Hagane no Renkinjutsushi - Volume 6 - Chapter 4

A CHAIN OF MISTAKES

GARFIEL WAS THE FIRST to notice a difference in how Winry worked.

“Good morning, Winry. Wait, don’t tell me you stayed up all night again?!”

Garfiel, who had woken up at his usual time, blinked in surprise when he saw the atelier’s workbench.

Normally, the bench was set up first thing in the morning with the automail they would work on and the polished tools they would need that day. However, the usually tidy work area was strewn with swapped-out parts, screws, and grease-stained tools.

“Good morning! I’m finishing up, so I’ll open the shutters right after!” Winry gave him a smile and returned his greeting in the middle of repairing some automail. She went right back to screwing in the final bolt.

“Did we receive an overnight job yesterday evening?” Garfiel said, cocking his head to the side in puzzlement, before realizing Winry was working on automail that a client had brought in the day before. Dubious, he asked, “Weren’t we just changing out the screw in the joint for this one?”

Winry replied breezily as though nothing were amiss, “That’s what I’d been planning, but the customer was concerned one of the internals was warped and apparently he’s coming back at around noon, so I thought I’d get it done before we open.”

“You don’t have to accept work with tight time constraints and tough conditions. Just the other day, you ended up with another complex job and had to pull an all-nighter then, too.” Garfiel seemed half-exasperated.

In front of him but not looking up, Winry finally finished her work and put down her screwdriver.

“Whew, I’m done. Okay, time to get ready to open shop!”

She wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. Without even stopping for a break, she drew water into a bucket. She had already finished doing routine maintenance on the devices and tools late the night before, so all she had left was cleaning the floors.

“My stars,” Garfiel shrugged when she didn’t show any hint of fatigue and diligently went to work sweeping the floors with a broom. “First, take a shower. I don’t approve of you being filthy before we even open up.”

“Huh?”

Winry blinked and looked down at herself. She hadn’t realized until that moment that she was covered in sweat and oil from head to toe.

“I’m sorry! I’ll get cleaned up right away!” she said. She couldn’t meet customers while looking like that—it would be rude. Winry rushed up the stairs and dashed into the bathroom.

As the lukewarm water washed over her, she scrubbed at her skin with soap. Metal shavings and blackened bubbles flowed down the drain.

“Whoa, I really was filthy! I’m so glad I finished in time!” she exclaimed as she scrubbed herself clean, loudly splashing water as she celebrated that she’d finished the earlier maintenance without issue.

Winry was firmly committed to hearing out each and every client she met. Since she knew now that she’d been inconsiderate of Darish’s feelings, she had reflected on her work and decided to prioritize her client’s feelings going forward.

After showering and changing, Winry gazed out the window as she ate breakfast. The smoke puffing out of smokestacks all over the city signaled the start of what would be a hectic day.

“Hope my work will satisfy the clients!” she said in order to remind herself of what she’d resolved to do. She slapped her cheeks to fire herself up.

IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE SHOP OPENED, the owner of the automail she had barely finished servicing stopped by.

“Morning. I’m sorry for coming in early. Could you reattach the leg I brought to you yesterday, by any chance? I found out that I have a last-minute trip I need to make for work. Have you finished the repairs?”

“Yes, and I looked at all the internal mechanisms. There weren’t any problems at all. I’ll reattach it now, so if you could please come this way.”

Winry nodded and offered a chair as the suit-wearing man’s eyes went wide. Though he had come in the day before, it had been right at closing time. Despite his request, the man was aware that dismantling an automail’s internal components would have taken time.

“The internal mechanisms?” the man said with an apologetic look in his eyes as Winry set about pulling off the prosthetic leg he’d worn in place of his automail. “You don’t mean you looked at all of them, do you? But it’s only been a day. You must have stayed up all night. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Winry said. After she finished pulling off the leg with a clunk, Winry brought over the automail. “Okay, shall I reattach it now?”

She leaned over his legs, put a wrench to the bolt of the joint and held it firmly.

“Are you ready? One, two, three!”

“Guh!” When he felt the pain and jolt from his nerves connecting, the man groaned a little. “Ha ha, I just can’t ever seem to get used to that, no matter how long it’s been.”

He smiled sheepishly, seeming embarrassed for crying out unintentionally at his age.

“How is it? None of it feels sluggish when you move it, right?”

“No, the exterior screw is perfectly fit in there, so it’s not making that strange noise. There’s no problem with it.”

He stood up and stretched his leg, then took a few steps and smiled in satisfaction.

“I have a big business negotiation in another town, but because you took such a good look at my leg, it won’t be distracting me and I’ll be able to focus on my work. I’m grateful, truly.”

After he settled the bill, as he left to go to work, Winry saw him out, calling, “Thank you so much!” The morning sunlight stung her sleep-deprived eyes so much it hurt, but Winry didn’t mind it at all.

Kaas came by that afternoon.

“Hello, Winry. I came to see your schematics.”

