Epilogue
Otto returned home to his loving wife after the meeting with Myne and Lutz.
“I’m home, Corinna. Just got back. Benno’s with me.”
“Welcome home, Otto. I hope you kept a good eye on my brother. Though I can’t say I approve of you coming home with a smile after teasing those young pre-baptism kids.”
“You look cute even when you’re pouting.” Otto wrapped his arms around his adorable wife’s hips and kissed her cream-colored hair repeatedly before heading to the parlor. Benno thumped him on the head and said, “Do that when I’m not around.”
Otto, being as utterly devoted to his wife as he was, wanted to reply with “Don’t interrupt our sweet time together,” but if he said that in front of Corinna she’d probably get mad and say not to embarrass her in front of her brother, so he had to swallow it down.
The parlor in Otto’s home was usually used as a room for Corinna to have meetings with her clients. The center of the room had a circular table, unlike the dining room, and it had four-legged chairs placed around it. The right side of the room had a shelf with samples of clothes she had sewn before. On the left wall hung tapestries that she had sewn with leftover cloth.
“Maaan, I didn’t expect things to go like that at all. To think she’d force Benno into negotiation like that...” Otto, having sat in one of the chairs, grinned at the frowning Benno sitting across from him.
“Oh? My brother, forced to negotiate? Please share the details with me, Otto dear.” Corinna’s gray eyes shined and she scooted her chair toward Otto a little as she asked for details with a sweet voice. It was rare for her to act so sweet, so while clapping enthusiastically in thanks for Myne on the inside, Otto casually told her what had happened.
“...And just like that, Myne made the meeting a lot more interesting than I thought it would be.”
“Myne is the daughter of your captain, isn’t she? The one you said was incredibly smart.”
“Yep, that’s the one. But you know, it’s been about half a year since she became my assistant and I still don’t get her. She’s so abnormal I really have no idea what kinda parenting would make a kid like her.”
Otto had met all sorts of people of various statuses across the world as a traveling merchant, so Myne’s abnormality stood out even more to him. The same went for Benno, who had accompanied him to meet her today. Benno knew people from all ranks of society thanks to the range of his work as a merchant. While Otto the former traveling merchant had a wide but shallow range of knowledge, Benno the rich city merchant had a deep and profound understanding of his city’s people.
“Hey, Otto. Was that really the daughter of a soldier?”
“Yep. Not a single doubt about it. But I’m with you in thinking that’s odd.”
“What do you two mean?” Corinna tilted her head, curious.
Otto thought of what made Myne seem weird and said what came to mind. “First, her looks. She’s way too clean to be a soldier’s daughter. Her clothes are the kind of raggedy hand-me-downs you’d expect, but her skin and hair are as clean as a whistle. The captain’s an older man like any other soldier, but neither of his daughters are dirty at all.”
“Perhaps their mother just takes good care of them?” Corinna had been raised as the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and although she had seen poor people around the city, she didn’t have a good understanding of their lifestyle. It took time, money, and resources to take care of one’s skin and hair. She didn’t understand that those in poverty did not have the leeway to spare any of those.
“Mmm, I saw her during the winter, and it didn’t look like their mother was putting that much effort into grooming. Though she and Myne do look alike. She’s a real beauty, totally wasted on the captain.” Myne had been told to wait at the gate during the winter once when the family went out to gather parues. Otto saw her mother when she came to get Myne, but didn’t get the impression that she was particularly more clean than average.
“...Do you think Myne is odd as well, brother?”
Benno put down his cup, looked up at the ceiling, and let out a slow sigh. “Yeah. Her hair was the color of the night, so silky that light gleamed off it. Her skin was pure white with not a speck of dirt to be found. Her hands were smooth like those of a noble who knows nothing of labor or household chores. Even her teeth were white. Everything about her conflicted with her raggedy clothing. No matter how I look at it, things don’t add up.”
“Hair so silky that light gleams off of it, you say?! What does she do to make it like that?!”
“Wha? Corinna, you’re plenty pretty already.”
“Quiet, Otto. I’m asking my brother.”
Otto blinked in surprise at just how serious she was. Women really did care quite a lot about how silky their hair was. Corinna rarely showed this much interest in anything but sewing.
“Seems like she’s putting something on it, but she wouldn’t tell me what.” Benno’s answer led Corinna to look at Otto, eyes full of hope.
