Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 1.3 - Chapter SS4

Mark — The Master and I 

My name is Mark and I serve the master at the Gilberta Company. If my memory does not fail me, I just recently turned thirty-seven. As the years go on, one’s exact age becomes increasingly difficult to remember. 

Considering that I joined the Gilberta Company as an apprentice for the store’s previous head, thirty years of my life have been spent in service to the store. Benno was born the year I joined the store as a lehange apprentice. Truly, time flies. 

Apprentices of merchants and craftsmen were split into two broad categories: lehanges and leherls. Put simply, lehanges signed a contract of employment with the owner, whereas leherls signed a contract of clear apprenticeship that promises future work within the store. The contracts differed greatly in content and payment, but a detailed explanation would surely be a waste of your time. 

The Gilberta Company generally hired children from other stores as lehanges. It was tradition for merchant children to gain experience by working in other stores. The length of the contract was determined by the store and the children’s parents. They generally lasted three to four years. The contracts had many goals: to expand their world view, to help them understand what would be expected from them, to remove them from a coddling environment, to build relationships with other children who would go on to take management of the stores, and so on. The contracts formed bridges connecting stores. 

I was originally one such lehange apprentice with plans to return to my family’s store after my contract was over. But my father died, and my older brother who inherited the store handled business so differently from him that after repeatedly renewing my contract as a lehange, I signed a leherl contract after turning fifteen and reaching adulthood. 

Leherl contracts lasted eight years. Under normal circumstances, one would return home from a lehange apprenticeship and sign a leherl contact before turning twelve. At age twenty they would be given management of the store in place of the current head. 

I was so late in signing my contract that I had eight years of training ahead of me after reaching adulthood. That said, I had already worked as a lehange for eight years and knew how to do my job at the Gilberta Company. The head of the store graciously treated me not as a standard leherl and modified our contract such that I would be paid about the same as a full-time worker. Thanks to that, I did not feel particularly troubled during my eight years of extended training. I merely rejoiced at my better pay and spent each day dedicating myself to my work. 

However, unfortunately enough, the head of the store died before I finished my apprenticeship. Master Benno had just reached adulthood and was hardly in a position to run an entire store. The majority of lehanges signed to Master Benno’s father declined to renew their contract with him. 

I was still in my training period, so I requested that my family assist the Gilberta Company so that I might continue working there. My older brother, however, not only didn’t send help, he mocked the death of Master Benno’s father and announced that he was cutting ties with the Gilberta Company. It would be hard to describe the wrath I felt that day. I still clearly remember the moment I swore to protect Master Benno and the Gilberta Company to spite my family. 

When my leherl apprenticeship ended, the master asked if I would return home, but having cut my family off, I had nowhere else to go, and the Gilberta Company needed me more than anywhere else. I said that I would stay at the Gilberta Company. Benno and I proceeded to work in a nonstop flurry of sleepless nights to restore the store to its former glory. With great speed we accomplished that and even grew the store larger than it was before. Surely enough years have passed since then that it is safe to say that I pulled strings behind the scenes in order to collapse my family’s store and use it as a stepping stone for the Gilberta Company’s growth. 

The previous head’s youngest daughter Corinna married, but his eldest son Master Benno had lost interest in marriage itself after his fiancée Liz died. Before I knew it, I myself had passed the age for marriage as well. Life never goes quite the way you expect it to. 

The store had plenty of work and the master agreed that Corinna’s child would take over once they were old enough, so it could be said that the Gilberta Company was no longer in great danger of collapsing. 

Which brings us to the present day, where Master Benno was absent due to a meeting with other large store owners. In such cases important decisions were given to me in his place. 

“Mr. Mark, we have received word that the next rinsham delivery will be late.” 

“That is reasonable, considering the last leeve shipment was late. Tell the foreman to deliver what they have completed and finish the rest as soon as possible.” 

“Er, Mr. Mark. An order for Mrs. Corinna has arrived from Baron Blon.” 

