The sales pitch for using the girls as walking advertisements for glasses at the wedding party was a surprising success. It turned out that even on the Western Continent, where technology was much more advanced, glasses were still seen as simple tools for sight correction. It appeared no country viewed glasses as a fashion accessory.
The grand duchesses of Brunhild, known across the world for having introduced new sweets, meals, fun toys, and useful gadgets to the world, were now all wearing glasses despite their sight being more than fine.
That meant this was the first time that glasses were perceived as a fashion item. In which case, there was no reason the royal family and nobility wouldn’t jump on it, especially the women. What was more, for the people who did wear glasses for their sight, it gave them the idea of having more than one pair that they could wear depending on their mood.
I chose that moment to lay out a selection of glasses on a table, and that immediately caused a glasses boom.
I first gifted a pair of glasses to each of the princesses of Allent, given this party was for them. The contrast with the usual appearances of their wives struck the two young kings of Dauburn and Zadonia right in the heart—I knew exactly how they felt.
After that, everyone tried to look for a pair of glasses that they liked, excitement spreading among the wives and young ladies in attendance. I decided to leave that part of it to the girls, while I recommended bifocal glasses to the elderly that were present. The lens of bifocal glasses contained near, far, and intermediate lenses combined in one. By shifting your sight up and down, you could see both further away and closer.
The emperor of Regulus was having difficulty focusing his vision in his old age and was thankful for the pair of glasses he was given. He’d had the issue for a while, but it had apparently been growing much worse recently.
Wait...it isn’t because I gave him a smartphone, right? There is a way to magnify the text...
Originally, I didn’t care all that much about whether or not glasses started trending—it had nothing to do with me. Or so I thought. But with this realization, I was starting to feel as if I were partly to blame. You couldn’t heal worsening eyesight with [Recovery], after all... Not unless it was the aftereffect of a disease like with Sue’s mother, anyway.
It wasn’t exactly intended as a way to make up for what I’d done, but I gave the rulers of the Western Continent instruction manuals from Glassie detailing how to grind lenses. The techniques had already been developing over this side of the world, but each factory generally kept its processes secret, so to have me so casually hand over the instructions surprised all of them. In return, I asked that they introduce me to any lens craftsmen who would be willing to move to Brunhild—if we didn’t become proficient at creating glasses without divine assistance, it would never spread to the common people.
“So wait, where’d the god of glasses go?”
“He went to Allent. The nobles over there have already started wearing glasses more, so he wants to spread the gospel of glasses over there for now, he said.”
I explained everything that had happened to Karen and Suika when they very conveniently appeared after the god of glasses was already gone.
“Anyway, where did you two get off to, forcing the god of glasses on me like that?”
“He’s so long-winded, y’know... It’s such a pain. He always tries to recommend these weird glasses whenever he sees us too,” Karen complained as she pulled out a pink pair of heart-shaped sunglasses from her pocket dimension. I’d seen sunglasses like those in manga, but apparently they existed in real life too. Honestly, it kind of fit the goddess of love perfectly.
“Hey, they don’t look so bad. I think they’d suit you, actually! Pfft—”
I couldn’t hold back the laughter when Karen slipped the glasses on. She looked so shady! The goddess immediately slammed her fist into my solar plexus as I tried to hold the laughs back.
“Guh?!”
“You’re laughing way too hard, y’know.”
Ugh... At least it stopped my laughing.
“Karen’s are fine, but he left me with these...”
This time it was Suika slipping a pair of glasses on. They had thick eyebrows, a red nose, and a little mustache; it was a pair of nose glasses.
“AHA HA HA HA! THIS IS AMAZING!”
I couldn’t help but start rolling on the floor in laughter. It was the perfect pair of glasses for a drunkard like her!
“Gwuh?!”
“You’re laughing way too hard.”
Ugh... Don’t punch me in the same place!
“Well, I’m relieved he’s gone. If he’d ended up settling down here, Brunhild would’ve become known as the kingdom of glasses, y’know.”
“The thought of that’s gonna give me nightmares tonight...”
I supported the idea of ensuring that all citizens had access to glasses, but not the idea that everyone should wear them. Even the girls took off the glasses once they returned from the party, though they said they’d wear them for a change of pace here and there.
Elze and Yae said they’d wear Appraisal glasses in future, since they were pretty bad at remembering names and faces. That definitely was one of the ways they could find use.
We’d handed out glasses to the children, but they didn’t care about them so much that they’d go so far as using them as a fashion item. The only kids that still wore them sometimes were Quun and Yoshino. They were the two that really cared about their fashion. Yoshino had also been using some glasses with a scope function to help aim with her harpbow. Those were the kind of enhanced glasses I was thankful for.