Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 1.2 - Chapter 9

Completed Paper 

“Aaaah, it’s all crumbly and broken...” 

“Same for these.” 

The prototype paper made from trombes was solid, but the pieces of paper made from other types of wood were varying degrees of bad. Whether it was because the fibers themselves weren’t sticky enough or because the fibers were shorter than we thought, they didn’t wrap around each other very well and most of them ended up falling apart in the drying process. 

“Maybe they would have been fine if we put more tororo into it? I wonder.” 

“Just gotta keep experimenting.” 

For our next batch, we put in a lot of tororo and went for thicker paper so it wouldn’t break apart so easily. 

“How about this?” 

“Gotta wait for it to dry, but here’s hoping.” 

The thick paper with extra tororo was so hard that it broke apart when we tried peeling it off the board. We could only watch, stunned, as the paper crumbled before our eyes. 

“That’s no good.” 

“Uh huh. It broke, rather than ripped, so it couldn’t really be called paper in the first place.” 

Maybe the ratio of fibers and tororo and water was off, or maybe the wood itself wasn’t good for making paper. It was hard to tell. I had read in a book that you could make something like paper out of basically any plant, but it was impossible to say how much my Earth knowledge applied here. Our failures here just made me want to shout “BUT WHYYY!” 

“It’s really too bad we can’t just grow trombes ourselves.” 

“Don’t even think about it!” 

“Maybe it would work if we had trombe seeds?” I thought it wouldn’t be hard to grow trombes if we could find the kind of red fruit I had picked up, but Lutz just shook his head. 

“Don’t look for those! You want to destroy the forest?!” 

“If we have those seeds, we can just cut them down once they start to grow like before.” Trombes were problematic since we didn’t know when or where they would appear, but if we could find a seed and then have a bunch of people standing at the ready, they wouldn’t be too hard to handle. 

However, Lutz just rubbed his temples and shut me down harder. “Nobody knows when or where trombes grow! They’re too dangerous!” 

“Oh, okay.” I couldn’t deny the possibility that a trombe had just coincidentally started growing near where I had thrown the fruit. Lutz was so mad that I gave up on the mysterious multiplying tree. 

“...Hurry up and figure out how things work here.” 

“I’m trying my best, you know.” Myne barely had any meaningful memories due to being stuck at home since birth, whereas I had plenty of solid memories from my Urano Motosu days. I couldn’t help but rely on them more than Myne’s. But lately, after I told him that I had memories of a past life as well, Lutz had started to correct me when he noticed me not understanding something about this world. 

“Basically, trombes are dangerous. They suck the energy out of the ground around them when they sprout, and for a while, nothing will grow where they’ve been. Growing them ourselves won’t ever work.” 

“Bwuh?! They’re that dangerous? It didn’t look like that happened with the one we saw.” 

“That’s why I said it was weird. Weren’t you listening?” 

“I just didn’t know what trombes were. You need to know what’s normal to know what’s weird.” 

Trombes made the best paper, but they apparently only sprouted in the autumn and were extremely dangerous, so cultivation wasn’t possible. Wishing for the impossible was pointless. Only thinking about making do with what you did have would bear fruit, so our trial and error experimentation would need to continue. 

In order to make mass production of paper possible from trees readily available in the forest, we experimented with ratios, with hitting the fibers harder, with using shram bugs to make tororo instead of edile fruit, and so on, improving the paper bit by bit. 

“Looks like volrin wood’s the best for this.” 

“Mhm. I think paper made from volrin wood with a bit of extra tororo made from shram bugs is good enough to be sold as a product.” 

After experimenting with the three types of soft wood the lumberyard told us about, we learned that volrin trees produced wood which made the thinnest, best paper. Volrin wood had fibers somewhat harder than the other two soft woods, making it harder to beat, but the more we hit it the stickier the fibers got. Once we realized that, we could make relatively good paper by hitting the fibers a lot. 

We then experimented with ratios of materials when making the pulpy water and found what should be the best. I wrote the recipe on my slate and slapped my hands together, knocking off the dust. 

“I think we’re good.” 

“Yep. Shouldn’t be any problems mass producing this paper.” Lutz’s expression was bright with joy over having found a good recipe for paper-making. He stroked the completed paper several times. 

“But we’ll have to wait until spring for that. It’s hard to get wood right now and the bark will harden as winter comes, not to mention the river getting colder.” 

We would be able to make much better paper by waiting for spring to come, whereupon the forest would be filled with soft wood and branches. Plus, to be honest, entering the river to dunk the bark was already getting painful. For Lutz’s sake, I wanted to put it off until the weather warmed up. 

“Okay, let’s go ahead and bring the paper we’ve finished to Benno. Over the winter I’ll be going to the gate to help Otto.” 

“Yeah. Let’s finish this up before we gotta prepare for winter.” 

