Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 1.2 - Chapter 17

Why It Failed and How to Fix It 

As Benno carried me to the factory making the shampoo, he looked at me somewhat awkwardly, as if he had something to say but didn’t really want to say it. 

“Hey, Myne. About that hair cleaning liquid...” 

“Yes? What about the (simple all-in-one shampoo)?” 

“It’s long and hard to say. Can’t you call it something else?” 

It was true that the name I thought up would feel long and hard to understand to Benno and others from this world, since they didn’t understand the words I was actually saying. Which meant that nobles might not really take to the product after it entered the market. 

“Aaah, well, I kinda just made it up on the spot, so it’s not an important name or anything. You can change it.” 

“...Really?” Benno blinked in surprise. 

I nodded at him with a smile. It all started because I felt great after finally cleaning my itchy, dry hair and just said the first thing that came to mind. I wasn’t attached to it. “Mhm. Feel free to call it whatever you like.” 

“Y’know, that doesn’t make it very easy for me.” Benno furrowed his brows deeply in thought. It took a lot of marketing sense to give a new product a name. 

Wanting to help as much as I can, I rattled off the advice that came to mind. “We’re talking about a product name here, so I think it should be easy to say and easy to remember. Maybe instead of calling it something like ‘hair cleanser’ we should use words that make people think about looking pretty and feeling good?” 

“Mnnn... Eeeh...” Benno’s expression hardened the more I spoke. It was possible that my advice had just increased the pressure on him. 

“I’ve been calling it, uh, (simple all-in-one shampoo) this whole time too, so I dunno, I think it’s fine.” Lutz shrugged casually as Benno fell so deep into thought that there were heavy creases on his forehead. 

“Myne, do you have any ideas? Any at all?” Benno looked at me for help, having seemingly failed to think of a good name on his own. 

But I had grown so used to calling it simple all-in-one shampoo that I couldn’t really think of another name for it. I could just shorten it, but I didn’t know if the people of this world would really understand what the name meant. “Mmm? I don’t know, how about (rinse shampoo)?” 

“...It always has to have (shampoo), huh?” 

“Not really, that’s just what comes to mind for me, so...” 

Benno murmured to himself for a bit, but because he was both unable to think of a better name himself and used to my original name for it, he settled on shortening it to “rinsham.” Um... Is that really good enough? 

When we reached the central plaza, Benno headed straight for the western road. I blinked in surprise, having expected the oil-squeezing workshop to be along the craftsman’s alley. 

“There are workshops on the west side of town too? I thought they were all in the craftsman’s alley.” 

“It used to be a food-processing shop. You generally find those in the west since they want to be near the market where people move the most products.” 

“Right, meryls are food. I’ve only been using them to make rinsham for so long I almost forgot.” 

When I first made shampoo, I was just obsessed with getting my hair clean and stopping it from itching. It never even crossed my mind that it would end up being turned into a product to sell. At first I was at a loss, since I didn’t have rice, seaweed, or any kind of juice. I dug through my memories to think of everything about shampoo I could remember, and in the process, remembered reading a natural living magazine that described mixing fruit oil with powdered salt and orange peels to make a scrub. My old mom and I had made it together when she got obsessed with natural living. 

Incidentally, that magazine also described firmly mixing egg whites to make face spreads, or using dried plums and sake to make skin lotion, but none of that stuff had anything to do with me and my young, fresh skin. All that concerned me was the ingredients to make shampoo. 

...It sure was hard to get oil that first time. To be honest, I had been so stressed out from my itchy head, and I didn’t think about how difficult the journey to the forest was. So I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had been kind of unfair to Tuuli by making her get the ingredients for me. Thanks to her efforts, I got my head clean, made my hair silky smooth again, and took my first step toward a healthy lifestyle. Thank you, Tuuli! 

The workshop Benno led us to looked like a large warehouse. As one would expect from a food processing plant, there was a mixture of a wide variety of different smells drifting through the air. There were several work tables lined up next to each other where workers were busy working away at different jobs. Along the walls were shelves of tools ready for use. 

“Is the foreman here? Tell him Benno wants to see him,” said Benno to a nearby worker, who replied with an enthusiastic “Understood!” before rushing off. 

Benno set me down and waited for the foreman to arrive. Soon enough, the worker spoke to a somewhat overweight man, who then walked in our direction with his belly shaking. You could tell at a glance that he was the boss of a shop that dealt with edibles. His body made it clear that he loved eating from the bottom of his heart. I had called him “somewhat overweight,” but that was from the perspective of a Japanese person. Considering how scarce food was in the city, he could probably be considered fairly fat. 

