Freida’s Hair Ornaments
We left Freida’s house and started our walk home. She had seen us off with a smile, so why did it feel like I had just narrowly escaped alive? Why did I feel more tired now, after eating sweets and chatting, than I did after going to the forest?
“Oh, finally finished with your business discussion?”
“Mr. Mark?”
As we passed by Benno’s store, Mark called out to us. We were planning to go straight home since Benno had told us to report back the next day, but Mark smiled and gestured us into the store.
“Master Benno is getting, shall we say, fidgety. Would it be possible for you to give your report now?”
“...Yes.” My stomach hurt just thinking about how mad he’d get over me giving a discount on the second one without consulting him, so I wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.
“Sir, may I allow Myne and Lutz inside?”
“Yeah, let’m in.” Past the open door was Benno, who was slapping his desk to hurry us inside. “How’d it go, Myne? How was that geezer’s granddaughter?”
“Ummm, she was a very cute little lady.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it. What’d you think of her?”
I tried making my report sound nice, but Benno shook his head and told me to tell the truth. I let out a sigh and complied. “Honestly, she acts so different from how she looks that it’s still hard for me to believe. But she’s not just a girl who loves money. She’s been watching the guildmaster since birth and now the concepts of earning money, expanding her grandfather’s business, and capitalizing on opportunities for profit are all second nature to her. She has amazing talent as a merchant.”
“You think she’s amazing too, huh...?” Benno scratched his head and sighed.
“Ummm, how should I put this... She was really cute, but really weird. Right, Lutz?” I said, summarizing my thoughts. Lutz rose an eyebrow and looked down at me, eyes silently saying “that’s the pot calling the kettle black.”
Benno gave a meaningful grin and looked at Lutz. “What about you, Lutz? What’d you think?”
“She tried to invite Myne to their store just like the guildmaster did. I think we need to be careful around her. Also, uh... I thought she was a lot like Myne.”
“Bwuuuh?! How?!” That’s just... unbelievable! I demanded an explanation for his shockingly bad opinion.
Lutz shrugged. “She talked about money the way you talk about books. Same expression and all. You’re both obsessed with the thing you like most, and just like you said about her, you look cute on the outside but you’re weird on the inside.”
...Oh, huh. I guess I look kinda cute now. There were no mirrors in my home, so I only ever saw myself in the blurry reflection of our water bucket. And the only people who ever complimented me up front were strangers and my overbearing dad, so I thought everyone was just being polite.
People didn’t just call me a bookworm in the past, they straight up called me a weirdo. I was well aware of that. It didn’t really bother me, but I didn’t look cute in my past life. I looked like a total geek that lived in a library, so nobody ever said I didn’t act like I looked.
Siblings tend to look pretty similar, so I imagined Tuuli on a quest for books, acting extremely bizarre in public, and facepalmed at myself. “...I’m sorry. I feel a little regret now.”
“You should be feeling a lot of it.”
“Ngh...”
Benno watched me crumble with despair and, grinning, tapped his desk with a finger. “So? How’d the business talk go?”
“Umm, Freida’s going to be wearing her hair tied up in two places, so we’ll be making two hairpins instead.”
“Good. Twice the profit,” said Benno like it was the most natural thing in the world, making my heart thump with fear. I had to tell him what I had done, but still, I was terrified of what would come next.
“Um, well, I...”
“What?” Benno glared at me with his dark-red eyes. I gave a tiny gasp, trying to word my explanation properly. After watching me flounder for a bit, Benno shifted his gaze from me to Lutz. He jerked his chin up and Lutz answered for me.
“Freida gave us thread to make the hairpins with, so Myne said she would make both of them for the price of one.”
“Lutz?!”
“She what?!”
Lutz continued, ignoring both Benno and my reactions. “But Freida was insisting that she follow the agreement and pay for both. It looked like they’d be fighting over it forever, so I stepped in and said we’d sell the second one half price, which they agreed to.”
Benno rose an eyebrow at Lutz’s explanation and looked at me. “Myne. Are you stupid? Did you not listen to me? Did you forget everything I said?”
“N-No. I remembered, which is why I didn’t give a discount on the first one. But after we agreed on the second one being half price, Freida also told me: ‘When you get the chance to earn money, take it and profit as much as you possibly can.’”
“You’re really letting a customer lecture you on how to sell things?” said Benno with an exasperated sigh before putting a hand on his forehead and shaking his head. I mean, I did think it was a little embarrassing that Freida found the need to explain to me how businesses worked, but still. Overcharging people didn’t sit well with me.
“I know what you’re saying, but please give me a break here. We’re charging so much above its like, proper market value, that it honestly hurts my stomach.”