“Would she tell you, Otto?”
“...She’s probably on her guard now. I don’t think she’ll tell me.” Otto nonetheless resolved to ask Myne the next time he saw her, for the sake of his wife who wanted to know the secret to silky hair. He was a man who would do anything for his beloved.
Otto continued, “Well, besides her hair, she’s got clean hands since she’s too small and weak to help around the house much. Her skin’s probably so white because she’s bedridden with fevers all the time and doesn’t go outside in the sun much.”
“...Now that you mention it, our meeting originally got postponed because she got sick,” murmured Benno to himself. Otto nodded with a frown, remembering how much of a pain it had been to deal with how on edge the captain had gotten after five days of Myne’s fever staying strong.
“If Myne looks the way she does due to being sick, should you two really be calling her abnormal?” Corinna determined from their conversation that Myne wasn’t a big deal. She shrugged as if having lost interest, but Benno shook his head.
“No, it’s not just her looks. What really got to me was her attitude and tone. She carried herself in a way only those trained to do so would. This is a stretch, but her parents aren’t fallen nobles who are strict with their parenting, are they?”
“The captain’s got another daughter, and she’s normal. She’s got silky hair too and relatively clean skin, but that’s all. She doesn’t stick out like Myne does.”
Benno nodded at Otto’s explanation and looked Corinna head-on. “Corinna, there was a lot more off about that girl than her looks. She had enough guts to not look away when I glared at her, the smarts to hide the details of her hair from me and turn things in her favor, the courage to gamble on making a prototype with a deadline, the negotiation skills to add conditions to her terms... Nothing about her was like a kid that hasn’t even been baptized yet.”
“There exists a child that didn’t look away after you glared at them?! That girl is certainly odd, no doubt about it!” exclaimed Corinna, her eyes wide. Benno was the oldest child of the family and Corinna the youngest, so when their father died not long after her birth, Benno had taken his place in many ways. She had grown up being scolded harshly by Benno and thus knew very well how terrifying his glare could be.
“Aaaah, y’know, she’s got a great memory and mind for math too. I couldn’t believe it when I gave her that slate. She knew how to hold the pen and use it without any instruction at all. Almost like she already knew how to write, somehow.”
“Perhaps she learned from watching you?” suggested Corinna as she poured Otto more wine, having noticed that his cup was empty.
Otto took a sip while thinking about how to word his response. “Well, I did show her how I did it, but it’s not so simple to write without hands on practice. You could explain how to hold a pen to a kid for a hundred years and they’d still struggle to draw lines at first. Letters, all the more so.”
“You do have a point...” Corinna knew from teaching her own apprentices that verbal explanations alone were not enough for children to learn.
“Myne’s math skills are bizarre too. She said her mom taught her numbers at the market, but knowing your numbers doesn’t mean you know how to do math, yeah?”
“Hold on,” Benno said. “The apprentices at my place know how to do a little math. They learn it from spending time with their parents.” Most apprentice merchants were the children of merchants, so many of them knew how to read, write, and do math on some level by the time their baptism came around. Otto himself had learned to read and do math while traveling the world with his merchant parents. But the math Myne could do was on an entirely different level.
“Myne knows a lot more than a little math. Budget reports involve calculating the stock and price of all the stuff we use at the south gate, yeah? The numbers get a lot bigger than the small ones at the market. Multiple digits larger. But she can calculate them without issue, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. And she doesn’t even use a calculator. She just writes the numbers next to each other on the slate.”
“...I knew it, you have been making her work as your assistant. How could you make a little kid like that help with budget reports? Shameful.”
Otto, glaring at Benno’s amused grin, lowered his voice. “I’ve never said this to anyone, but listen. She’s doing most of my paperwork for me. Seventy percent, at least.”
“...Wha?!”
“...Seventy percent? Dear...”
Both of them were shocked. Benno briefly froze, eyes opened wide in shock, and Corinna wasn’t much different.
Otto couldn’t help but laugh. “If she knew how to read more words she’d be doing it all. She’s something else. One time, I was away at a meeting, and she dealt with a noble’s letter of introduction perfectly.”
