Ascendance of a Bookworm

“This…” murmurs the guild leader, transfixed.

The only time Tory used this hairpin was during her baptismal ceremony. What happened on that day, I wonder? I’m a little shocked about how suddenly the guild leader’s aloof smile completely disappeared, so I look back at Benno, seeking some kind of assistance.

The guild leader’s captivated by this, is he okay?

While I may be worried, Benno is clearly not. A terrifying expression flickers across his face, like a carnivore licking his chops, before it settles back into his usual darkly pleasant smile.

“Is this not the hairpin you’ve been searching for, Guild Leader?”
“You’re selling this?!” asks the guild leader, his eyes wide, looking back and forth between me and Benno. There isn’t a trace of a smile on his face anymore as he looks at us hungrily. Terrified, I can’t stop my breath from catching in my throat.

…Lutz, no fair! You’re hiding behind Benno!

I turn slightly to try to creep behind Benno as well, but he firmly clasps my shoulder, dragging me back to the forefront.

“Umm,” I stammer, “I was planning on making these during my winter work.”
“Your winter work… then, could you sell me that one right now?”

He reaches out as if to take Tory’s hairpin from me. His blazing eyes tell me that if he gets his hands on it I’ll never get it back, so I frantically shove it back into my bag.

“I can’t do that,” I say. “This is something I made for Tory. It’s not for sale.”
“I’ll buy it for this much,” he says, his hand coming up in a flash, three fingers standing straight up. That’s probably some sort of sign to indicate a value, but I don’t know what exactly it means.

Flustered, I look up at Benno for advice.

“Hmm, I see…” he says, grinning broadly. “If we could ask for a little more, we might be able to make one in advance especially for you, sir. What do you think, Maine?”
“It’s… it’s just like Mister Benno says, sir.”

As if I could possibly refuse. I force a smile onto my face and comply with his implicit order.

“If she starts now,” he says, “She should have plenty of time to complete it before your granddaughter’s baptismal ceremony this winter. Isn’t that right, Maine?”
“Yes, more than enough time.”

…Ah, now I see. During the summer’s baptismal ceremony, the guild leader’s granddaughter must have seen Tory’s hairpin and said that she wanted something just like it.

With that one statement, everything finally snaps into place. As the leader of the Merchant’s Guild, this man would be the most informed person in the entire city about the flow of merchandise through the markets, but even so, he couldn’t find a trace of this hairpin. Since it’s something I made entirely in-house, solely for Tory, it was never on the market, and nothing else like it is sold anywhere, he must be growing more and more nervous as the day of the winter’s baptismal ceremonies draws ever closer.

“There’s barely a month left, are you sure you can finish it?”

Come to think of it, making the flowers requires a surprisingly large amount of both time and thread, so in this extremely hectic season, unlike during the winter season where we’re shut inside by the snow and have nothing else to do, we don’t have time for making random things, or so my mother said. However, if this is a job that I’d be making money on, there might not be any problem with me devoting all of my time to it. Since I’ll need to procure the thread and talk to the granddaughter about her specific request, it’ll take somewhat more time than otherwise, but if I have until the winter baptismal ceremony, I should have more than enough time.

“Yes, sir. This hairpin isn’t for sale, but there won’t be any trouble making a new one.”
“Yeah,” says Lutz, nodding emphatically, “we can do it.”

Next to me, Benno has been grinning broadly as he listens to our conversation.

“However,” he interjects, “since I can’t register these two, when they finally finish making the hairpin, they most unfortunately won’t be able to sell it…”
“Tsk… Fine then, after we get their temporary registrations complete, let’s work out the details of the order…”

With that, Benno’s victory over the guild leader seems to have been clinched. The guild leader was unable to find serious fault with him, he didn’t reveal any information about the paper, and he was able to secure our temporary registrations. In high spirits, he turns to head out of the guild leader’s office.

“Well then, shall we go back downstairs?”
“Hold up,” says the guild leader. “I can take care of their guild cards in here, so why don’t you let the children wait here? I’d like to work out the details of the order, too.”

Benno clucks his tongue quietly, then looks back, smilingly, over his shoulder at the guild leader.

“If I left the kids here alone, I don’t even know what kind of troubles they could blunder their way into, so why don’t I stay here and make sure to keep an eye on them for you?”
“No, no, these kids seem to be very well-raised! I’m sure they won’t cause any trouble if they’re out of your sight for a minute. Right?”

