Vested Interests
The next day came and it was time to peel the black bark to turn it into white bark, so we brought a pan, a tub, and a bucket with us. We peeled the bark with knives while occasionally holding our hands up to the fire and dipping them into hot water to warm up.
“You know, I really don’t want to do this outside of summer. It’s so cold my fingers are all tingly,” I said.
“Yeah. Going into the river is real killer.”
We complained to one another while continuing our work and getting white bark from all the trombe wood. I didn’t see any moldy spots on the white bark, which made me sigh in relief.
“...Looks like it didn’t get moldy. Whew.”
“Didn’t I tell you that? Maybe the volrin wood, but the trombe wood’s definitely fine.”
“Trombes sure are dangerous plants, aren’t they?”
Once the bark was peeled, it was time to gather in the forest. There were some herbs that could only be foraged in this season, and I picked them up with Lutz while he taught me what to look for. Along the way, I noticed that Lutz was actively avoiding red fruits about the size of an adult’s thumb. Maybe they were poisonous. I pointed at one, making sure not to touch it, and asked Lutz.
“Hey Lutz, why don’t you pick up these red fruits? Are they poisonous?”
“Ah, yeah, you don’t need to bother with tau fruit. They’re basically just water inside. Can’t eat’m and the water dries up eventually if you take them home. Nothing you can do with them right now.”
The phrase “right now” implied they would be useful later, so I gave Lutz an inquisitive look. So he explained, “Once summer comes, they end up about as big as your fist. They’ll explode if you throw them at someone, so we can have fun tossing’m at each other.”
I concluded that they were nature’s water balloons. They would just dry out at home and they wouldn’t get bigger if not left on the ground. Weird.
“Kids and adults end up having big wars in town. I mean, you remember the Star Festival, right?”
I had lived in this world for over a year, but I didn’t remember any festival like that. “Um, Lutz. I’ve never heard of the Star Festival. Has there always been a festival in the summer?”
“Last year you were close to dying when the festival came around. I went to your place so we could go together and your mom told me your fever wasn’t going down at all. I went to get the bamboo after the festival was over,” said Lutz, establishing that I had been on the verge of death back then. That had been the first time I fully understood that the Devouring heat was actually trying to swallow me up. I was unconscious for days in a row and ended up in bed for a while afterwards, so going to a festival was the last thing on my mind.
“Tuuli must have wanted to go and play too. Did I make her stay home to look after me?” It was possible that I had stolen away nice childhood memories from Tuuli. The thought of that made my shoulders droop, but Lutz just shrugged and shook his head.
“Nope, Effa was looking after you and let Tuuli go to the Star Festival. She and Ralph fought to see who could gather the most taus in the forest.”
“Oh, okay. That’s a relief.”
“Hope you can go too this year, Myne.”
I promised Lutz I would watch my health this year so I could go to the festival, and before long, we had finished our gathering. But well, promise or not, I didn’t know if my parents would let me go to a festival that involved getting pelted with water.
Starting from the next day, we had to work in front of the storage building. The water was so cold that we had to repeatedly dip our hands into hot water while we worked, but nonetheless, we swished around volrin pulp in the contract paper-sized suketa. While the pulp dried over several days, we started making paper from the trombe bark.
“Looks like the volrin paper is dry now. Good thing it was so sunny today.”
“We’re gonna have to dry the trombe wood for a full day tomorrow, yeah?” confirmed Lutz as we split the twenty-six completed pages of volrin paper. Lutz looked at his thirteen sheets of paper and furrowed his brows. “Wait, why are we splitting them? Shouldn’t we just split the money?”
“Well, I want some paper for myself. I couldn’t keep paper made from wood Benno bought for us, but since we got this wood ourselves, it should be okay.” If I were to buy the paper back after selling it to Benno, I would eat the cost of the thirty-percent handling fee, if not more. It would be better not to sell him the paper in the first place.
“So you’re not selling yours?”
“I’ll sell half of mine. I want to collect paper and make a book.” Now that we had the process ironed out and we were both fairly used to it, there were fewer failures in each batch of paper. That was problematic for my book-making. I honestly cared more about paper than money, especially since Mom had started telling me a ton of stories I wanted to write down.
Once our work was done, we went to Benno’s store to both sell the paper and return the key.