“Hello Benno, thank you for coming all this way. I see you’ve brought two kids with you.” 

“They’re the ones who made the rinsham in the first place. Keep that a secret,” said Benno, with a forceful enough glare that the foreman bobbed his head in silent agreement. “So, did you figure the problem out?” 

“I’m afraid not. We’ve tried changing our tools, workers, and all sorts of things, but it feels like we’re just getting further away from making the right product.” 

Benno’s expression darkened with frustration at the negative report and the way he glared at the anxious foreman honestly made me feel like I was getting the same stink eye. 

I pulled on the foreman’s sleeve and spoke to him. “Um, could you show me how you’re making it?” 

“Sure. I’d appreciate you telling me if you notice something. I’m getting reports that the stuff we make here doesn’t make hair that much cleaner.” 

We moved to a corner of the room so the foreman could do a live demonstration. It’d be a waste of materials if he failed, so he crushed just one meryl using weights to squash the fruit all at once. He then held up the cloth and wrung it so the oil would drip into the bowl below. It took way less time than I was used to, since both Tuuli and Lutz had to use a hammer. 

“And that’s how we get the oil. Same so far, right?” The oil-extraction process seemed fine to me. I could hear Lutz muttering that it looked the same to him, and at a glance, I couldn’t see a problem either. 

“We have to use hammers to crush the fruit instead of weights. But I don’t think a difference that minor would impact anything that significantly.” 

“Yeah, kids would have to use a hammer for this. Guess I should try that next,” murmured the foreman. 

But before we did that, I had a request. “Do you mind if I see the oil you just squeezed out?” 

The foreman nodded and handed over the bowl. Inside I saw perfectly clear, green oil with no impurities floating around. It was oil completely different from the thick, white oil we dealt with. 

“...Oh, okay. I understand now.” I figured out the problem as soon as I saw the oil. That was a good thing and I was happy to have the solution, but at the same time, they were failing for a reason that kinda made me sad. So, so sad. 

“What?! What’re we doing wrong?!” The foreman practically pounded for the answer, and I gave it to him with somewhat slumped shoulders. 

“...It’s the cloth you’re using to wring out the oil,” I said. 

Benno immediately glared at the foreman, who opened his eyes wide and desperately shook his hands. “The cloth?! But I bought pretty good ones, just for this new job!” 

“...That’s the problem.” Now, both Benno and the foreman were looking at me with wide eyes. 

I shrugged and placed the oil-filled bowl on the table. “The pieces of cloth that our families have are rough and loose. Threadbare. I think you can tell by our clothes, but we’re poor. We don’t use cloth this finely woven, so when we squeeze out the oil, little bits of the broken fruit and tiny seed-like things get stuck in the oil.” 

The oil that Tuuli and Lutz squeezed out was always thick white, not pure green. The reason was simple. The cloth we used was so much more threadbare than the ones in this workshop, and on top of that, we squeezed the fruit completely dry since we couldn’t afford to waste any of the oil, even though that ended up making the oil less pure. 

“The stuff that makes the oil thick is called (scrub)... um, I mean, it’s important for getting hair clean.” The pure oil made in workshops like this would normally have powdery salt, dried citrus peels, and nuts added to it in order to make a scrub. But in our case, the oil was already a scrub right after being squeezed out. Not to mention that we didn’t have the leeway to add anything to the oil in the first place. We were pushing it just by adding herbs for the smell. 

The foreman’s mouth was hanging open in stunned surprise. He hadn’t expected that answer. Neither had I, really. To think that the more he struggled to get better quality oil, the more distant from his goal he went. I could only imagine the stress he had been feeling. 

On the other hand, Benno’s expression had significantly softened, likely out of relief over having found the source of the problem. He picked up the cloth with the tips of his fingers and shrugged. “Didn’t think the cloth would be the problem here. Not sure if I’ve ever been punished for buying high-quality tools before. I was thinking the problem would have something to do with mixing the herbs.” 

“The herbs are mainly just there for the smell.” 

The foreman let out a heavy sigh, looking both relieved and troubled. “I guess we’ve gotta throw out all the oil we got using these cloths, then.” 

“What? No way. That’d be a huge waste, it’s still usable.” If given the choice, I would have liked to use high-quality oil free of impurities myself. Putting in ingredients to make a proper scrub would result in rinsham a lot better than what I usually made. “You just have to put fruit stuff into this pure oil. With the right selection of ingredients, you’ll have rinsham a lot better than what I made myself.” 

“Yeah? You sure know a lot for a little girl, don’t you?” muttered the foreman, impressed. At the same time, Benno’s eyes gleamed like a predator who had found his prey. 