Though the guild leader may be smiling kindly, I’m scared of whatever he could be scheming underneath that. Cautious of the fact that I could be suddenly stolen away, I unthinkingly grab for Benno’s hand.

“Th… this is the first time I’ve come here,” I say timidly, “so I want to stay with Benno.”
“You see?”

Smiling triumphantly, Benno sits down on the hard bench that the guild leader has in his office, picking me up and setting me on his knee. “Good work,” he murmurs in my ear, gently ruffling my hair. He seems to be in a very good mood.

Shortly thereafter, I’m relocated to a spot on the bench next to Benno, with Lutz sitting on my other side. The guild leader sits down across from us, and we begin discussing the details of the hairpin.

“Well then,” he says, “I want one hairpin, delivered before the baptismal ceremony.”
“Umm… what color should I make the flowers? Do you know what colors she likes, or what might fit her hair, or…”
“I don’t really know much about that. Just make it like that one,” he says, pointing at the pin inside my totebag.

However, that kind of blunt declaration is actually somewhat problematic for me. I am very sure that Benno is massively overcharging the guild leader for this, so I want to make sure that I’ll be producing a product that his granddaughter is going to be absolutely delighted with. I have no doubt that this grandpa, who went to great lengths to find a hairpin for his granddaughter, thinks that her smile is the most priceless thing in the world.

“Umm, could I maybe speak to your daughter directly and ask her about what she would like? I believe she’ll be much happier if I could do so.”
“I want to surprise her, so I’m trying to keep this under wraps.”

There it is! That ever-troublesome surprise gift!

In order for someone to be truly delighted by a surprise gift, the giver needs to be very certain of the recipient’s tastes and desires, and present it to them at just the right time, when they’re thinking that they want something like that. Grandpa, though, is saying that he doesn’t even know what his granddaughter’s favorite color is, which makes a surprise gift much more challenging.

“…Umm, well, it’s important that the hairpin matches the dress she’ll be wearing, and it should fit with her hair color as well. And if she’s already found something else that she’s going to wear in her hair, then wouldn’t she be troubled by getting a new hairpin?”
“Ah, really?”

Since it’s the winter ceremony, preparations are probably already underway for the dress she’ll be wearing. If that’s the case, it’s possible that her mother is also working on something for her to wear in her hair.

“Since I’ll be making it from scratch, I feel that it’s most important that she receive something that she truly wants, even more than something that merely matches her tastes. Wouldn’t you agree that her look of joy would be more wonderful than a look of surprise?”
“Hmm, I see…”

The guild leader strokes his mustache, looking up at the ceiling as if in thought.

“Maine, was it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you like to come to my shop?”
“She refuses!”

Before I even have a chance to react, Benno rejects the proposal.

“My shop is much bigger than Benno’s,” continues the guild leader, “and we trade in some very good things. It’s a great offer, isn’t it? You still haven’t actually had your baptismal ceremony and officially become apprentices yet, so it’s still possible for you to come apprentice at my shop. How about it?”

How about it, he says, but after all of the support I’ve received from Benno so far, I have no intentions at all to do him the injustice of spontaneously switching to another shop.

“I owe a lot to Benno that I can’t pay back,” I say.
“Hmm, I’ll pay him back for you.”
“What? Ummm…”

I have every intention of refusing, but the words won’t leave my mouth. As Benno watches me waver under the guild leader’s relentless pressure, his mood grows worse and worse. His eyebrows crease together as he taps his temple repeatedly, looking at me with a dangerous glint in his eyes.

“Maine, kindly give your response to the guild leader. Your rejection, if you would.”
“I… I mu, mu… I must refuse!”
“Mm, well, that’s a shame, but I guess I’ll give this up for now. You’ve got someone scary standing over you, after all, so you can’t say what you really want.”

He’s giving up for now?! But I’m already telling him what I really want!

“If you’re going to be meeting with Freida, my granddaughter, how does tomorrow sound? It’s better to get these decisions squared away sooner rather than later, isn’t it?”
“Umm, couldn’t Mister Benno come with me?!”

Earlier today, Benno had thoroughly engraved the words “don’t meet with the guild leader alone” into my consciousness. Meeting with him without someone present who can actually handle him would be very dangerous. However, the guild leader shakes his head in reply.

“Unfortunately, both Benno and I have a meeting tomorrow. If you’re just meeting with another girl your age, you don’t need a stern old man like him watching over you, do you?”
“…Alright, if it’s just us kids.”

