Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 12 - Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

A Tale of Three Cities: A Story of Something of Value

It happened when I was walking around aimlessly on my own one day in City C (provisional name).

“Hey, Miss Witch! We baked that bread you like again today! How about it?”

The older woman running the bread stall shouted at me, waving her hand.

Oh, who could she be speaking to? I wondered, glancing around at my surroundings. But as far as I could see, there was no one nearby who could be called a witch. In fact, I was the only person on the road.

In which case, she must be referring to me as “Miss Witch.”

“I’m afraid you must have the wrong person.”

Even though I did walk over to the roadside stall, I shook my head and clearly denied being a witch. I had absolutely no ability to use magic.

“Huh? Oh, I sure do…”

The woman at the stall stared intently at my face and hair, and she finally seemed to realize her mistake. According to her, I was dressed exactly like a witch who often came by to purchase her bread.

She said that the witch’s hair was ashen gray.

My hair was pink.

Only the color of our hair, and our apparent ages, were different. Since our faces were so alike, the woman must have mistaken me for that unparalleled lover of bread.

“But you really look just like her… From your face to the way you carry yourself, you’re the spitting image of that witch!”

Confused, the woman peered curiously at my face.

I suppose I would be.

“I’m told that a lot.”

“Oh? Do you know the witch?”

“Well, something like that.”

I looked over the bread lined up at the stall as I nodded. The woman had called out to stop me based on a misunderstanding, so I didn’t think it would cause any problems if I just said, “Nope, wrong person. Good-bye,” and left. But, well, each and every loaf of bread on display did look pretty delicious.

They looked so good, I could easily imagine my mistress ravenously stuffing her face with the bread she purchased here.

“…How much is this?”

Since objects exist for the sake of their owners, I figured it was probably unavoidable that my purse strings would slacken a little bit at this shop.

The proprietor answered, “Ah, that one’s—”

With a nod, she put the loaf in a bag for me. According to her, it was the best seller in her shop, and the cheapest.

“Wow, but you really are just like her…”

And apparently, it was the preferred bread of my mistress.

My, my.

Evidently, we’re like two peas in a pod, even when it came to food.

I have no name by which others can call me.

If I must introduce myself, it is as a broom and as one of Mistress Elaina’s possessions.

Normally, as a traveler, Elaina lives a carefree life, unconcerned with time. But occasionally, she doesn’t have enough time on her hands to deal with something. These are always the sorts of situations when she changes me into my human form.

Of course, this instance was no exception.

“Sorry, Miss Broom, I’ve got to go take care of a job right away. If you don’t mind, would you take this and go shopping for me?”

That happened earlier this morning. Mistress Elaina cast a spell on me to change me into a human. As soon as she was done with the spell, she told me what she wanted.

I crumpled on the spot.

“How cruel…! Just when I finally take human form after so long…! Only to be ordered around…! In the end, I’m nothing but a convenient tool to you…?!”

“Uh…”

Mistress Elaina looked confused. She was still standing there, holding some money.

This is a digression, but thanks to the fact that Mistress Elaina always carries around her broom with her, I always know everything about the circumstances in which I am transformed into my human form. So even if she didn’t go to the trouble of explaining and just tossed the money at me, I would obey. But even so, my mistress explained everything from the beginning.

“The fact is that I was commissioned for a job by the people of this city, see, and it seems like it will be a pretty tough one. So I’m planning to shut myself up in my room for a while. I won’t have time to go out shopping, so could I ask you to buy lunch and dinner for me?”

Mistress Elaina pressed three gold coins into my hand.

Three gold coins for two meals…?

“Isn’t this too much…?”

How much are you going to eat? If I buy enough to use up three gold coins, that will be a considerable quantity of food…

“No, just two meals’ worth will do.”

“Wow, so that must mean you want quality over quantity…?”

My mistress, Elaina, wants me to arrange a glamorous lunch for her.

Is that what this is about?

I understand.

“No, that’s not really what I mean…”

“Well, you have always been someone who preferred quantity over quality, haven’t you, Mistress Elaina?”

“Good grief, you’ve been traveling with me for years, but you don’t know anything.” Mistress Elaina chuckled haughtily. “Well, it’s not wrong to say that I’m happy when I can eat for cheap, but it’s not necessarily true that I always prefer quantity over quality, you know?”