“You’re not gonna survive as a merchant if taking money makes you feel guilty. Good grief... Well, you’re the only one losing money here. You charged her for the second one and that’s what matters. Otherwise, rumors would have spread that our store gives a free hairpin with every purchase, and dealing with those customers would have been a real pain. Pick your battles and be more careful about what will happen if you lose.”
I hadn’t imagined for a second that rumors like that would spread and impact our customers. He had basically just told me I was still too ignorant to do business here, which made me slump my shoulders sadly.
“Aww. I didn’t think that far ahead. I’m sorry,” I apologized. “But moving on, this is the thread that Freida gave us. I would like white thread that will go well with it. As for its length, ummm...” I took out the measuring tape from my tote bag and stretched it between two fingertips. “I would like thread that’s about... one hundred felles long.”
“Alright. Go buy some with Mark tomorrow. While you’re at it, buy enough thread to cover your winter handiwork,” said Benno, who then told us we could leave.
Lutz and I left his store together and went home. I now knew exactly how a tired working man felt on his way home to his wife and kids. I wanted to go home and let it heal me.
“I’m home.”
“Welcome back, Myne. How was the girl you were meeting today? Are you friends now?” Tuuli, on cooking duty, smiled at me while stirring the pot. Upon seeing Tuuli — a cute, kind girl who took care of others while being both a master chef (in process) and a sewing beauty (planned) with a good seamstress job — indescribable emotions welled up in my chest.
“Tuuuulii!”
As I hugged her tight, Tuuli furrowed her brows a bit and peered into my face. “What’s wrong, Myne? Did something bad happen?”
“You’re an angel, Tuuli. The healer of my heart. You’re the greatest older sister in the world, but I’m just sick and useless. I didn’t realize it until Lutz told me today, but I’m a weird little sister who acts way different from how she looks. Sorry, Tuuli.”
“Haaah... You just now realized?” Tuuli sighed and, after patting my head a few times, pointed toward the bedroom. “I’m cooking right now, Myne. Come help once you put your stuff down.”
“Okay.” I set my tote bag down and started helping Tuuli. Despite still being called super small all the time, I had grown a little taller and could now safely stir the pot if I stood on something. Which is exactly what I did while reporting what happened today to Tuuli.
“So like, the girl’s name is Freida and she’s really cute, but all she’s interested in is money. She said her favorite thing to do is count gold coins.”
“Gold coins?! I’ve never even seen one of those before and she has enough of them to count? She must be super rich.” Tuuli was more surprised by how much money Freida had than by how weird it was that she loved to count money. Where we lived it was normal for people to work their whole lives and never earn a gold coin, so I could understand how big of a deal that would be to her.
“Her house was crazy, too. There were a ton of decorations and it was really pretty. Oh, also, Freida told me the name of what I’m sick with. It’s apparently called the devouring.”
“...I’ve never heard of that before.” Tuuli tilted her head. I couldn’t blame her for not knowing; it seemed like barely anyone knew what it was called.
“It’s a really rare disease. Not even Otto or Benno recognized it, and Freida only knew about it because she was sick with it too. But she also said it cost a fortune to cure. If a rich girl like her said it costs a fortune, well...”
“We’ll never be able to afford it.” Tuuli came to the same conclusion as me in a snap. It wasn’t even a matter of debate. We were so poor we couldn’t even afford to call for a doctor when I collapsed in fever for days in a row.
“...Uh huh. But she told me what I had to do to stop it from getting worse.”
“Really?”
“She said I’ll be fine as long as I have a goal that I’m working toward with all I have.”
“Wow. You have been more energetic since you’ve found something you like, now that I think about it. You used to always just cry and complain that only I got to do things...”
Speaking of which, many of Myne’s memories were of her crying and bothering Tuuli while she was sick. The fact that Tuuli just casually compared me with how I used to be probably meant that she noticed how much I had changed. I fell into thought, and Tuuli hurriedly patted my head again.
“Don’t feel bad. I’m just glad you’ve been more healthy. So, how did the hairpin stuff go?”
“I learned Freida’s favorite colors and she gave me the same thread she used to embroider her clothes. I’ll make the hairpins with that. Oh, and since she’s wearing her hair up in two places, she needs two hairpins.”
“Neat.”
We continued to prepare food and eventually Mom came home, then Dad, who had been working the night shift so much lately I hadn’t seen him for a few days. While enjoying my first meal with the whole family I’d had for some time, I talked about the guildmaster’s house. Everyone listened with rapt attention, since they normally didn’t have the opportunity to go into the homes of rich people.