Caught in the middle of Benno’s battle with the guild leader and focused on the plan to ask Freida about her wishes, I’ve started to wear down a little, so without thinking about it too much, I consented to a meeting with only another girl my age. Benno, hearing me agree with the guild leader’s opinion, clucks his tongue disapprovingly.

What?! Did I do something wrong?!

I glance between Benno, whose eyebrows grow even more creased, and the guild leader, whose smile grows even wider, and suddenly realize the stupidity of my reply. By agreeing for it to only be “us kids”, I’ve made it so that Mark won’t be able to come with me. Frantically, I kick my brain into full power, looking at both sides, trying to figure out what to do.

“S… since Lutz is going to be working on making this too, it’s alright if he comes too, right? Si… since it’s just us kids!!”

Going entirely by myself is too scary to consider. When I suggest dragging Lutz into it too, though, Benno seems to relax just a little bit.

“Well, that’s fine too,” says the guild leader. “Now then, how does meeting in the central plaza at the third bell sound? Freida can come out to meet you there.”
“Sounds good, sir.”

As if she had been waiting for the conversation to conclude, the staff member from earlier enters the room, carrying temporary membership cards. It appears that our temporary registration has been successful.

“These are your temporary membership cards. These are magic tools as well. They’re absolutely necessary when you’re conducting any sort of business discussion. Benno can explain the fine details about that later. Since this card shows that you two are essentially a shop’s apprentices, you’ll be able to use it to access the upper floors of the building.”

This mysterious card is made of a strange, pale metal that glimmers with rainbow colors as the light strikes it. Compared to the things I normally interact with, this is almost unnecessarily different. The more of the explanation I listen to, the more I admire this obviously fantastical card. Faced with the wonder of a magic tool, I can only blink in response.

“Now then, the last step is for the two of you to push some of your own blood into the card so that it can recognize you. If you do that, other people won’t be able to use it arbitrarily.”
“Wha?! B… blood?!”

Does all magic require blood? The memory of having to slice open my finger and make a blood seal for the contract magic is still very fresh in my mind.

“Give it up, Maine,” says Lutz.
“Lu~uutz…”
“It’s fine, just give me your hand. …It’s not like you’ll do it yourself, right?”
“Oooohh…”

Tearfully, I extend my hand. Lutz pricks my fingertip with a needle. A drop of blood immediately wells up from the wound, to which he presses the card, which seems to absorb it.

In the next instant, it brightly flashes.

“Whoa?!”

It flashed with light for just a moment, but afterwards, it looked exactly like it had before. Not a trace of a bloodstain or a fingerprint has been left behind, leaving it as perfectly clean as it was before.

Magic tools are really convenient. But scary.

Although I had been frightened of drawing blood and startled by the card’s bright flash, Lutz finishes his own task almost disinterestedly.

“With that,” says the guild leader, “your registration is complete.”
“Thank you very much,” I reply.

I run after Benno, who has already started leaving the room now that there’s no longer any reason for him to be there, then leave the Merchant’s Guild building entirely.

All we did was get registered, but now I’m very worn out.

---

“Welcome back, sir. It seems you were able to successfully get these two registered?”

When we return to Benno’s shop, Mark is there waiting for us. Although from time to time I’ve seen a merchant’s dark smile cross his face, Mark is, fundamentally, a supporter, and his pleasant smile always heals me.

“Yes!” replies Benno. “Thanks to Maine, we won a flawless victory today.”
“Oh ho! How rare.”
“She caught that old bastard’s eye, though.”
“…That would seem to be rather dangerous indeed.”

Even Mark seems to regard the guild leader as dangerous. I must agree, from the bottom of my heart.

“Please, right this way,” he says, opening the door to Benno’s office and showing us in. “I’ve made arrangements so that we can settle the accounts regarding the prototype paper.”
“Well then,” says Benno, “let’s wrap this up then, shall we?”

As soon as I heard “settle the accounts”, though, my hand rocketed into the air.

“Excuse me! I have a question. Could you please teach me about money?”
“Huh?”

Benno frowns, not understanding what I meant, Mark, similarly, has his head tilted to the side in puzzlement.

“Ummm, well, until now, I’ve never actually held any money… I can read numbers very well, but I don’t know how the numbers and the money actually match up. …Let’s take 5,640 leon, for instance; I don’t have any idea at all how to use coins to pay that amount, or anything like that.”
“What?!”

The wild shout of disbelief was not just Benno’s. Mark and Lutz both joined in as well.

