Tuuli’s Hair Ornament
One morning, several days after I stayed at the gate, Mom finally finished the dress she had been working so hard on for Tuuli.
Fundamentally, it was a one-piece dress sewn together from unbleached cloth. The fanciest part of the design was embroidery around the sleeves and neckline. Around its waist was a wide sash with a cool blue color that gave the dress an elegant flair.
It was cute, for sure, but I had memories of Japanese fashion where kids wore fancy dresses, kimonos, and just generally vibrant clothing at festivals. Tuuli’s dress felt a little lacking in comparison.
“So, Myne? Is it cute?”
Well yes, but it’d be cuter if you added more frills and decoration. I kept my thoughts to myself, though, because Mom looked full of pride and Tuuli was happy. By this world’s standards, the dress was surely more than good enough. Not to mention that this was a dress one wore when visiting a holy temple. Maybe a flashier dress would cause problems.
I shouldn’t talk about things I don’t understand, and there’s a lot about this world’s fashion I don’t understand. But there is something I think I can talk about. Her hair. Tuuli’s hair had gotten a lot more glossy thanks to regular shampooing and care, but she always kept it up in a braid. If she planned on changing her hair style for the festival, a nice hair ornament would add a lot.
But I needed to learn more about this stuff before I did anything. Myne was too young to have any memories of the baptism.
“It’s cute, Tuuli! But... what about your hair? Are you going to do anything special for the baptism?”
“Well, I wasn’t planning to?”
Tuuli... Come on. It’s a special occasion, you gotta mix things up a little! I slumped my head reflexively, but I shook myself out of it and continued questioning her. A hair ornament could still work with her normal braid.
“Ummm, well, what about a hair ornament? Are you going to wear anything on your hair?”
“Hm, I don’t know. It’ll be summer, so maybe I’ll grab a flower?”
“No way, that’d be terrible! Think about how cute your dress is!”
It was frowned upon for children to wear their hair completely up, but braiding was fine, and we could just make a hair ornament if she didn’t have one. I could make a lace one myself. There was still time before summer.
“I’ll make you one, Tuuli! Let me make you one. It’ll definitely be super cute.” The moment after I said that, I realized I didn’t have the needles I needed for sewing lace. Mom had needles for sewing wool, but they were too thick for lace.
...O-Oh no! What do I do?! The only one in my family that could probably make needles from scratch was Dad. The long hair stick that Tuuli gave me had actually been carved down and smoothed out by Dad. He even finished it with an oil coating.
I glanced to the side, checking to see what kind of mood Dad was in. Several days had passed since Otto taught me letters at the gate, but he was still in a bad mood. I doubted he would be very receptive to begging.
“U-Um, Dad.”
“What?”
“You’re pretty good with your hands, aren’t you? You made Tuuli’s doll, right?”
“W-Well, yeah, pretty much. Ahem! Aaah, what, do you want a doll too?” He was frowning hard to show that he was mad, but nonetheless, his eyes gleamed with anticipation and he kept glancing at me.
“Nuh uh. I want sewing needles.”
“Sewing needles? Like the kind your Mom uses? Just borrow hers.” Dad’s face fell with disappointment the moment he heard my answer. He looked so, well, pathetic that I wished he would at least try to act a little tougher.
“I want needles a lot, lot more thin than those. I want to sew thread, not wool. Dad... I think it’d be really hard to make thin needles, but, would you pleeease make me some?” I looked up at him with wet eyes, hands clasped in front of my chest, as I made the cutest begging pose I could manage.
I didn’t know if this world understood the significance of puppy dog eyes, but fathers of all worlds and universes should be weak to their daughter’s cuteness... Hopefully.
My cuteness must have done the trick, as Dad stroked his stubble and fell into thought. “...Is wood fine?”
“Uh huh! Can you make them? They need to be really thin.”
“I’ll give it a shot.” Tickling his pride probably helped, as he immediately took out a few knives and began carving a chunk of wood.
He was used to carving with knives and worked fast. The bark of the thin branch was gone in no time, leaving just the hard inner wood. He then sliced off layer after layer of the wood while looking at Mom’s thicker needles as a reference.
“Is this thin enough?”
“Mmm, could you make it a little thinner?”
“This much?”
“That much!”
After carving the branches down to the proper thickness, he swapped out knives and began carving out the pointed tips. His work wasn’t good enough to be that of a professional, but I for sure couldn’t do it myself, so I was genuinely impressed.
“You’re amazing, Dad! They already look like good needles. If you would just smooth them out so the thread doesn’t catch on them, and give them an oil finish, they’ll be perfect.”