“Welcome, Mr. Kaas. Please take a seat over here. Umm, your schematics are …”

Winry searched for the two blueprints in a box filled with rolled-up papers, then spread only one of them over the table initially.

“This is the one we spoke about earlier that would be made using new materials,” Winry said as she pointed at the knee on the diagram. She had selected materials designed so they could be made thinner using the latest techniques in order to fulfill Kaas’s request for lighter automail. “This part as well as that part will be three millimeters thinner than before.”

“What are these lines that form a cross here?”

“Since it’s thinner, we’ll put in thin metal rods as reinforcements,” Winry explained. “This is a diagram of it from the back. It will be fifteen percent lighter than the automail you’re currently using.”

As he listened to her explanation, Kaas followed the diagram with his eyes and nodded firmly as though to indicate that he didn’t have any issue with that figure.

“That’ll be such a help. Looks like the only thing left is for me to learn how to take care of it, and that should be it,” he said, his voice quieting slightly. Though he had agreed to the new automail, he still seemed concerned about maintenance.

“About that, would you be kind enough to look at this?”

Winry spread out another sheet of paper. It was a blueprint for another piece of automail that would be lighter than the automail he had now, but that required the same care as his current leg.

“You told me that you were worried about having a different maintenance routine, so I found another type of material. But it will be slightly more expensive than the other one.”

“Oh, you went out of your way to make a second design?” Kaas seemed surprised as he leaned forward and looked at the blueprints.

“Yes. I can’t make it as light as the one I just showed you, but you’ll be able to care for it in the same way you have been.”

“Oh ho, looks like the screw here is a different shape.”

“Yes, I can’t make the body any lighter, so I thought I’d lighten the parts instead.”

Winry pulled off a screw that was taped to the edge of the blueprint and offered it to him. It was handmade. Since carving it was labor-intensive, the metal was normally not used for making delicate parts, but she had practiced using the new machine to make it.

After she finished explaining the two designs, Winry laid them out them side by side on the table.

“What do you think?” Winry asked.

She didn’t mind whichever Kaas chose. What mattered was that she had prepared plans that fit his desired conditions, and that he chose one.

“I suppose I’ll choose this one,” he said, pointing at the blueprint that would allow him to keep his current maintenance routine.

“Understood. Then I’ll produce this one for you,” Winry replied. She drew a large circle over the blueprint that he had chosen.

“I’m counting on that,” Kaas said. As he stood up from his chair and was just about to leave, he stopped in his tracks. “So, why did you prepare two blueprints for me?” 

“Because,” Winry stopped rolling up the schematics as she explained. “You’re the one who’ll need to maintain your automail every day, Mr. Kaas, so I thought I’d better make something that prioritizes what you want. Also, it would make me happy to know that you’re using your automail and taking care of it in the long term. The best way to make that possible is to make it easier to maintain.”

“I see.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled as though he were squinting at a bright light, but the hand he gently placed on Winry’s shoulder as he passed by expressed his gratitude. His large, rugged hand on her shoulder brought warmth to Winry’s heart.

When Winry judged there was an afternoon lull in the stream of clients coming in, she called out to Garfiel, who was servicing a regular’s automail. “Mr. Garfiel, could I go out for a bit? I checked every bit of Milia’s automail, so I’d like to go reattach it for her.”

The day before, Winry had visited Milia’s house and taken the girl’s automail. After a scrupulous inspection, it seemed that the issue Milia had complained about had indeed been imagined. Winry wanted to tell Milia that as soon as possible.

“You’re going all the way to her house?” Garfiel said, stopping in the middle of applying oil to a customer’s automail. He looked doubtful. As a general rule, Atelier Garfiel didn’t pay home visits for automail servicing.

Winry said, “I just thought she’d have trouble coming all the way here on a substitute leg she’s not used to.”

Milia’s house was partway across the other side of the mountains with the heart of the town in between, so she would need to travel up steep stairs and over inclines. Winry had been the one to take the girl’s automail, so she wanted to do what she could for Milia.

“I understand that, but more importantly, are you sure you’ll be fine without getting some sleep?” Garfiel questioned, pointedly looking at the bags under Winry’s eyes. “It’s a lovely thing that you’re taking such good care of the clients, but there’s no point if it means sacrificing your own health in return.”

At Garfiel’s somewhat stern warning, Winry replied, “I’ll be fine! I’ve always been tough, ever since I was small!”

When Winry brought her firmly balled fists up to her chest as an apparent show of just how tough she was, Garfiel sighed. He didn’t know what else to do.

Winry’s skills at work seemed to be improving and she had a very good reputation with the customers. But if she kept pushing herself, that stress would eventually manifest. That wouldn’t only negatively affect her ability to concentrate and her problem-solving skills—she would lose her ability to consider those around her as well. The shelf and floor, and most importantly the old tools from Resembool that Winry had been so attentive to at the outset were starting to collect dust. As the one with more experience, Garfiel started to warn her to be careful of that: “So, Winry …”

However, before he could get anywhere, they heard the voice of the man from the studio next door.