“Oh, all done?” Benno took the volrin paper from the both of us and counted the sheets. Thirteen from Lutz, six from me. He frowned at the clear difference.
“Not many from you, Myne. Why’s that?”
“I wanted the paper for myself. There’s no problem with that since we used wood we got ourselves, right?”
“...Yeah. I don’t mind that for wood you got yourselves, but what do you even want that paper for?” asked Benno, looking somewhat on guard.
“I want to make a book. You need paper to make a book.”
“A book...? Why would you want one of those? They don’t sell.”
“Bwuh? I wouldn’t sell it. I just want to read it by myself.”
Lutz looked between us. He and I were both confused. Benno couldn’t understand why I would use valuable paper to make something that couldn’t be sold, and I just wanted to read a book regardless of profit. There was no way we could understand each other.
“I don’t know what’s going on in that head of yours, but I get the feeling it’d just be a waste of time to think about it. Here’s your pay. Paper this big has a market value of one large silver each. My handling fee is a thirty-percent cut. How much do you earn?”
Lutz still wasn’t great at percentages. He hurriedly glanced at me and I gave an immediate answer. “Seven small silvers.”
“Huh?! Seven small silvers?! I, uuuh, what?! Isn’t that a little too much?!” Lutz hadn’t expected that at all and his jaw just dropped at the value of paper.
“...Calm down, Lutz. It may seem like we’re earning too much, but we’re only going to be earning money from paper for this season. Compared to how much Benno’s going to make as he sells paper for decades and decades after this, we’re basically earning peanuts. Don’t worry about it.”
“Seriously...? Don’t worry about it?” I was trying to calm Lutz down, but he just blinked rapidly at me in stunned disbelief.
“You sold thirteen sheets of paper today, Lutz, so you get nine large silvers and a small silver. I sold six, so I get four large silvers and two small silvers.”
“I mean, no matter how I think about it, nine large silvers isn’t peanuts.”
“Oh? Should we sell them for less, then?” I saw how frightened Lutz was and suggested that we lower the prices, but Benno shook his head with a frown.
“You can’t lower the price. That’d cause unnecessary conflict with the vested interests. We have to keep the price up. Once your wood paper’s solidly in the market, I’ll think about how to handle the price. But if you’re scared of earning that much money, I can boost my handling fee. Sound good?” Benno said to Lutz with a grin.
“We don’t have the right to change the paper’s price, so I’ll leave all that to you, but I won’t let you increase the handling fee. In which case, Lutz, I can take your money if you don’t want it.”
“I’m not giving it to either of you! It’s just so much money it’s kinda spooking me!” roared Lutz, clutching his guild card. Guild cards confirmed identities through blood, so only the owner of a card could use it. A very safe place to store your money.
“Don’t worry. You won’t have to see the money yourself if you store it all in the guild.”
“Grrr. I dunno how you’re so calm about this, Myne. Wish I had your guts.”
Putting aside how I had saved most of my money back in my Urano days, I had already gained and lost several small golds worth of money in this world, so I was used to dealing with large quantities of cash. I wanted to shout that I wasn’t gutsy at all.
I puffed my cheeks out, pouting, and Benno laughed hard while paying us through our guild cards. I took five large coppers to give to my family and saved the rest. Lutz also split his pay into savings and hard cash to give to his family.
Several days after that, Lutz went to get the storage building key and came back with a large bundle and a letter. Or to be more precise, it was a letter of invitation written on a board. The bundle contained ponchos with hoods.
Lutz held up the differently colored ponchos and blinked in confusion, not recognizing what they were. I read the letter, which neatly and concisely described the meetup location and why we were being invited.
“It says we’re going to go clothes shopping, so meet up in the central plaza at fourth bell.”
“Huh. Clothes?”
“...Benno says that there are people coming to his store who are angry about the paper we made. He wants to work things out with them but in such a way that they don’t learn that you and I exist. Our current clothes will stand out where we’re going, so he wants us to come wearing these.”
“Huh? Wait, what? Is something dangerous happening here?!”
We both tried the ponchos on. They were warm and hid most of our clothes, which was ideal. We could hide our faces and hair too with the hoods, so we would wear them when going outside. My hair stick would especially stand out.
