Josef—Beruf Certification
“I heard the foremen are gonna eat with us today,” I said to the leherls, who were packing away their tools since work was over for the day. They all glanced warily at Bierce, then one whispered to me.
“Hey, Josef. That rich patron girl came today, didn’t she? Are things good again? We don’t wanna have a dinner like the last one ever again,” he teased, but I could sense the worry in his voice.
I clenched my fist and gave him a confident grin. “Don’t sweat it. Tonight’s gonna be a good night. For everyone except me, that is—I’ve gotta hold Heidi back.”
There was a moment of silence, then everyone started cackling. It’s been a long time since the workshop was cheery enough for us to joke around like this, I thought before a grinning craftsman came over and slapped me on the back.
“Oi, Josef. Looks like you’re gonna have to get to work before dinner.”
“Yep, yep. It’s already your time to shine. Go get Heidi to clean up. She’s still over there thinking to herself,” he said in a now-cheery voice, pointing over to Heidi, who was glaring at some materials while deep in thought.
I turned my back to the craftsmen and quickly walked over to where she was. She didn’t even notice me, and instead just kept mumbling to herself while glaring at a small bowl of materials.
“C’mon, Heidi. Give it a rest for today. We’re all stuck here until you clean everything up,” I said, poking her in the head before grabbing the bowl and lazily handing it over to a nearby lehange. She had been deep in thought, but not deeply enough to stop her from shooting out of her chair the moment the materials were taken from her.
“Gaaah! Josef, wait! Be careful! Don’t mix the materials!”
It looked like I had successfully brought her back to reality. I gave the bowl back to Heidi, which was filled with a powder that had been ground down to use for ink.
“If you’ve got time to complain, you’ve got time to clean up. The bell’s gonna ring soon.”
“Okay! I’ll clean up right away, so please, be gentle!”
“C’mon, I’m not you. I’ll treat the materials carefully.”
Everyone nearby was laughing and saying things like, “Yeah, leaving Heidi to Josef is always the best move,” but honestly it had been so long since I last heard them teasing us that even their lighthearted mockery was nostalgic. The workshop going back to normal was a huge relief.
“The Gilberta Company’s gonna help get the guildmaster on our side when it comes to selling ink to nobles,” Bierce announced. “We’ve also got a patron who’s helping fund Heidi’s research into colored ink, and we even managed to sell some, so drink as much as you want today, boys.”
This declaration caused the leherls to erupt in cheer, and they started chugging beer and munching enthusiastically through the food on the table. I myself downed my mug of behelle in one go.
We had made and sold the ink that the Gilberta Company wanted so that we could form a connection with them, which led to us being able to leave dealing with nobles to them and the guildmaster. Along the way, we had even found a patron for Heidi’s research. If we’re not gonna celebrate today, when will we? Our hard work’s finally paid off a little; we can save the rest for tomorrow. Heidi has a long, rough road ahead of her... That is, as long as we don’t tick off our tiny patron.
I thought back to the tiny girl who had helped us with our colored ink research earlier today. Lady Myne was kind of a weirdo herself, having quickly become friends with Heidi the research nut, but I couldn’t yell at Lady Myne when she did something weird like I could with Heidi. I had to show more restraint and work that out with her attendants. Not to mention, if I didn’t stop Heidi from researching day in and day out, we’d eat up all of Lady Myne’s funding and be in a real bad spot if she refused to give us more.
Even while drinking behelle among all the festivities, my head was still filled with thoughts of tomorrow’s work. Heidi and I had been entrusted with researching the new ink, which meant I would be doing all of the work except the research itself. It was probably obvious by now, but Heidi was utterly useless outside of research; it took her way too long to do anything, and her lack of progress would just end up annoying everyone around her.
“That’s some nice chugging there, Josef. You must be happy that the ink we made is selling so well, huh? I bet you wish we could eat with everyone like this every day,” Heidi said with a grin, taking a swig of her own behelle. She loved eating with a ton of people like this, especially the other leherls, but in our workshop, Bierce’s family and the leherls usually ate separately.
“How many times has Bierce told you that the boys need some time to relax without him being around? Give it up, this is only ever gonna be for special occasions.”
“I’m jealous of the leherls. I wanna eat where Dad can’t see me sometimes too,” she murmured while eyeing Bierce furtively. I laughed and looked his way too. It was true that the leherls wanted to at least relax and eat meals without him, their boss, watching them. His decision to normally eat separately from them was the right one to make.
