Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 12 - Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

A Tale of Three Cities: The Reason for the Price

One day, my sister and I arrived in City A (provisional name), a place full of time-worn scenery with historical elegance.

Old stone buildings lined the streets. They stood quietly along both sides of the road, as if watching over me and my older sister, travelers and outsiders that we were.

“This town is quite charming, isn’t it?”

One traveler with light jade-green eyes, short white hair, and a black headband.

Her name was Amnesia. My older sister.

I expected my sister to always be on guard, but she must have been feeling a little relaxed once we made it to the city. She was weaving aimlessly down the street, taken in by the scenery.

“It’s dangerous not to watch where you’re going.”

A hand tugged at my sister’s sleeve.

A younger traveler with light jade-green eyes, long white hair, and a black ribbon.

Her name was Avelia. That’s me.

After we’d passed through the gate into the city, there had hardly been any foot traffic until we’d reached the main avenue we were walking along now. The town had a very quiet, pleasant atmosphere.

But that wasn’t to say that there was no one on the roads or that this was a deserted city.

We would be in trouble if we bumped shoulders with any of the residents.

“Big sister, did you know? The average earnings in this city are much higher than they are anywhere else, or so I hear.”

“Oh? Really?”

My big sister narrowed her eyes. She began glancing around, sizing up the few people we could see on the street.

Everyone was wearing seasonal clothing, like dresses, blouses, and shirts, and all of it was exceptionally plain.

In short, the townsfolk were all very plain.

“…Are there really a lot of rich people here?”

That was why my sister was squinting so hard.

But I nodded, full of confidence.

There had been all sorts of information written in the city’s promotional pamphlet about the tourist attractions and the history of the place and even, leaving aside whether this part was true or false, about the one characteristic feature of the city: that its inhabitants had no character.

A VERY HOMEY PLACE! the pamphlet had said. OUR PEOPLE ARE VERY FRIENDLY TO TRAVELERS. ASK THEM ANYTHING YOU WANT IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CITY. OUR RESIDENTS WILL ANSWER ANY QUESTION! the pamphlet had insisted.

Most of what the pamphlet had to say seemed totally suspect.

The whole pamphlet was written in that sort of language.

I read it out loud as I walked along with my sister.

“‘The truly wealthy do not show off the fact that they have money. The people of this city shun flashy things, and most of them desire a simple, quiet lifestyle,’ apparently.”

“Huh…”

“‘This city is known as a place where individuals with lots of money can live peaceful lives, and many have moved here from elsewhere,’ it says.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s pretty much what’s written in the pamphlet.” I was staring intently at the pamphlet as we walked along.

“I see.”

My big sister nodded and yanked sharply on my sleeve.

“It’s dangerous not to watch where you’re going.”

Everything about the town was utterly ordinary, and yet it made me feel vaguely uneasy.

The street stalls that would have been seen lining the main avenue in most cities did not exist here. Instead, vegetables and fruits were arranged for sale in the greengrocer’s, and bread was the same way. When it came to skewered meat and the like, it wasn’t even being sold in the first place. Apparently, it was prohibited to sell because of the strong scent. That was also written in the pamphlet.

The people seemed to be fussy to a fault about the scenery of their city. There were very few signs, shop curtains, or other such things.

Frankly, there were so few markings that it was impossible to discern whether a building was a shop or a private home without getting quite close.

“Which is this one…?”

“Who knows…?”

Actually, it wasn’t always clear even after getting close.

We stood in front of a store for a moment, both our heads cocked in confusion.

There were many stores standing side by side in this city.

The looks of the stores were highly stylized, sometimes to the point that mere travelers like us, as first-time customers, couldn’t really tell what was being sold inside.

After we stood there for a while tilting our heads and asking, “Which could it be?” my sister suggested, “Well, we’ll know if we go in, won’t we?” and ultimately we stepped inside a shop, encouraged by the idea.

