The Life of an Apprentice Merchant
A bell rang loudly in the middle of the dark city, announcing that it was time for working citizens to wake up early in the morning.
“Ngggh, morning already...?” In the past I slept right through first bell and stayed in bed until Mom shook me awake, but now that I was an apprentice merchant, I had to wake up.
I forced my tired body up despite its complaints and started moving. As a lehange, contracted until the age of ten, I had to work every other day. Today was one such other day, meaning I had to go to the Gilberta Company.
“Guuuh, I’m so tireeed...”
“This is what you wanted, Lutz. Quit your complaining.”
I headed to the kitchen and grabbed breakfast while Mom complained at me. I dunked hard bread in yesterday’s leftover soup and ate away. To finish the meal off I gulped down some milk we got by trading eggs from our chickens and wiped my mouth with a sleeve. It was then that I realized my mistake.
“Oh, crap...” I reflexively looked at the milk stains on my sleeve, remembering how Mark had told me to eat gracefully and use a cloth when wiping my mouth.
To the wealthy customers of the Gilberta Company, I acted and talked too crudely to work on the floor yet. Despite trying to follow the advice given to me and get rid of bad habits, I always ended up acting like normal whenever I wasn’t paying attention. Myne told me to follow Mark’s example and I was trying my best to do just that, but I had so many bad habits that I didn’t even realize were bad.
...It’s hard to notice these kinds of things unless someone points them out to you. As someone raised by a family of builders, I knew nothing about what kind of world merchants lived in. It was only after making paper and opening up a path to being an apprentice in the Gilberta Company that I started getting little bits of advice from Mark. Nobody in my entire life had warned me to clean my mouth after eating, to keep my clothes and hair clean, to speak politely, to have proper posture, or even to treat things carefully.
Thanks to that, I finally understood how Myne felt when she said she had memories of living in another world and had trouble understanding how to live here. If you asked me, I was a lot closer to Myne than I used to be. You really couldn’t notice these things unless someone told you.
“Thanks, Mom. See you!” I quickly finished my breakfast and dashed out of the apartment.
The gates would open once second bell rang. Farmers who woke up at first bell to come sell their crops, along with merchants who had to spend the night in the villages after the gates closed, would start pouring into the city. The Gilberta Company opened exactly at second bell to do business with these customers, which meant we had to be there even earlier to get the store ready.
My dad and my eldest brother Zasha both worked in construction, so their work depended heavily on the weather. They left once the sun rose. Sieg and Ralph were apprentices in carpentry workshops. Mom wove fabric in a textile workshop. The opening of the gates were irrelevant to workshops, so those who worked in one tended to leave after second bell, right around the time kids going to the forest started gathering outside.
Basically, now that I was a lehange apprentice in the Gilberta Company, I was waking up and working super early.
I passed through small, dimly lit alleyways and ran down the still-dark street. Each day was hotter than the last since my baptism was in the early summer, but the air was still cool thanks to the early hour and it hit my cheeks pleasantly as I ran.
The Gilberta Company’s employees were generally the kids of wealthy merchants, which meant they all lived to the north. I was the farthest, down by the south gate. It was common for me to end up late despite getting up and moving the moment I heard first bell. At least it was still summer. Things would get even harder once winter came and each day would begin with me having to leave my warm bed.
When I reached the Gilberta Company, it was early enough that nobody was inside preparing yet. The door for employees — lehanges — was still closed. I let out a sigh of relief and started climbing the stairs next to the store, at which moment I heard the heavy sound of the door opening.
...Oh crap. It’s open now. Hurry! I raced to my rented attic room and washed my face with the small jug inside then wiped it with a towel. I pinched some salt and rubbed it against my teeth then wiped them off with the towel too before gargling. Once that was done, I grabbed a pair of my apprentice clothes from a hanging thread and hurriedly changed before using a comb Mark bought for me to fix my hair up as much as possible.
“Nmm, yeah, I should wash my hair today.” I touched my hair while brushing it and sighed. It was a little greasy. Mark would probably give me a warning if I didn’t wash it soon. I had some rinsham that I made myself, but since my brothers made fun of me whenever they saw me using it at home, I always did it here. Tonight I would wash both my clothes and my hair.
