Prologue
“Tuuli, would you please peel these potatoffels for me?”
“Okaaay.” At her mother’s request, Tuuli took a seat and readied her knife. They were preparing lunch. While peeling the potatoffel skin, she glanced at the door that Myne had left through.
Apparently, she was introducing Lutz to one of their father’s coworkers. They left a lot earlier than the planned meeting time of third bell, but regardless, Tuuli didn’t think that the introduction would go well.
“She’s trying really hard to make this happen, but it’s just gonna be impossible, right? Shouldn’t you have stopped her, Mom?”
“I don’t think Lutz will become a traveling merchant, but he needs to learn that for himself. And it’s rare for Myne to get this enthusiastic about something, so I don’t see the issue.” Effa, also peeling potatoffels, shrugged and explained that in the first place she wasn’t expecting much from Myne’s efforts. Her expression said that she was dead confident that Myne would fail.
It was only the day before yesterday that Myne learned that introducing a friend to your father’s coworker was the same thing as asking for an introduction to apprentice work. She had hurriedly prepared and went to the forest yesterday to get Lutz cleaned up. His hair ended up shockingly blonde and silky, but when it came to taking on an apprentice, there were more important things than looks.
Tuuli really didn’t expect that anyone would hire Lutz through trust in Myne alone. That said, she felt kind of weird seeing Myne work as hard as she had been lately. Her sister hadn’t been this hard of a worker a year ago.
“...It feels like Myne isn’t Myne lately. She still gets sick and passes out all the time, but she doesn’t cry about things being unfair anymore. Though I guess she does cry about not being able to do things, and then gets all upset if someone tries to do them for her.”
At one point, Tuuli’s little sister had spent all her time getting mad at her for being healthy and getting to go outside while she was stuck in the house, but that was a thing of the past. Myne was still getting sick, but she was also doing what she wanted to do, challenging the world and getting depressed when she failed.
“Oh sweetie, that’s just what happens when a child grows up. Babies have to be taken care of, but over time they grow to dislike that and want to take care of themselves. But they aren’t prepared to do that yet, so they get upset. You acted the same way when you were turning three.” Effa smiled, remembering the past.
Tuuli herself didn’t remember how she acted all that time ago. She got a little embarrassed at the thought of her trying to take care of herself, failing, and getting upset. But there was something about Effa’s statement that felt off. Tuuli compared herself to Myne and tilted her head in thought.
“You said I acted like that while I was turning three, right? Doesn’t that mean Myne’s growing up late?”
“She is. But when you think about how she’s physically stunted, well, I suppose it makes sense that emotional growth would be stunted too. Now that she’s finally gotten more healthy, she has the room to grow up. It might be difficult for you, Tuuli, but please let Myne do as she wishes for now. She’ll become more capable over time, more understanding of her limits, and eventually she’ll stop pushing herself too far.”
“...That reminds me, she was trying to get strong enough to gather and draw water in my place after my baptism. She got really depressed when she couldn’t manage it at all.” Tuuli thought back to Myne’s recent behavior. She was asking for all sorts of bizarre things like usual, but she could change on her own, and she could both relieve herself and clean up after herself without any help. Tuuli definitely had less of a burden on her shoulders than back when Myne would spend all day throwing tantrums.
Gathering was a more complex story. The first day she walked to the forest on her own, she stealthily made clay tablets with Lutz’s help, which Fey and his cronies then crushed. She got so mad her eyes flashed like a rainbow. But nowadays she didn’t cause any problems at the forest. She was too weak to do much gathering, but when compared to a three year old going to the forest for the first time, that was reasonable.
“She really can do a lot more than she used to. I hope she’ll keep getting more healthy.”
“I can imagine that the interview will fail and she’ll come home depressed. When that happens, cheer her up for me. Myne did her best here,” said Effa, standing up with her peeled potatoffels.
Tuuli gathered the skins and stood up as well to help prepare the rest of lunch. At the time, she didn’t expect in even her wildest dreams that Myne had actually paved the way toward being a merchant apprentice, albeit with a few conditions to overcome.