However—

“What is this shop selling…?”

“Who knows…?”

We still couldn’t really tell, even after going in.

The shop was modest yet stylish. The scent of aromatherapy oils wafted through the air, and goods were displayed individually on a series of beautifully aligned shelves.

And for some reason, there was a grand piano sitting in the middle of the shop.

“Heh-heh-heh… Welcome. Go ahead and look around as you please. But you mustn’t sample, okay…?”

And the perfectly attired proprietor was playing that piano, live.

When we entered the shop, she turned toward us with a flutter of hair and said, “My little darlings get even tastier when I let them listen to good music…”

We hadn’t asked, but for some reason she explained anyway.

On the beautifully aligned shelves in the overly stylish shop sat apples, bananas, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, and so on. Multicolored fruits and vegetables of all kinds were on display.

To put it plainly, it was a grocery store.

“They’re expensive…”

“So expensive…”

We stood before the shelves for a moment, at a loss for words.

The ridiculous prices were written beneath each item.

Most of the vegetables cost about five times the market rate. But the strange thing was that there were plenty of people buying them, and the store was packed with housewives listening to the tones of the grand piano as they did their shopping.

It seemed that this city was indeed populated by the wealthy.

However, these were absolutely not products that foreigners and travelers such as us could lay our hands on.

So we just left.

“What was with those ridiculous prices?”

“Who knows…? Maybe it includes a performance fee?”

I was already convinced that this city existed within an eccentric, peculiar cultural system.

All the stores we went into after that, every single one of them, had some strange concept. They were so bizarre that in every store we entered, we spun right back around.

As we wandered around town laughing uneasily, I thought about how it would have been nice if they had at least written something in the pamphlet about how strange this city was.

We had many unusual exchanges in the strange shops we visited.

“Everything in our shop is the highest-quality vintage product,” extolled a specialty cheesemonger as he showed us around his shop.

“What on earth is vintage cheese?” my older sister asked.

“Cheese that has gone over to the other side of fermentation,” came the answer, with a proud look.

Honestly, I didn’t understand what that meant.

“So in other words, it’s just rotten…?”

“Stop it, Avelia.”

“I mean, what is that shopkeeper looking so proud about?”

“Avelia…”

In the end, we retreated from the cheese store without buying anything.

After that, we popped over to a butcher shop.

“Take a look at this. It’s very beautiful, isn’t it…? Sparkling like a gemstone…”

The meat, glistening bewitchingly under the light of a lamp in the shop, was apparently the rarest meat from the highest grade of cattle that were raised ever so carefully.

It looked less like meat and more like a singular work of art.

“What incredible meat…!”

My sister’s eyes lit up as she beheld such meat. She gazed longingly at it, just like a young maiden in love.

“By the way, how much does this cost?”

The butcher nodded at me and answered her after a long silence.

“Sigh… It’s priced like a gemstone, too.”

It goes without saying that we moved on from that store immediately. No matter how wonderful the meat looked, the price was not wonderful at all.

“I’m always ready to eat meat, but…,” my big sister said with a sigh, “that price would dampen any appetite.”

The next place we visited was a cosmetics store standing inconspicuously along the road.

“Come take a look! We’ve developed a totally new type of cosmetic treatment!”

Inside the dazzling store—

The woman running the store announced her development to customers as she poured magical energy into a cauldron. There was a poof of smoke, and then a tiny creature crawled out of the cauldron. It was about as tall as my index finger. It had on an adorable little hat, and as it flapped its butterfly-like wings, the creature bowed once to all the customers in the store.

It was a fairy.

Then the fairy flew around the store, giving each of the customers a kiss on the cheek.

“The spell I’ve devised cleanses toxins from the body. How is it? Doesn’t your skin feel rejuvenated?”

As to whether or not the effect was real, that was obvious from looking at the reactions of the customers gazing delightedly into the shop mirrors.

