The next morning, Zen stood at the entrance of the inn as he saw Elysia and Mina off in a carriage. They were going to get their dresses prepared for the party that was being held the day after tomorrow.
In the western region of this continent, a custom from old times dictated that men wore formal suits and women wore dresses for events like soirees and banquets. Catalan was no exception.
They had a peculiar culture by which it was fashionable to wear a different dress every time there was a party, and that it was gauche to wear your best clothes repeatedly until they wore out.
In short, craftsmen would custom-make these extremely expensive silk dresses, adorning them with extravagant lace and embroidery and sometimes even gems, only for the dresses to be thrown away after being worn only once.
The problem here was that Catalan’s upper class consisted of bureaucrats, not nobility. Aside from those of similar backgrounds to the powerful Leadon family, who’d produced ministers for four generations in a row, a normal bureaucrat didn’t have many assets. Of course, the empire did pay them wages appropriate to their positions—if anything, they were generous.
Take Cummel, for example. As one would expect of a prefectural governor, who sat at the top of the local government hierarchy, he received a good enough salary to buy a vacation home and employ a family of caretakers for it. He’d also easily thrown his pocket money into Elysia and Keel’s expenses on this luxurious trip (although Zen still thought they were being covered by public funds).
However, Cummel was only considered “moderately” rich. The financial power he held was nothing compared to that of aristocrats, who extracted immense amounts of taxes from the citizens in their territories. The money they had was on a whole different level.
Thus, for the bureaucrats of this country, having one dress made was already expensive enough, but ordering a new one for every party became an extravagance that really stretched their finances thin. That was when the dress rental business developed in Catalan.
In the empire, if a settlement was big enough to be considered a city, it’d definitely have at least one dress rental store.
Naturally, renting one was way cheaper than having something custom-made, and you could comfortably change from dress to dress even on a bureaucrat’s salary. It was a price point that satisfied those who needed dresses for official business, like Zen’s group, and those who just needed them for entertainment purposes.
Because of that, Mina had used Alona City’s dress rental store last year, and she had agreed to take Elysia there with her this time.
During breakfast, Elysia had teased Zen. “Are you not going to choose my dress, father?”
“You shouldn’t care about what your father wants. Wear what you’d like,” he said, making a plausible excuse. He was actually reluctant because he felt that women took forever to choose clothes; Sharla had put him through enough of that pain. However, he felt like Elysia saw right through him.
I’m not a real father after all. Sorry. He internally repeated his sad excuses. Well, he didn’t know that a majority of fathers were in the same boat, reluctant to accompany their daughters shopping for that very reason.
“Have fun. Remember to be thankful to Miss Mina for showing you the way, and to His Excellency Cummel for covering the costs.”
“Yes, father.”
After he said some fatherly words to put up a good front, he saw Elysia and Mina off as their carriage departed, waiting until he couldn’t see them anymore.
Now then, we’ll be heading out too! Zen happily headed for the rear garden. Any father out there would probably be overjoyed to finally get some me-time.
There was a well-equipped stable in the back, which housed the guests’ carriages as well as the inn’s own horses. The inn managed everything there, of course.
A carriage was on standby there with Keel already waiting inside.
Incidentally, the carriage that Elysia and Mina had just taken had been provided by the inn as well, a convenience offered to guests since the inn was a fair distance from the city center. The carriage in front of Zen right now was the one they’d taken from Nazalf.
He was very familiar with the coachman by now, so Zen cheerfully said, “Let’s get going, please.” He’d already told the coachman the destination.
Zen was going out to the marshes on the city outskirts to catch carp!
He knew Elysia thought that while fishing was something he really loved, he was also extremely horrible at it. But he just couldn’t give up this hobby.
“Alona carp are delicious, but it seems they’re well-known for being fun to catch too,” said Zen. The stew at last night’s dinner had been perfection. It’d been upstaged by the blue crane, though.
“I’ve heard that too. Kulzawa was grumbling to no end about how jealous he was that you were going to Alona.”
Their next-door neighbor Kulzawa (Donna’s husband) was Zen’s fishing master, who was teaching him how to fish. In this day and age, travel was mostly a hobby for rich people. That meant that no matter how incredible Alona Prefecture was for fishing, it was pretty difficult for commoners from other areas to visit.
“I need to tell him stories of our trip when I get back.”
“You don’t mean you’re going to brag, do you?”
“Ha ha. That’d upset him for sure.”
As they sat inside the carriage, which was still quite cramped thanks to Keel, they continued their friendly conversation with Zen half buried under his fluffy coat.
Mina wasn’t here, so he could converse with Keel without reserve (although speaking loudly enough for the coachman to hear was out of the question).
However, when they exited Alona City, the carriage started shaking the moment they started treading a small, unpaved road. If Zen wasn’t careful while talking, he’d wind up biting his tongue.