You Look Busy
Rosa begged me for time to organize, so I paused the handover and headed to Maria’s workshop.
“Maria, are you swamped right now?”
“Well, the magic tool for making bath salts, shoe cushions, the rice polisher, verifying Pere’s fabric, warm fabric, cool fabric…” She counts them off on her fingers.
“I thought we filed the patent for the rice polisher.”
“No one can make it yet since rice isn’t circulating.”
The shoe cushions are still pre-patent.
“What’s this about verifying three fabrics?”
“Can we make Pere’s fabric repel water even more? For the warm and cool fabrics, slime fluid is scarce, so I’m checking if we can spin effective thread with less fluid.”
“Scarce slime fluid?”
“They don’t split. So we still only have one of each.”
“The maids’ uniforms aren’t progressing, then.”
“No. They keep pressing me to finish, but it’s not working out.”
“Didn’t we give the cool fabric to the Northtrad family?”
“We only handed over the fluid since we can’t raise slimes, but there’s so little we haven’t announced it.”
Northtrad has plenty of requests, so maybe they’re not fixated on the cool fabric.
I should visit the slimes.
“Anything new?”
“You’re already overloaded, Maria, so I’ll ask someone else.”
“No, it’s a change of pace. Other tasks sometimes give hints.”
I mention needing a magic tool to make the thick toothpicks used for cocotte fry and cocotte-coated bake.
“Why not ask Nanally? She’s helping with the bath salt tool.”
“Nanally? Who’s that?”
“Master Zaccaria’s daughter.”
“The master’s daughter?”
Nanally wants to blacksmith, but the master forbids her from making swords or blades.
“Why?”
Apparently, many who want swords refuse items made by a woman.
“Then she should make swords and weapons exclusively for women.”
There’s probably demand for weapons tailored to women from a woman’s perspective.
“Why didn’t I think of that? I want to tell Nanally. Let’s go now.” Maria urged me, and we headed to Master Zaccaria’s workshop with Natalia, Atre, Lucas, and the escort knights.
In the carriage, “Hardt, I told you not to leave us behind.”
“Yeah. Good thing we noticed.”
Atre and Lucas scold me.
They scrambled aboard just as I was about to leave.
“Sorry. I was talking with Maria and didn’t expect we’d end up going to Master Zaccaria’s workshop.”
When I’m in the mansion, they often play with each other or eat sweets freely.
“I’m tired of hearing your apologies.”
“You should treasure us more.”
They were genuinely upset.
“I’ll bow to the head chef and request your snack choices. Forgive me with that?”
“Ice cream-topped pancakes with berry sauce.”
“Three kinds of dorayaki and matcha latte.”
The answers come without hesitation.
“Were you faking anger because you figured I’d offer snacks?”
““No way.””
“Really?”
I gave them a suspicious look.
Don’t turn away like that.
“Fine, it’s my fault. I’ll pass on the requests. Don’t get mad if it’s not today, okay?”
“Got it.”
“Can’t be helped.”
We’ve arrived at Master Zaccaria’s workshop.
Maria callsed out, “Nanally, you here?”
“Maria, you always show up unannounced. What if I’m out?”
“You’ve never been absent before. Today, Young Master Reinhardt has a request—will you hear him out?”
“Young Master Reinhardt? The lord’s son?”
He’s right in front of you…
What do you think about this chapter?