The fairy flew over to me and my big sister and kissed us both. I could tell when I looked at it up close that the fairy the cosmetics peddler had created was not actually a proper living creature but just a type of magical illusion made to look like a fairy.

In other words, the fairy’s kiss was simply theatrical, and the magic spell that was actually removing the toxins was just floating through the air around us.

I don’t know if it was because it was applied by such an elaborate theatrical process, but the price of that cosmetic treatment was high enough to make my brow wrinkle.

Sure enough, my sister and I made an about-face.

I’d wondered the same thing at the grocery store we had visited first.

“Why on earth is every shop putting on such complicated presentations? I imagine their customers would be happier if they reduced the price by the same amount they have to increase it in order to pay for all that unnecessary staging.”

Next, we stopped off at an inn, and I candidly asked the proprietor there about it.

Supposing this inn had been, like most of the other shops in this city, the type of place to deal in contrived theatrics, I would never have said such a thing, but as you can probably deduce from the fact that I gave my honest opinion so plainly and decisively, it was an establishment that had no use for pointless theatrics.

As far as I could see, the interior was quite simple, and the rates were reasonable.

Though it was a little bit more expensive than your average inn in another city, there was no doubt that it was cheaper than most places in this city. You could say it was an inn that was kind on the wallet.

Both the price and the chuckling proprietor on the other side of the counter were very inviting.

“Well, but there’s nothing for it. The people of this city really go crazy for expensive things, you know.”

The proprietor shrugged.

“You do know that the people of this city are all rich, don’t you?” he asked.

So I nodded.

And my sister answered him as she fished the pamphlet out of my pocket, “We read this.”

The innkeeper said, “The thing about the people living in this city, you see, is that since they have a lot of money, they want more expensive things than ordinary people do.”

It was assumed that items that cost more than other goods had something special about them. The very fact that something had an exceptional price seemed to stoke the desire to purchase it in these people, who were all part of an exceptional social class.

“So in order to make special, expensive things, the greengrocer, for example, puts a lot of time and effort into raising fruits and vegetables, and the butcher deals in rare cuts of expensive meat. The cosmetics peddler uses rare ingredients and puts on a special performance. After all, their wares seem more special that way, right?”

“And the consumers are all attracted by this…?”

The innkeeper nodded at me.

“They want expensive things just because they’re expensive.”

He told us that recently, qualities like taking a lot of time to make or being made with special materials were no longer enough to make something sell.

“For instance, that cosmetic treatment that imitates a fairy is a good example. All the cosmetics that shop sells are certainly high-quality, but they weren’t selling at all until the folks there added the staging with the fairy.”

No matter how good the substance of a product was, that didn’t matter if its appearance was so plain that it didn’t stick in anyone’s memory—explained the innkeeper.

“It’s all make-believe, and it’s all absolutely essential. People are always looking for a way to stand out.”

That must have been why, at the cosmetics shop, they had switched to the presentation with the illusory fairy. The flashy look of it made the high price very easy to understand.

By the way, in a situation like this, if we try to reframe it, looking at it from the perspective of the people trying to trick customers into buying cheap goods—

“So then, no matter how poorly made something is, as long as it looks good on the outside, someone will be fooled into buying it, right?”

You could also look at it that way, right?

“And such goods do sell very well.” The innkeeper sighed. “Recently, it seems like such scams have become all too common,” he added.

This city was a place where the average income was very high.

It was ironic that the people here found particular value in products with extravagant appearances, considering that they hated being flashy and wanted to live simple, quiet lives.

“But, and I may be bringing this up too late, is it okay for you to be talking so openly about the internal affairs of this city with travelers?” my big sister asked as she paid the fee for one night’s stay for the two of us.

The innkeeper accepted the money with a practiced gesture and gently placed the room key in my sister’s hand. “Yes, it’s no problem at all.” He smiled.

Then he told us this:

“Cheap things are cheap for a reason, too.”