“That’s unusual, given that it is summer. There is no time to waste. Contact Corinna at once.” 

As I passed the somewhat busier time than usual, the master returned carrying Myne. 

“Mark, we have to talk. Follow me!” 

He marched right to his office. His eyes were shining and filled with enthusiasm, whereas Myne was limp with exhaustion and Lutz was breathing heavily as he chased after him. That was all I needed to see to know that yet another difficult challenge had been put in front of us. 

Gathering the materials to operate a rinsham-making workshop, securing craftsmen, blasting the market wide open, running around the city to get the tools and materials Myne and Lutz needed to make plant paper, working to calm the conflict with the Parchment Guild, creating yet another workshop for plant paper... Thinking back, my past year had spent doing quite a lot of unreasonable work. What would it be this time? 

“Mark, we’re training a sweets maker! Get ready!” Training a sweets maker? It seemed this had nothing to do with our work beforehand. I was suddenly struck with a very bad feeling. Given how sudden this was, Myne was doubtlessly involved. 

I observed the master cautiously and he took out various wood boards with gleaming eyes, checking various things. It was good to see him motivated, but his motivation here would probably give those around him a lot more work. 

“You say a sweets maker, but what exactly do you intend to have them make?” 

“Ask Myne.” 

Aaah... Of course, Myne. It seems she has done it again. 

The Gilberta Company was initially a clothing and decoration workshop founded by the master’s great-grandmother, Mrs. Gilberta. Historically, the wives of the family made clothes while the husbands sold them. Although the store was registered under their husbands’ names, the women ran the store in reality. 

The Gilberta Company initially sold clothes to wealthier commoners, but ever since laynobles began to notice clothes designed by the master’s mother, it has become increasingly focused on selling to the nobility. It was about ten years ago that this shift first happened. Very recently, all things considered. Corinna’s talents were equally favored among the nobility, which secured the Gilberta Company’s safety. To sum things up, the Gilberta Company was a clothing and decoration store that also dabbled in beauty products. 

Myne’s rinsham was a high quality beauty product, and her hair ornaments (now being made in Corinna’s workshop) were already fairly popular throughout the city. With higher-quality thread and more refined designs, they would even be possible to sell to noble wives and daughters, which made Corinna quite happy. 

However, the plant paper Myne brought wasn’t quite the kind of merchandise the Gilberta Company dealt with, nor was sweets. 

“Once again! You need sugar to make my sweets! How many times have I said this by now?!” 

“You don’t need sugar to bake bread. They’ve gotta practice using an oven first, yeah?” 

“But there are already bakeries throughout town and even a Baker’s Guild! You’re going to clash with vested interests again! Just for practice! I’m betting you’re going to try and steal a baker from the Baker’s Guild, aren’t you?!” 

“You’ll never start a new business if you’re scared of the vested interests!” 

Myne and Master Benno’s heated argument, with Myne standing on her chair to be at eye level with him, reminded me of the master’s arguments with Liz. They say that the more two people fight the closer they are. Perhaps this argument showed how much they had grown to trust each other. 

At times it felt like the master looked the most alive when he was furiously arguing with Myne about business. I couldn’t help but wonder if arguing on equal terms with Myne, clever at speaking as she was, felt as good to him as arguing with Liz had. Though with Liz, he had never been able to win a single argument. 

“Lutz, could you explain the situation to me while those two are busy? What has compelled the master to train a sweets maker?” I asked, snapping Lutz back to reality. He straightened his back and began to explain. 

Lutz was so used to being dragged every which way by Myne that he was quick to shift gears when necessary. He was a fast and compliant learner when it came to just about everything, which when combined with his serious, determined nature made him quite a valuable apprentice. He had a good head on his shoulders and at times like this he could concisely explain what had happened in order. 

