several days later, Winry enthusiastically headed to her desk so she could use her afternoon break to work. Since Garfiel was attending to a regular in the studio, she was on her own for lunch.
“Um, so the best bolt for this joint would be …” Winry trailed off as she scrutinized a clipboard in her left hand while holding a sandwich in her right. Then she stared down at the giant sheet of paper spread out on her desk. A breeze wafted in from an open window and tousled her hair, but that didn’t even register in her mind. “I need a twelve-centimeter wire to fit in the joint, so maybe that’ll work with a number fifty-eight screw.”
She took a bite from her sandwich. Her pencil noisily scribbled across the surface of the schematics for the automail she was designing for Darish.
“Oh, maybe I can use a fifty-eight screw over here too,” Winry contemplated with a piece of bread still between her lips. The blueprint rustled as Winry flipped up the right edge of it. There was, unsurprisingly, another automail blueprint right below. Unlike the blueprints for Darish, which were still relatively clean, the bottom blueprint had slapdash notes scrawled all over it. There were also traces of bygone writing that she had previously erased.
As she was writing the number of the screw in a corner of the schematics for Darish, there was a knock at the door of her room.
“Winry, I’m coming in! Oh my, that’s not proper of you!” Garfiel scowled when he opened the door to see Winry with the sandwich still in her mouth as her pencil raced across the paper.
“Now that’s not a ladylike way to behave!”
“S-sahr … sorry!” Winry quickly removed the sandwich from her mouth and apologized.
“For being so cute, you act so crudely sometimes,” Garfiel said.
“It’s just that both of my hands were occupied,” Winry said.
“Whatever am I going to do with you?” Garfiel gave her a put-upon smile.
Hee hee, Winry laughed to herself in embarrassment.
“So, there’s an errand I was just about to ask if you could run. Oh, drawing up schematics, are we?” Garfiel said. He had walked into the room and peeked at the in-progress design on the desk. “So these are the ones for Darish, then?”
“Yes. I’m still just figuring out the basic setup, but I’m going to ask if he has specific requests and then I’ll draw up the plans based on that,” Winry said, then stopped to take in a deep breath. “But he hasn’t come by.”
Darish hadn’t come back to the shop since his first visit. He hadn’t turned down her services, and she hadn’t heard of him going to another shop, so she had no idea what to do.
“Right. I suppose you can’t seal the deal, then,” Garfiel said, troubled as he pinched his chin. If Darish did formally request automail from them, they would need to procure the parts to make it. Knowing that, getting an answer from him sooner rather than later would make things easier.
After they both pondered over what to do for some time, Garfiel suddenly perked up and proposed, “Right, I know. That new tool I told you about is coming in tonight.”
“What? Is it really?!” Winry brightened, a smile forming on her face at news of the highly anticipated arrival.
“Yes, so how about you be the one to go to Darish? You’re going to make this automail using the new tool we’re getting, aren’t you?” Garfiel gently tapped the schematics with his fingertip, but smiled knowingly and murmured, “Looks like you’ve put the cart before the horse.”
Winry had been drawing up her plans with the assumption she would use the new tool from the outset. Feeling embarrassed when she realized he had seen through her, she took the shopping list from him.
“Then I’ll take you up on that. I’ll stop by Darish’s hotel while I’m out.”
Darish had told her where he was staying while she made his chart, and she knew it would be easy enough to stop by.
“If you could, I’d love for you to make him some wonderful automail that’ll show him not all mechanics are terrible. Oh, looks like you’ve selected the materials you’re using. Let’s see what you have here. Let me take a look,” Garfiel said with a kind look on his face as he picked up the plans in order to peruse the materials list. As he did that, another blueprint fell down from behind it.
“Oh? What’s this?” Garfiel asked, looking at the plans Winry had been perpetually writing up, erasing, then rewriting. “Is this for Darish too? Looks like it’s for a kid around his age.”
As Garfiel read the figures that were recorded on the sheet, it seemed he had deduced that the measurements were for a person around the size of a twelve-year-old.
“No, those are for a friend,” Winry said.
If Edward ever learned he had been mistaken for a twelve-year-old, he would go on a fiery rampage. Winry could almost hear him shouting, Don’t you dare call me short! She unintentionally let out a giggle. She could practically see Alphonse, exasperated and holding Edward back while saying, Wait, Ed, calm down.
“Ah, so that’s the childhood friend of yours you said you were making automail for. Hmm. You really are putting a lot of thought into it. He must be special to you.”
“No, it’s not anything like that!”
Special—when Garfiel said that word, Winry lost her cool, though she didn’t know why.
As Garfiel watched Winry suddenly go from calm to panicked, he put his hand to his mouth and uttered, “Oh my. Now, this childhood friend of yours couldn’t happen to also be your sweetheart, would he?”
“Not in the least bit!” Winry exclaimed.
“You’re so worked up. That’s so precious.”
“It’s not like that! There’s no way I’d go out with a little runt like him!”
As she shook her head and ardently denied it, Winry felt her cheeks getting flushed from how worked up she had gotten.
“I need to go run the errands!” Winry said as she dashed out of the room, feeling an odd emotion she couldn’t quite understand. She was supposed to be angry, but for some reason, she felt embarrassed.
“Have a nice trip! Really, just can’t admit it, can she?” Garfiel said, waving his hand delicately and breaking into a smile as he watched Winry stomp down the stairs.
“seriously, i can’t believe Mr. Garfiel!”
After leaving the atelier, Winry walked briskly down a road shimmering from the heat haze. Since Winry and the Elric brothers were childhood friends, she was regularly teased about Edward, though she would bluntly deny there was anything between them whenever that subject came up. She couldn’t understand why, but the earlier exchange had shaken her to an extent that was surprising even to her.
However, it was true that the thought of the Elric brothers tenaciously working toward their goal somewhere right now brought out her urge to work harder too. The two brothers who inspired her courage really were special to her in a way that couldn’t be summarized by childhood friendship.
“But they’re just friends! It’s always been that way, ever since we were small!” she said, almost as though she were trying to convince herself of something. Winry walked even faster, as if to shake off the strange agitation that had overtaken her, right as …
“Waaaaaah!”
She heard a child cry from a side street. Winry stopped in her tracks and looked over in that direction.
“Wonder what’s going on?”
She switched directions and peered around the corner to find that a small crowd had gathered in front of a street stall. A small girl sat at its center.