The Road to Washi
It was time to make washi, traditional Japanese paper. I was finally in a position where I could make it. Or rather, in a position where someone else — Lutz — would make it for me. As a part of his job, even. How wonderful.
On the way home from the interview with a merchant, I was practically skipping along the road with excitement. Mentally speaking, I felt like I could jump in the air and spin at least twice before landing like a figure skater.
“Eheheheh. Ahahah.”
“Myne, I get that you’re happy, but c’mon. Don’t get too excited. Do ya want to catch another fever?”
“How could I not be excited? I mean, we’re making paper here! Paper! I can make books with paper. Ahaha, yes!” How could I stay calm with books getting ever closer?
Lutz, watching me start to actually skip along the road, put his hands on his head and sighed. “...Myne, alright, we’re making paper. But how are we gonna do it? I’ve got no clue myself. Don’t we need tools or something? Is this gonna work?”
Lutz’s calm questions threw a bucket of cold water over my excitement. After returning to reality, I paled at the truth of my situation. I knew how to make washi, definitely. I even had vague recollections of what tools were involved. There was a book I read about disappearing crafts and all that. But I didn’t remember the exact details on how to make the tools to make paper. Without those tools, I had no way of making the paper itself.
...Guuuh, I have to start with making tools. Aaah! Once again, I know all but the most important things.
“Hey, Myne. You sure got quiet all of a sudden. Don’t tell me that you don’t actually know how to make paper.”
Lutz gave me a really uneasy look, so I hurriedly shook my head. “Don’t be silly. I definitely know how to make paper. I’ve been trying to make it for so long now. But I’m not strong enough to cut trees or draw water from the well, and I can’t even do things like start fires or crush fibers. I needed help, but I couldn’t ask others to make paper for me. That’d be too selfish, so...”
“You coulda just asked me if you needed help that bad.” Lutz pursed his lips a bit, looking a little frustrated. I was glad he was willing to help, but making paper was a lot of hard work. It was on a different level from digging holes or helping carve branches.
“The thing is, um, all I can do is tell you what needs to be done. It’s not like before where we worked together to do things. From start to finish, you’ll be doing almost all of the work to make paper yourself. Are you really okay with that?”
“Duh, ’course I am. You think up things, I make them. That’s the promise we made, right?” Lutz nodded immediately, but I had to make sure he was fine with that promise. It was possible that he had just gotten caught up in the atmosphere of the interview and didn’t really think about it before agreeing.
“So, like, Lutz we have to start by making the tools needed for paper. Do you think you can do that?”
“...You’ll be with me, right?”
“Of course. I’ll do everything I can.” With that said, I fell into thought. I had to remember what tools were needed before we could make them. While I was at it, I needed to search through my home to see if anything could be replaced with something simpler. That might get Mom mad at me, but I had no other choice given how poor I was. “I’ll write down the tools we need and start looking for things we can use in place of them. If I can’t, we’ll have to make them ourselves. First, I want you to find trees that will make good paper.”
“What about the trees in the forest?”
“Well, the thing is, I don’t know which trees in the forest will make good paper.” I knew which Japanese trees would make good washi, but the trees of this world were alien to me. “Umm, let’s see. What we want here are trees with long, strong fibers. The fibers also need to be sticky, so they’ll clump together. We need a lot of fibers from each tree, too, but... I don’t know how to check and see what kind of fibers a tree has.”
Not to mention that some trees were only good for chopping at certain points in their lifespan. I knew of a tree species that made great paper after one year, but then hardened up after two years such that its fibers were unusable. That knowledge didn’t help me actually look at trees and identify how old they were, though. I really was useless.
“...I mean, I dunno which trees are like that either.”
“Basically, there are probably soft trees and hard trees, but I want young, soft trees.”
“Yeah, they do get harder as the years go on.” Any kind of tree was too hard for me to cut, but Lutz had a lot of experience in the forest and could apparently tell which trees were soft and easier to cut than others.