“I’m not sure how dangerous it is yet, but since we’re meeting Mark there, maybe we should finish up the trombe paper soon so we can sell it to him there? Oh, but if he’s trying to keep us a secret, maybe we shouldn’t walk around with it. What do you think?” I said while checking how the trombe paper looked, and for some reason Lutz got mad.
“Why are you so calm, Myne?!”
“Bwuh? I mean, I expected that there would be some conflict with the vested interests. That’s just what happens when you introduce something new. They acted faster than I thought they would, but still.”
“Wait, vested interests? What’s that?” Lutz blinked in utter confusion and repeated the phrase that didn’t flow off his tongue very well.
“‘Vested interests’ refers to an organization or people who already have rights related to earning profit in a certain market or product. That is to say, they have a vested interest in the product or market. Remember what Benno said? Lowering the price would cause conflict with the vested interests. He’s probably talking about the people who make parchment.”
“What’ve they got to do with anything? We’re making paper from wood, not animal skin.”
They seemed completely unrelated due to how they were made, but paper and parchment overlapped in usage and market — they were used the same way and by the same customers. No other product had been competing with their parchment and therefore threatening their profits, so I could imagine that they had fallen into a complete panic over the appearance of a new kind of paper.
“Up until now, they were the only ones who could make paper, and people had no choice but to buy that paper to make contracts, right? They had control over the price. But now there’s a new kind of paper and their customers could move over to buying it instead.”
Lutz nodded, getting what I was driving at. If both products were used the same way, it just made sense that some customers would be drawn away.
“If that happens, they won’t earn as much money, right? They don’t want that. Not to mention, prices tend to fall once there’s a lot of something in the market.”
“Huh? Really?”
I took out my stone slate and drew a graph. I started with two perpendicular straight lines for the X and Y axes, then two simple curves representing supply and demand.
“This graph shows the relationship between supply and demand. This is the supply curve and this is the demand curve. Think of supply as products that exist and demand as the people who want those products.”
“Right.”
“When a lot of people want a product but there’s not much of that product, the price of the product rises.” I pointed at the leftmost part of the graph and Lutz understood my point, recognizing that things got more expensive when there wasn’t much there.
I nodded and traced my finger along the supply curve. “So it follows that when more of the product enters the market, more of the people wanting the product will get it, which means demand will decrease. That lowers the price.”
Then I poked the point where the two curves made contact. “Once there’s more of a product than there are people wanting it, it’ll stop selling no matter how many more you make and put on the market. That means its value will steadily drop, right?”
I moved my finger to the right and showed that the supply and demand curves had completely switched over with demand now above supply. “Understand? The more paper we make, the more its value will drop. The people making parchment don’t want its value to drop. They want to keep their profit secure, so they’re protesting Benno’s new paper.”
“Uh, isn’t this kinda bad?” said Lutz nervously.
I smiled and shook my head. “Benno’s trying to hide us, which means that he’ll take care of them himself. It’s not something we have to worry about. Though I can’t say anything for sure until I hear the details.”
We finished twenty-four sheets of trombe paper before the meeting time described in the letter of invitation, but left them in the storage room for safety’s sake.
“You should put your hood on too, Lutz, so nobody can see your hair or face too well.” Benno being this guarded meant that it was indeed possible that we could get wrapped up in something dangerous. Better safe than sorry.
We waited in the central plaza somewhat anxiously, and after fourth bell, Mark finally came. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Shall we go buy your apprentice clothes, as promised?”
“Yes, thank you.” I didn’t need apprentice clothes since I wasn’t becoming one, but it would probably be smart to buy clothes that wouldn’t stand out when I went to Benno’s store. Or maybe it would be a waste of money.
I started to debate internally over the best course of action when Mark suddenly picked me up. He must have interpreted my hesitation as a sign of poor health.
“Um, Mr. Mark, I can walk on my own!”
“I became uneasy due to your hesitation. Please allow me to do this, for the sake of my own health.”
“I was just thinking about something. I’m perfectly healthy right now!”
Mark sped up his walking pace, smile not faltering for a moment. “Feel free to think as much as you like,” he said, solidifying that he had no intention of setting me down.
“LUUUTZ!”
“This is faster, just suck it up for a bit.” Lutz immediately shot down my cry for help, so having no other choice I gave up and accepted my fate. Grrr! Traitor!