“Ah...” Oh no. I shouldn’t have said that. I looked at Lutz, the blood draining from my face, and I saw him shaking his head in exasperation. At this rate Benno was going to find me out the same way Lutz found me out. AAAAAAAH! I’m so dumb! Don’t I ever learn?! 

I somehow managed to keep my mouth from trembling while forcing a fake smile on my face. Stay calm, stay calm. He hasn’t found me out yet. “Just be careful about using stuff with rough grains, since that can hurt the scalp,” I said with a smile and then tried to leave the workshop, but Benno gripped my shoulder and held me in place with a ferocious smile of his own. 

“Myne, it sounds like you know a lot more than you’ve been letting on, huh?” 

I did, but I wasn’t about to dig my hole any deeper. It would be impossible to lead a peaceful life here if I drew suspicion to myself like this. I needed to escape Benno’s interrogation through any means possible. Unlike Lutz, Benno didn’t know Myne from the past and thus had no concrete evidence to fuel his suspicions. I could get through this if I tried hard enough. And try hard I would. 

Digging my heels into the ground to defy the force that was Benno, I did my best to smile and bluff my way out of the situation despite the cold sweat running down my back. “Anything more will cost you. I charge an information fee for my services. I don’t talk for free.” 

“How much?” Benno jutted his chin up with a grin and told me to name a price, but no matter how much he paid me, I wasn’t planning on telling him anything. However, negotiations would end the second I said that. It was important that I make Benno choose to withdraw from negotiations himself. 

My head spun as I desperately thought of something to say, my heart pounding in my chest. “...The rinsham’s already going to do well in the market as is. Just how much would you be willing to pay just to earn a little more on top of that, really?” I said, maintaining my cool as we glared at each other behind fake smiles. Benno’s dark-red eyes were gleaming with a ferocious light and I wanted to just give in immediately out of fear, but this was one battle I couldn’t afford to lose. Anything I said about this would be viewed with clear suspicion and draw unwanted attention. 

Benno spoke to the foreman without taking his glaring eyes off mine. “Mind if we borrow your conference room?” 

“N-Not at all, go ahead.” The moment the foreman answered, Benno hefted me up and abducted me into the conference room. 

“Bwuhbwuhbwuh?!” 

“Myne?!” 

“We’re just having a little chat! Nobody follow us!” shouted Benno, making Lutz pause in his tracks with a jerk. The foreman nodded, pale. 

Having seized control of someone else’s conference room, Benno set me down on a chair and then sat on the one opposite to it. He glared at me in silence for a bit, then spoke. “Two small golds.” 

“What?”...I had just misheard him. It slipped past my ears. I thought I heard a pretty absurd price for the information, but it was all just my imagination. 

I ended up stunned, but by pretending I had simply misheard him, I managed to get back on my feet. But the moment I did, Benno repeated himself, more clearly this time. “I’ll pay two small golds. Tell me how to improve the rinsham, what fruit to use, everything you know.” 

He would be willing to pay two small golds just to improve the rinsham? Just how much profit was he expecting to earn off of it? Maybe he was planning on overcharging nobles like he overcharged Freida. 

“...Mr. Benno, how much are you planning to charge for each unit of rinsham?” I questioned, making Benno narrow his eyes a little and snort. 

“That’s got nothing to do with you.” 

“In that case, I’ve already told you how to make the rinsham, so improving it has nothing to do with me either.” I let out a sigh of relief on the inside and, thinking that would be the end of the conversation, put my hands on the table to climb off the seat. 

“Three small golds. Don’t expect me to go higher.” Benno grabbed onto my hands and, looking a little frustrated, raised his price. My heart wavered at that massive sum, but if that was his maximum price, then the negotiations were already over. For the sake of a peaceful life, I had to get Benno off my trail. 

“I decli—” 

“Take the money and save it. The only thing that can fix your devouring is money.” 

I started to say “I decline,” but Benno interrupted me with a glare. He spoke in a low, forceful voice that made it sound like he was on the verge of grinding his teeth. 

“...Mr. Benno, you knew about my devouring?” 

“I considered the possibility, but didn’t know for sure until the geezer told me the other day.” The geezer being the guildmaster. What had he told Benno, I wondered, and what connection did it have with how Benno lowered his guard around him after I sold the hairpins to Freida? 

Benno’s change of tone threw me off enough that I lost my strength in the process of standing up and fell back onto my chair with a plop. That must have looked like me adjusting back into my seat, as Benno leaned further over the table to bring his face closer to mine. He then spoke in a low voice, such that only I could possibly hear him. Despite being faint whispers, I could clearly hear everything he said. 

