Research (13)
After dinner I lay down on the bed, and the experiment from earlier came drifting back. I had burned through materials so carelessly… a pang of regret settled in.
When it came to combinations, thinking simply sometimes turned out to be the answer. The poison that had been born the moment I swapped water for attunement agent. The tanned leather made by throwing in bone and hide…
But this time? Even the attunement agent had failed. I had tried mixing in medicinal herbs and toxic plants, and those had failed too. Had I gone about it too simply this time…? Should I have thought it through a little more before combining anything? The regret gnawed at me.
I really should have thought harder…
Especially this time, I had clearly held an advantage — knowledge from my previous life. I should have drawn on that more carefully…
Looking back after it was all over, the waste of it stung. Maybe I would try again tomorrow…
I lay there, sinking into thought. I had come to think of myself as a person of this world, and so I usually tried not to dredge up memories of my past life. Lean on them too hard, cling to them too tightly, and I would never adapt to this one — that was the fear.
But this time, it looked like I needed that old knowledge after all.
"Hah… I wonder if anything will even come to me…"
I closed my eyes and quietly focused, reaching back toward my previous life.
In that life I had been an ordinary person. Born into an ordinary family, raised in ordinary ways — school, friends, cram classes… I had simply drifted along, living a life much like everyone around me. Following friends into choices, dipping into subculture because it was trendy… pushed into university, hanging out because everyone else was, scrambling into a job, earning money. Aside from never having managed a single romance, it had been a life I was more or less content with.
That wasn't it. What I needed was knowledge. Why was I remembering all that?
I tried recalling the years of study — the hours spent listening to teachers and professors. I wrung my brain dry, straining to pull the memories free. But they were hazy. People were creatures of forgetfulness, after all. Time passed and things faded on their own. And if something hadn't been important…
I hadn't even studied that hard. How was I supposed to remember something from twenty years ago? Still, I kept wringing.
"Hah!"
I sat bolt upright.
"Yuli?"
My sister startled at the sudden movement. I ignored her, went straight to the table, pulled out paper and pen, and wrote down what had surfaced.
Ash. Lye. In my previous world, people had once used wood-ash lye as a soap substitute. And somewhere in the fog of memory, I recalled that ash powder went into the making of natural soap.
This world used ash powder in a similar way. I remembered people taking the ash left after burning firewood and using it to strip grease. In other words, cross-checking confirmed that ash powder played an important role. I still didn't know how it worked — but I knew it mattered!
Why hadn't I thought of this sooner?
Next combination, I would use ash powder…!
Once the note was finished, I rummaged through my memories again. But the moment I was actually sitting there, no good ideas came.
"Yuli, aren't you sleeping?"
"Huh? Don't mind me."
I tapped the tip of the pen against the paper, lost in thought. Damn it. The second I sat down, nothing came.
I kept fretting, kept turning it over. A long while of fretting later, still nothing. Sitting there wasn't going to conjure anything up.
I set the pen down and climbed back into bed.
I had decided to try ash powder, at least. Time to sleep?
But something still felt like it was on the tip of my tongue… Lying there, sleep wouldn't come, and my mind kept turning. I got up, sat in the chair, fretted when nothing arrived, lay back down… still couldn't sleep, drifted into thought again, and the moment anything useful surfaced I got back up. Over and over.
My restlessness affected the other two people in the room.
"Julian? Can't you sleep?"
"Yuli, quiet…"
"S-sorry…"
But I couldn't sleep! I gripped the pen hard and fretted. The usable notes on the paper so far came down to three things: information related to ash powder, the knowledge that sulfur could make gunpowder, and an abrasive recipe I had once seen in an alchemy game.
"Mmm…"
That should be enough for tomorrow's experiments. Time to sleep?
I lay back down on the bed, pulled the blanket over myself, and closed my eyes. The moment they shut, more thoughts crowded in. I did my best to push them away and try to sleep.
Ugh! I couldn't sleep at all!
I tossed this way and that, fighting for sleep.
I overslept… After a night of broken rest, I woke much later than usual.
"You seemed to be having trouble sleeping last night. You're not unwell, are you?"
Sister Mary looked worried.
"No, I just couldn't fall asleep."
I yawned long and wide. Clearly short on rest. Still, I had gotten up earlier than my sister…
"What will you be doing today?"
"Ah — I've decided."
I looked over the notes I had scribbled in the night.
"You saw these, right?"
"Yes. Will you be obtaining ash powder?"
"Yes. I'm going to gather more foamgrass, collect dry branches outside, and make the ash myself."
This was exactly when magic would shine! Gather well-dried branches, burn them with fire magic — burn and burn and burn again — and produce ash powder. I had heard straw made good material too, but it wasn't harvest season yet.
"This idea of ash powder… are you perhaps trying to make soap?"
…Huh?
"How did you…?"
I had never told her what I meant to make with the foamgrass. I hadn't even been sure it was possible, and since it might fail, I had kept it to myself. How had she figured it out?
"Well… at the temple, there are days set aside for making soap."
Something like winter preparations, she explained — they used materials gathered through the temple's work to produce soap. But a soap recipe was fairly important knowledge, wasn't it? The fact that she knew it only confirmed what I already thought: this was a denomination that valued learning.