“Hey! Get those boxes you’ve got in the road cleaned up already!”

“Oh, sorry!” Winry replied. She hurried out to the front, her footsteps thudding as she went. “I’ll clean them up right away!”

“You’ve even blocked the way into my shop. Bring your shipments in as soon as they arrive,” the man chided.

Winry had been planning to haul everything into the studio after confirming that all the parts they had ordered had been delivered, but she hadn’t had time that day and had left them out. She now brought in both of the large boxes at the same time, placing them down in the studio with a weighty thump. She didn’t even check their contents before she heaved the box containing Milia’s automail and some tools onto her shoulder.

“I need to go before it gets too late! Well, I’m heading out!”

“Oh, wait … !”

Winry’s hair fluttered as she smiled and ran off, Garfiel’s call to stop her falling on deaf ears.

ONCE WINRY WAS OUT OF THE STUDIO, she made a beeline to Milia’s house.

When she looked up at the clock over at the edge of town, its big hand had just ticked to point at three o’clock. The large mechanical clock, apparently created by automail engineers living in the town as a way for everyone to keep the time, was outfitted with an arm holding a hammer and a bell on top. Every hour on the hour the arm would come alive and swing the hammer up to strike the bell and toll out the hour.

The bell rang out three times overhead, informing those who worked in the town of the time.

“It feels like it barely struck twelve just earlier,” Winry mused. “I can’t believe how fast the time has flown by.”

By the time she would get back to the studio, it would probably already be five o’clock. After that, she was planning on drawing up provisional schematics for some new clients and checking on the automail maintenance she had finished the day before.

Winry kept a firm hold on the automail she carried as she quickly wove between people.

She had been incredibly busy the past few days, but she had started seeing her clients smile a lot more than before. All her efforts were paying off in results. Those satisfied smiles and the trust in her clients’ eyes as a result of her work and painstaking care were what brought her joy—they were what motivated her.

As she ran along, feeling a pleasant sense of satisfaction and fulfillment, she heard a familiar voice coming from somewhere.

“Um, so I want a chocolate cookie and orange juice and also, uh …”

She turned her head to find Lettie and Darish ordering off a menu in front of a roadside stall. The large, roofed cart served juices made from vegetables and fruits, as well as muffins, cookies, and other snacks. Though it served alcohol and bar snacks at night, it often sold chilled drinks during the hot afternoons.

Winry stopped in her tracks to watch the two from behind. The street and passersby separated her and the children.

She hadn’t seen Darish since that day. He hadn’t visited her and she hadn’t had the guts to go see him. But she had been hoping for another chance at a conversation with him, if she could get one. Barring that, she at least wanted to apologize to him. Though she’d been dreading this, the smiles of her clients from the past few days spurred her to approach him.

Darish was preoccupied with his thoughts, leaning against the stall while on his crutch. Lettie was looking at the menu and trying her hardest to get a response from him, but he wasn’t paying attention in the slightest.

Winry mustered up her courage and called out, “Darish?” 

Hearing her voice, Darish sprung up and turned around.

“Oh, it’s you!” Lettie said when she realized who was there. She leapt onto Winry, who accepted the small girl with open arms while she looked straight at Darish.

Darish immediately averted his eyes.

“Hello,” Winry said, but he put his elbow on the counter and kept his head turned away without returning the pleasantry. He seemed to want to have nothing to do with her. That stung. Lettie innocently looked up at her.

“Did you come to buy juice too? I got orange juice and Darish got apple juice. We’re gonna eat chocolate cookies too.”

“And what did you order for your mom?” Winry asked with a small smile as she tried to endure the stabbing pain in her heart from Darish’s cold reaction. That was the point when Darish decided to finally say something.

“Our mom went home. She’s coming back the day after tomorrow, though.”

“I see.” Winry had been told that their father had stayed behind and was alone in their house, which was far from Rush Valley. Karen had likely headed back temporarily in order to check on her husband and the state of their home. While Winry processed the information, Darish kept avoiding her eyes and shifted away from the counter.

“You’re here to buy something too, right?” he assumed.

“No, I’m not,” she said, her hands waving in the negative, which made Darish let out an indifferent hum between a sigh and a reply.

Though it hadn’t been much of one, they’d successfully had a conversation. Winry felt like the heavy atmosphere between them had begun to clear, even if only slightly. She once again faced Darish, standing right in front of him.

She knew exactly what she wanted to say to him.

“I’m sorry for earlier.” She bowed her head low. “I was convinced that if I learned the right techniques for creating the best automail possible, that was all I needed to make my clients happy. But that assumption hurt you. I’m really sorry.”

She kept her head bowed with genuine sincerity. Her hair swept down and spilled from behind her back, fluttering to the sides of her face.

When she raised her head after some time, Darish was scowling suspiciously at her. Lettie, who had no idea what had led to this, looked from Darish to Winry with wide eyes.

“I’m listening to clients now,” Winry continued, “and I’m making sure I communicate with them so that I can consider their feelings when I do my job. There are times when I still don’t get things right, but I’m making sure that I never forget to be considerate.”