“You…” says Benno, slowly, “haven’t touched money… Well, you’re not a merchant, and you’re such a young kid, so maybe that’s not strange? Wait, no, that still is strange, right?”
“…Oh!” says Lutz. “She never gets sent out on errands, since she faints so easily.”
“Ahh…” they all say, breathing a collective sigh of understanding.

“I do calculations at the gate, but I’ve never actually watched anyone exchanging money with the merchants. When I went with Mark to go place orders, too, all we really did was hand over order forms, and we really didn’t exchange any money. I’ve been to the town market a few times with my mother, and I’ve seen her use some small coins to buy things, but I don’t know what those are or how much they’re worth.”

As I explain, Mark retrieves a small cloth bag, then steps forward in front of Benno. With a jingle, he spreads the contents of the bag over the desk.

“Then, perhaps I should first show you the different kinds of coins.”

There are coins minted out of a light brown metal, perhaps copper, in three different sizes, and there are both small and large coins made out of silver and gold. Lutz, fixated on the gold coins on the table, gulps audibly.

“This small copper coin is worth ten leon. The mid-sized one here with the hole in the middle is one hundred leon, and the largest is one thousand. The small silver one is ten thousand, and the pattern continues through this large silver coin, and these small and large gold coins.”

Since it’s very easy to remember that ten of a small coin is exchanged for one of a large coin, I’m much more at ease, nodding my head in comprehension as Mark explains. To my right, however, Lutz moans quietly to himself. It seems that he is completely and utterly confused by higher orders of magnitude.

We’re going to study very hard this winter.

Once he starts having money of his own, I think he’ll probably learn how to calculate with it, so it’ll probably be all right.

Benno takes out the six sheets of prototype paper, then lines them up on the desk.

“A full sheet of parchment is worth one small gold coin. A sheet the size we use for contracts is worth one large silver coin. A sheet about this size, then, would be about two small silver coins, I think.

A postcard-sized sheet is worth two small silver coins, he says…

I knew in theory that paper was expensive, but now that the money is being set out right next to it, I suddenly gain a new appreciation of that fact. Come to think of it, I did hear that a contract-size sheet would have been an entire month’s salary for my father, didn’t I?

“So, this time, let’s use parchment as the basis for figuring out the price of this paper. I’ll pay two small silver for the forin paper, and four small silver for the higher-quality tronbay paper. I’ll take a thirty percent commission from that. Next, you said you’ll be needing a new paper frame, larger than the one you used for this prototype. I’ll go ahead and take the price of that out of the total now. That’ll be another fifty percent.”
“Alright,” I reply, nodding. Since we’ve managed to complete our prototype, from now on the cost of any tools and materials will be entirely our responsibility.
Benno smiles broadly. “How does a twenty percent share sound, this time? In the future, you’ll be ordering raw materials through the lumberyard, and the market price might go down once more paper starts to circulate, so we might have to revisit this in the future, but…” “This is fine with me,” I say.

I nod in agreement, then turn to look at Lutz. He nods as well, with an expression I have no idea how to read.

Benno sets a wooden calculator on the desk with a thunk and pushes it towards Lutz.

“Lutz,” he says, “that’s three sheets of forin paper and three sheets of tronbay. Alright?”

Lutz pushes a few things around on the calculator, inputting the price for three sheets of forin, but after that he pauses, bent finger trembling in the air, and hangs his head in defeat. He can do calculation in one digit, but when the quantities or the varieties increase, he loses all hope.

“How about you, Maine?”
“Umm, ‘two times three is six and three times four is twelve’, so it’ll be eighteen small silver coins total. Twenty percent of that will be three small silver and six large copper for both Lutz and my share together, so each of us will get one small silver and eight large copper.”

I blink a little as Benno stares at me. Behind him, Mark smiles wryly.

“That’s correct. That really is amazing, to be able to compute that on the spot without a calculator.”

I, however, can’t even use a calculator at all, so this winter I’ll need to be practicing right alongside Lutz. I need to be as familiar with my surroundings as possible.

“Next… Lutz, I’ll take the cost of the slate and slate pencils out of your individual portion. That’ll be two large copper coins.”

Two coins are pulled from Lutz’s share, and in exchange he receives a slate and a few slate pencils.

“Now, you can carry this money with you, but if you’re going to have trouble finding a place to store it, you could instead deposit it at the Merchant’s Guild for safekeeping. Which would you prefer?”

It seems that the Merchant’s Guild also functions as some sort of bank. Having a lot of physical cash on hand is somewhat terrifying, and since one day I’d like to be able to buy a book, I’d like to have some sort of savings account.