According to his explanation, there was a taste-testing event after the meeting at the Merchant’s Guild, and there he had a confrontation with the guildmaster’s chef. The master had ended up angrily declaring that he would just train a chef to make sweets for him. It would be impossible to ask him to give up on it, given how much he hated to lose. 

“Judging from what Myne has said, to make her sweets we will need an oven at our disposal and a skilled, passionate chef that will work hard to improve recipes through experimentation. Master Benno is already thinking about hiring a baker used to using ovens, but that won’t go well unless the baker is interested in making things other than bread and has the passion necessary to experiment,” explained Lutz, which led to me finally understanding the core of Myne and Master Benno’s argument. 

“And the master said that nobles would buy those sweets?” 

“Yes. But...” 

“No buts, Lutz. Now that the master is invested, we have no choice but to follow through with it.” 

Though my assessment was somewhat influenced by favoritism, I considered the master to have an inhuman sense for business. Every time he determined a product would sell and threw himself at making it happen, he was right and earned immense profits. I clapped my hands to get Myne and Benno’s attention. 

“Master Benno, you say that you will train a sweets maker, but how long do you intend to train him? Will this be profitable?” 

“...Yeah, it’ll be profitable. I intend to nab a baker and have him teach the chef, so it won’t take too long for him to learn.” Master Benno nodded. His eyes were brimming with confidence and his expression made it clear he wasn’t even considering that he might fail. 

“I hear that the sweets will need sugar. Do you have a plan for acquiring sugar?” 

“I’ll manage to get some if I talk to my relatives, though I’ve been distant with them lately. Pretty sure Uncle Emile has some connections in the Sovereignty, yeah? I’m also talking to one of Otto’s childhood friends that’s still a traveling merchant. I’ll have the chef bake bread for now to get used to the oven.” 

“I see. So sugar isn’t entirely out of our grasp, then.” He hadn’t thrown himself into this without any hope for success. Ever since Myne first mentioned sweets, he had been researching avenues for getting sugar. Purchasing an oven from a workshop and getting it installed would be complicated and frustrating, but not overall a large challenge. The biggest problem before us was the inevitable negotiations and conflict with the vested interests. There was no doubt that the guildmaster would come complain again. 

I thought back to the conflict that broke out with the Parchment Guild and felt like sitting down. Continued conflicts over paper and sweets unrelated to our main business simply wouldn’t be good for us. 

“Myne, do you have any suggestions to reduce friction with the Baker’s guild like you did with the Parchment Guild?” 

“Bwuh?! You want me to think of an idea?!” Master Benno was so focused on staying on the offensive and not budging an inch that Myne would be a better choice for the job, given that she tended to dislike conflict and always sought ways to avoid it. Most importantly, sweets were outside of my area of expertise and I had no idea where to even begin with such negotiations. 

“You are more familiar with sweets than anyone here, Myne. You would be better than Master Benno at finding compromises, so please, if you have a suggestion that will bring both parties profit, please don’t hesitate to say it.” I knew that I was giving an unreasonable request to a little girl who had just finished her baptism, but just like Master Benno, I did not consider Myne to be a normal child. 

“Bwuuuh?! Ummm, a compromise? That’s kind of hard actually, um...” 

“...Perhaps suggesting that our bread will be different bread? Or that we will be using the oven for something other than bread?” 

Myne fell into thought and I tried turning Myne’s paper compromises into their bread equivalents. Nothing really came to mind for me, but perhaps they would help Myne think of something, considering how she came up with strange idea after strange idea all the time. My guess must have been right, as Myne turned with her dark-blue hair swaying and her golden eyes sparkling before raising her left hand high in the air. 

“I’ve got it! I want to eat (Italian) food!” She said a word that I didn’t understand. Lutz and Master Benno didn’t seem to recognize it either, but Myne continued on talking nonetheless. 