“Well, you can make paper out of basically any plant, even bamboo, but the easier it is the better it will be for us. Plus, if we’re going to commoditize this stuff, we want wood that’s easy to work with.” If plant paper entered the marketplace, we had to plan ahead to avoid running out of material. “If possible, we want a tree that can be cultivated and grown just for paper. But I’m guessing you can’t tell which are easier to grow?”
“Actually, I can. They’re pretty different. I know of some trees that are really easy to grow.”
“Really?!” I could only grit my teeth in frustration over my own ignorance of the world born from being a sick shut-in.
Only a month had passed since I had worked up the strength to go to the forest. I had never even chopped wood before; it was beyond me to pick wood for something. “I’ll leave picking the wood to you, Lutz. We’ll try out lots of different kinds and find which one works best, so just think of any soft trees you can. Also, I want you to find (tororo).”
“The heck is that?”
“Well, it’s like sticky stuff that can help keep the fibers together. I don’t actually know if there’s any of it around here. Do you know of any trees... or, well, fruits even, that have thick and sticky juices?”
Lutz fell into thought. Apparently nothing immediately came to mind. “Eeeh... I’ll ask someone who knows more about this stuff than me.”
“Okay. I’ll try to remember what exactly we need, and then write down the steps to make paper. Then I’ll think about how to make those tools.”
Our conversation came to a close right as we reached my place.
“We’re here. Alright, let’s get to work!” Lutz’s eyes were gleaming, filled to the brim with motivation. I gave a firm nod and went inside.
“Welcome back. Don’t feel bad, Myne. You’ll be useful to someone someday.”
“Bwuh? Tuuli, what’s going on?”
“You just have to try harder next time. Okay?”
The moment I went inside, both Mom and Tuuli started consoling me for some reason.
“The interview went really well. He had some conditions, but he agreed to potentially hire us.”
“Whaaaat?!” The two of them looked extremely shocked.
I turned my back to them and took out my stone slate as they started talking about celebrating. I had to write down what tools we needed while thinking about how to make washi. “I have to get ready for stuff, so...”
“Tests for apprentice work are really serious. Good luck!” said Tuuli supportively.
I nodded, readied my stone pen, and began imagining the process of making paper. First, I needed to chop down the trees and plants that would become the core of the paper. Lutz had something like a hatchet, so he could cut trees whenever we needed. Which meant we didn’t need any special tools for that step. Next.
Generally, you would steam the wood to peel off the black outer layer. We needed a steamer. If we had one in the kitchen, I could use that. I checked but didn’t find one, which made me realize we hadn’t had any steamed food before. It wouldn’t be surprising if we didn’t have a steamer. I wrote down “steamer” and “pot” on the slate. Next.
The steamed wood would be dunked in water and have its outer layer peeled while it was still hot. We would have to do the steaming and peeling by the river, but since we had knives, that step wouldn’t be a problem. Next.
Drying them, leaving them dunked in the river for over a day, and peeling the inner white layer didn’t take any particular tools either. A knife would be enough. Next.
The white layer would need to be boiled with ash, softened, and have the impurities removed. In short, we needed ash and a pot. We could reuse the pot from the steaming, but getting ash would be more difficult. Mom would never give me any, and I didn’t know if the ashes formed from steaming would count. I wrote down “ashes.” Next.
After leaving the boiled white layer dunked in the water for a full day, we needed to wash off the ashes and let it dry under the sun, which would also bleach it. After that, we would take out damaged fibers. We could do all that with our hands, no tools necessary. Next.
Hit the fibers like crazy until they look like cotton. We would need a mallet or something to land decent blows on the fibers. We could probably make something resembling a mallet out of firewood. I wrote down “wood shaped into a rectangle.” Next.
Mix the beaten fibers with water and tororo. We would need a bucket or tub to mix everything. After that was done, the pulpy mixture needed to be flattened with a suketa, a bamboo screen held in place with a frame. The pulp would end up spread across the screen and dry into paper. Making a suketa would probably be our biggest hurdle. I wrote down “tub” and “suketa.” Next.