After getting myself dressed, I grabbed my bag which had my ink, pen, calculator, and so on before rushing back down the stairs and entering the store.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning, Lutz. Mr. Mark’s already in the back,” warned a leherl who was cleaning the front section of the store, where customers went. I hurriedly rushed to the back section. Pretty much every store kept most of their products in the back of their stores to prevent theft. They only put a few samples out front. Customers would point out what they wanted, then more of it would be brought out from the back of the store or the basement storage area. Basically, the back of the store was much larger than the front of the store and was filled with products.
“Lutz, you are somewhat late.”
“Sorry, I w— Forgive my lateness, Mr. Mark.” I apologized to Mark, who was directing nearby lehanges as they organized the storage area, then got to work alongside them. Managing the storage area in the back was the job of newly hired lehanges. You couldn’t do anything if you didn’t know what was in the back, where it was, and how to handle it. The first thing lehanges needed to do was learn how to handle the numerous different products, ranging from accessories to types of cloth. Who knew how long it would take to have everything memorized like Mark.
“Lutz, take the hairpins to the front.”
“Yes sir!” The hairpins that Myne and I had made over the winter were selling very well. Myne had mentioned selling the manufacturing process to the Gilberta Company, so in the future the hairpins would probably be made in Corinna’s workshop, but for now they were all hairpins we had made together.
I had thought that the hairpins would only sell from the end of autumn to the beginning of spring, since outside of winter those with baptism ceremonies and adulthood ceremonies could gather flowers on their own. But traveling merchants drawn to rare products were buying hairpins aplenty.
...I hope they sell today, too. I delicately placed the hairpins onto a tray, taking care to avoid damaging the shape of the flowers. Of the five differently colored flowers on the tray, one had flowers that looked worse than the rest. I laughed a little as I thought about how Myne had probably made that one.
Second bell rang and the gates opened. Customers came in one after another. Some came to sell wool, cloth, and thread while others came to buy the same things before leaving. All of them made the front of the store loud and busy. As a mostly useless apprentice, I was still not allowed to work in the front of the store. The most I could do was carry checked goods to the back of the store.
The lehange that joined in the spring was the son of a large store, so he was used to dealing with customers. He offered them tea, carried their deliveries inside, and basically did work in the front of the store.
“Lutz, could you take this delivery to the back of the store? Give it to Leon, if you would.”
“Understood.” I took the cloth from him and headed to the back, then searched for the leherl Leon to give it to him. He nodded and put the delivery where it needed to be. Cloth was organized based on quality and color, but I couldn’t determine the quality of the cloth by touching it yet. Leon came from a store dealing with cloth and was so skilled with it that despite first signing up as a lehange, he was eventually promoted to a leherl.
...It might not be possible for me to become a leherl, but I needed to at least do a good enough job for my three-year lehange contract to not be ended early.
Everyone else working at the Gilberta Company was from merchant families. As a carpenter’s son I lacked the childhood experience with business that they had. I needed to work much harder than anyone else. I was accepted as an apprentice because I made the paper and hairpins with Myne, but that wasn’t really my accomplishment. It was all Myne.
By the time third bell rang, the customers who had entered the city right at second bell had started to leave and were replaced with merchants from within the city. The new lehanges would go to the front of the store when their family arrived and practice dealing with customers. But since nobody in my family came to do business, I had no opportunity to practice. Master Benno said I would have to practice with Myne. But since Myne wasn’t a merchant, I didn’t think she would make for the best practice.
Fourth bell signaled the end to morning work and the start of lunch. The store closed, and with person staying behind on watch, everyone went back home or grabbed something to eat from the stands and restaurants on the main street. The bread Mom made me take to work wasn’t enough for lunch, so I usually got something at a stand. Having my own money I could spend on myself felt amazing. I owed Myne a lot for teaching me to save money for when I needed it in the future.
It was a pain, but when eating lunch I had to go back to the attic and change clothes again. No matter how hungry I was, I couldn’t eat anything while wearing my apprentice uniform. Mark would get mad at me if he saw me walking around chomping on food in uniform.
The food stands closer to the market in the western part of the city were cheaper than the stands by the plaza or to the east. I bought a galette there and ate it on my way back to the plaza beneath the hot summer sun. Galettes were a mobile form of food made from mixing three kinds of flour together, cooking them for a bit, then wrapping the resulting bread around ham, bacon, sausage, and other kinds of meat. Unlike bread cooked dry for preservation purposes, galettes were easy to eat without soup.
I could eat out today thanks to the clear weather, but on rainy days I had to make do with water and the hard bread I brought from home. There weren’t many food stands that operated in the rain and it’d be a pain to walk outside during bad weather anyway. Basically, the weather was always important.