“Uh huh. I’ll go to the gate tomorrow and ask Otto how to write a thank you letter. Because, I mean, we’ve finally made paper; I want to write a letter on it.” 

Lutz nodded at my suggestion while stacking up the heap of today’s failures. “I’ll leave that to you. So, you want to bring these failures home with you, right?” 

“Uh huh. We’re bringing the good paper to Benno, but I’m going to make a book out of the messed up paper that we ripped by accident and stuff.” 

I had already confirmed with Mark that it wouldn’t be a problem for us to keep our large number of failures. With them, I would be able to start making my first real book.

The next day, I went to the gate for the first time in a long time. As the winter accounting season involved a lot of budget related paperwork, Otto greeted me with a shining smile on his face. 

“Heya, Myne. I’ve been waiting for you.” Otto’s smile broadened as he patted the stack of paperwork next to him and gestured me over. I had apparently arrived while he was in the middle of calculating and writing down the total price of purchasing a certain number of a particular type of goods, as written down on wooden cards. 

As I helped him work through the paperwork, I asked him about how to write a thank you letter. “Mr. Otto, I would like you to teach me how to write a letter of thanks.” 

“A letter of thanks? What, like nobles send each other?” 

I almost said that it didn’t have to be the kind nobles use, but stopped. It was possible that in this world, only nobles ever sent letters of thanks. “Um, there are letters of introduction, so I thought there might be letters of thanks to express gratitude for those introductions... Was I wrong?” 

“I know that nobles send letters of thanks to each other, but I don’t know any merchants who will bother with them. It’d be a waste to use paper on something that’s not a contract.” 

That made sense. Paper was very expensive and not something you could use frivolously. “How should I express my thanks, then?” 

“For merchants, it’s normal for you to take something you’re selling that the person wants and give it to them for free. Whether a servant delivers the gift or the merchant himself, the idea is you give them a concrete gift, not a letter.” 

I had assumed that a culture with letters of introduction would have letters of thanks too and planned to write one on the very paper I had made with Benno’s help, but in reality, it was normal to give gifts as thanks and not letters. 

“I didn’t expect that. Um, Mr. Otto. What do you think I should give Mr. Benno? I can’t think of anything we have that he would be happy to have.” I couldn’t imagine a single one of my possessions being something that Benno would want. He felt like the kind of person who owned everything. 

Otto shrugged and gave me some advice. “Won’t the paper you two made be enough? That’s the only product you two have, and if it’s worth something, then Benno will be getting a return on his investment. Seems fine to me. If you really want to throw in something extra, how about... information on some kind of new product to sell, or something like that?” 

“Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Otto.” 

Hm... My options are raising the value of paper, or giving him information on a new product... I think I can make this work. 

The next day, I suggested to Lutz that we make special paper to represent our gratitude. “Otto told me that merchants don’t send letters of thanks, they give gifts in the form of products the person will want. So I think we should use trombe wood to make some special paper for him. We still have some white trombe bark, right?” 

“Yeah. Great paper would be a good gift for him... Wait, what’ve you got there?” Lutz looked down at the red plants in my hand. 

“I found these growing by the well yesterday and squashed them until they were flat and dry like pressed flowers.” 

“Whaddaya want allegras for?” 

“Naturally, I’m going to use them to make the paper special.” 

Allegras was the name of a plant that looked like a red clover. My idea was to put the allegrases in the drying paper, just like one would put flowers in the pulpy water while making washi. I wanted to make a message card with allegrases lined up along the sides, first, and then I wanted to make another sheet of paper with the leaves removed from the stems arranged into heart shapes in the middle like you would see in chiyogami, a kind of decorative Japanese paper. 

Once we finished the message card, Lutz and I wrote “We finished this paper thanks to your support, Mr. Benno. Thank you very much.” on it and signed our names. 

“This paper looks crazy pretty.” 

“The allegrases mixed in make it look like a picture’s drawn on the paper, doesn’t it? So pretty.” 

“Yeah. What about this piece of paper?” 

“I’m going to make (origami) out of it.” 

“Gonna make what?” After cutting the chiyogami-esque paper into a square with a knife, I folded it into a wishing crane. I remembered from my Urano days that people in foreign countries liked shurikens the most, but the people of this world probably wouldn’t recognize them, and something elaborate like a massive flower would be a waste of paper. A crane, on the other hand, looked elegant and could easily be made from a single sheet of paper. I made the back part spread out like a peacock’s tail, so it looked even better than a normal crane. 

“So? What do you think? Looks pretty good if you ask me.” 

“...H-Holy crap. How’d you turn paper into this? I have no idea what you just did.” Lutz prodded the crane timidly with his fingers. His reverence made me realize something. Wait... How much is this origami crane worth, from a materials perspective? 

“Actually, Lutz, isn’t a paper decoration like, super extravagant here?” 