Take the screen out of the frame and move the filtered paper onto the drying bed. As the name implied, the drying bed was a place to put finished paper to dry. All you had to do was stack the day’s worth of paper onto it and, after a full day, the water will have drained out. I wrote down “paper stand.” Next.
After that, put gentle pressure on the paper with weights to squeeze more water out. If you leave the paper pressed for a full day, most of the tororo’s stickiness will apparently go away. What could we use as weights? We definitely had weights for squeezing out oil, but I didn’t know if Lutz could use them. Just in case, I wrote down “weights.”
After pressing the pieces of paper, peel them off the drying bed one by one and put them on a board. I wrote down “flat board.” Once the pieces of paper dried under the sun for a bit, we just had to peel them off and we were done.
“Mmm, now that I think about it, we sure need a lot of things...” We needed a steamer, a pot, a mallet, ashes, a tub, a suketa, a drying bed, weights, and a flat board. Not to mention the wood and tororo. I remembered most of the washi making process from pictures and illustrations I had seen, but given that I had never actually made any myself, I couldn’t recall the exact details. For example, the best wood-to-tororo fiber ratio.
Regardless, at some point I had seen an offbeat celebrity on TV making paper for a variety show. If a celebrity could do it, how could I not?
...I tried thinking back to the TV show. You can do it, memory! Actually, that celebrity definitely borrowed all those tools. They didn’t make anything themselves. And they had an instructor guiding them, too. Guh!
Despite having the knowledge, my real-life experience ended at making postcards in class from the paper used to make milk cartons. That was better than having absolutely zero experience, but it was hardly worthwhile.
Anyway, I figured it was worth a shot to try making at least a postcard’s worth of paper here. Smaller tools would be easier to make, and it would be faster to experiment with different types of wood if we made smaller sized pieces of paper.
“Okay, Lutz. Let’s try making the steamer first.” Chinese cooks often used rounded, basket-like steamers, but those would be hard for us to make. Square basket-like steamers, on the other hand, shouldn’t be too bad at all. I drew a rough sketch on my slate and showed it to Lutz.
“Looks pretty simple to make, but do you got any nails?”
“Wha?! Can’t you just... bend the twigs and fit everything together?”
“What...?”
The problem with making tools? We didn’t have the tools to make tools. We could cut wood, but we didn’t have nails. In this world, nails were too expensive for kids to get their hands on easily. To make matters worse, even though we had tools to cut wood, we didn’t have tools for more precise carving.
It’d be great if I could borrow Dad’s tools and carve the pieces of wood to slot together like Edo period sashimono, but I didn’t have the knowledge or craftsmanship necessary to do that. Anyway, if it was simple enough that Lutz could do it after hearing an explanation, it wouldn’t be something worthy of needing “craftsmanship.”
Nails were something useful in daily life, and thus they were sold in smitheries that dealt with metal goods, but we had no capital to buy things with. We were doomed from the start.
“What’re we gonna do, Myne?”
“Ngh. I’ll try talking to Otto about this. He might be willing to pay me in nails for my assistant work.” The only thing I could do was go to the one place that would pay me for my work.
A day passed, and I went to the gate and asked Otto about the nails. “Mr. Otto, I have a question. How much do nails cost? If you know a cheap place to buy them, please tell me.”
“...Why nails? You can’t even use them, Myne.” Indeed. I didn’t have the muscles to use a hammer. Otto could understand why I wanted ink and pens, but not nails.
I shook my head and explained with a sigh. “I want to make the tools I need for making paper, but I don’t have the tools I need to make those tools.”
“Ahahahahaha!” Otto laughed, hitting the table as he did so. It was pretty funny that the day after I had confidently told Benno that I’d have the paper ready by spring, I would come to Otto saying I couldn’t make it. Unfortunately, I had no choice but to make a fool of myself here.
I glared at Otto, pouting. He wiped the tears of laughter out of his eyes and shot me a grin. It looked warm on the outside, but it was the dark grin of a merchant.