Darish didn’t seem to have more to say after spilling his guts to her a few days earlier—he leaned on the counter and remained silent. He no longer looked so dubious of Winry’s intentions. She couldn’t tell if that was because he was willing to hear her out or if it was because he had already lost interest in what she had to say, so she earnestly continued, saying, “I’ve started to see smiles on my clients’ faces more often. I think that’s because you showed me where I was wrong, Darish. So I’d like you to let me look at your leg again, if possible. I won’t force you, of course, but if you feel like you’d be willing to talk with me again, please come by the shop. This time I’ll make sure I’m listening to you.”

Once she had told him exactly how she felt, Winry bobbed her head one more time. Then she gave Lettie, who was looking puzzled, a tender pat on the head and turned away.

Winry didn’t look back as she walked off. The sound of mechanics hammering away and shopworkers soliciting customers surrounded her. There were plenty of mechanics around and she was just one of those many. She prayed for Darish to choose her again from among all those others as she quickly climbed the steep hill to Milia’s house.

She didn’t think that a single conversation was enough to bring Darish to forgive her. However, if she got one more chance, she would work incredibly hard in order to not let him down again. The last thing she wanted was to hear him say “I knew it’d never happen.” She once again resolved to make every effort she could for her clients and to spend even more time than ever before on her work. 

But taking on everything in that way would inevitably come with strain. Had she been an experienced adult, she might have been able to find balance, but at fifteen years old, Winry only knew how to throw her entire self at a problem.

Slowly but surely, though Winry was unaware, the toll of taking on too much had compounded.

WITH MILIA’S GRATITUDE AND SMILE still fresh in her mind, Winry rounded the corner to the studio.

“Winry!”

When she searched for the person who had called her name, Winry found an older man standing on the other side of the road.

“Mr. Pollack?”

Pollack, whose right eye was automail, was a regular at Atelier Garfiel. He had been leaving maintenance up to Winry more recently.

“Hello!” Winry greeted him with a light bow like she always did whenever she passed a familiar face on the road, but this time her politeness was met with Pollack calling to stop her in a somewhat rude tone. “Hey, Winry, haven’t you got something to say to me?”

“Huh?”

The normally mild-mannered Pollack looked irate. Winry tried to think of what he could have meant or what she could have done to cause that look on his face, but nothing immediately came to mind.

Then Pollack beckoned Winry forward, looking peeved as he did. When she crossed the road, Pollack glared at her with his automail eye.

“How could you do that? You were the one who told me to come by the shop at four, weren’t you?”

“Oh!” Once he told her that, Winry finally remembered. “I-I’m sorry!”

Several days prior, Pollack had told Atelier Garfiel that his eye was acting odd and Winry had accepted his servicing request. Since Pollack ran a general store, he could only leave his shop for a limited time, so he had scheduled an appointment in advance. However, the appointment had completely slipped Winry’s mind.

Despite her flustered apology, the hard look remained on Pollack’s face.

“I came to the shop on time, but then Garfiel told me you’d just gone out and wouldn’t be back for a while. You put me in a real pickle.”

She hadn’t just forgotten the appointment, but to her great shame, had also revealed that she’d only remembered it just now, when he had reminded her. Pollack’s anger was only natural.

“Luckily, Mr. Garfiel was free, so he looked at it for me instead,” Pollack said.

“I’m so sorry!” Winry could only bow her head in earnest apology.

“Really now,” Pollack frowned. “It’s your skills I’ve put my trust into, so make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Though Pollack still looked upset, it seemed Winry’s repentance had gotten through to him.

“Yes, I’ll be more careful,” Winry said, her head still lowered.

“I’m counting on it. See you.”

Immediately after Pollack disappeared into the crowd, Winry held her head in her hands and scolded herself, “What am I even doing?! I’ve got to get it together.”

Gshk GSHK-KREEEEEEE!

The strange, tempestuous shriek of metal grinding against metal filled the air. An intense sound like a crash of thunder shocked the people talking in the street into silence. Those working in the neighborhood paused their work to see what was happening.

“What’s that sound?” she wondered.

Winry, who had covered both her ears with her hands, looked all around for the source of the racket. Then she saw that the people passing by the front of Atelier Garfiel were calling into the studio, asking, “You all right?”

“Huh?!” Winry exclaimed. Winry let go of her ears and went into the shop.

“Mr. Garfiel!” she shouted.

When Winry rushed inside, she saw Garfiel along with Henrik and Weis, her colleagues. The three of them were around the new machine that they had just bought a few days ago. The strange sound had stopped, but a burning smell permeated throughout the atelier.

“Oh, Winry,” said Garfiel, turning toward her as he stood in front of the machine. She had never seen him look so grave. “Did you make sure to take care of this machine last night?”

He wasn’t asking so much as confirming something.

“Yes, I did, like I always do,” she answered.