“You want to practice using the oven for food that doesn’t take sugar, right? (Pizza), (gratin), and (lasagna) all fit that bill. Oh, right, right. We can probably make (quiches) and (pies) too, not to mention just cooking meat in the oven. Wow, now I’m excited!” Myne was excitedly listing name after name, which was nice, but given that she mentioned cooking meat in the oven, she probably wasn’t listing sweets. Lutz, seeing Myne’s shining eyes and blissful almost-drooling expression, groaned next to me and held his head in his hands. 

“It’s too late. Myne’s started going crazy. She has a goal in mind and now she’s gonna rush right towards it... Master Benno’s done for.” The complete lack of hope in Lutz’s voice made it clear just how much suffering Myne’s rampages put him through. It seemed that Myne and Benno were even more alike than I thought. They both ran straight forward after setting their sights on something. Neither of them were concerned with the work they put those around them through. 

“Mr. Benno, you should give up on sweets and just make a restaurant. Like, a fancy restaurant for selling fancy food.” 

“Hey, hold up! You’re not the one deciding things here!” 

“It’ll be fine. You can use your sugar to make sweets for dessert. Let’s just calm down and make an (Italian) restaurant.” 

“What’s fine about that?!” Just as Lutz feared, Master Benno was losing control of the situation. I felt that Lutz being dragged around by Myne resembled me being dragged around by Master Benno and internally wiped a single tear off my heart. 

“Lutz, please grow strong. Don’t just let her drag you around. Pretend that she is going on a rampage and prepare accordingly so that you maintain some control of the situation. Doing so will lessen the burden on your heart.” 

“Mr. Mark?” 

“There is a knack to being properly dragged around.” Lutz looked at me with his green eyes shining with respect. His sincerity made me swear something. I will raise Lutz such that he will survive no matter how hard these two drag him around. 

Myne continued to talk as Lutz and I shared in our mutual suffering. She was listing off the various reasons why a restaurant would be superior to a sweets shop one after another. 

“I mean, won’t you cover more demographics if you sell food and sweets? Not to mention that this will make the oven practice more fruitful and the chef more motivated. You can also have customers eat food experimentally and hear their thoughts before introducing new recipes to nobles.” 

As I stood there impressed at her skillful use of persuasive language, Lutz looked up at me with furrowed brows. 

“You know... When Myne gets passionate about things and starts ranting, I somehow always start to think that she’s right.” 

“An important skill for merchants to learn is making their customers want to buy their products.” 

I nodded and Lutz shrugged with a laugh. 

“...Too bad Myne only uses her talent to get stuff she wants.” 

“Observe carefully and learn how you can make the one you’re talking to agree with you. Examples to follow in life are all around you if you look.” Many desired to have the skill to persuade others to agree with them, but as we had a store to run, we couldn’t allow ourselves to be swept up in Myne’s desires. 

“More importantly, Lutz. How does Myne look right now? I think she might be getting too excited.” 

“Gaaah! Myne! Calm down a little!” By the time Lutz called out to Myne, she was in the process of faceplanting onto the table. As expected, she had gotten too excited. But she was still trying to talk with her face pressed against the table, her words ending up muffled as she tried to persevere. 

“There’s a world of difference between the food rich people eat and the food nobles eat. A lot of people will definitely come eat if you have food as good as what the nobility eat, even if it’s a little expensive.” 

“A world of difference? Really? When have you ever eaten noble f... Right, the guildmaster.” 

“Seeee, Mr. Benno, you’re interested too. The food really is incomparable. But don’t worry, you still have hope. I haven’t told Leise anything about cooking this kind of stuff. Eheheh.” Myne giggled victoriously and I knew that a major blow had been dealt to Master Benno, but I couldn’t let him agree to her suggestion through inertia alone. We needed to calm down and listen to Myne’s suggestion after she could give more concrete details. It was a universal law that something with advantages carried with it some kind of flaw. 

“As Myne has been saying, I believe we should think carefully over whether or not it would be worthwhile to train a sweets maker. Thank you for your wonderful suggestion, Myne. What would we do without you? On that note, I think it would be best for you to return home and collect yourself. You seem to be quite exhausted.” 