“Is that so?”

“It certainly is. I just choose the things that have the most value to me.” Then Mistress Elaina said, “Now, since you’re in your human form for once, go do whatever shopping you like. That’s why I’m giving you three gold pieces.”

“You’re being very nice today…”

“What are you talking about? I’m always nice.”

“By the way, what sort of things do you desire for your lunch and dinner?”

“Let me see—”

Mistress Elaina nodded to me, then put a finger to her lips and said, “All right, bring me something valuable.”

So basically, those were the events that led up to my shopping expedition.

I procured bread that Mistress Elaina liked and bought an assortment of foods for her dinner as well. It was safe to say that my shopping was pretty much finished.

So, holding my shopping bag in my arms, I walked down the road toward the inn.

I had quite a bit of money left over. I had only purchased the minimum of what Elaina needed. Even though she had told me to shop around as I pleased, there wasn’t really anything I wanted.

Now then, what to do with all this extra money?

“…Oh?”

I was absentmindedly going through the possibilities in my mind, when I spied a cosmetics store along the road.

I could see that there were lots of products from the same brand piled up near the entrance.

According to the sign, they were apparently mysterious products that had been imported from a nearby city where only wealthy people lived. They somehow used fairies to make people’s skin prettier.

Apparently, the fairy cosmetics were hugely popular in that wealthy city, so they were now appearing for sale in great quantities everywhere else as well.

I was sure the cosmeticians of City C (provisional name) were no exception and that they wanted to sell on a grand scale like everyone else.

There were huge quantities of the fairy cosmetic.

“…………”

But they were sitting in a wagon in front of the shop.

There were no customers in the shop. In this city, no one was ordering the fairy cosmetic. It almost seemed like its popularity elsewhere had been fabricated.

It seemed sort of sad.

I looked upon my fellow objects with pity. Someone had gone to the trouble of making so many of them, and yet they couldn’t properly fulfill their role, and they couldn’t get any attention from anybody.

I was sure the product itself was good stuff.

So I bought some and then went back to the inn.

By the way—

I noticed this right after I bought it. The fairy cosmetic, or whatever it was called, was quite expensive, considering it was on wagon sale.

When I got back to the room, Mistress Elaina said this while holding the cosmetics I had bought: “…These cosmetics are priced ridiculously to begin with. Even at half off, they’re more than twice as expensive as normal cosmetics, see? If you extend a hand out of pity, it will get badly burned.”

“Seems that way…” I’d never expected to use up all the money I had been given. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to use all of it, but…”

“Oh, no, don’t worry about it, please.” Mistress Elaina bowed her head and took the bag from me. “Thank you for going shopping. It was a big help.”

“You don’t need to thank me. I just did what comes naturally, as an object.”

“But offering thanks is also natural, as a person.”

After stretching a little bit, Mistress Elaina reached into the bag. Inside it were several loaves of bread I had purchased from the bread stall on the main avenue, as well as sandwiches and croissants I had bought at a different store after that. Just as she had requested, the food was all bread. The bag was stuffed full of Mistress Elaina’s favorite food, the very thing she valued.

“By the way, Mistress Elaina, are you making good progress?”

“As you can see.”

“I don’t really understand what I’m looking at, though.”

“Well, I guess you could say it’s kind of rough going. I’m stumped.” Mistress Elaina chuckled.

On her desk were sitting several jars of the fairy cosmetic, the same cosmetic I had just purchased. All of them were unboxed, but there was no evidence that she had used them.

According to Mistress Elaina, she had been commissioned by a cosmetics shop in this city—the same shop where I had just bought my souvenir—to investigate the composition of the fairy cosmetic.

Now, just what benefit could there be in investigating the composition of an over-the-counter product?

“According to the people at the cosmetics shop, the fairy treatment itself is apparently quite well-made. It seems to brighten up the skin exactly as promised. But it doesn’t sell at all in this city.”

“…Is that because it’s expensive?”

“Apparently, a lot of people here actually find it unpleasant that the cosmetic takes the form of a fairy that flies around. The overwhelming majority of them are of the opinion that it’s gross.”

