Since there was going to be a festival on the day of our wedding ceremony, we were flooded with applications from people wishing to run stalls, including store owners. It was my job to inspect each one and give my approval. There was limited space for stalls, so we couldn’t accept all of them—my days were spent carefully selecting an equal variety to ensure the enjoyment of as many residents as possible.
Aside from that, I also had to write invitations and think of dishes to be served at the reception. There was a mountain of work to be done, not to mention my existing duties at the Lakeside Duck Bakery that couldn’t be ignored, like taste testing new products, greeting visitors, and replying to inquiries.
Fortunately, I had help from our capable steward, Constance, and my loyal attendants, Nico, Rico, and Coco. They were working as hard as they could too. And then there was my duck, Alexandrine, whose presence soothed my heart. Whenever I collapsed at my desk, she would nuzzle against my cheek to cheer me up. At the same time, Wibble would call for a break and make me delicious tea. I wouldn’t have been able to get things done without everyone’s help—I was so grateful to them.
In the evenings, Gabriel and I would discuss aurora pearl production. We took turns reading the book that Emilie had given us, but the content was so complex that I couldn’t even understand a tenth of it.
“It’s not your fault, Fran,” said Gabriel. “This cultivation method uses high-level magical techniques, so the book doesn’t hesitate to use specialist jargon. How far have you gotten in it?”
I showed him the page I was on.
“You’ve already read that much?!” he exclaimed in surprise.
“I skimmed the parts I didn’t understand, so I haven’t been taking in everything.” The book was dense with hastily scrawled notations, and I didn’t know most of the terminology. I might have been progressing quickly, but it hardly mattered when I wasn’t processing what I read.
“No, what surprises me is that you could read these words and sentences at all.”
“The words and sentences?”
“The handwriting is clearly terrible, isn’t it? And the prose is all over the place.”
The writing was certainly a bit crude, and the sentences meandered and weren’t well constructed. “It’s not unreadable, though.”
“It takes me quite a while to piece together what it’s saying, so I lose focus. I end up getting a headache.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Yes. The writing is so poor that I have to read your letters to calm myself down. How is it that you can read it?”
“I think...it’s probably because I was exposed to various kinds of penmanship as a child.” I had exchanged letters with a diverse group of people, some of whom had writing that looked like chicken scratch, but I had simply thought it was unique. Reading messy handwriting came easily to me.
“That’s wonderful. You could say it’s a special skill.”
“Is it really?”
“Yes. Please have confidence in yourself.”
The look in his gaze was so serious that I had to nod and accept it.
“Since childhood, I’ve never been good at reading original magic tomes,” he continued. “Most of them were written by hand, before the invention of printing, and reading them was agonizing because the majority of the mages capable of publishing their work had poor handwriting and rambling prose. But nowadays, most of the magic books in circulation are neat transcripts rewritten by scribes, so it is no longer common to come across messy text. That’s why this is so tiring.”
“It must’ve been hard for you.”
“Indeed. I can only read this aurora pearl cultivation book for an hour every night before I feel sick. If only it were written by you, I’d be able to read it for hours.”
I hadn’t known Gabriel had been struggling so much with the book. Suddenly, I had an idea. “In that case, shall I read it and transcribe the text for you?”
“Wouldn’t that be too much trouble?”
“Not at all. I didn’t understand most of what I read, but I can definitely copy as much of it as you want.”
“That would be a great help!”
It wouldn’t be good to transcribe it without permission, though, so I would have to ask Emilie first.
“For now, why don’t I read it to you?” I asked.
“That would be nice. I’m sure I’ll have wonderful dreams.”
Happy to be able to contribute something, I immediately started reading the book aloud for him.
A few days later, I received permission from Emilie to transcribe the book and began doing so in my spare time.
“Wibble will help!”
“Thank you.”
Together with my talented slime assistant, I copied the book’s contents to a separate ream of paper.
I vaguely knew that pearls came from oysters, but I didn’t know how exactly they were made. The book described the principles of pearl production in detail.
When a foreign object such as a grain of sand enters an oyster’s shell, the oyster feels pain. In order to alleviate the pain, it envelops the grain with an iridescent substance it secretes called nacre. The resulting object is called a pearl.
In other words, pearls weren’t actively produced by oysters—they were the product of a natural defense mechanism. When the first ogre duke discovered this mechanism, he had wondered if pearls could be cultivated.
The creation process required both time and effort. In order to artificially produce pearls, a core in the shape of a perfect sphere was placed inside the oyster. The oyster was then fed powdered magicite. Magic was used to strictly control the water quality and temperature too.
The pearl would be ready in a week at the earliest, but before it was harvested, a transparency spell was used to check its condition within the shell. If it was fully formed, it was taken out of the oyster.
The harvested pearls were sorted by a variety of factors, such as size, level of imperfection, and luster. Then they were shipped to jewelers and other dealers.
“Phew,” I sighed, having finished transcribing a few dozen pages about pearl cultivation. Wibble had performed all of the miscellaneous tasks like switching out the sheets of paper, drying the ink, and refilling the inkwell, allowing me to focus solely on writing.
“Fra, did you make good progress?”
“Yes, I got a lot done thanks to you, Wibble.”
“Yay!”
I had each page delivered to Gabriel in sequence as soon as the ink dried. Partway through, I received a message card from him, saying, “Your writing is very beautiful and easy to read. Thank you.” Reading it made me so happy, I felt all of my fatigue disappear.
I’ll keep up this pace for the rest of the book, I thought with renewed motivation.