“Aaah, w-well, it’s a gift for Benno. It’ll be fine.” 

I had thought that origami would be a nice combination of cheap to make and unusual, but thinking about the price of paper, I had probably just done something very wasteful. Aaah... Maybe I should tell Benno that he can spread the paper out and still use it, just with some creases? 

“Otto also mentioned that we could give him information on something that would make a good new product.” 

“That’s your thing, Myne.” Lutz casually threw the ball in my court. I had a few products in mind, but I wanted to hear Lutz’s thoughts on whether they would sell or not. 

“...Benno seemed interested in my hair stick when we first met him, so I was thinking maybe I could tell him more about it, but isn’t it just a wooden stick?” I pointed at my head and Lutz gave a big nod. 

“Yeah. It’s just a stick.” 

“Do you think it’ll sell?” 

“...They’re easy to make at home, so I dunno if anyone would bother buying one.” I had expected that, unusual or not, it wouldn’t sell, and Lutz had the same thought. 

“If you want to sell your hair stick, what about that other kind? The thing you made Tuuli for her baptism.” 

“Lutz, you’re a genius! Everyone really loved that hair ornament! I might want to make them for this year’s winter handiwork.” With that, I had gifts to give to Benno. All we had left was setting up a meeting when he had the time. 

“Hey, Lutz. Could you ask Mark for Benno’s schedule when you go to give back the key?” 

“Yeah, sure.”

On the day Mark mentioned to us, Lutz and I went to his store with the paper we had made together. As complete products we had the trombe paper and the volrin paper, with three versions of each with varying degrees of thickness, which made for a total of six kinds of paper. 

On top of that we had the allegras message card and the origami crane. And finally, I had Tuuli’s hairpin in my tote bag to use as the starting point for potential business plans. 

“Good morning, Mr. Benno. We finished the paper prototypes and brought them for you to see. They ended up really good thanks to your investment and help.” 

“I heard that from Otto, but really, you already finished?” 

“Yes. Have a look.” I took the paper out of my tote bag and placed it on Benno’s desk. After looking at the stack with wide eyes for a second, he reached out and picked up a sheet. 

“Let’s see here.” After holding it up to the light and getting a feel for the texture, he took out ink. He then cut off a strip near the top and ran his pen across it. “...You can write on it. It’s easier to write on than parchment since it’s so smooth, too. The ink runs a little, but that’s not a critical problem... Hm.” 

“Do we pass? Will you take on Lutz as your apprentice?” 

Benno, stroking his chin, grinned and reached for the next sheet of paper. “Yeah, that was the deal. How much of this stuff can you make?” 

“Mmm, these are just small prototypes, so we’ll need bigger tools if we’re going to shift into mass production. I think this paper is just a little too tiny to be useful. How big is the paper you use the most?” The letters of introduction I saw at the gate varied so much in size that I had no frame of reference for making my own paper. The suketa used to make normal washi were so massive that they would take more strength than I or Lutz had, which would defeat the purpose. Lutz and I needed to make the paper ourselves, and I wanted to, if possible, mass produce paper of the most commonly used size. 

“The paper I use for letters of introduction and contracts are generally this size. There’s no set standard.” Benno took a piece of parchment from his shelf that was somewhere between an A4 and B4 size sheet of paper. Making one would require a suketa of significant size. 

“Okay, then we’ll need a new screen and frame about that size. But we won’t start actually making the paper until spring. It’s getting too cold for us to gather the wood we need and such.” 

“Just get your tools ready before spring. Ask Mark for help. This paper will make a lot of money, no doubt about it.” Benno accepted our paper and recognized its value. Lutz and I looked at each other and smiled, happy that our labor had finally borne fruit. 

“This paper’s especially high quality,” said Benno, touching the paper made from trombe wood. He could tell at a glance that it was higher quality. It was both whiter and smoother. 

“That paper was made from trombe wood.” 

“Did you say trombe?!” Benno’s jerked his head up, looking stunned. 

Lutz and I exchanged glances. Indeed, trombes were apparently a very well known plant famous for being dangerous. I took a step back and left the explanation to Lutz so I wouldn’t say anything weird. Picking up on my intention, Lutz stepped forward and spoke. 

“Myne found a growing trombe when we were gathering in the forest by chance and we got this wood from chopping it down with the others. It was really hard to get and who knows where trombes will pop up, so I don’t think we’ll be able to make it very often.” 

“Yeah, figures. But trombe wood, huh...?” It was plain as day that Benno was desperately thinking of a way to mass produce trombe paper. He had the expression of a calculating merchant, but trombes were rare enough that he probably didn’t have much hope of coming up with something. 

“In all our experiments, trombe wood ended up being the best quality paper, but without materials to make it, we can’t sell it. This other paper is made out of volrin wood. That’s much easier to get, so this paper is more suitable for being sold as a product.” 

