“She doesn’t really seem like she’s good at reading and writing.”
Unlike her usual jobs during the day, she did seem to be a bit clumsy when it came to this. She had made quite a few reading and spelling mistakes.
“She works hard during the day, so she’s probably tired at night.”
Little Col displayed his odd enthusiasm for studying by chasing away his nighttime sleepiness with sand in his mouth or munching on raw onions. It would be cruel to expect that much from Selim.
But something occurred to Holo.
“But when we go to trade on the other side of the mountain, she is never that sleepy.”
Selim did seem a little tired when they set out on the way home, but she did not appear to be falling asleep.
“It’s probably a matter of her strengths and weaknesses, right? She probably gets sleepy looking at writing. Myuri’s the same.”
When he spoke their daughter’s name, she understood.
“I am as good as anyone when it comes to this.”
“That’s not much to be proud of. Well, you can read, but when it comes to writing…Don’t you think the Wisewolf of Yoitsu should be a bit better at writing?”
He hit her where it hurt, earning him a glare from her.
“I have improved quite a bit. This form of mine is temporary anyway. ’Tis not much I can do if my hands do not work well.”
“Even though you can grab meat so quickly from the pot?”
She bared her fangs, and he looked away, pretending not to notice.
“You fool. Learning letters does not fill the stomach!”
“…Myuri says the same thing, doesn’t she?”
“I beg your pardon?!”
She scolded her mumbling companion, and he shrugged cheekily.
“Look, come on, let’s get working.”
He was never constantly cornered the way he used to be.
And she did not hate this sort of bickering.
“Honestly, you fool.”
As she murmured that, she placed a chair next to his and stuck to his side. Of course, they shared the blanket as it draped over both of their backs. This was not bad at all.
She cemented in her memory that this moment had happened.
As she did so, she took the first piece of parchment into her hand.
There was the thud of wooden utensils being set down, and Holo opened her eyes.
It was after lunch, and the unoccupied Hanna had brought her something.
“Good work today.”
“…Wine, how unusual.”
Holo lifted her head from the table, and her nose twitched at the scent of the warmed wine, steam still rising from it.
Hanna was normally concerned with cost so it was curious for her to offer wine so freely.
Then, just as Holo was about to gratefully reach out to take the cup.
“Hmm, this is…?”
There was a wooden bowl, and it was filled with things she had never seen before.
“It’s a gift from a guest. The Sir told me to serve some for you when he went out.”
It was candied something or other. Sugar could be obtained by boarding a boat in town at the bottom of the mountain and heading downstream, then changing vessels after arriving at the open sea and traveling farther south, eventually reaching a port in a sunny country where the sea was a clear green and it was summer for more than half the year, all to trade with someone who had come by boat from an even more southern point.
If sugar was harvested from the earth like salt, then she would not mind living there and spending all her days licking the ground.
It was that delicious of a sweetener, but she was caught by Hanna’s words.
“…You hid this from me?”
Hanna only shrugged innocently.
“He said you might end up eating it all if I showed it to you once.”
“That fool!”
I am not Myuri, she thought to herself as she grabbed a piece, finding the sweet in her hand quite strange.
Whatever the fruit was, it was cut into round slices and had been seasoned with sugar, but the shape was odd.
She had never seen such a fruit like this before, but when she put it in her mouth, she was shocked.
“’Tis ginger?!”
“It’s still cold when the sun isn’t out, so it will also warm you up.”
“Mm-hmm…Mmm…”
The fur on her ears and tail stood on end at the crunchy texture of the sugar and its sweetness, then the indescribable ginger flavor that came after, the tingling spiciness heavy on her tongue. As her throat grew hot from the ginger, the warmed wine was a perfect accompaniment.
It was scandalous to hide such a wonderful thing from her.
She asked Hanna with her mouth full of the crunchy sugared ginger, “Is this all?”
“He said to make sure to give only a little bit at a time.”
It was exactly how he would have treated their daughter, Myuri. She almost wanted to demand Hanna give her more, immediately, lots more, but then that would only acknowledge his point that she would eat it all once she laid eyes on it. She had to avoid that as the wisewolf.
That being said, it was difficult to resist its charm.
She had been fighting with that parchment for a while, and her mind felt like it was melting.
To have this sweet and spicy food after all that was almost violent.
Even a wisewolf would roll over in surrender.
But before she did that, she spoke, managing to maintain a semblance of reason.
“C-come now, it may go bad if we do not eat it quickly, aye?”
“Sweets don’t spoil so quickly.”
“Then bugs and mice—”
“These will be fine buried in the ice room.”
There was no one in the bathhouse who could contest Hanna about food.
If she persisted, Holo felt like she would even be able to eat the bowl itself.