The three of us entered the clothes store and were greeted by the pleasant shopkeeper. Both the workers and the customers here were wearing fine clothes. Lutz and I definitely would have been kicked out if we had come alone.
“Oh, hello there Mark. Good to see you again. New apprentices?”
“Yes, that’s right. I would like to order Gilberta Company apprentice clothes for these two.” Benno must have bought all his apprentice clothes here, as the storekeeper nodded immediately to Mark’s request.
“Wait, what? An apprentice outfit for me too?” Lutz was becoming an apprentice, but I wasn’t.
Mark just nodded with his unfaltering smile. “You will simply stand out too much wearing what you are now. My apologies, but we will be ordering clothes for you as well. It will be convenient for when you enter our store on business.”
I wasn’t becoming an official apprentice, but I would be inventing new products in the Myne Workshop and visiting Benno’s store to discuss profit details and the like, so it was likely that I would be going there about as much as I had been for the past few seasons. It would just be sad if I went with Lutz in my patchwork hand-me-downs while he wore fancy new clothes. Maybe it would be a good idea to buy new clothes now that I had spare money.
Lutz was taken to the back of the store first and stripped down to his underwear for measurements. I was taken to another room where the same was done to me. It was exhausting to get measured all over.
“We request an advance payment of one small silver.” After ordering a full set of apprentice clothes — jacket, shirt, pants or a skirt, and even shoes — we tapped our guild cards against the storekeeper’s to pay one small silver. Benno had been right when he said that the final price would be around ten small silvers. That was the cost of one Gilberta Company apprentice outfit. Given my ignorance of the world, I had no idea if that was expensive or cheap.
After finishing our order, Mark brought us to Benno’s store. Benno was glaring at a piece of paper with a somewhat grim expression on his face, but it softened after he saw us.
“Oh, there you are. My bad for being so sudden with all this. Things got bad faster than I thought they would. Maybe I went too fast. But either way, I’m on guard now. You two should stay on guard too. Keep your eyes open. There are people who will do anything to keep their power safe, and those people are everywhere.”
Benno was aware that he was potentially being overprotective, but when product rights and the power they granted got involved, no amount of caution was too much. We were kids too young to have been baptized, but if we wore apprentice outfits we wouldn’t stick out in the store like we did before.
“When you mentioned the vested interests in the letter, were you talking about the people who make parchment?” I asked.
“Yeah. Some members of the Parchment Guild sent an official complaint to the Merchant’s Guild.”
“To the Merchant’s Guild, really?” I tilted my head, not knowing what connection the Parchment Guild had with the Merchant’s Guild.
Benno explained that part of the Merchant’s Guild’s job was to protect vested interests, minimize the friction caused by new products entering the market, and arbitrate between different Guilds and parties.
“They sent a complaint to the Merchant’s Guild last evening, saying I started selling paper without joining their guild or paying them anything. According to a contact of mine, they asked the Guild to ‘get this lawbreaking ruffian under control.’”
“Uh huh... So, what’d you do?” No way would Benno just sit quietly and let them order him around. He must have found a good compromise they could settle on before making his move.
I urged Benno on, not feeling worried in the slightest. His lips curved into the confident grin of a successful carnivore. “I gave a hard objection. My paper’s made of plants, not animal skin, so the Parchment Guild’s got nothing to do with it. Basically, I told’m to back off.”
I felt the blood drain from my face at Benno’s bloodthirsty attitude. He hadn’t found a compromise or anything, he was just picking a fight with the vested interests head-on. If things got violent, it would be all Benno’s fault.
“Um? So like, you didn’t think of a compromise, or something?”
“Idiot. They’d just look down on me if I tried to compromise. The fact of the matter is, I didn’t steal any of their manufacturing secrets and I don’t owe them anything for their manufacturing fee. Plant paper and animal paper aren’t made the same way and they aren’t the same things. One’s not derived from the other. They’re just trying to monopolize the paper market for themselves, and if possible, suck up the profit my new product is going to make.”
This was just how Benno operated and it wasn’t my place to complain about how he ran his business, but I wished he could have handled things a little more peacefully.
“Mmm, parchment is made from animal skin, so I don’t think they’ll be able to increase production no matter what they do. What if you work with the Merchant’s Guild and agree that official contract paper will always be made from parchment so that you can guarantee that at least some of their profit will be preserved?”