Mom was most interested in the decorative tapestries and cushions, whereas Dad was curious about the kinds of alcohol they had lined up in the parlor. Tuuli seemed interested in what kind of clothes Freida was wearing and stuff, so all her questions were about things Freida owned.
After the much more lively than expected meal was over, I caught Mom and asked her to return the needles I used for thread.
“What for?”
“I’m going to make new hairpins. Remember what I said yesterday? Freida wants them. I went today to hear the details. She wants me to use the thread she embroidered her clothes with, so I brought some home with me.”
“Please show me that thread, dear.” My mom, a dyer by trade and skilled seamstress, didn’t even try to hide how interested in the thread she was. She retrieved the needles and pressed me to take the thread out.
The moment I took the thread out of my tote and placed it on the kitchen table, Mom picked it up and started looking it all over. Tuuli was peering at it too, interested as an apprentice seamstress in what kind of thread is used on the clothing rich girls wear.
“It takes a long, long time to dye anything this deep of a red.”
“I knew it, this thread is really high quality.”
I readied the needles while the two of them fiddled with the thread, enraptured.
“She’s even going to buy the hair ornaments at a high price since nobody else sells them. I’m going to work really hard to make good ones for her.”
“Are they going to be like mine?”
In Tuuli’s case I had prioritized being economical with thread and thus made a bundle of different colors from whatever thread we had left, but for Freida I had plenty of red thread. Plus, we were overcharging her so much that I really wanted to make fancier hairpins than Tuuli’s. It was the least I could do.
“I’m going to make the flowers bigger, since I have so much thread this time.”
My plan was to make a bouquet of several roses with small white flowers. Yes, I was disappointed with my poor imagination that first thought of roses when it came to rich young ladies. But still, roses did manage to look both flashy and dignified.
I sewed the thread in a way that was like decorative lace with wavy edges, so that it would look more like flower petals when wrapped around itself in the end. Once it was long enough, I twisted it around, sewed just the bottom part together, then spread out the “petals” enough that it looked like a tiny rose.
“Wow, so cute!” Tuuli liked it enough that I started work on another one. Dad, who was drinking while keeping an eye on us, called out to Mom, who was eagerly watching my hands.
“Hey, Effa. If you’re that interested in all this, want me to make another needle?”
“Dad, I want one too! Can you make two?”
Mom’s enthused hug and Tuuli’s cute request put Dad straight into a good mood. He started carving the wood immediately. He managed to finish the thin needles pretty fast, since he had experience making them now.
Tuuli took the first needle and started sewing with me. Her dexterity had apparently leveled up thanks to her work as a seamstress. After just a bit of teaching, she was pumping the mini roses out in no time. To be honest, she was going way faster than me.
When Mom’s pair was finished, she took them and started sewing right away at a monstrous speed with a full smile on her face. She had been watching me work so closely that she already knew how to make them.
“Myne, want me to make the sticks for those hair things?” said Dad enthusiastically, with nothing else to do since he had finished the sewing needles.
I hated to turn him down, but that was Lutz’s job. Without him making the pins for the hair ornaments, I wouldn’t have any excuse for bringing him to Freida’s with me. Not to mention that Lutz wasn’t the kind of person who would accept money for no work. If he didn’t make the pins, he’d end up with no pay.
“I appreciate the thought, but no thanks. That’s Lutz’s job.”
“Lutz this, Lutz that. You’ve been pretty cold to me lately, Myne.”
There went Dad pouting again. He loved his family so much that he felt weird jealousy toward Otto, Lutz, and so on. It got kind of annoying sometimes.
I let out a sigh and shook my head. “If you really want to make something, why not make something for me instead of for other kids? I want a hair stick with a hole in the tip for my baptism ceremony.”
“I get it, Myne. You don’t want me to make sticks for other kids, huh? Feeling jealous?”
...Um, no. I have no idea why you would even think that.
Dad must have had some weird delusions going through his head, as he grinned happily and started making my hair stick. Since he was back to being pleased, I returned to my own sewing. Tuuli and Mom had gotten quite the lead on me while I was talking to Dad.
“That’s enough red flowers. The ones we’re making now can be the last ones.” We needed a lot of the same flower, but things went by a lot faster when all three of us worked together. Mom in particular was very fast. As expected, the slowest out of us was me, the one getting paid to do this.
“Awww, we’re already done?” Tuuli pursed her lips unhappily, having quite enjoyed the sewing. I shrugged while making a rose. My initial plan had been to have three mini roses for each hairpin, but now we had four for each. The hairpins just weren’t big enough for more.
“You don’t want to waste the thread they gave us, right?”