“Please give me the large copper coins. I’ll be giving them to my mother. I’ll leave the silver coin with you, if you could please deposit it for me.”

It had been one of my dreams as Urano to show gratitude to my parents by giving them my first real paycheck. It’s okay if I manage to fulfill that dream here instead, right?

“Alright. Lutz, what about you?”
“I’ll do the same as Maine.”
“Alright then.”

I receive eight large copper coins, then Benno and I touch our guild cards together. They make a sharp pinging noise, like the plucking of a string, then we take them back. Nothing on the card seems to have changed at all.

“Now, you’ll be able to take out your money on the third floor of the merchant’s guild. Eventually, you’re going to need to go there and practice doing that.”
“That makes sense,” I reply.

Benno smiles wryly at me as I stare at the card in my hands, spinning it around in my fingers. Mark seems to share similar thoughts. Lutz touches his card to Benno’s as well, then collects six coins. The feel of the cold metal in our hands sets our hearts racing.

“This… is the first time I’ve ever held money,” I whisper.
“We’ve earned this ourselves, you know?”

I think back on all of the many failures we faced before we successfully made paper. Seeing this money after all of that is moving me deeply.

“When spring comes, let’s make a lot of paper, and let’s sell it all,” I say.
“Yeah!” replies Lutz.

My mind still fixated on my first ever earnings and feeling completely satisfied with the afternoon’s events, I look up at Benno.

“This is everything we needed to do today, right?” I ask.

However, my words only cause Benno to grimace, and he flicks me on the forehead.

“Hey, don’t be stupid, kid. Your battle is tomorrow. You’re going to be facing off against that old bastard’s granddaughter, alone, with no adults there, you know? With that thoughtlesslook on your face?!”
“What?! But, um, she’s just a child, and we’re both girls, right?”

I can’t imagine this being anything you’d call a battle. All I’m going to do is meet Freida so that I can ask her what she wants, and the guild leader isn’t going to be there, so is “facing off” really the right phrase to use?

“According to the rumors, it sounds like the granddaughter that old bastard really dotes on is the one kid amongst all his grandkids who’s the most like him.”
“Sh… she takes after the guild leader?”

I try to imagine what the guild leader’s face would look like on a young girl, but my imagination fails me.

“Well, you’re bringing Lutz with you, so that’s a little better. You won’t get overwhelmed. Lutz, you shouldn’t say anything you don’t need to, but if that girl tries to steal Maine like the guild leader did earlier today, you need to immediately refuse. Personally, I have no idea where that old bastard’s hidden his traps. Got that?”
“Got it.”

Lutz nodes vigorously, an earnestly serious expression on his face. Is it really necessary to make this big of a deal out of this meeting, though? We’re talking about an unbaptized little girl, right?

As I lean my head to one side doubtfully, the coins audibly rub together in my hand.

“…Come to think of it,” I say, “how much did you agree on for Freida’s hairpin? The guild leader made some sort of sign with his fingers, but I didn’t know how to read it…”
“The sign that old man put up meant three small silver coins. When I said we needed to ask for a little more, that made it four coins.”

This is extremely startling to hear. Even factoring in the price of the thread, this is massively overcharging for just a single hairpin.

“Th… what? What?! That’s a ripoff!”
“Make sure you’re done on time. This winter’s baptismal ceremony is going to be a great advertisement, so that’ll affect how well we can sell them afterward.”
“Um, so, adjusting the price is…”

With a sharp glare, Benno banishes my last glimmer of hope.

“You think I’m pulling one over on that geezer?”
“No, not at all.”

I hang my head dejectedly as I reply. I’m going to have to make a pin that’s worth four small silver coins, so there’s more than just a little bit of pressure on me.

“Even after my introduction fee, my commission, and the materials cost, you’re still going to make, what, fifty, sixty percent of that? Put your heart into this, kids. It’ll be fine! Look, that old bastard finally managed to find the hairpin he was looking so hard for, but you wouldn’t sell the one you were holding right in front of him. That makes it seem even harder to get, right? Then, he’s asking that you do something that you’d ordinarily be doing as your winter handiwork right now, in the middle of this amazingly busy time of year when everyone’s trying to prepare for winter, and sell it to him by this winter’s baptismal ceremony, before it’s even gone to market, so his granddaughter can wear something nobody else is? That’s what that price means. Don’t worry about it, kid.”

So, if you can come up with a few excuses, it’s okay to blatantly rip someone off, he’s saying? Seriously, give me a break.