“A complete rejection of the concept of the product…”

“And I assume there are some people who refuse to use it because it’s just a gimmick.”

Apparently, in places where everyone was wealthy, this kind of special staging added to the sense of luxury and originality of the product and also commanded a higher price. But in this city, the overwhelming majority of people seemed to be of the opinion that the price should be lowered to compensate for the theatrics.

Well, I have to agree with them there.

“The quality of the product itself is highly rated, even here. But the price is very steep, and it has a feature that most people don’t want. So the cosmetics shops decided to study the composition of the product so that they could create a cheaper imitation.”

Fortunately, no one at the original manufacturer seemed to have taken notice of anyone in this city—said Mistress Elaina.

It was sad that no one was importing the expensive product they had worked so hard on, but—

“I guess it’s not necessarily the case that something will seem wonderful and valuable to someone just because it’s expensive and rare and special.”

But at the same time, I supposed it wasn’t necessarily the case that some other product would have no value to anyone just because it could be obtained cheaply and easily.

Mistress Elaina stuffed her cheeks with the cheap bread I had purchased earlier. She chewed and swallowed, then said, “Well, I guess it’s just a matter of putting in the work to make something new when it’s an expensive thing, and putting in the work to distribute it widely when it’s a cheap thing.”

It wasn’t an issue of quantity over quality or quality over quantity. Ultimately, it was probably a question of whether an expensive item aligned with a person’s sense of value.

In other words, the quality of something couldn’t be measured solely by its price.

Mm-hmm.

I staggered across the room, stood in front of the full-length mirror, and took another look at my appearance, which was the same as my mistress’s.

“What about me?” I tilted my head. “Am I a high-value item? Or a low-value item?”

I had never had a price attached to me in the first place, so I had no way of gauging my own value.

Was I a good object or a bad one?

“Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it?”

After biting off another hunk of the cheap bread I had bought, Mistress Elaina said, “You’re my object.”

…………

“Mistress Elaina. That doesn’t really answer the question.”

“Sure it does.” Munch, munch.

“Mistress Elaina…”

“By the way, how much did this sandwich cost?”

“It was cheap: one copper coin.”

“You got it at that shop on the main avenue, right?”

“You can tell?”

“Yes. It’s good, so I remember the taste.” Munch, munch.

“Do you think I’m a good object, Mistress Elaina?”

Munch, munch.

“Mistress Elaina.”

About a month had passed since then.

Right after I arrived in a certain city—

“Miss Witch! You there, Miss Witch!”

The woman working at a cosmetics store that faced the road called out to me.

“We’ve got some great products in here. Won’t you come take a look?”

The woman beckoned me over with these very suspicious words. Having just arrived in the city, I was still holding my broom as I looked over the products lined up at the storefront.

They seemed to be the ones the clerk wanted to recommend.

“You’ve got a good eye, Miss Witch! This cosmetic is made in a nearby city, you see? It makes your skin smooth, and it’s very popular here right now. Would you like one?”

“…………”

Lined up in front of me were rows of a familiar package.

It was the fairy cosmetic.

But it was different from the stuff made in City A (provisional name). This was an imitation product made somewhere else. The theatrics of the fairy giving the user a kiss had been removed, rendering it an entirely ordinary cosmetic.

The price had been reduced accordingly.

“This is really a wonderful product, you know. How about it? You should try it out right now if you wish.”

Chuckling, the woman approached me without hesitation.

Uh-oh, aggressive sales tactics?

I took one step back.

“No thanks.”

No matter how cheap it was, I already knew all I needed to know about that product. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to any kind of sales pitch.

After all—

“I already have some.”

I pulled a jar of the cosmetic out of my bag.

It was exactly the same product as what was on display in the shop.

“Oh, you do have some already, don’t you?”

In the end, the saleswoman wasn’t able to pressure me to buy anything, but she didn’t seem particularly bothered. She smiled as she kept approaching me. “That’s very good, isn’t it?”

It was more like simple chitchat than a sales tactic.

“Sure it is—”

I returned the cosmetic to my bag and held my broom.

In both hands, I held it dear.

“If not, there would be no reason for me to carry it around.”

This belongs to me.

And it’s a good, valuable thing.