“Leave it to me.” His pride as a father must have been restored by my praise, as Dad got to work smoothing out the thin needles with an exceptionally pleased expression.
“Myne, it looks like Dad’s all cheered up now. I’m so glad!” Tuuli beamed the innocent smile of an angel.
I nodded in return, saying “Uh huh, I’m glad too,” while sweating on the inside. It’s my fault he was upset in the first place, ahaha...
Since Dad was working hard on my needles, I started looking for thread so I could get to work as soon as they were ready. We had plenty of thread left over since Mom had prepared plenty for Tuuli’s dress. The white thread and the unbleached thread that she had used to sew cloth would still be useful to her. But the colored thread she had used for the edges and the sash only had tiny snippets left over. They wouldn’t be that useful.
“Mom, can I have the rest of the colored thread?”
“What do you want it for?” Mom, surprised that I would want thread, gave me a puzzled look.
“I want to try some (lacework). Tuuli needs a hair ornament.”
My Japanese mother hadn’t just taught me how to make baskets, she had dipped her toes in all manner of arts and crafts, taking me along for the ride. I really wish she hadn’t bothered, but she was set on getting me interested in something other than books and got me wrapped up in whatever the latest craze was.
Basically, I had just as much experience with a million random things as she did. And one of those random things was lacework, which actually ended up relatively useful to me back then. I was confident that I could make a lace ornament if given the tools. My life as Urano was over, but my past experience kept proving useful in unexpected ways.
That said, since Mom had no way of knowing about my past life, she was hesitant to give me thread. She definitely thought doing so would just be a waste of good thread, given how often I’ve “wasted” things in the past.
“She’ll only need an ornament for the baptism, you know. Why waste thread on something so frivolous? A flower is more than good enough. Tuuli’s already cute enough as is.”
“If there’s a way to make her cuter, it’s wrong not to do it! Cuteness is justice!” I clenched my fist to show my resolve, but Mom just sighed for some reason and turned her back to me, signaling that the conversation was over.
I hurriedly grabbed onto her skirt and began begging. “Please, Mooom. I just need your extra thread. I want to use the needles Dad worked hard to make for me! He’s almost finished with them. Pleaaaase.”
I looked at Dad for help, hinting that the needles would be wasted without thread. He must have understood the meaning to my glance and, perhaps fearing his efforts being wasted, or perhaps fearing losing my respect, backed me up.
“Effa, it’s not often Myne gets interested in sewing. Why not give her some of your spare thread?”
“...You’re right.” After thinking about it for a bit, Mom reluctantly gave me the thread too short for her to do anything with.
“Yay! Thanks, Mom. I love you, Dad.” I shot my fists into the air, showing my happiness. Dad grinned. He grinned so, so hard as he sped up his heated carving.
I wonder if all dads act like this when their daughter is sweet to them. Well... Now that he’s happy, I guess it’s okay if I stop worrying about him for a bit?
Dad gave me the needles, packed uncomfortably full with his fatherly love, so I went and started the lacework right away. First up was making a bunch of tiny flowers.
Fiddle fiddle fiddle fiddle...
Lacework required tightly weaving the strands just like my failed faux-papyrus did, so I needed some firm determination to succeed. But since this time I was making tiny flowers, and it only took me fifteen minutes to finish one.
I set the yellow flower on the table and got to work on the next one. Tuuli looked at the lace flower with admiration before tilting her head a bit in confusion.
“Isn’t it a bit small?”
“The ornament’s going to be a lot of tiny flowers bundled together.”
You see... Making one big flower would be a problem if I got bored halfway through, right? Once again, I kept my thoughts to myself.
I had talked big and now needed to finish the ornament for Tuuli no matter what. A design built around tiny flowers allowed me to duck out whenever I wanted.
To tell the truth, back in my Urano days, I had given up on a lot of big designs before finishing them. Predicting problems and avoiding them before they happened just made sense.
“I thought about making a lace ribbon, but it’d need to be long enough to tie, and it’d be a problem if I ran out of the same color thread before it was done. So, I’ll just make lots of little flowers.”
“You really thought this through, Myne.”
“Of course I did! I’m doing all this for you, Tuuli.”
I put my all into making a cute hair ornament for Tuuli, as thanks for always taking care of me. Since I would be bundling together finished flowers, it wouldn’t matter if I quit halfway through, ran out of thread, or needed to swap colors to keep going. No thread would be wasted.
Fiddle fiddle fiddle fiddle...
