Spring Log III Page 9

  “Hey, can you cut the act, at least?”

  The hint of sadness vanished from Holo’s expression like a bubble suddenly bursting.

  In its stead, her eyes gazed at him ever so coolly.

  “Hmph. And what is it you will be up to whilst I am driven away into the mountains?”

  “At the very least, it won’t be napping on the bed as I take a sip of ale.”

  Holo knew very well that was a dig at her, and she glared up at him with all her might.

  “Or do you want to do my work? It has to get done fairly quickly, so I wouldn’t mind if you did it well.”

  “Rgh…Y-your work?”

  Work in the bathhouse was divided between what needed to be done every day in order to maintain the house and seasonal work. The latter especially involved lots of troublesome chores, such as gathering and processing the harvest in order to preserve it. Holo looked as though she was trying to remember what sort of work it was, so Lawrence reminded her.

  “Drying the sulfur powder in the sun for the guests’ gifts.”

  “Oh.”

  There was yellowish sulfur powder dissolved in the water that came up in the springs. It was apparently different from regular sulfur and was said to be effective against joint pain and swelling and cuts. Guests who believed the folklore liked to dissolve it in hot water and drink the concoction. Lawrence tried it once in the past and it purged his bowels so he could not outright recommend it, but it was a merchant’s duty to meet his customer’s demands.

  However, the sulfur accumulated at the source of the spring had to be placed in an unglazed pot once to extract the water and then dried out in the sun. Most of the guests bought the stuff in bulk, so preparing for that was also quite a bother. Having said that, burning a big fire and drying the powder that way would be a loss of profits for them, so they did it all in the summer when the weather was mostly sunny. And preparations for that, too, were difficult to deal with.

  The damp sulfur powder after being separated from the water was heavy, and it was arduous work scraping the hardened mass out of the pot. Once it was all on a scrap of linen, they had to use a stick to break it into pieces and spread it out, then when it was dry, they had to gather it all up and repeat the process over and over.

  There was no doubt that Holo would whine after the third run-through.

  Holo weighed her gains and losses in her mind’s eye as Lawrence stared at her, then suddenly broke into a smile and spoke.

  “…Well, I suppose I am a member of the bathhouse. I must work hard to become a friend of the village.”

  It seemed that she had come to the conclusion that she would rather walk around the forest.

  Lawrence glared coldly, and Holo glared right back, challenging him to respond.

  He shrugged and sighed.

  “I’ll tell Miss Hanna to prepare something good for you, so I’m counting on you.”

  She then pinched the back of his hand.

  “You fool. You believe I can always be won over with food?”

  “So you don’t want any?”

  “I said no such thing.”

  Holo exhaled through her nose, and Lawrence could do nothing but smile bitterly.

  There had been many times in the past that Lawrence strapped luggage to wolf-Holo’s back, but doing so to her human form was unusual. He placed a knapsack filled with writing utensils and lunch on her then tied the strings tightly so that it would not bother her on the mountain roads.

  Then, since she would be going along with other villagers, they would have to hide her ears and tail. Her ears could be hidden by a hood, but her tail was the main issue.

  As the saying goes, the best place to hide a tree was in the forest, so they chose to use a fluffy fur sash. Though it was summer, it was still rather chilly in the spots of the forest the sun did not reach, so it was perfect.

  All that was left for him to do was trust in Holo’s actions and her eloquence if she aroused any suspicion.

  “I’m counting on you.”

  “Hmm.”

  Holo, all covered in clothes for the outside, did not seem upset but actually rather excited.

  When she was going to leave, she stood on her toes and presented her face to him, so with a sigh, Lawrence gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  “Eh-heh. Be a good boy, now.”

  Lawrence smirked—Who was the lonely, clingy one?—and Holo flashed her fangs gleefully as she headed off down the hill from the bathhouse. Before long, she met up with the village hunters, and Aram, dressed as a monk, bowed his head deeply and they were off. In the end, Holo gave him a big wave, and they vanished from view.

  Unlike when they sent Myuri on her first errand, an absent, oddly sentimental smile appeared on Lawrence’s face.

  “Excuse me, Sir Lawrence?”

  There was a voice.

  It was the girl who worked in the bathhouse, Selim, who had stood slightly behind him also to see Holo off.

  “Perhaps I should have gone instead…”

  Selim, whose shoulder-length hair was of a faded color and had a truly divine white coat when she returned to her wolf form, looked apologetic, but that meant she had grown used to her position.

  Since Holo had often teased him for fancying the most pitiful types of girls, Lawrence had to be careful of how he treated Selim.

  “No, she has done almost no work as of late. Without you, Miss Selim, the bathhouse would stop working. You’ve seen her napping before, haven’t you?”

  Selim drew up her shoulders, as though shrinking, perhaps because she recalled the imagery.

  She almost nodded honestly, but she quickly shook her head.

  “N-no, I enjoy working, and Lady Holo will gladly lend me a hand when it counts.”