Garfiel had left this useful, but somewhat touchy, machine’s maintenance to Winry. After the job she had taken the night before, she had finished servicing it like usual, and she couldn’t remember anything happening that would have caused Garfiel to specifically ask her about it. However, the unusually serious look in Garfiel’s eyes and the way Henrik and Weis were looking so stonily at the machine shook Winry.

Garfiel asked again, “Are you sure? You didn’t forget any part of the servicing, did you?”

“Uh, first I unplugged it, then I removed the base and blades and took the scraps out of the drive.” As she went through the servicing steps and her actions from the previous night, Winry unconsciously put her hand up to her chest as though to soothe her heart as it started to pound. “Then I blew out the dust with the air compressor and wiped down the base and blades …”

That was when she abruptly stopped. Winry’s face rapidly paled.

“Oh, but the cylinder!” she cried.

She would normally rake out the metal powder that had worked its way into the machine, then oil the cylinder. That was an important step in ensuring the blades would be quick and accurate. She realized that past Winry had skipped that step.

When she quickly stuck her face into the machine that Weis and Henrik surrounded, she found that the normally straight blades were horribly misshapen. She could see parts scattered around. The sight caused her mind to go completely empty. 

“I had a suspicion that was it,” sighed Garfiel. He could verify from how Winry’s face had changed color and she’d gone speechless that she had indeed made a mistake during the maintenance. 

Winry’s lip quivered as she recalled her mental state the night before.

When she had been working on the machine’s maintenance, her thoughts had been revolving around Milia’s leg, the progress she had been making with several schematics, and Darish, all while she had also been fighting off exhaustion.

After several days of hard work and sleep deprivation, she had lost her ability to concentrate. On top of that, she hadn’t even been able to objectively see that herself. Her neglect to remember Pollack’s appointment aside, in her current condition, Winry had been inevitably headed toward making a giant mistake.

“This is no good,” said Weis. He had opened the exterior stay and brought his face up to a gap to check the inside of the machine, but now put the tool he was holding on the ground as though he had given up. “There’s a crack in the cylinder. It probably won’t be able to function accurately like that.”

“Looks like a bunch of small parts popped off all over the place too,” added Henrik. He had stuck a screwdriver in where the base was warped in order to pull out the damaged pieces, but now he also gave up, collapsing into a nearby chair. “We need to change out the broken parts or we won’t be able to get it to work.” He raised his palms, gesturing defeat. Next to him were blueprints and some automail as well as an unprocessed sheet of metal.

“But what about that automail …” Winry trailed off. Her face froze as Henrik shrugged.

“We’ve gotta finish that by tomorrow morning,” Henrik said. “That sheet metal there is Weis’s. We didn’t think we’d be able finish without this tool, so we came by to see if we could use it.”

As he spoke, Henrik reached out to the automail he had set down. The automail’s exterior was crushed as though it had been put under a great deal of pressure. One of its parts clunked dully as it fell to the floor in front of Winry’s eyes.

“When we tried using the machine, we couldn’t control it, which resulted in what you see here. We’re lucky that we got out of this with just a broken casing.”

That terrible noise from earlier had been the sound of the automail being crushed by the damaged machine.

Only the exterior had been ruined, but with the machine now broken, the automail mechanics couldn’t finish their work. Similarly, Weis likely wouldn’t be able to proceed with processing the sheet metal at all. When Winry realized she had broken the cutting-edge machine they had all chipped in to buy, her knees started quaking.

“I’m sorry! I’m really sorry!” she cried. It wasn’t anything that could be fixed with an apology, but she couldn’t not lower her head. “I’ll look for parts immediately!”

If she could replace the broken parts, she could possibly fix the machine. Winry gathered the scattered pieces on the ground with both her hands, then quickly scribbled the model number of the bent blade and cylinder on some memo paper that was on the workbench.

However, when Winry tried to rush out of the studio, Garfiel stopped her.

“It’ll be impossible to get all of those parts today—there’s just too many of them. And the shops are going to be closing soon anyway.”

“But … !”

Still half facing the road, and with a stricken look on her face, Winry watched Weis gently shake his head.

“The manufacturer makes this cylinder in a distinct shape. It’s not interchangeable with any other manufacturer’s parts and there isn’t much supply. Sometimes things like this happen.” After wiping the oil off his hands with the towel around his neck, Weis nestled his metal sheet under his arm. “I’ll head back to my shop to see if I can process this with another tool.”

“I need to at least see if I can go back and get the exterior back to looking how it was,” Henrik said, wrapping the broken automail in cloth. Despite their attempts to rally, the two experienced engineers had come over after determining that they would need the new machine for their work. That basically meant there was no other way to finish their jobs.

Because of her mistake, the two of them might lose their customers’ trust. In Rush Valley, where it was always the survival of the fittest, Winry knew full well exactly how important even a single customer could be.

Since Garfiel had put his faith in Winry’s maintenance skills, his colleagues might even think he was a poor judge of skill for entrusting the machine’s care to her. Even after he had taken her in as his apprentice, she had made a mistake and betrayed the trust he had put in her. She couldn’t stand by and do nothing.