That incident really surprised him. Otto had received Myne’s report after the meeting. She told him that a merchant with a letter of introduction from a laynoble was waiting. Normally, visitors with letters from a noble introducing them to another noble are given the highest priority, and their needs were accommodated to immediately so that they could be sent to the castle gates as soon as possible. Even commoners are treated like laynobles.
On that day, however, a meeting was being held by an archnoble. It was obvious that the archnoble should be prioritized. But one mistake in treatment and the visitor could potentially get furious enough that they’d use their letter of introduction as a shield to force their way into the meeting, which would earn the ire of the archnoble and spiral out of control.
The situation was complex, and in the midst of that complexity Myne exploited the commoner merchant’s pride by sending them to the waiting room for laynobles, and framed the situation in an agreeable way by telling them that an archnoble’s meeting is underway. To top things off, she gave a report on the situation as soon as the meeting ended, which deftly avoided a situation where the commander left before giving the proper signature. The situation was resolved quickly and in such a way that the commander could reprimand the confused soldier for relying on a child for help. It was perfect.
“She must be amazing, then.”
“Amazing’s one way to put it, but it’s more like... she’s abnormal. Something’s weird about her. But I don’t think her dad, the captain, has noticed that at all. He treats her just like he would any cute and sickly daughter. If I hadn’t said I wanted to make her my assistant, he probably never would have noticed how intelligent she is.”
“Good for her that she’s got thick parents. If they had noticed, they might’ve thrown her out for being a freak,” said Benno, making Corinna furrow her brows.
“Don’t even joke about that. I don’t want to imagine it.”
“Don’t worry, Corinna. Even if her parents threw her out, Benno would pick her up. She’s skilled enough to fight Benno and win,” said Otto with a grin. Corinna giggled.
“...Hey, Otto. Do you think that girl’s really gonna make the stuff?” Benno gave Otto a hard look while drumming his fingers on the table. His reddish-brown eyes had become those of a merchant probing the future for profit.
“The paper that’s not parchment made from animal skin? Yeah, she’ll make it. No doubt about it.”
“You seem pretty confident in her.”
“Not long ago I gave her the idea that if she can’t do something herself, she should make someone else do it. Now that Lutz has become her arms and legs, she’s got nothing to fear.”
Myne had been frustrated with her weakness above all else, which was a clear sign that she knew the method for making paper and just couldn’t execute it herself. She had said she would make prototypes precisely because she knew she could do it. Otto didn’t think she had been gambling at all.
“...Paper like that will turn the market upside down. I wonder how I should deal with her.”
“Woah now, are you thinking about hiring Myne?” Otto, sensing from Benno’s words that he intended to take not just Lutz but Myne too as apprentices, opened his eyes wide in surprise.
“Of course! You think I’m gonna let someone else have her?! Do you have any idea how many products that girl will invent all on her own? That hair stick, that stuff that makes hair gleam, the paper that’s not parchment... Those are all the inventions I learned about today, but she’s definitely hiding more. She’s going to become a living natural disaster that destroys the market and remakes it anew.”
“Hold up! She’s my assistant. I’m not gonna let you take her from me.” Benno was completely right, but Otto wasn’t having any of it. He had spent the past half-year training her specifically so she could help him during budget season. He wouldn’t let someone snatch her away without a fight.
But Benno just gave a smug laugh and curved his lips into a grin. “The girl said being a merchant was her second choice. She even said she wasn’t interested in being your assistant. You’ve only spent half a year on her, right? Give it up. Look for someone else.”
“I’ll never find someone who only needs six months of training to become even half as competent as her! If Myne’s just doing the thinking and Lutz is doing all the making, what’s the problem with her working at the gate?!”
At the very least, he wouldn’t budge on having her help for budget season. Or so he thought, glaring as hard as he could, but it was Benno who wouldn’t budge an inch. He put his cup down and leaned forward.
“No! I’m going to get a contract with her at the Merchant’s Guild. I won’t risk letting anyone else take her.”
“Myne doesn’t have what it takes to survive in the Merchant’s Guild! She’s so weak and sickly you would hardly believe it. Any work that involves moving around is too much for her!”
“...Is she really that sick?” Benno was so stunned he lost his momentum, which Otto took as an opportunity. He drove his point home.
“I figured she would be fine in a room with a furnace and left her on her own for a single bell’s worth of time, but when I came back, she was collapsed and sick with a fever.”
“What?”