I finished my galette right as I reached the plaza and out of habit wiped my hands on my pants. I jerked in fear and looked around to see if anyone from the store was around.
...Whew, nobody. I sighed in relief and hurried back to my attic room. Unlike Master Benno, who loved to have long and slow meals, I had plenty of spare time during lunch break and intended to use the opportunity to do laundry. I wanted to wash my hair today too. I took a washtub and put a bucket, my spare uniforms, a towel, soap, a laundry board, and a jar of rinsham into it before walking down the stairs and heading to the well. It was rough living in an attic room due to all the stair usage.
I drew water into the bucket at the well, put in the rinsham, and washed my hair first. I took off my shirt, poured the bucket of rinsham water onto my head over the washtub, put the water back in the bucket, and repeated the process. Getting my hair completely wet then drying it off with a towel was how I washed my hair. My hair was short, unlike Myne’s, and I didn’t have anyone to help me, so this way was the best way for me.
After drying my hair with the towel, I washed my clothes and the towel. After washing my apprentice uniforms and the towel, I returned to my room and hung them from the thread to dry. That way they would be dry by the next time I came.
I ran a comb through my hair. My head felt great and my hair was smooth. I pulled a strand of hair and nodded after seeing that it was silky again. With that done, I changed back into the uniform I had been wearing in the morning and returned to the store.
“Oh, I see you washed your hair. It’s good that you’ve learned to do that before I point it out. Keeping oneself clean is very important,” said Mark, complimenting me. My efforts being recognized gave me the strength to keep trying my best. I wanted to learn from Mark’s example and be more capable of keeping an eye on other people. That won’t be easy.
Town merchants dropped by the store occasionally throughout the afternoon, but compared to the morning we were much less busy. This was when Master Benno and Mark went to the nobles’ district on days where they had business there.
After fifth bell rang, we newbie lehanges were taught by experienced leherls about the businessmen dropping by the store, ran errands to the Merchant’s Guild, and studied to do our jobs better. We had a lot more spare time and it was easier to ask questions then compared to anytime else.
“Today we’ll be learning about how to write supply orders. Each store writes their orders in somewhat different ways, so forget about how you do it at home. You will need to learn how we at the Gilberta Company write our supply orders.”
“...Relearning stuff again? It’s so hard to remember all the little differences.” The newbie lehanges knew how things worked at their home, but they had to relearn much of it to work at the Gilberta Company. Learning some things from scratch was hard for me, but it was probably even harder for them to relearn the same thing with slight differences.
“You know how to write supply orders already, Lutz? Looks like these are just how the Gilberta Company writes them. Yep, all good. Try doing the math for these sales reports, then.”
“Understood.”
Man... Myne really is amazing. Thanks to Myne teaching me how to read, write, and do math on top of us learning how to count money and write supply orders through our business with Benno, I was somehow managing to do my job despite lacking the knowledge of a kid raised as a merchant. If not for her, I could imagine that the leherls would have stopped bothering trying to teach me a long time ago.
I clinked the pieces of the calculator around as I did the math. I was still slow with it, but the fact that I was just a little bit of practice away from being as fast as the other apprentices was thanks to how I had practiced using it with Myne.
“Lutz, the master is calling for you. Please go to his office.” Mark called out to me and told me to go to Benno’s office. I stood up and felt the envious glares of the apprentices around me.
“Lutz again, seriously...?”
“Master Benno always calls him the Myne Chief. I bet it’s just something to do with Myne again.”
I headed to his office while listening to the lehanges murmuring behind me. They weren’t wrong. I only ended up as a merchant’s apprentice thanks to being Myne’s childhood friend and the guy watching over her. Which was exactly why I fully intended to do my job as “the Myne Chief.”
...Nobody else could be her chief but me.
“There you are, Lutz. It’s about Myne,” said Master Benno the moment I stepped into the room, looking up from some paper and boards he was checking over. “What’s everyone around you saying about Myne joining the temple?”
“I don’t think anybody knows she’s becoming a shrine maiden except me and her family. Everyone else thinks she’s just working at home and coming here like she has been. Her family’s not spreading the word since it would look bad from the outside... I think.”
Only orphans joined the temple. Those orphans being pre-baptism kids who were abandoned by their families, perhaps, and had no close relatives to look after them. Baptized kids could become live-in apprentices with their employers as their guardians. Their lives would become much harder, but they would keep their jobs and their status.