Otto noticed me reflexively putting on my guard, so he gave an actual grin. “If you tell me how to make the stuff that turns hair silky, I’ll give you all the nails you need.”
That wasn’t a good deal at all. If Otto spilled the beans to Benno, I’d lose one of the cards I had that gave me power. The losses were simply too great.
“...That information is too valuable for just nails. Judging by Benno’s reaction yesterday, I can imagine that stuff will make for a very profitable product.”
“Heh. Nice eye,” Otto murmured, a little impressed.
I shrugged and started thinking as hard as I could. If I lost Otto’s support, I’d have nowhere else to go. Hmm... I wonder why Otto wants to know about the shampoo? Unlike Benno, he’s not a merchant. I doubt he’d try selling it on the market. Maybe he wants to earn a favor with Benno?
...Otto’s better groomed than your average guy here, but he doesn’t seem the type to care that much about his hair. If anyone wanted the shampoo, it would be a girl... A girl?! His wife?! If his beloved wife wants the shampoo, it all makes sense.
“...Mr. Otto, I can’t tell you how to make it, but I don’t mind trading with you.”
Otto raised an eyebrow. Judging by his interest, he wasn’t too caught up in knowing how to make the shampoo specifically.
With success in sight, I took another step forward. “Ummm, okay. I’ll teach Mrs. Corinna how to use it and then make her hair all silky for her. I don’t mind demonstrating, since just having the stuff isn’t enough to do anything with it.”
“Alright. You’ve got a deal.” Otto nodded without taking even a second to think. I figured that bringing Corinna into this would be effective, but I hadn’t expected it to go that well. “How about you come to my place the next day I have off? We can trade then.”
“That sounds fair.”
And so it was decided that, on Otto’s next day off, I would take my simple all-in-one shampoo to his place and become a hair stylist (shampoo only). I was relieved to get nails, but at this rate, I’d be losing my share of the shampoo. Though, since the shampoo would run out eventually, I could guess that Otto would be bargaining with me more in the future.
“Lutz, I found a way to get nails.”
“For real? That’s awesome, Myne.”
“Uh huh. I had to trade some (simple all-in-one shampoo) for it, though, and I don’t have much of it left. Will you help me make some more today?”
“Yeah, sure.” I figured it would be best to take the opportunity to make a lot of shampoo so that I would have extra for future bargaining purposes.
“Meryls will start growing in a bit, but in this season, rio fruit are the best for this.” We gathered rio fruit in the forest and Lutz crushed them at my place for their oil. Lutz couldn’t use the weights yet either, so he hit them with a hammer. I threw some herbs into the squeezed oil bit by bit.
“Wow. This stuff’s pretty easy to make, huh?”
“Mhm. The most important part is mixing the right herbs with the right oil. That’s why it’s okay to trade the finished stuff for what we want, but not how to make it. Be sure not to tell anyone how to make it, okay? No matter what.”
“Why?”
“It’s so simple that if you tell somebody how to make it once, they’ll be able to make it on their own. They won’t ever trade for it again.”
“Huh, alright. I get it.”
I put my finished shampoo into a small jar and handed it to Lutz, who blinked in confusion. “Wha? I don’t need this. You’re the one who got all this stuff together, you can have it.”
“You deserve at least this much for your help, and Mrs. Karla will definitely appreciate it. She was all over you about it, right?” Lutz had mentioned how much of a pain his mom had been when I cleaned his hair before the interview. I hadn’t seen Karla since then, so she was probably asking Lutz about it constantly.
“Oooh, that’s a good point. Thanks, Myne.” Lutz happily took the shampoo and I smiled at him much like Otto would.
“Don’t tell her how to make it, no matter how hard she gets onto you about it. Give the goods, but not the info. This is practice for the future. A merchant has a lot of things he needs to keep secret, so...”
“...Can’t I start practicing with something easier?”
I giggled at Lutz as he slumped over wearily. ...Still, I didn’t expect that nails would end up being this big of an obstacle for us. The road to washi might be longer than I thought.
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