a little firebrand. Screaming 'I'm sick of this body!' while cleaning her room and getting a fever, doing some strange dance and collapsing, eating something she claimed was good for her and getting a stomachache..."
Aunt Effa smiled as she said this. That was the Mine I knew. Yeah, I could picture Mine's antics.
"And then by the time those tantrums with no understandable reason started settling down, she was able to go to the forest with Lutz. Even if we couldn't hope for her to be like a normal child, she was able to go outside and participate in festivals—and now she's gone like this..."
After that, Mine's family was too overcome with tears to speak. But the neighbors whispered among themselves that it couldn't be helped—after all, their daughter, who had only just gotten healthy again, had been killed by a foreign noble, with not even a body left behind.
In the light of the bonfire, Uncle Gunther silently carved a board through his tears, making a gravestone for Mine.
We took turns sleeping and stayed up through the night. When the second bell rang, the wives brought out bread and tea. You weren't supposed to eat any meat until the funeral was over.
After finishing a simple breakfast, the neighbors and I carried the light board and headed to the Temple. We had to file a death report and receive the medal needed for burial.
I spoke to the Temple gatekeeper about filing the death report and was let into the prayer room. When someone in the city died, it was customary for a Gray Priest to handle it, but this time the Chief Priest himself came out.
"Born in summer at the age of seven, named Mine? Understood."
After waiting in the prayer room for a while, the Chief Priest returned with a white, flat medal and handed it to Uncle Gunther. It was the medal Mine had registered with a blood seal at her Baptism Ceremony. It served as a burial permit, and for poor people who couldn't afford to prepare a gravestone or monument, it doubled as one.
After receiving the medal at the Temple, we headed to the cemetery outside the city. The board carried by the neighbors only had the small wooden box on it and was light, so everyone's pace naturally quickened. And since there weren't many memories of Mine, conversation was inevitably sparse.
We buried the wooden box in the farthest corner of the cemetery from the entrance. The box wasn't that large, so burying it didn't take long.
Uncle Gunther pressed the medal firmly into the board he'd been carving for a gravestone. The medal stuck fast to the board and wouldn't come off. Just like the surrounding graves, this board would be driven deep into the earth as a grave marker.
Rich people's gravestones had various words carved into them, but around here, few of the poor could read, so almost none had inscriptions. People identified graves by the shape of the carved wood and the position of the attached medal, but on Mine's gravestone, "Beloved Daughter" was carved.
Once the burial at the cemetery outside the city was complete, the funeral ended. If the deceased had been the head of the household, there would have been discussions about inheritance and declarations of the successor who would carry the family forward, but there was nothing like that for Mine, who had just completed her Baptism Ceremony.
The day after the funeral, the neighbors returned to their normal lives. I returned to my everyday routine as well.
I left the house, raced down the stairs, passed through the well square, and ran up the stairs again. When I knocked on the door, Turi looked at me with a puzzled expression.
"Good morning, Lutz. Did something happen?"
"Something happened—oh!"
I wouldn't be going to the Temple with Mine-turned-Rozemyne anymore. There was no need to watch Mine as she wandered unsteadily from place to place. No need to worry about her health as we walked, or make things together with her, or have her cling to me acting spoiled, or come crying to me when she was in trouble. Nothing.
"...Mine really isn't here anymore."
Even after she became Rozemyne, I'd thought Mine was still Mine. But Rozemyne, who had to live on as a higher noble's daughter, was no longer Mine. She wasn't the Mine I'd known, the Mine I'd been with all this time.
I understood for the first time what it truly meant for Mine to be gone. My body trembled, and tears that hadn't come during the funeral overflowed all at once.
Turi slowly stroked my head, just as she would when comforting Mine, until I calmed down.
"Lutz, you can still talk to Mine at work, right?"
"...Even if I can talk to her, she's not Mine anymore."
"No. But Mine kept saying until the very end that even if she couldn't talk, she at least wanted to see my face."
Turi told me, bit by bit, about her last exchanges with Mine. Even if she couldn't call herself family, she wanted to see her looking well. If that was what Mine wished for, then surely Mine would want to talk to me about business matters, at least.
"Hey, Lutz. Take me to the Gilberta Company today."
"Turi?"
"I want to fulfill my last promise to Mine."
Saying this, Turi returned briefly to the bedroom and came back holding the bag Mine had always used. Inside were the rattle she'd made with Mine for Renate and the writing board Mine had used.
"I promised that once I got into Corina's workshop and became a first-rate tailor, I'd make clothes for her. I'll go see her in my own way. You made all sorts of promises with Mine too, didn't you?"
At Turi's words, I remembered all the things I'd discussed with Mine. I'd promised to make and sell books together with Mine. I'd promised to build whatever Mine came up with.
"...I don't have time to be sitting here crying."
I had to make enough books that Mine could spend all day reading.
I wiped my tears hard, grabbed my bag, and with Turi, opened the heavy front door.
That was Lutz's perspective on where the blessing of light went and Mine's funeral.
I debated between Mother Effa and this, but considering the path of the light, I went with Lutz.
Next time, we'll go to the Noble District from Frieda's perspective in a side story.