“Awww, Mr. Mark, you’re so nice. Thank you.” I directed Lutz to take Myne home and thus got them both out of the store. 

After seeing the kids leave, I returned to the office and discovered Master Benno face-planting against his desk as Myne had been. He looked up at me, but didn’t lift his head. 

“Sheesh. Myne never stops surprising me.” 

“I did not expect her plan to avoid conflict with the Baker’s Guild to shift in that direction.” 

Benno slowly sat back up in his chair while scratching his head. He looked at me, his dark-red eyes gleaming sharply. 

“...What do you think, Mark?” 

“I believe that a restaurant will be much simpler than your sweets plan. A restaurant will not cause friction with the Baker’s Guild, for instance. In their stead we will need to think about how to approach the Eatery Guild, but establishing a restaurant should not be difficult if we follow the proper procedures.” Myne had suggested we build a high-class restaurant. We weren’t going to use our status as a large store to disturb cheaper restaurants, so it was unlikely that the Eatery Guild would reject our application. 

“A restaurant’s not a bad idea. It’s usually rich people that hire chefs, but most chefs are commoners. Having more money at their disposal just means they’ll make more food, not different food. Nobles hire the best of the best and teach them recipes only shared among the nobility, so their food’s more varied and tastes different. If we pay special attention to our ingredients and flavors, there’s no doubt we’ll get customers even if food’s priced a bit high.” 

I had never eaten food cooked for a noble before, so I wasn’t entirely sure myself, but Master Benno had been invited to dinner at noble estates a handful of times. If he said there was a big difference between the food of rich people and the food of the nobility, he was almost certainly correct. 

“But why does Myne know all that? She only spent a few days in the guildmaster’s house. Why does she know so many different kinds of recipes? How does she know so many recipes that need an oven?” 

“Because she is Myne.” I responded to Master Benno’s question with a sigh. He didn’t look satisfied, but that was the only answer. 

“Mark, y’know...” 

“Thinking about it will only be a waste of time. It does not matter who Myne truly is if we can use her knowledge for profit. You said so yourself when she brought us the rinsham. Rethinking that strategy won’t change the situation we are in. It would be much more constructive to plan out ways to stop Myne from leaking valuable information elsewhere,” I said with a shrug. Master Benno looked away awkwardly, then clapped his hands to change the subject. 

“Yeah, that reminds me. I’m thinking about adopting Lutz. What do you think?” 

“The fact you have recently begun saying what comes to mind without thinking makes me believe Myne is influencing you in a negative way.” 

“Huh?! As if! Don’t lump me in with that thoughtless buffoon!” Master Benno was quite furious, but what could adopting Lutz be considered if not a thoughtless suggestion? If he were to adopt a child in his position, third parties would consider that child to be his successor. He would be starting a war of inheritance with Corinna’s child before said child was even born. 

“In that case, may I ask what thoroughly considered line of thought led you to concluding it would be wise to create unnecessary conflict with Corinna?” Master Benno sighed and complained about my sour tone, but nonetheless began explaining his reasoning. 

“First of all, we need to secure Lutz on our side so we don’t lose our connection to Myne. You know what I mean, right?” 

I understood that it was important to keep Lutz on our side since there was a magic contract that compelled products created in the Myne Workshop to be sold through Lutz. I also knew that as Lutz was a lehange apprentice, Benno wished to prevent him from leaving the store after his contract ended. 

“I thought about making him a leherl, but if I’m gonna be entrusting a store to him, I might as well adopt him and put myself in a position where my opinion holds a lot of weight to him.” 

“Will a leherl not suffice for that? In fact, if Corinna’s child is a girl, could we not just have them marry?” There would be less opposition from our surroundings if we trained him as a leherl and he then married into the store, compared to just raising him as an adopted son. But Master Benno just shrugged while waving a hand. 