That said, I had experience with both sides since I had married into Bierce’s family through Heidi, and well... It was safe to say that there was a big difference between what the five leherls ate and what we ate. Eating separately was convenient to Bierce in part to save on the leherls’ food costs.
There were a lot of reasons and excuses for us eating separately, but regardless of all that, we ate dinner together when there was important news for the workshop. It was the best and worst of times for the leherls, who loved the better quality food but feared Bierce’s news.
This time it’s good news, but last time it was because Mr. Wolf had died, so yeah...
The last time we had eaten with the leherls was when the former head of the Ink Guild, Wolf, had died under mysterious circumstances, and Bierce ended up unable to refuse the position of guild head. If this meant he had to pick up all the shady, underhanded deals that Wolf had been making, then it wasn’t strange to think that Bierce would have to start dealing with nobles himself.
Naturally, the leherls all paled after hearing that; the workshop would no doubt crumble without Bierce. The lehanges could run away when their three-year contracts ran out, but the leherls didn’t have it so easy. Their fates were tied to the workshop. His daughter and successor, Heidi, only cared about research, and since I, her husband, wasn’t qualified to be a beruf yet, everyone had been reasonably terrified.
...I gotta get my beruf certification as soon as possible.
One needed the title of “beruf” to be a workshop foreman. Anyone could inherit the workshop when a foreman died, but without this title, the successor’s position in the guild would weaken, and he’d have restrictions placed on him. Furthermore, he wouldn’t be able to hire any new leherls or lehanges, and lehanges wouldn’t be able to renew their contracts with him.
Everything was decided by skill in the world of craftsmen, and it was a harsh world indeed. You couldn’t own a workshop without being a beruf, since talentless people owning workshops would damage the reputation and development of the entire area. You could technically get around this restriction if you had friends in powerful places—a personal workshop not belonging to any guild, generally established by a rich merchant or a noble, could be run by a foreman who wasn’t a beruf—but that didn’t apply to most people, and in general the death of a foreman meant the death of a workshop.
...Like Wolf’s own ink workshop.
Since Wolf was the only one in his workshop who was a certified beruf, his workshop rapidly deteriorated after he died. Limits were put on trade, and due to rumors coming out about his dark past, several lehanges canceled their contracts once spring came.
I can’t let our workshop meet the same fate.
I was a leherl married to the workshop’s successor—I was tied to it no matter what happened, and I didn’t have the luxury of slacking on getting my beruf certification, lazily watching Heidi go nuts over research. Bierce had been forced to become head of the Ink Guild after Wolf died, and in all honesty, it wouldn’t surprise me if he dropped dead under equally mysterious circumstances any day now.
I need to get my beruf certification as soon as possible.
Bierce had slapped me on the back and said, “Josef, I’m counting on you,” when he became the head of the Ink Guild, and I felt the true weight of that slap more than ever now.
“...Woah!” My heavy thoughts were suddenly interrupted by Heidi jabbing a finger between my eyebrows.
“Drop the frown already and eat up, okay?”
“What’s with you all of a sudden...?”
“I need your help for sure to develop the new ink. I won’t be able to make so many different kinds myself, so shape up. There’s gonna be a lot of stuff I want to try tomorrow,” Heidi said as she piled meat onto my plate. It took strength and stamina to mix oil and materials together for hours at a time while making this new ink, which meant Heidi would have a real hard time doing it by herself.
Am I just an ink-making machine to you, Heidi? Huh? I thought, but despite feeling a little frustrated at my wife for once again thinking about nothing but research, I ate the meat on my plate and drank my behelle.
“Isn’t this great, Dad? I’m so glad that little girl decided to be my patron. Everything’s going so well now thanks to that.”
Although our workshop was in a better spot than before, Bierce remained the head of the Ink Guild, and the deals with nobles made in the past were all resting on the guildmaster’s ultimate decision. The fact that Bierce was the only one in the workshop with a beruf certification was still unchanged as well.
The only things that’re going well are the new ink selling and you getting research funds. Is that all that matters to you?! Come on! I silently yelled at Heidi, who was beaming thoughtlessly as she finished her dinner.
Ever since then, Lady Myne, our patron, visited the workshop seemingly every day to help with our research on colored ink. The colors changed dramatically based on the oil and materials used, and faded over time once put on paper. Overall, the research was leading into a string of failures. But we kept making different kinds of colored ink despite all the problems, with Lady Myne writing it all down.