“Ooohhh…”
“Why not eat it slowly? You’ll be able to enjoy it longer that way.”
“You fool. I may also enjoy it all at once!”
Hanna sighed in exasperation.
But she was right, and the inside of her mouth was rather hot.
Heartbroken, she pushed the wooden bowl away toward Hanna, in a way that she did not have to look at it.
“Put it away…”
“My, how prudent of you. Very well then, I will go put this away before you change your mind.”
“Ah!”
Then, in a moment of weakness, Holo reached out and took one piece. Hanna smiled, slightly aggravated.
“Let me just say this now, but I am going to hide this in a place you can’t find, so don’t come looking for it.”
Hanna said the same thing Holo did when she scolded Myuri. She wondered if it was because they were two peas in a pod.
“You fool.”
“I am not a fool. I would not be happy to find my pantry in complete disarray because you went looking for it. I will put a tight lid on this, so even that great nose of yours will be no use.”
“Urgghhh…”
In a bathhouse, the greatest monetary costs were related to food, so her companion had given Hanna tremendous authority. It was almost as though it was difficult to tell who was master of the house when they were in the kitchen together.
Not only that, he also asked her to be strict with Holo and Myuri.
The kitchen was filled with things they could immediately gnaw on, but those were more akin to traps meant to distract them.
“I am working so hard, and yet such cruelty…”
Holo spoke reproachfully, but Hanna did not give the bowl back to her.
“Well, I don’t know about that, but I heard that it will be of great help once you finish all that work you are doing. Once that’s squared away, you can ask for sugar or anything else you’d like.”
“Of course I plan to. But I do not know when it will be over.”
&n
bsp; It was not an act when she laid face-first on the table.
Guests were starting to arrive and musicians had returned to the bathhouse, so it was quite lively. As long as the guests had songs and dancing, they could spend the entire day in the baths, which meant she and her companion could leave them alone.
Once this was routine, there were some extremely hectic moments but also stretches of time with nothing to do at all.
But now, during her idle hours, she was pouring all her energy into those sheets of parchment. If she did not, then it would never end, and if they received more requests in the future, it was possible the work would not be finished at all until the fall.
Of course, they could refuse to do anything that was too much for them, but the guests were rushing to unburden themselves, all thanks to little Col and Myuri’s adventure, so they could not say they had no responsibility.
And her companion had said with a grave expression that if they accept the work now, it would lead to other things later.
If it was for his sake, then she had no choice but to stay committed.
“But what does that fool plan to do with all that money he will be making?”
Holo murmured to herself, her cheek still pressed to the table, as she watched Hanna put the candy away. Business at the bathhouse was going smoothly. Perhaps he was thinking about another matter. No, it could not be for buying honeyed peaches for her. That sort of foolish mistaken priorities had died down since they opened the bathhouse.
She did not know, but what she did know was that she had to focus on her own portion.
“Well, let us begin!”
She gulped down the rest of the wine Hanna had poured for her and headed toward the bedroom.
Her companion was absent because he had some work to do in the village, but she could tell by the lingering scent that he had been poring over the parchment until the very last moment.
She took the blanket draped over the back of the chair, hugged it, and sniffed it. It was filled with her companion’s scent.
“…Heh.”
In combination with the wine and effects of the ginger, her body was filled with warmth. She looked out beyond the open window, the faint melody of a musician’s instrument and singing drifting in.
It was a quiet, fair afternoon.
She lay down on the bed for a quick nap, and her consciousness drifted away instantly.
And so, about the permits.
There were permits for mining gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, mercury, sulfur, and a myriad of ores that included the above. There were also permits for trading them, as well as others for weighing them. There were permits for grading them. Permits for appointing someone to inspect them. Permits for exempting them from inspection.
Wheat, barley, rye, and oats were divided into different classifications depending on the town, with various taxes relating to each, and unlike other crops, straw that was used as fodder would also be treated separately. If it were to be used for ale, then it would not be recognized as food but as alcohol, and it fell under the classification for permits regarding wines, ciders, and distilled items. Related to that was yet another struggle as to what the definition of alcohol was. There were permits that allowed the holder the right to ignore the definition and privileges to appoint a specific examiner from a specific town in the event of a dispute over it.
There were similar collections of permits like this for meat, fish, furs, metal products, wood products…It was endless.
“…Is the human world just a bottomless swamp?”
Without even the energy to raise her voice to express how she resented this and was unwilling to do any more, Holo muttered to herself.
“You’ve gotten the hang of how the world works. Look, there’s only a little left.”
There was no need for her to think that her companion’s face, lit by the candlelight, was looking any older. Instead, as their work continued, he grew livelier and livelier as he recalled the past.