  “That’s what I mean. She’s thinks it’s fine as long as the boat doesn’t sink. She lacks the spirit to row faster.”

  It was almost as though she was saying that Lawrence, who needed it, was the strange one.

  Selim gave Lawrence a troubled smile as he groaned, then spoke slowly.

  “Or maybe it is the secret to living a long life.”

  Selim was a good person, as she smiled, trying to save both of their faces.

  “That might be right. The scales will fall over if you put too much lead on one side.”

  “Indeed.”

  She beamed, and he smiled in return. Had Holo been there she would have glared, but Lawrence wished she would learn a little from the honest Selim, who never used her smile as a weapon.

  “Oh, Sir Lawrence, I have a report to make.”

  As they walked back to the bathhouse after watching Holo off, Selim spoke up.

  “I was consolidating all our expenditure calculations last night.”

  “Any discrepancies? No, don’t tell me, a deficit?”

  After getting glasses, Selim’s skills in reading and writing improved greatly, and before they knew it, he could give her the same work that he would have trusted to Col.

  Selim was perfectly suited for accounting work in particular, since she did not work frantically but carefully and steadily, one after another.

  “No, it’s the coins.”

  The moment she said that, Lawrence knew exactly what it was.

  “Oh…the change…”

  He spoke with a bit of a sigh, and Selim recoiled apologetically.

  “I tried to make due with every kind of silver possible when it came to paying for our order, but we didn’t have enough change…”

  “It’s not your fault, Miss Selim.”

  Lawrence spoke to calm her down and scratched his head.

  “That came up at the assembly, too. Trade is booming everywhere this year, and there’s a shortage of coin.”

  “So…no allowance for a while, then?”

  Selim shrugged and gazed up at him with rounded eyes, as though trying to make him worry about the coins for payment now.

  “If we deal with larger purchases with money orders, then…What’s lef
t are small expenses and change for the customers, right?”

  The guests’ requests for change were especially important. One of their pleasures during their long stays were parties starring the dancing girls and musicians. The bored, lewd old men would stick thin copper coins onto the attractive dancers’ sweaty bodies as an offering and lived for the smile they would get in return.

  There were also those in Nyohhira who walked around selling their homemade alcohol and sweets, so it was important to have small change on hand to pay for a snack, and those who brought attendants with them needed to provide some pocket money as well.

  No small change meant a great inconvenience for many people.

  “I will try and think of an idea, so if you could please manage something in the meanwhile.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Selim was a meek girl so she did not look at all upset with the situation, but she would have to bear the brunt of the guests’ criticism when it came to change. Lawrence felt a bit bad about it.

  He watched her as she briefly bowed her head and returned to work, then he sighed.

  “An idea…An idea, huh?”

  Lawrence put his hands on his hips and looked to the sky.

  His inn was deeper into the mountains from Nyohhira, which already stood quite far in. The closest proper town was several days’ travel away, either by river or by road. This coin problem was giving the money changers in even the biggest cities trouble, so it was not something that a bathhouse master so far out in the wilderness could do anything about.

  He could hear the melodies of an instrument and the guests’ lively clamor from the bath on the other side of the building.

  It was Lawrence the bathhouse master’s job to keep this laughter and activity alive.

  This was the home he and Holo had dreamed of, so giving up was not an option.

  “But dreaming in this world is a pain on its own, isn’t it?”

  Lawrence smirked and grumbled to himself, then returned to work.

  The village assembly met once a month during the busy seasons of summer and winter and twice during the down seasons. Additionally, they could also meet at their own discretion if a problem arose.

  While these meetings often became drinking parties very quickly for the bathhouse masters, they had been talking rather seriously these past several times they gathered.

  “Okay, well, about the road to Saint Selim’s Village, things are going smoothly.”

  Since his wife, Holo, was a part of it, Lawrence reported on the surveying of the road. None of the other masters expressed any particular objections to his idea of building a road where a girl like Holo could easily walk.

  And in the end, it seemed they had settled on the name of Saint Selim’s Village for Aram’s post town. There was nothing they could do about it since, when they acted out the miracle of a saint whose body became silver as she slept in the ground, Selim ended up using her own name before the archbishop.

  But no one would think that she and the Selim who worked at Lawrence’s bathhouse were one and the same.

  “I hope you don’t mind if we leave the allotment of expenses for building the road, the sale of cleared lumber, and construction costs of the huts for later.”

  “No objection,” came the chorus from the other bathhouse masters. Though it was not as bad as winter, to talk about money during the summer when there were many people coming and going would only lead to confusion. During the busy season, none of the bathhouses were entirely certain how much money they were making.

  “And now, next on the agenda…”

  The chair hesitated.

  “…the grave shortage of change that has befallen us.”

  “What did the money changers in Svernel say?”

  Someone cried out in excitement.

  Svernel was a town considered to be the key of trade in these northlands, one that Nyohhira relied on for the delivery of their goods. Whenever they had a surplus or deficit of coins, they would contact Svernel’s money changers first.

  “They might ask us to give them coins instead of giving any to us.”