“I might be able to gather the parts if I go to the shops around town! Please let me look for them!” Winry shouted, then ran outside.

IN THE EVENINGS, Rush Valley was bustling with customers who were heading back to their own jobs and townspeople coming home from shopping. Winry wove through the crowd as she rushed straight to the wholesale merchant who normally helped her.

“Mr. Mandel!”

“Oh, why, if it isn’t Winry. What brings you here?”

Mandel gazed down at Winry, curious after she had burst in through the door and ran up to the counter, out of breath. He asked, “Is there something you need a rush on?”

Winry caught her breath as she nodded and pulled the parts and note out of her pocket.

“Oh, now those have taken a beating,” Mandel said. He picked up a flattened screw from among the parts on the counter and scrutinized it.

“I need replacements for these parts—slicing blades, a number C-1 screw, a number 77 spring washer, an A-8 anchor bolt …” Winry recited the names and numbers of the parts she had brought to make sure there would be no mistakes, jotting down a list on the spot.

Normally, she would start up some small talk with Mandel, since she knew him pretty well, but right now, with thoughts of the broken machine weighing heavily on her, all she was capable of was making the pen race across the paper as she prayed she could collect all the parts.

It seemed that Mandel sensed Winry’s desperation from how silent Winry was as she moved the pen. He didn’t strike up any additional chitchat as he headed to the back of the shop where the stock was kept.

“Let’s see. You need ten, twenty … twenty-eight in total, it looks like. Seems like I have all the screws.”

Winry followed Mandel’s back as he meandered back and forth in front of a shelf. She clenched her fists on the countertop as she tensely stared at him.

“There, thanks for waiting,” he said after a while. He had lined up about sixty percent of the parts she had asked him for. “Sorry. This is all I’ve got right now. I should be able to order the rest tomorrow, but if you’re in a hurry, I think you ought to try other places. Still, I’m not so sure that this will be available in this town.”

Mandel tapped one of the parts she had listed. It was the unique cylinder Weis had told her about.

“I’m the only shop that deals with this manufacturer, so your best option if you need it today is to go to the junk shops.”

“I understand. Then please let me pay for these things.”

“Huh? I’ll send you a bill later, so it’s fine,” Mandel said, surprised to see Winry pulling out her own change purse to pay. He would normally bill Atelier Garfiel for all the parts at the end of the month.

“No, please let me pay today.”

“You sure?”

Mandel seemed dubious as he told her the total bill, but Winry paid, took the receipt, and immediately left the shop while thanking him.

The sky had been clear just earlier, but it was starting to gray as clouds formed. She didn’t have time to worry about the weather.

“Twelve left!”

She clutched her package of parts as she opened the door to another wholesale shop. Then, after leaving just a few minutes later, she headed to the junk shop across the street. She repeated that process several times, gradually collecting what she needed.

“Three left!”

After leaving another shop that was pretty far from Atelier Garfiel, Winry ran without pause to find the remaining parts. Sweat dripped from her forehead, attracting dust that then smeared across her face.

Eventually the sun set and the clock’s bell tolled seven times, and in a sign as clear as the bell, neon signs began to switch on and glow throughout town. The stores along the main road would still be open for about another hour, but the other shops would soon be getting ready to pack up.

Winry quickly headed into the closest junk shop. The shelves that lined the cramped shop were piled with broken automail, dust-covered tools, and various machine parts.

As she carefully walked past shelves that seemed like they could collapse at any moment, Winry picked out promising iron scraps one after the other and then replaced them before dragging out yet another part.

“This isn’t it. This one isn’t either. This one is broken.”

Though the parts were broken, they were still merchandise. In order to avoid getting them dirty, she would wipe her oily, dusty hands with a towel, but after touching the parts her hands would immediately blacken again.

The remaining three parts included the cylinder she had been told she likely wouldn’t find, and two springs that would be used by the driving mechanism. Those were things she could not substitute with another manufacturer’s parts. Once she finished searching a shelf, she next stuck her hand into a box in the corner.

“I-I found them!”

She wiped away the sweat trickling down her forehead as she pulled her prizes out of the box. She had found the two springs among other unfamiliar machine parts. They were slightly contorted and rusted, but they were easily usable if she polished them up.

Now all she had left was the cylinder. She prayed she would find it as she used a screwdriver to open up and peer into the ruined remains of what appeared to have been automail. She did the same for other parts, including a hunk of metal that might have once been part of a larger tool. However, she didn’t find any additional windfalls, and still hadn’t found the part in the end.

She returned the last part to the scrap iron container, paid for the springs, and went outside to find it had started raining at some point. The sky had fully darkened.

She stuck the exposed springs she had just bought, as well as her other bags, into the largest of the bags. Then she removed the top of her overalls, untucked the shirt she was wearing underneath, and covered the bag of parts with her shirt.

“Hopefully they won’t get wet this way,” she said, holding the parts she had collected to her stomach. Winry immediately jogged to the next shop.