Otto had needed to stand by the gate when on guard duty, so he left Myne in a furnace-warmed room for a bit, but when he came back to check on her, she was collapsed with a burning-hot forehead. When Gunther came to get her, he said, “Don’t sweat it. This happens all the time.” Otto could imagine that meant that Myne’s abnormal weakness was accepted by her family as a fact of life.
“Things were horrible back when spring just began. She couldn’t even walk from her home to the gate.”
“Oh? But I don’t believe it should be that long of a walk to the gate from any home in the city, dear.” Since the outer walls circled around the city in its entirety, it wasn’t actually that big of a city. A kid should be able to walk from the west gate to the east gate within the time span of a single bell ring.
“That’s right. The captain’s house isn’t too far from the southern gate. But she couldn’t manage it. She’d get exhausted halfway through, get carried the rest of the way, and then rest immobile in the night shift room. After that, she’d be bedridden for two or three days every time.”
“Hey, isn’t that, uh, dangerous? Wouldn’t she just die if someone put her to work?”
That was a legitimate concern. In particular, Benno’s store was growing in size and was as busy as it was successful. Otto didn’t expect that Myne would be capable of working there with her sickly body.
“Ngh...” Benno had been told that she was sickly, but he must not have expected that she was that sickly. He rubbed his temples and fell into thought.
With that topic settled, Corinna stood up to prepare lunch. On the table was a lamp, a small jug for refilling cups, and a plate with dried meat piled on top for snacks. Otto, chewing hard on the salty dried meat, watched Benno pour himself a fresh glass.
“Hey, Benno. You sure you don’t know anything about that sickness Myne mentioned? The one with the heat inside of her?” Otto figured from the reaction Benno had to Myne’s question that he actually knew what the sickness was, and that was correct.
Benno looked up a little, wondering whether or not he should say it. After some thought, he let out a quiet murmur, which was rare for him. “I figured she might have the devouring. But I can’t say for sure. Not enough evidence.”
“...The devouring? What kinda disease is that?”
“It’s not a disease. It’s when the mana inside of you grows too much and eats you alive from the inside out.”
Otto’s eyes shot wide open in surprise. Mana was a mysterious, powerful energy that commoners didn’t have. He didn’t see it that often and thus didn’t know too much about it, but as far as he knew, it was said that no country would be able to survive without the assistance of mana. Which is why nobles, possessing mana as they did, stood above commoners and led countries.
“...It’s rare, but sometimes those who aren’t nobles end up having mana too. But magic tools needed to unleash mana are incredibly expensive, so it’s true that only nobles are capable of properly using mana.” Benno, given his market connections to nobles, knew more about this country’s inner workings than Otto did.
“I can’t say for sure, but if that girl has the devouring, it would explain both her sickly nature and small size. The thing is, though, if this really is the devouring we’re dealing with here, then without a magic tool it won’t be long before that girl... dies.”
“Wha?!” Otto, with thoughts of Gunther doting on Myne passing his mind, locked his eyes on Benno as if he’d been hit with a bucket of cold water. But Benno’s expression was serious, and Otto could tell he wasn’t joking around.
“The mana in her will grow as she does, and eat her alive in the process. Commoners with mana generally don’t survive until their baptism without a magic tool.”
“Is there something we can do?” asked Otto desperately. Maybe Benno would know a solution to the problem.
Benno sighed and scratched his head. “She can avoid dying if she signs a contract with a noble. They’ll lend her magic tools. However... that’d be signing her life away. She’d become living furniture that exists just to use her power for nobles. Hard to say whether dying young with her family would be better or worse than that.”
Benno’s words provided no easy out. Otto himself couldn’t tell which would be better. He didn’t want to die, but he didn’t want to live a life serving nobles like cattle, either.
“Otto, don’t get too serious. We don’t know if she really does have the devouring yet,” said Benno. “In the first place, she would already be on the verge of death if she really did have it. She wouldn’t be able to walk around outside like that.”
“I see...” Otto’s chest was flooded simultaneously with slight relief and great unease. Myne had been on the verge of death multiple times. He heard that she was only capable of walking outside due to months of hard work, and that before now she had barely gone outside at all.
Would she really be okay? Should he report this to Gunther? Otto swallowed down the whirlwind of feelings within him by taking a gulp of alcohol from his cup.
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