“His granddaughter has the devouring just like you, but she’s alive thanks to money and the guildmaster’s connection to nobles. You need to sell the information you have, save money, and prepare for the day that’s coming whether you like it or not.” 

“What day...?” 

“The day you lose control of the heat inside of your body.” 

Understanding washed throughout my body. I had felt the devouring heat within me growing over time, bit by bit, but had passed it off as my imagination of variation based on my health. It seemed that Benno and the guildmaster had come to the conclusion that the devouring heat within me was indeed growing over time, and eventually it would become too much for me to control. When I placed social isolation and being dead on two sides of the scale, the answer here became painfully clear. 

...I don’t want to die yet. I had finally gotten to the point where I could make paper. Over the winter I had failed repeatedly, but after a lot of work I created an environment where making books was no longer just a dream. Not to mention that I got more used to life in this world as the seasons passed, which meant less clashing with my family. In the past I was always dead weight, but at last I had found somewhere I could be at least a little useful. Living in this world was finally getting to be fun. 

I didn’t want to die yet, but I had to consider what would happen if I gave Benno the information he wanted and he got creeped out. What would happen if he considered me a creepy, weird little girl? Unlike Lutz, who knew Myne from the past, Benno had no context. He would just consider me a creepy kid who knew way too much about things she shouldn’t. He probably wouldn’t attempt to kill me just for being creepy, and since he didn’t have a history with my family like Lutz, nothing too bad would happen if he informed them that I was being creepy. 

The worst case scenario was just Benno distancing himself from us and canceling his plans to hire us as his apprentices. However, if that happened, I could just accept Freida and the guildmaster’s offer. I wouldn’t be completely out of options if Benno withdrew his support. 

...If money’s what it takes to survive, well, I want to keep living. 

“Okay. I’ll sell it for three small golds,” I said, looking at Benno in the eyes. He gave a small nod and released my hands. Then, after we touched cards, he picked up my bag and took out the supply order set without even asking me first. 

“H-Hey! That’s my stuff!” 

“Stuff my store supplied you.” 

“That’s true, but at least ask me first!” 

“Yeah, sorry,” said Benno without sounding sorry at all. He took the pen and ink and readied them, treating the supply order board like a memo pad. “Alright, let’s hear it. Start with how we can sell the oil we thought wasn’t working.” 

“You just have to put ingredients into it to make it a (scrub). There’s a lot of different things that would work here, but the easiest will likely be salt. Crush the salt until it’s a powder, add it to the oil, and it should work for both cleaning and for deodorizing.” 

“Salt? Really?” Out of everything I had read about in the magazine, mixing fruit oil with powdered salt was the easiest thing to make. Benno’s eyes were wide with surprise, probably not having expected something so familiar to him to be effective here. 

“...You could also dry the peel of a (citrus) fruit, by which I mean, dry the peel of something like an apfelsige and crush it into a powder too. It should smell better and clean more than the oil by itself.” 

“Apfelsige peel, huh? Got it. Anything else?” Benno looked at me while scratching away. 

“Mmm, maybe (nuts)... aaah, I mean, mixing in some nussfrut powder should work too. I’ve never had the opportunity to try any of this myself since my family is too poor.” 

Benno’s dark-red eyes were locked on me, his expression making it clear he was intent on squeezing out as much information as possible from me. “You know about things you couldn’t try yourself? Myne... just who are you?” 

“That’s a secret, and not one you’ll be buying with small golds, either.” 

Benno’s mouth bent into a bitter frown. My heart pounded as he looked at me with the suspicious eyes of someone looking at a person that they just couldn’t understand. I wasn’t strong enough to bear being looked at like that without losing my cool a little. 

With my fake smile still plastered on my face, I decided to roll the dice and risk asking Benno where I stood with him. “Are you going to cut off ties with me because I’m a creepy little girl? I sold you this information prepared for that to happen.” 

Benno’s eyes widened with surprise for a second, then he lowered his eyes and scratched his head before letting out a heavy sigh. He then slowly shook his head multiple times and looked up. When he did, he was wearing his usual confident grin. “Nah, you’re gonna make me a lot of money. My only concern here is making sure nobody else steals you away. Don’t forget, I’m a merchant,” he said, standing up and ruffling my hair. By treating me normally, he was signaling that he had decided to maintain the status quo and not dig any deeper. 

I let out a relieved sigh, ducked to avoid Benno’s hand since he wouldn’t stop rustling my hair, and stuck my tongue out at him.