She didn’t have time to stand around. The longer it took her to get back to Atelier Garfiel, the less time Weis and Henrik would have to work, regardless of whether she could fix the machine. She desperately struggled to keep her legs moving. They had become so tired they barely listened to her as she went to one building after another.

While that was happening, the towel she had been using to wipe her hands had become too dirty to use, which meant Winry had to rub her hands on her own clothes to clean them before entering each shop.

By the time she realized it, most of the shops had closed. When she exited a shop after another fruitless search, the light of its sign and a few others, as well as their show windows, were the only things lighting the road.

She hadn’t found the cylinder.

“What should I do?” Winry murmured despondently. The lights of the shop she had just left fell on her and cast an even larger shadow at her feet. 

When she left the building entrance, she found the rain had started coming down harder. It pummeled Winry as she began walking aimlessly along the deserted road. The rain just kept coming down harder and harder, drenching her clothes and hair. Only the sound of the rain pelting down in sheets surrounded her, just as the commotion of the afternoon had earlier.

Droplets dripped from her chin, and while she walked along the dark road, the sound of the bell echoed from afar. Its sound, perhaps muffled by the rain, tolled nine times in succession before going silent.

Winry stopped in front of a show window.

Unlike her heavy, sinking mood, the inside of the show window was dazzlingly bright. The window featured rare automail and jewelry made from precious metals that had been created by some studio or other.

Maybe she hoped the bright light of the window would raise her low spirits, but for whatever reason, Winry stared at it as she continued along, though who knew how many times she might’ve passed by before. She stopped to look at the displayed merchandise, and just as she started to walk again, she stopped in her tracks.

“It’s that manufacturer!” she said, pressing both her hands up against the glass.

Tools and metal parts, polished until they sparkled, were enshrined within the display case. What had drawn her eyes was a lump of unshapely metal that seemed as though it had been the sole part taken from a gigantic machine. From a gap between the gears and braces, she could see a cylinder inside of it and, on one corner, the stamp of the manufacturer she had been looking for.

Winry held her fluttering heart as she read a piece of text introducing the merchandise, which had been posted next to it. 

“‘A part used in a well-established manufacturer’s tools. Because they only use high-quality metal, their products outshine others in durability. Through alteration, it can be used for automail production.’ This is it!”

She pressed her face against the glass as she checked the displayed part. It seemed it was being used in a different machine than the one in Garfiel’s shop, but the cylinder was without a doubt the unique one from that particular manufacturer.

“Thank goodness!” Winry exclaimed, relieved that she would be able to fix the machine. But the relief only lasted for a moment. “No way.”

When she saw the price tag attached to the showcased merchandise, her face froze.

It was exorbitantly expensive. It was of high-quality metal, in good condition, and made by a manufacturer known for their high efficiency, but even with those things in mind, the price was still too high.

Winry’s eyes darted to the prices of the other merchandise displayed alongside it. Everything was far above market price.

“Could this place be … ?” Winry said as she raised her head to look at the sign. Droplets of rain splattered on her face.

The establishment, which labeled itself a junk shop, seemed to be one of the commercial traders that had started to appear more frequently in Rush Valley. She suspected it was one of the places Garfiel, Henrik, and Weis had told her about. They would sell things for a high price without maintaining the merchandise properly—solely for a profit.

Standing in the rainy street, her hand paused over the pocket that held her change purse.

She had already spent quite a bit of money that day buying parts. However, she did have a high-value paper bill stashed away for emergencies. She had just enough to afford the part.

Winry looked up at the sign again, then at the cylinder in the window, before she finally turned her eyes down to her own feet. Her sopping-wet shoes were covered in mud and oil.

She had been indignant to learn that Darish had ended up saddled with a leg that hurt him because of a crooked business, but at that moment, she was desperate for another crooked business’s wares. Knowing that made her feel pathetic as a mechanic, and filled her with sorrow.

Winry’s wet bangs clung to her damp forehead as she looked down, and raindrops coursed along her face. After following the path of a droplet that fell from the tip of her nose, she squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, she reached out with a chilled hand and slowly pushed the shop’s door open.

IT WAS PAST TEN by the time Winry arrived back at Atelier Garfiel.

Without regard to the rain, the studio’s shutters had been left a quarter of the way open, allowing lamplight to stretch out into the road. It seemed Garfiel had done that for Winry’s sake for when she came home along the dark road.

“I’m back.”

She headed into the studio under the shutters, hanging her head.

Inside, Henrik was trying to fix the machine, though the odds were stacked against him. He had headed back to his shop to make an attempt at his work with his own machinery, but it seemed he hadn’t been able to do much without the new machine. Garfiel also held a wrench in one hand as he pulled off a broken part. In an attempt to fix the gap, he fit another part into the machine.

The two of them raised their heads, startled out of deep concentration by Winry’s voice.

“Winry!” the worried men exclaimed. 

“Winry, why were you out so late?” Garfiel asked.

Winry silently offered the bag of parts to Garfiel and Henrik when they hurried over to her.