“Makes sense. Volrin wood’s definitely good for mass production.” Benno nodded to himself. It looked like he had come to a conclusion on all this paper business, so I took out my gifts. 

“And, here... This is a letter of thanks we made for you. Mr. Otto told us that you would appreciate us increasing the value of paper, so we made a special kind of decorative paper.” 

“A letter of thanks, huh? I’ve sent one to an archnoble before, but I’ve never gotten one myself. Feels like I just went way up in society.” Benno, grinning and looking pleased, opened up the message card. He then froze, staring at it with slightly widened eyes. 

“Um, we put allegrases into the paper while making it. How do you like it?” 

“Wha? Allegras is a kind of common weed, isn’t it? But... they look beautiful like this, huh. I’m thinking this paper would be good for noble wives and daughters.” The fact Benno immediately thought of market demographic upon seeing a new product just showed how reliable of a merchant he was. That he expected the paper to interest nobles was tacit confirmation that we had indeed raised the value of the paper. 

“Umm, and this is like, a gift for investing in us and helping us come this far. It’s a decoration made from paper. This one is a (wishing crane).” 

“Ohoh! This is paper?” I flattened the crane on his desk and Benno picked it up, eyes sparkling. He looked at it from various angles, but really, it was just a decoration and nothing more. 

“I realized I had done something very wasteful after making it. It’s just a decoration. But if you spread it out, you can use it as paper again. Creased paper, but still.” 

“What’s wrong with decoration? It’ll be a good marketing prop for the paper we’re selling here.” As he put the crane on one of his own shelves, Benno murmured that he would put them on top of the paper shelves, should the operation go that far. It seemed that his shelf would be the crane’s home for some time. To be honest, I hadn’t expected him to like the crane that much. I was truly, truly glad that I had made it for him as a gift. 

“I’ll be honest. I didn’t think that you could make paper out of wood. The quality’s a lot better than anything I expected, too. This will make for a fine product. Good work. I’m looking forward to mass production starting in spring.” Benno’s high praise made Lutz and I so happy that we clasped hands and jumped for joy. I thought back to how hard it had been to make all this happen and actually teared up a little. 

“We did it, Myne.” 

“It’s all because you worked so hard, Lutz.” 

Benno watched us celebrate with a wry smile and stacked the paper back onto his desk. “I’ll buy all this paper. You’ll be paid on your way out, just talk to Mark.” 

“Really?!” Speaking of which, he had mentioned that we would be paid what’s left after the fee for materials and handling. 

...Wow! It’s my first pocket change! I started to think about how it might be a good idea to use our remaining white bark to make paper to sell, when suddenly it hit me. I had brought Tuuli’s hairpin to ask Benno about whether or not it would be a worthwhile product. 

“...Also, there’s something I want to discuss with you. Do you think this would sell?” I took the hairpin out and placed it on Benno’s desk. It was a short pin with a bouquet of small blue and yellow flowers attached to it. For some reason, Benno jerked after seeing it and tensed up a little. 

“Girl, what is this?” 

“A hairpin. It bundles up your hair and looks pretty, too. Like this.” I took Tuuli’s hairpin and stuck it in next to my hair stick. “I made this for my older sister’s baptism, so I can’t sell this one in particular, but I think I might want to make this kind of ornament for my winter handiwork. Do you think they’ll sell?” 

Benno, glaring at the hairpin with sharp eyes, spoke in a low voice. “...They will.” 

“Okay, I’ll make them then. Which means, well... can I ask you to also fund me making these, so I can sell them to you?” 

Benno let out a sigh and looked at me. I was probably just imagining that he looked really tired. “What in the world do you need?” 

“String. It doesn’t have to be high-quality string, but I would like string of as many different colors as possible.” Making all the hairpins the same color would be boring, and I was sure everyone would want a hairpin that matched their hair color and such. The more designs and colors the better. 

“Just string? What else?” 

“I would like a little wood, but since I’m already gathering wood for firewood, that’s not a problem.” 

“You’re making these on your own, girl?” Benno gave me a hard glare. Whiiich reminded me that our operation here revolved around me thinking and Lutz making. It would probably be smart to have Lutz help in some way. 

“...The plan is for me to make the ornament part and Lutz to make the wood pin part. We’ll be working together, of course. Right, Lutz?” 

“Yeah. I’ll make the wood parts.” Lutz squeezed my hand and hurriedly nodded. 

Benno gave me a firm look that implied he wanted to say something, but I kept my cool with a fake smile. “Alright, sure. Now that we have that settled, do you two have the time and strength to go somewhere right now?” 

“Uh huh.” 

“Perfect. We’re going to the Merchants’ Guild.” 

“The Merchants’ Guild?!” ...Oh no, another new phrase. What kind of place is the Guild gonna be?