“What to do, what to do...?” Heidi murmured, getting so absorbed in her research that she would forget to sleep and eat. She kept repeating that she needed to make ink good enough for Lady Myne like it was a magic spell as she changed the kinds of inks and searched the market for materials that looked like they would make good colors. None of that was especially new, so despite my exasperation, I wasn’t really worried about her; all I had to do was wait for the right opportunities to stuff food into her mouth and watch for when she started wavering in her seat so that I could throw her into bed.
Sadly, that wasn’t enough this time. Heidi had been murmuring something about there having to be a secret to all this while chewing on her morning bread, but I just ignored her and went ahead to the workshop. Eventually, a terrified lehange came rushing up to me.
“Mr. Josef, Mrs. Heidi’s been arrested or something!”
“What?!”
She hadn’t shown up at the workshop yet, but I’d assumed that she was so late because she had fallen asleep during breakfast—in reality, she had been captured by art workshop employees after she started fishing around inside while they were drawing. What the hell is she thinking?! I thought as I raced down the street with the lehange.
It wasn’t long before I found Heidi surrounded by angry-looking craftsmen.
“Heidi, what are you doing here?!”
“I was chewing on my bread, trying to think of good ideas, and suddenly... here I am. Why am I here?” Heidi tilted her head at me while blinking sleepily.
I immediately shook her awake. “How am I supposed to know that?! Wake up already!” I yelled, then deeply apologized to all of the hard-eyed art craftsmen watching us. “I’m sorry my sleep-deprived wife caused you trouble.”
Whether she had consciously come here or not, her goal had definitely been to find out the secret behind making ink not change colors when put on paper. But it was a major crime to steal trade secrets like that. I had to convince them that Heidi had just wandered over here sleepily, with no hidden intentions whatsoever.
“Quit messing around and tell the truth! She wouldn’t just sleepwalk over to a place like this!”
“If she weren’t sleepwalking, she wouldn’t be here at all. We have no business here.”
“Obviously she was here to steal the secrets to our paint production methods!”
“I’m a leherl working in an ink workshop and she’s its successor. We don’t need to know about paint; it has nothing to do with ink. And we both know how serious the punishments are for stealing trade secrets. We would never do that.”
While I was busy getting yelled at by a bunch of furious craftsmen, Heidi had started to fall asleep on my arm. Despite her own husband desperately apologizing for her own blunders, her head started to bob. By the time she was audibly snoring, the craftsmen had all calmed down and were just shaking their heads and expressing their sympathy for what a crazy wife I had ended up with.
“Just keep a better eye on her, alright?”
“Absolutely. It’ll never happen again.”
Heidi didn’t wake up no matter how much I shook her, so I ended up carrying her to the workshop, at which point fourth bell rang. Noon had come, with us making no progress despite the fact that Lady Myne always came in the afternoon.
...Can I actually survive as this woman’s husband? I was so annoyed by Heidi’s bizarre behavior that thoughts of divorce briefly flashed through my mind as I tossed her into bed.
“Don’t drag us back down now that things are finally looking up. Their method for stopping paint from changing colors is a business secret. You know what we would do to anyone who tried stealing our ink production processes, right?”
“Ngh... Sorry,” she replied, scooting up in bed. It seemed that she now understood how bad the situation had been as well.
“You really weren’t thinking, were you?”
“I’ve been thinking so hard lately that it feels like my head is gonna burst.”
“I’m not talking about research here, alright?” I poked Heidi’s puffed-out cheek, and she blinked her gray eyes several times in surprise.
“Huh? What else but research should I be thinking about right now? I need to solve this fast, while she’s still funding us.” Heidi looked at me as if she couldn’t believe that I didn’t understand that, and honestly I didn’t feel like arguing. I had heard that Bierce and the Gilberta Company had come to an agreement about the research funding; it wasn’t anything for Heidi to worry about. Really, what I needed to think about here was how to keep the patron from being weirded out by Heidi and leaving.
“Heidi, Josef—I’ve figured out how to make fixing agents!” Lady Myne exclaimed, walking into the workshop with a beaming smile that afternoon. She and Heidi squealed with excitement and immediately started talking about how to make the fixing agent used for dyeing cloth.
“Woooah! This is amazing! So amazing!”
Thanks to the fixing agent Lady Myne told us about and taught us to make, we stopped the colored ink from fading when used. It was done.
...And the burden was finally off of my shoulders.
Lady Myne didn’t need to visit our workshop anymore now that the ink was done, and Heidi could spend less time immersed in research. To be honest, having a patron visit our workshop basically every day was exhausting. I had to keep my eyes on Heidi at all times to make sure she didn’t do anything rude, and Lady Myne’s presence made it hard for all the other workers to go about doing their jobs as they normally would.