“These are the parts for the machine. Did you find all of them?” Henrik said, eyes going wide as he accepted the bag and pulled the parts out, lining them up one at a time on the workbench. 

“The cylinder!” Henrik exclaimed in surprise when, at the very end, he found the snugly wrapped part.

“Will we be able to fix the machine?” Winry hesitantly asked, hands clasped nervously together as she watched him pull out all the parts.

“Yeah, of course. You’ve saved us!” Henrik said, breaking into a broad, genuine smile now that he was sure he could finish his work. “I’ll call Weis in. If we all work on fixing it, it’ll take two hours tops. Then we can work on the orders, and we’ll have more than enough time to finish by morning! Thank you, Winry!”

Though he was thanking her, Winry couldn’t help but hang her head apologetically. Even if she had gathered the parts to fix the machine, that still didn’t change the fact that she had broken the machine in the first place.

Henrik took an umbrella and left the shop. The studio was enveloped in silence once she and Garfiel were left alone. The sound of the rain hitting the roof was the only noise.

“Come over here. I can’t believe how wet you are.” Garfiel beckoned Winry over while she stood in front of the shutters with a somber look on her face. “You have to dry off or you’ll catch a cold.”

He placed a clean towel onto her head. Winry pulled out her hairband as she was told and dried her hair. Garfiel watched her with his arms crossed, then he eventually asked her in a quiet voice, “So, about that cylinder?”

Winry’s shoulders twitched in response.

“I can’t believe you found it. I wish I could just be delighted that you saved us, but where did you buy it?” he asked, voice hard and slightly angry. Winry clutched the ends of the towel on her head and looked down.

With his arms still folded, Garfiel tapped on his arm with his fingertip as though urging her to reply. However much he wanted her to respond, Winry couldn’t just tell him she had bought the part at an establishment everyone detested.

“I’ve told you not to go near those fishy shops, haven’t I?” Garfiel said, seeing right through her silence. His shoulders heaved with a sigh as he looked down at Winry. 

“It’s risky getting involved with them,” Garfiel warned in a stern voice. The corrupt traders had recently become more aggressive. “Using them acknowledges their existence and makes them stronger. You know that, don’t you?”

Still gripping the towel, Winry apologized in a whisper, “I’m sorry for what I did.”

Garfiel’s face softened and he didn’t pursue the topic any further. He placed a gentle hand on Winry’s shoulder and said, “Now, go take a hot shower, get some food in you, and sleep for tonight.”

With his usual smile on his face, Garfiel opened the door that led to the back.

“Huh? Let me help with repairing the machine too!” Winry said, flustered, as Garfiel pushed her shoulders gently from behind, nudging her out of the studio.

“We’ll figure out the rest. You’ve already done more than enough by bringing us the parts,” he said.

“But!” Winry protested, pleading with her eyes, but Garfiel flatly rejected her.

“It’s fine, so just do what I’m telling you,” he said, urging Winry up the first few stairs. 

“Also, there was someone waiting for you today,” Garfiel said, looking up at her from below. His face clouded, seeming like he was reluctant to tell her.

“Mr. Pollack?” Winry asked. 

She assumed it was Pollack since she had upset him by standing him up for their appointment. Normally, she should have immediately apologized to Garfiel after coming back from Milia’s house, but she had been working so hard at collecting all the parts that she still hadn’t been able to actually talk with him about it.

“I’m sorry. I forgot my appointment with Mr. Pollack and caused you trouble,” Winry apologized. How many people had she apologized to that day? She couldn’t bear how pathetic she was. However, Garfiel shook his head.

“Don’t worry about what happened with Mr. Pollack. I didn’t mean him. It was Darish.”

“What?” Winry stopped short when she heard the unexpected name. 

“He came by the shop this evening saying there was something he wanted to speak directly with you about. Then he waited here until a little before nine.”

“Darish came by,” Winry spoke, hearing the tremble in her voice. Her heart was already sinking. 

“And then, when he went home, he told me to tell you that you don’t need to be in charge of his automail anymore. It seems like he’s looking for another shop.”

In her mentally and physically fatigued state, Garfiel’s words were enough to knock Winry down.

“Warm yourself up and get a good night of rest today. Okay?” Garfiel consoled her as she stood frozen partway up the stairs, then he headed back to the studio.

Once she was left alone, she stayed in that spot for a while, her mind vacant. Eventually, she was able to get her legs moving up the stairs again, but it took her a few minutes. Back in her room, she found her desk and the floor soaking wet, the rain having blown in from the open window.

Winry staggered over and placed her hand on the wet schematics.

One was for Edward. She hadn’t been able to work on it for a while because of how busy she’d been recently. The other was the schematics for Darish that she had reworked several times.

“What …”

… am I even doing, she might have said to herself. Or perhaps she had been about to scold herself with a What kind of idiot are you? Winry had no idea herself which she had just been about to say. She picked up the ink-blotted blueprints.

The only sound that reached her ears was that of the incessant rainstorm.