“Look, it’s a permit for managing furs in Lenos,” and “Huh, I didn’t know there were rights for managing the dockworkers in Kerube,” and “There’s a permit for importing gold in Ruvinheigen. We wouldn’t have had to go through all that trouble back then if only we had this.” As he brought up this and that, his eyes shone.
Other permits indicated ties she had never noticed before between so many different towns, and her companion’s skin was much brighter than after drinking or eating any sort of food.
Even in his sleep, he mumbled about it. “Since this town and this town protect the privileges between them for that product…You could make a lot of money if you buy it in that town…Heh-heh…”
But as she stole glances at him as he did so, with parchment open before her, she was starting to enjoy it.
Whenever he found a place-name where they had once ventured together, far, far away from Nyohhira, he would light up. She did not mind, because she was the same.
Back then, it was not an endless repetition of the same routine. Every day had brought something new. Those dazzling, shining memories were impossibly stuffed into such a short amount of time.
It had all been so hectic that she was the first one to say no, she had had enough. It was her wish that put an end to her companion’s journey. Then, her companion granted her wish, and though he did seem a bit regretful at the time, now he did not seem to feel much anguish over his choice at all.
Essentially, her companion was simply enjoying the nostalgia with a distant gaze.
Even though she knew it was her own selfishness, it was not fun.
She wanted him to recall their old travels with a face that yearned terribly for it.
Then she would have an excuse to be angry at him. Do you never learn your lesson?
Then she could have said this to her companion.
“If you wish to go on a journey again, I—”
It was when she was writing down a place-name on a permit regarding salt tariffs as she listened to her companion grow excited about some complicated permit, which nullified the privilege to pass through the checkpoint on Roef River without paying taxes.
He fell silent, and Holo suddenly realized that her thoughts had escaped through her mouth.
“…”
She looked up, and he was staring at her with a strange expression on his face.
“…’Tis nothing.”
She dropped her gaze back to the salt permit. He did not say anything right away, and after gazing again at the permit he had been so excitedly reading out loud, he spoke quietly.
“I’m not going on a journey.”
She knew that.
That was why she could not let the next part of her sentence be bitter words.
“Hey.”
He continued.
“You’ve been hiding something from me, haven’t you? Ever since Selim came.”
She was shocked. The fur on her ears and tail stood on end.
And yet, her only response was this.
“Whatever do you mean?”
He lightly scratched his nose, and—had he held back a smile?
“I know.”
His hand landed gently on her head.
“Because you’re my wife.”
She shivered uncomfortably, as though a soft woolen thread tickled the inside of her ear.
Her chest clenched painfully, and tears welled up in her eyes.
“…Fool.”
“But you really did seem to be in a good mood, so I honestly wasn’t sure what it could be. You were getting along well with Miss Selim. If I wasn’t careful and bothered you about it, you looked like you would get really angry at me, so I didn’t say anything.”
He was carefully studying her face. She could not look back at his.
“…”
“…”
They both kept quiet, and silence fell over them.
Her companion released the breath he had been holding, then leaned back in his chair.
It creaked a
s he did.
“It feels like things have gotten stale since Myuri and Col left.”
The bathhouse was silent.
“Are you bored of life here?”
There was a slight smile on his face.
“No, of—”
This is the bathhouse her companion worked so hard to bring together. It was their house and a place to call home. There was no chance he would wish to leave that all behind and go traveling again.
But she could not finish her sentence, and he even asked her if she wanted to go on a journey not too long ago.
She did not know herself very well.
“I do not know…”
She spoke honestly, and her companion seemed amused.
“I’ve come to notice lately how old I’ve gotten, but you’re still young.”
“…Huh?”
Her pitiful voice was starting to become a cry at the back of her throat.
She looked at him, and his smile was growing bigger and bigger. That meant her expression must have really been on the verge of tears.
“That’s what I thought when I was watching Myuri—so that’s what it means to be young. And that it wouldn’t be surprising if a certain someone who is like a mature wolf got bored of life in the bathhouse, too.”
“That’s…”
She barely spoke, then shook her head. Hard.
“I have not grown bored. Not at all.”
The inside of her heart, however, was not serene. There certainly was a tempest of irritation that every day was so similarly fulfilling.
No matter how she thought about that, it was indulgent and selfish and not something her companion could do anything about.
She could not stop or turn back time.
And so she was hesitant as to whether she should be honest. Her companion had a good heart, which made her worry that he might treat her strangely, or that it might make him sad.
As her words became stuck in her throat, he smiled a bit sadly.
“Did the wolves all show off together? What was it like with Miss Selim?”
He was worried about her. He would listen to her. Not only that, he was always within her reach. And he would not be around forever.
If she had to say it someday, then she should say it sooner than later.
She swallowed something that was lodged in her throat, and slowly, she opened her mouth.
Spring Log II Page 16