"Could you… tell me the recipe?"
"Of course. It isn't difficult."
Soap, she said, could be made from water, oil, and ash powder.
"For goods meant for sale, they often use oil pressed from plants, or add flowers for fragrance."
I see… My knowledge had been half-formed! I had gotten as far as ash powder, but I never would have guessed oil was needed too…
"Has no one ever thought of making soap with foamgrass?"
"I never have, no."
"Then we can try it today."
Thanks to her, I now knew I needed to prepare oil as well. Today, I would do this properly!
I threw on clothes in a rough approximation of dressing and was about to head downstairs for breakfast when Sister Mary caught me.
"Julian, even so, you really must tidy your hair."
She took me by the shoulders, steered me smoothly into a chair, and began arranging my hair.
"It's grown quite a lot…"
The hair that had passed my shoulders and reached nearly to my shoulder blades was genuinely annoying.
"Truly beautiful hair."
Sister Mary seemed fond of it; she kept stroking as she smoothed it into place.
"Maybe I should just hack it all off."
"What?!"
She cried out so loudly my ears rang. I dug a finger into my ear and turned to look at her.
"Why so shocked?"
"Y-you're going to cut this beautiful hair?!"
"Yes. It's inconvenient."
"Absolutely not!"
With that absolute refusal, Sister Mary carefully gathered my hair in her hands.
"It's a pain to take care of, too…"
"I will manage it. You must not cut it. Absolutely not."
Was this really enough to fluster her into such formality? I twirled my bangs between my fingers. Still a nuisance… and I didn't much care for the pink, either…
Back when I had been a man, that pink hair had earned me plenty of teasing. It was such a distinctive color, after all. So I still didn't particularly like it. It suited me better as a woman than it had as a man, maybe — but I still just didn't like it.
"Absolutely, absolutely not. You must not cut it."
Sister Mary reacted so fiercely that I found myself nodding without meaning to. Only then did she let go.
When I came downstairs, Maximilian was already waiting.
"You're up early. Must have had free time on your hands."
"Yes. I was free enough that I considered rising even earlier to train."
A noble, and this diligent? I couldn't understand it. Then again, diligence wasn't a flaw. It was a virtue, not a shortcoming. Thinking that only made me somehow more irritated.
Handsome, good-natured, diligent, knight-class, and a wealthy noble on top of it? So people like that actually existed… The type my previous life would have called a golden child. I was jealous. Deeply jealous!
Breakfast was quantity over quality. Inn food amounted to hard black bread and a soup of indeterminate origin, but at least it was cheap.
"Gathering again today?"
"Yes. Unlike yesterday, I actually have a proper goal this time."
"I see."
After breakfast we left the city again and climbed the mountain. With a clear objective, I swept up every patch of foamgrass we found along the path.
"Sis, pick up some branches we can use for firewood."
"Mm."
"Mary, I trust you'll handle things without me saying a word."
"Yes. Leave it to me."
We gathered the materials we needed in earnest, and once a pile of firewood had accumulated, we settled into a suitable clearing.
"All right — first, flip the earth!"
I spread holy power across the ground, then raised my hands. The soil that made up the earth rose and formed a pit. I fixed the hollow in place and stacked the firewood inside.
"What are you making?"
"Ash powder."
Burn the wood, burn the branches — burn them all down into ash.
"I see."
Maximilian didn't ask what it was for. He simply and quietly fed the collected branches into the pit. When it was about a third full, I prepared the next spell.
Not a simple flame spell — something that would hold for a long time with excellent heat.
"Flame Whirlwind, and Flame Wall — both at once."
A ball of fire spun into a whirlwind in my hand. I would throw it into the pit, then apply the formula for Flame Wall to lock the coordinates in place. After that? Seal the mouth with rock, keep feeding it holy power, and maintain the magic.
"Ready?"
"Yes. Whenever you are."
I cast the spell into the pit, and Maximilian quickly sealed the entrance with stone — leaving proper gaps for air, of course.
"Now we just wait."
Once downtime arrived, everyone fell quiet. The only one still talking was Maximilian.
He really never stopped, did he…
I had found the sole flaw in a man who seemed to have everything. He talked too much about nothing!
I let his chatter wash past me and flicked at my hair. Still wanted to cut it off…
"Are you thinking of cutting it again?"
Sister Mary hurried over in a fluster.
"I-it's just annoying…"
My sister had no particular reaction. Maximilian, on the other hand, was staring at me with wide eyes.
"Y-you're going to cut this beautiful hair?!"
"I-it's a pain to manage."
"Th-that is absolutely not allowed!"
Sister Mary was one thing — why was Maximilian reacting like that?
"Why?"
A little irritation crept into my voice.
"W-well…"
He couldn't answer. He glanced around, stalling.
"Is there a reason?"
"W-well… longer hair, as it is now, suits you better."
Suits me…
I grabbed a fistful of the cumbersome hair and twisted it. The texture was genuinely soft, and the sheen was prettier than it had been when I was a man…
"Well, if that's the case…"
It wasn't so bothersome that it actually interfered with daily life. Maybe I could put up with it?
Not one person but two telling me not to cut it — there had to be some reason for that.
So… maybe I would endure it.