  “Even though we gave them so much in the spring?”

  Once the busy winter season was finished in the village of Nyohhira, it was customary for them to bring the large amounts of coin paid to the bathhouses to the money changers in Svernel. Since all the work left undone over the winter began at once in the spring, the value of coin went up, which gave them a nice profit from bringing the coins to town.

  “What about the Debau Company?”

  That question was directed to Lawrence. The Debau Company, which held great influence over the economy of the entire northlands and at the same time minted the most reliable coin, was deeply connected to him since his days as a traveling merchant.

  “I sent them a letter, but they said it would frankly be difficult to mint new coins since all the mines are plagued with snowmelt during the summer.”

  Even with the tools to create money, they could not make any new coins without the source material.

  Though the Debau Company had their own mines, it was likely their production was not enough.

  “Well, I’m sure every place with the right tools is going frantic to secure their source metal. Hammering out new coin now would make them rich.”

  “Oohh, I haven’t seen a shiny silver coin in a long time!”

  “The merchants who come and go have all been issuing money orders lately and complaining that it doesn’t make them want to do any trade.”

  Money orders were a kind of document with a price written on it. While on one hand, it was convenient that one did not have to carry every single heavy coin on oneself, it was still nothing more than a piece of paper, no matter how large the amount was. Lawrence understood how it felt as if there was no inherent value in it.

  “If only we could give the dancing girls money orders for offerings!”

  Everyone laughed at the joke.

  “Even if we tell them that the piece of paper is a stand-in for coins, the girls probably won’t smile…”

  No matter the condition the coins were in, everyone acknowledged their value because of how they were shaped.

  “I guess then all we can do is somehow make the dancers, musicians, merchants, and peddlers spend the coin they’ve earned and collect it for ourselves.”

  They were sharp as well, so they knew the most profitable places to take the money they gathered.

  Unfortunately, Nyohhira was no such candidate, so their coins would only end up leaving the town.

  “Or maybe we should sing and dance for them.”

  That joke produced even more laughter.

  But the way they laughed was almost out of desperation, showing how defeated they were in the face of a coin shortage.

  “I guess we have no choice but to bear through this.”

  The chair spoke tiredly, and all the bathhouse owners sighed.

  It was when a heavy silence lay over them.

  “While we might not be able to sing or dance…”

  One master spoke. It was the one from the bathhouse that served the most delicious food in Nyohhira.

  “We had the perfect event to scrape together some change, didn’t we? Isn’t that enough?”

  Did we? came the murmured voices in the hall.

  As Lawrence sat puzzled, that bathhouse master looked straight at him.

  “It’s the one you spoke about before, Mr. Lawrence.”

  “Huh?”

  Everyone’s gazes suddenly gathered on him.

  “That fake funeral of yours.”

  The blood rushed to Lawrence’s head not because he was embarrassed.

  It was because he was happy.

  “Ah, putting the living in coffins…you mean?”

  “Oh yeah, I remember that idea. That was an interesting one. What happened to it?”

  People had trouble saying what was important to even their loved ones if they were not on their deathbed. So Lawrence had t
he idea of an event where they held funerals for the living, in order to tell others the embarrassing things they would not typically say.

  Since the guests gathered in Nyohhira during the summer and winter, Lawrence had the idea of calling in guests during their inactive seasons of spring and autumn.

  They tried it once and it cost no money and was generally received well, but the problem was the conservative and slow-moving bathhouse masters. Preparations and that sort of thing were troublesome for them and none of them wanted to take responsibility, so it had been left at that.

  Lawrence wondered for a while if he could take on all the responsibility himself, but he was the newest member of the village, so it was possible he would become a nuisance if he stood out too much.

  And he had forgotten about it before he realized it, and he now felt oddly revived.

  “We can sell candles as votives for funerals, and if we pass around an offering box, the dancers and musicians and traveling merchants will have to pay a bit of change. It’s crucial that we say just a little bit is fine since it’s for fun. Of course, it’s a great bonus if someone offers a silver coin.”

  Everyone nodded in understanding.

  Then the chair clapped.

  “That certainly kills two birds with one stone. It is clear that if it is this bad during the summer, then the coin situation will grow worse during the winter. And so, while we cannot do it now, I don’t think it a bad idea to start discussing holding it in the autumn. How about that?”

  Though the assembly typically could never reach an agreement on the smallest details, in a small town such as this, some matters were settled in an instant. “Agreed.” Voices accompanied raised hands, and Lawrence witnessed the moment his idea was accepted by the village.

  “Well, we’ll leave it at that. But for now, there’s nothing for us to decide, so let’s concentrate on Saint Selim’s Village first.”

  There was a mountain of things to do.

  As the hall grew noisier, Lawrence directed his gaze toward the bathhouse owner who offered his idea.

  The man noticed him immediately, and as though he understood why, he just shrugged.

  He was a master who never failed to produce imaginative meals for his guests, so it seemed that he had just suggested it because it seemed useful, regardless of Lawrence.