“That won’t work with Lutz. He’s only got eyes for Myne. Plus, his real dream’s to be a traveling merchant. He’s waiting for an opportunity to leave the city. I’m thinking it’ll be real hard to keep him tied down to just this store.” 

“...A traveling merchant? Goodness.” That was a fairly surprising dream for one born and raised in a city to have. Master Benno shrugged and grinned. 

“I’m thinking it all comes from his insufferable home life, but either way, once Myne’s not chaining him down here anymore, Lutz won’t have any reason to stay with us. It won’t be long before Myne gets taken by a noble. Might be a noble from this city, might be a noble from another city, might even be a noble sent from the Sovereignty. There’s no way to say which it’ll be, but it’s beyond likely that Myne will be leaving this city.” 

At the moment, Lutz was an apprentice under Benno’s protection. He had no skills or business knowledge. But once he reached adulthood and had the wisdom of a merchant, he would realize his own value. If at that time Myne had left the city and rendered their magic contract moot, it was very likely that he would leave to travel to stores in other cities. 

“When Myne leaves this city, I want Lutz to be there ready to go with her.” 

“Why would you go so far for them?” I narrowed my eyes slightly and Master Benno gave a conflicted laugh. 

“Corinna’s the real successor of the Gilberta Company, I’m just standing in her place for now. Myne keeps talking about how she wants to make a book, but our store’s not about making books. It’ll take some time to set up, but I want to leave this store to Corinna and Otto so I can start up my own store.” 

The Gilberta Company was run by the female side of the family, so in a future where Corinna and Otto ran it themselves, Benno starting his own store made sense. But still, I couldn’t connect that to his attitude towards Lutz. I looked at him in confusion, and after a sigh, he murmured that he couldn’t hide anything from me with a nostalgic smile on his face. 

“Myne and Lutz remind me of how my life used to be. Back when Dad was still alive, and I was free to live however I liked... Back when I was with Liz.” 

Myne and Lutz running around did indeed remind me of Master Benno and Liz having fun themselves, so I could empathize with his feelings. I closed my eyes and thought back to how I had seen them stealthily hiding behind the store, acting like adults and coming up with little plots. 

“They’ve reminded me of so much. Even the dream I forgot after I had to dedicate everything I had to protect the store and my family after Dad died.” 

“You wanted to be the kind of merchant that held influence over the entire world, was it?” I said, causing Master Benno to open his eyes wide and get so flustered it was amusing. 

“Wh-Why do you remember that?!” 

“I remember everything about you.” I would not like to be underestimated. I had known Master Benno since his very birth. 

I lifted my head with pride and Master Benno groaned, holding his head. It was hard to deal with people who knew details of your youth. Understandable. 

Master Benno finally escaped his embarrassment after groaning for some time. He coughed once. 

“If I keep making the products in Myne’s head a reality, don’t you think my dream will come true? I’m pretty sure it will.” 

“The scale here is quite large, but if you do indeed make all of what Myne says into reality, you will no doubt hold immense influence over the world.” 

“I’m thinking about starting by going to the city my siblings live in and making a plant paper workshop there too, so I can start the spread of plant paper. Mark. What are you going to do?” 

Master Benno looked up at me, his fingers intertwined and his back leaning against the chair. The sight of him waiting so seriously for an answer nearly made me laugh out loud. He had adopted the same posture and looked at me with the same expression when he asked me if I would leave the store after my training period as an apprentice was over, following the death of his father. 

“I believe Theo will work better with Otto than I would. I will stay with you, Master Benno. You need someone to train Lutz, yes?” 

Benno sighed in relief, which made me smile nostalgically. He had abandoned his dream to protect his family and his store, but now Myne was pushing him to grow the Plant Paper Guild and venture out into the world with a new business. She was certainly his Goddess of Water, just as Otto had said. 

Thanks to this, I had also remembered my own dream. If Myne is Benno’s Goddess of Water, then I would like to be his God of Fire, assisting his growth from the side.