I sighed in relief, but Heidi slumped over in disappointment. “Aah, we sure finished that in no time...”
“Now that the ink’s done, she’s not gonna be paying for the research anymore. Playtime’s over,” I said, poking her cheek. Please, don’t let her or anyone else cause any more problems, I begged on the inside.
It was a simple wish, but not one the gods were willing to grant: Lady Myne smiled and said, “I don’t mind paying a bit more if you want to continue your research.”
“Lady Myne, you’re the best!”
“Please, you’re spoiling her!” I yelled. Who’s gonna keep an eye on her while she does her research?! I don’t wanna live like this for the rest of my life!
“Heidi, Josef—as far as I am concerned, you are both now Gutenbergs,” Lady Myne said with a smile while pointing at Heidi, who was spinning in place with her arms spread out like an idiot.
“Guten... huh? We’re a what?”
“Gutenberg. The name of a heroic—nay, godlike—being whose legendary accomplishments changed the history of books. As it stands, Johann is the Gutenberg of metal letter types, Benno is the Gutenberg of plant paper, and Lutz is the Gutenberg of selling books. There’s also Ingo who helped make the printing press, and now you two are the Gutenbergs of making ink. It is only natural that I would fund the Gutenbergs who are making my dreams of reading a reality.”
It looked like I was the only one who wasn’t following her. The little boy accompanying Lady Myne had murmured something about there being “another one,” and Heidi was jumping for joy.
“We’re Gutenbergs, Josef! She has work for us! She’ll fund us! She’ll let me do research! Yahoooo!”
“I’m sure that knowing why the ink changes color will prove useful in the future, so please, keep up the good work.”
“You can count on us!” Heidi declared proudly.
...Ah, of course. I get it. I’ve been trying not to think about it since she’s our patron, but this little girl is a weirdo just like Heidi!
That said, while them getting along so well wasn’t good for my heart, Lady Myne already had her own personal workshop and the backing of the Gilberta Company despite her young age; she was on another level from Heidi and her singular obsession with research.
“However, your highest priority should be making the ink. If you don’t finish an order before the due date, I’ll cut off your funding without a second thought.”
“Eek!”
“You’re the kind of person who loses sight of their surroundings when they get absorbed in their research. I need to make it clear what your priorities should be, and lay out a punishment for when you fail to stay on track,” she said to Heidi, looking confident and authoritative.
...Yep, that’s a businesswoman for you. She looks young, but she’s got a proper backbone.
“Birds of a feather sure know how to clip each other’s wings, huh? Looks like you know exactly how to keep her under control,” the apprentice from the Gilberta Company chuckled, saying exactly what I was thinking.
Right, birds of a feather! I nearly burst out laughing myself, but Lady Myne glared at me with a pout, so I hurriedly promised to watch over Heidi’s research to get her back in a good mood.
And rest assured, Heidi was in a good mood that night.
“Isn’t it all grand, Josef? She’s going to continue being my patron, and everything’s just going so well.”
“Heidi, seriously...?” I couldn’t believe she was acting like all the problems she had caused this morning just didn’t exist. But before I could say anything, Heidi beamed a smile as dazzling as the summer sun.
“Now you’re definitely gonna get your beruf certification.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what our workshop needs now more than ever, right? We finished the new colored ink and secured research funding from a patron, so if we force the issue with the Ink Guild—which owes us for dumping the position of guild head onto Dad—it should be pretty easy for us to get you a beruf certification. Don’t you think so?”
My jaw dropped to the floor. I probably looked pretty stupid right now, but could you blame me? I never would have expected to hear Heidi talking about the future of the workshop or anything like that. I wanted a beruf certification as soon as possible, but I hadn’t at all considered that this was why Heidi was so absorbed in her ink research.
“...But you’re the one who’s researching the colored ink, Heidi. You deserve the certification.”
For each success, only one person could receive certification. Heidi deserved it; she was the one who had been so dedicated to her research that she was forgetting to eat and sleep. But when I said that, she opened her gray eyes wide and tilted her head.
“I couldn’t have finished the ink this quickly without you, and you’ll need the certification to run the workshop. Is this even something to discuss?”
“You’re not wrong, but...”
“I don’t wanna think about all this hard business stuff. I just want to mix a bunch of stuff and learn a lot about ink. Take the beruf certification for my sake, Josef. It’s what your cute wife wants,” Heidi said with a grin. For some reason, confirming that she was cute felt like accepting defeat, so I silently tossed her into bed.
Some time later in the future, Bierce, as the head of the Ink Guild, awarded me my beruf certification.
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