“Oh, that’s true. We don’t want to waste pretty thread like this.” Despite her disappointment, Tuuli nodded and began packing up her needles.
“Next, I’m going to make a lot of tiny white flowers from thread Benno’s buying me. I think it’ll be good thread just like this red thread, since they need to go together. I’ll have the thread tomorrow, so hopefully we can all work together again.”
“I can’t wait!” Tuuli smiled at me and happily hugged the sewing box to her chest. Hmm... If Tuuli’s this into it, maybe she should make hairpins with me over the winter instead of baskets?
The next day, Mark, Lutz, and I went to buy thread together. It was the same store we visited with the craftsman from before when making the suketa screen. The fact we bought the top-quality spinne thread last time must have left a deep impression on the store owner, as he stood up as soon as he saw us.
“Oh, if it isn’t the customers that bought spinne thread. Do you need more?”
“Yes, we’ll be ordering more at a later date. Today we have visited in search of another kind of thread,” said Mark, reminding me that Benno was having the craftsman make the larger screen by spring.
My head was so full of Freida’s hair ornaments and my winter handiwork that I forgot all about preparing to make paper in the spring. ...I really need a notepad. Not a stone slate where the words rub right off, an actual notepad.
“What do you need today?”
“Um, white thread that’s just like this red thread.” I took the thread out of my tote bag and the store owner gave it a hard look, then nodded.
“Pretty expensive stuff. You’ll want thread like this to match it.” He took out two types of thread and placed them in front of me. I compared them several times with Freida’s red thread and decided on the one that made the red stand out in a more appealing way. I then handed it to the store owner.
“I would like one hundred felles of this thread, and one hundred felles of that green thread. Also, I would like a bunch of thread in a lot of different colors, the cheapest kind of thread you have. Two hundred felles of each color, please.”
I needed to provide two different supply orders, one for Freida’s thread and one for my winter handiwork. It was for this purpose that I always carried my supply order set around in my tote bag — wooden cards to write on, the measuring tape, ink, and a pen made from carved wood. After stating my orders, I began scratching them onto the cards then and there.
The cheap thread looked less vibrant, but if we we’d be charging about two large coppers for them, we couldn’t be picky with our thread. People in this world didn’t generally wear hairpins during their daily lives, which meant they would be tucked away for special occasions. Nobody would buy the hairpins if they weren’t priced accordingly; they needed to be cheap enough to justify purchasing for a single event. The guildmaster, spending six small silvers for two hairpins, was simply abnormal and couldn’t be used as a baseline — even if it was for his prized granddaughter.
“I’ll need some time to get the handiwork thread ready. You want me to take it all to the store once I’m done?”
“Yes. Please do.”
I put only the expensive thread I was using for Freida’s hair ornament into my bag and left the store. The thread store was close to my house, so we parted ways from Mark and went home without him. On the way I reported to Lutz that I finished using the red thread last night, which made his eyes bulge.
“Wha? You’re already finishing the flowers? Didn’t you say you’d take your time cause the baptism’s a month away?”
“I think I’ll finish by tomorrow or the day after. Mom and Tuuli started helping and they’re way faster than me. They finished in no time. It would have taken a lot longer if it were just me.”
My initial plan involved me going to the forest and store frequently enough that I would only have time to make the hairpins from dinner to bedtime, which would have led to me taking seven to ten days to finish. I hadn’t expected in my wildest dreams that I would run out of things to do in a single day.
“Alright. I’ll get the pin parts done soon.”
“Mhm, thanks. My dad wanted to join us and make them, but...”
“Really...?” Lutz sighed at the thought of his job being taken.
“...At first I thought it would be really bad for my family to do all the work for us, but after thinking about it, I realized it wouldn’t really be bad at all. Merchants are all about selling things that other people make, after all. Benno’s making a profit from the handling fee he gets from selling our stuff even though he doesn’t help make them at all, right?”
“Huh. Good point.” Lutz looked at me with a look of understanding washing over his face. He didn’t have to do the work to get paid. Merchants made a living by making money from moving products from one place to another. We were still thinking on the level of craftsmen, not merchants.
“This time we told Benno and the guildmaster that we’d be making it together, and I don’t want to change our story, but I think we need to study harder about how merchants work.”
“Yeah.”
When I arrived home with the thread, Tuuli and Mom did my work for me, as expected. In the time it took me to make a single white flower, Tuuli made two and Mom made four. They finished in no time. I tried making some leaves with the green thread, but they ended up making all of them before I could. No matter the situation, I always ended up useless.
...In conclusion: Just like I thought, becoming a sewing beauty was out of the cards for me. I had made the right call by working to become a merchant apprentice.
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