“You’re as soft as ever.” Benno snorted. I thought that the Parchment Guild would be more cooperative if we guaranteed some of their profit and parchment’s relevance in the future, but Benno apparently didn’t think that was a good idea.
“I just don’t like unnecessary fighting. Plus, I really just want paper to spread throughout the world and be used for all sorts of things. Contract paper isn’t my end goal. I want it to be used for books, memo pads, painting, origami... I want paper to be something even kids can use without worrying about the price.”
“Thaaat’s a bigger dream than I expected,” murmured Benno, eyes opened a little wide in surprise and exasperation.
“Hm? Is it really that big of a dream? I think it’ll happen no matter what once paper gets mass produced. So really, the best thing to do here might be to go ahead and make volrin paper a lot cheaper than parchment while using it for everything but contracts. For example, these written reports on your desk. They’d be easier to carry with plant paper and easier to store. They’d be easier to write on than wood boards, too.”
“I see, using different paper for different purposes... I’ll have to think about it.” This time, Benno’s eyes narrowed in thought and he didn’t say I was being soft. Something I had said must have tickled both the profit-seeking part of his brain and his heartstrings.
“If we use different paper for different things, then you can treat trombe paper as specialty paper for high-class purposes. It’s better than parchment even, right?”
“Yeah. I’ve been planning to make trombe paper a lot more expensive than parchment.”
“Wait, come again? A lot more?” I blinked in surprise, which made Benno narrow his eyes a bit more and look between Lutz and me.
“...Don’t tell me you two haven’t realized it.”
“Huh? Realized what?”
“Lutz. What’s special about Trombe wood?” asked Benno.
Lutz bounced a little in his chair in surprise at the unexpected question, then began to list off his answers. “Huh? Eeer, trombe wood grows super fast, and it’s hard to burn.”
“Oh, I get it...! Is trombe paper hard to burn too?” Speaking of which, Dad had said that furniture made of Trombe wood was so hard to burn that it sometimes survived fires. Young and soft wood couldn’t be made into furniture, but it could be made into paper.
“That’s right. Compared to normal paper, it’s extremely hard to burn. That’s not to say it can’t burn at all, but it’s exactly the kind of paper nobles will want for recording classified government information and preserving official documents. I’d be stupid not to give it a high price.”
It certainly was a special kind of paper deserving a higher price. Even back on Earth, different kinds of paper had different prices. Unique or otherwise difficult to make paper was always fairly expensive.
“Okay, I understand now. So... how much will each sheet of trombe paper be?”
“For a contract-sized sheet, five large silvers.”
“Bwuuuh...” The price was so overwhelming that I actually felt a little headache come on. Lutz was so shocked he couldn’t speak.
Meanwhile, Benno just flatly repeated that it was rare paper made from materials that could not be consistently obtained. The price was obvious to him. Apparently, he wouldn’t put it on the market until he had built up a large enough stock of it.
“With that out of the way, don’t come to this store again until this business with the Parchment Guild is finished. There’s a reason I want to keep you two hidden. If the method for making plant paper leaks out and others start selling it, people could die.”
“Wait, what? People could die?” I blinked in surprise at the sudden escalation and Benno brought up the magic contract I had completely forgotten about.
“Our magic contract states that you will decide who makes the paper and Lutz will sell it. If someone starts making and selling the paper without knowing about that contract, anything could happen.”
“Bwuh?! Contract magic is that dangerous?! It involves people who didn’t have anything to do with the contract too?!” I held my head in my hands, stunned by this unexpected development. I had never thought for a moment that the magic contract I had made to secure our employment would end up being so dangerous.
“Contract magic exists to keep nobles under control. Whether you know about the contract or not, breaking it will give you some kind of punishment. I’m going to hide your identities and tell the Merchant’s Guild that I have a magic contract stating that only I can make and sell this plant paper. That should shut the Parchment Guild up.”
The contract might have brought us more danger than safety. Since only I had the right to decide who makes paper, and only Lutz had the right to sell that paper to the first customer, we were actually in a pretty risky position.
“I want to hide that you two have the rights to the paper. You can keep the key to the storage building for a bit, so don’t come back here. I’ll contact you through Otto once the dust has settled.”
Lutz and I both nodded, assured by Benno’s confidence. ...I just hope that the contract magic I asked for doesn’t kill anyone.
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