I felt someone looking at me after making several flowers and instinctively looked up. Mom was staring at my hands, entranced.
Given that being good at sewing was a requirement for being a beauty, everyone recognized Mom as a beautiful woman. That probably led to her being interested in all sorts of sewing.
She picked up the finished flowers and rolled them around in her hands. “...These don’t seem too hard to make.”
“You’re so used to sewing wool and stuff, I think you’d be a lot better at making these than me if you learned how. Want to try?”
I handed Mom my needles and she got to work, looking at the small flowers. She would occasionally pause to fiddle with the flowers, and in no time she had finished one of her own.
Wooow. Just what I’d expect from a sewing beauty. She learned how to make them just by looking at them. Meanwhile, it took me forever to learn even when being taught step by step, since I just didn’t care.
“That’s really good, Mom.”
“I’m more impressed that you knew how to make these in the first place, Myne. I’ve made scarves and sweaters, but I never thought about making ornaments like this before.”
In this world where it took all one had just to stay alive, most people didn’t have the leeway to worry about decorations. Nobody made hair ornaments like this, and Mom might not have ever seen any lacework in her whole life. I knew about this kind of thing since I had been raised in a world where attaching decorations to one’s clothes was normal, but even small little lace flowers were weird in this world.
“So, Myne. How will you put all of these little flowers onto her head?” Mom couldn’t imagine what the completed product would look like from the strewn about flowers, so I gave her as simple of an explanation as I could manage.
“Ummm, well, we’ll make a circle with these leftovers, and sew each flower onto them one by one. It’ll look like a bouquet of flowers, right? Then we’ll just stick a (pin) through it, and... wait, a (pin)?!”
The blood drained from my face. I even let out a tiny shriek, which made Mom flinch with surprise.
“What’s wrong, Myne?!”
“Oh no... We don’t have a (pin).”
This is big trouble! I don’t think this world has pins. At the very least, I’ve never seen them at home. This is a world without hair scrunchies! A world where everyone bundles their hair with tiny strings! What’s going to happen to my precious ornament?!
“D-D-Daaad!” Explaining with words would be hard, so I took out my slate and sketched what I needed. “I want a tiny hairpin kind of like mine, except one that has a flat end with a tiny hole in it! Can you make one?!”
“Heh, that’ll be easier than your needles.”
“Really?! You’re amazing, Dad! I’ve never respected anyone this much in my life!” I got so emotional that I hugged Tuuli hard as Dad muttered to himself, “Heheh. I beat you, Otto.” Apparently he had been secretly competing with Otto.
Dad enthusiastically made me a tiny hairpin, so I took it and sewed the mini-bouquet onto it, much like one would sew on a button.
“Okay, done! Tuuli, put on your dress and sit here, please.”
Wearing her summer dress, Tuuli sat on the nearest seat to the furnace. I slid my own chair behind her and stood on top of it after removing my shoes. I then undid Tuuli’s braid, combed her hair, and started braids on both sides.
Tuuli’s hair was fluffy and had a natural perm, so I stopped the braids halfway through to give her a more elegant look that would be sure to stun anyone who saw her. To finish things off, I stuck the ornament’s pin into the crude string that was keeping the end of her braids together. The tiny white, blue, and yellow flowers looked great on her green hair.
“Yep, super cute!”
“My goodness! You’re adorable, Tuuli!”
“You’ve got some good hands on you, Myne. Maybe you’ve got a future working with your hands?”
Tuuli, smiling from her family’s praise, turned every which way while touching her hair and the ornament.
But eventually, she pouted a little. “Myne, you put it on the back of my head. I can’t see it at all.”
“That’s true, but... what can you do?”
“Well, I still want to know what it looks like.”
Our home had no mirrors, so I had no way of showing her what it looked like. I thought for a second about what I could do, and although it wasn’t the best solution, Tuuli looked so frustrated that I undid her ornament and put it on my myself, next to my own hairpin.
“It looks like this. What do you think?”
“Wooow, cute! You look amazing! Um, Mom? Did I look like this too?” Tuuli cried out with eager excitement after seeing what the ornament looked like on me.
“Myne braided your hair and colored the flowers to suit you, so you looked even cuter, Tuuli.”
“Wooow... Huh. Ahahaha... Thank you, everyone. I’m really happy.” Tuuli broke into a ridiculously happy smile and blushed as she took the ornament off my hair.
And so, Tuuli’s special outfit was completed before spring. There was no doubting that she’d be the star of this summer’s baptism.
Also, Mom ended up addicted to lacework, and before I knew it the needles Dad made for me were in her sewing box.
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