There were many rumors about kids raised in the temple’s orphanage. Some said they were worked to the bone in noble mansions, some said they were trapped inside the temple for the rest of their lives. Nobody would ever hire them, and since they allegedly never participated in baptism ceremonies or adulthood ceremonies, they weren’t even counted as citizens of the city. They were treated as unwanted baggage. Myne’s family would be mocked and belittled if it became known that their child joined the temple.
“Myne’s going to be treated like a blue shrine maiden, but most people won’t understand the significance of that, and we sure don’t know what’ll happen if she gets involved with a real pain of a noble. Don’t say anything you don’t have to. I’ve gotten reports that someone’s sniffing around the city for details on Myne. Be careful.”
It seemed that Freida had warned him that a man had visited the Merchant’s Guild looking for information on Myne.
“Freida just thought he’s another merchant Myne’s stepped on the toes of, but we know she’s entering the temple. It wouldn’t be strange for someone on the nobility’s side to be gathering information on her. Lutz, it won’t be hard for them to find out that you have a magic contract signed with her. Keep an eye on yourself and your surroundings.”
Master Benno intended to hide Myne as much as possible, and I intended to do the same. To be honest, I had never dealt with nobles, so I didn’t know what made them scary or annoying to deal with. But everyone was so on guard towards them I knew I should be too.
“By the way, is Myne about to get better?”
“I think so. It’s been three days since she got sick with a fever, so she should be getting better soon.”
“Bring her here when you can, I need to talk to her about something.”
“Understood.” I nodded and left his office, only to see that everyone was closing up the store already.
“Lutz, please put away the unorganized products still in the back room. The bell is about to ring,” said Mark, just as the sixth bell began to ring. Sixth bell signaled the closing of the store.
“See you tomorrow.” We lehanges all started heading home. The store was closed by the leherls that had rooms in the upper floors of the store, like Mark and Leon. I needed to go leave soon so the store could close. I hurriedly grabbed my stuff and ran outside.
I then climbed to my attic room to start preparing to go home. I took off my apprentice outfit and threw it into the washtub before changing into my usual clothes. Then I checked the water jug to see how much water it had left. If there wasn’t enough water to wash my face there, I wouldn’t have time to get more the next morning.
...Looks like there’s still enough.
I locked my attic door and raced down the steps, then started walking home. Pretty much everyone in the city went home at sixth bell so the steadily darkening street was filled with people. There was a cool breeze, but the body heat from the crowd rendered it pointless.
...There were never this many people when I was just coming back from the forest. Now that I had a job I was stuck walking with the sixth bell crowd, but back when I was gathering in the forest, since the sixth bell signaled that the gates were closing, I only ever saw the fight between merchants trying to force their way into the city and the gate guards trying to close the gates. We kids could slip into small alleyways on our way home, so we could avoid the crowds.
“Ah, welcome back, Lutz.” When I got home Mom was making dinner. My brothers were all home too. It was a daily practice for mom to yell at me to help with dinner, reminding me that everyone else was tired too, and today was no exception.
Our home menu had expanded a bit thanks to Myne’s recipes, but many of them required stuff like parues, which only grew in the winter or otherwise took a lot of hard work to make, so our normal eating habits hadn’t changed that much. We mainly just ate bread, soup, ham, and sausage.
“Gaah! Ralph! That’s mine!”
“Your fault for being slow!” Ralph stole a slice of my ham so I lifted my plate, eyes flared open in anger, but then Zasha came from the side for my sausage.
“You’re a merchant apprentice, you don’t move around too much. We’re carpenters and a lot more hungry than you.”
“Stop, Zasha!” roared my mother. “Sit down and eat!” My sausage was saved thanks to Mom’s yelling, but I could tell from their eyes that they were still aiming for my food. If I didn’t finish my plate while they were still meek from Mom’s glare, they would be back at it again in no time. I scarfed down my sausage and then moved to my soup-soaked bread.
...Gaah, darn it! They’re gonna pay for this! Thanks to my savings I had enough money to buy some food for myself, but still, having my food stolen really ticked me off.
Our conflict-filled dinner ended and I moved right to preparing for bed. I couldn’t wake up early if I didn’t go to bed early, and in any case there wasn’t much for me to do after sunset. Going to bed fast to save on candles was the best plan.
I heard seventh bell ringing, signaling that it was bedtime.
...I think I’ll go check on Myne tomorrow. She should be better by now.
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