CH 67

A few days after that, I was in a daze and couldn’t do anything. Do I want to go see how Mikoto is doing? Just for a little while… to see if Mikoto might be waiting over there again…

No! I can’t, I can’t, I can’t! If Mikoto was really still waiting for me over there, if she saw me like that, I would never be able to push her away. If I do that, I’ll end up making Mikoto dependent on me again.

Calm down. This is not goodbye forever. This is necessary for Mikoto to become independent. If I do anything extra here, Mikoto’s dependence will never be cured. What should I do when I’m anxious?

…… Well, I guess that’s what it is. In the end, I was also dependent on Mikoto. This may be what is called codependence. I don’t know what form or condition would merit calling it that, but at least we were dependent on each other. Even though I’m being so boastful I was also dependent on Mikoto. That’s why I’m so restless.

Now I and Mikoto can get back on our feet. So that we can overcome our dependence on each other and smile together again… now we have to endure… I will get over this…

“Miss Flora, Lady Victoria has come to see you…”

Helmut hesitantly called out to me. I guess he already knows that I’ve been acting weird for the past few days. It’s difficult to keep secrets from Helmut and Isabella, who are both always with me. In particular, I tend to show my emotions easily. I thought I was putting on a poker face, but the two soon found out.

“Is that so? Let’s go to the drawing-room, then,” I said.

I was working in the office at Manor Carruthers, but once I took my hands off my work, I headed to the reception room. Since I had business with Victoria, I entrusted the message and letter to the branch office a while ago. I heard that Victoria was going to the royal capital, so I thought it would take a while, but apparently, she’s back already.

“Good day, Lady Flora… oh my? Are you alright?” Victoria said as soon as I entered the room.

It seems I don’t have a poker face at all. Even Victoria, who I don’t see every day, could tell that immediately.

“It’s nothing. Good afternoon, Mrs. Victoria. Please, have a seat,” I said.

I can’t stay in a daze forever. And it’s not a bad goodbye. A temporary goodbye for us. If I can’t overcome this, I can’t see Mikoto no matter how long it takes. So if I can’t get over it…

I let Victoria, who is still worried about me, sit down and proceed with the conversation immediately. There was no other reason to summon Victoria. It was regarding the development of underwear and sanitary products. This is also a matter of life and death for me.

I talked to Victoria about the rough idea. However, Victoria’s expression is not very pleasant.

“Underwear… I don’t think there will be much demand for it. In addition, it’s a little too expensive to use cotton as a disposable item for menstruation,” Victoria said. “It’s not that expensive to just put a cloth between your legs, so how many people are willing to pay such a high price to use something like that…?”

Apparently, Victoria wants to say that there will be no demand from a merchant’s point of view. Certainly, in this environment where there is not much cotton in the first place, it may even be outrageous to throw it away as just a menstruation napkin. But it’s no concern of mine. I don’t develop this as a product to sell, I develop it because I want it, so it doesn’t matter if it sells or not.

“I know that even if I commercialize it, it will be too expensive to sell. I’m not trying to sell it to the world,” I said. “I just want to make this exclusively for myself. And to lower the price, I’m thinking of growing cotton in House Caan’s territory.”

“Cotton? Does cotton grow from plants? Can you cultivate it?” Victoria asked.

Cotton is still very minor in this world. Even in the past, in medieval Europe, silk and cotton were only brought from East Asia and South Asia through the Silk Road, and they were not cultivated locally. It is even found that in some parts of Europe cotton was thought to be the tree from which sheep sprouted.

In the first place, cotton cannot be grown unless it is warm and you have abundant water, so it may be difficult to grow cotton in Europe due to the climate. The southernmost tips of Greece, Italy, and Spain are only about the same latitude as Tokyo, Japan. Even though warm air flows in due to the currents of the Atlantic Ocean and westerly winds, there are overwhelmingly many colder places in Europe than in Japan.

“It would be difficult to grow in the open air in this normal climate,” I said. “In order to grow cotton, it would have to be in a warmer area. It is possible to grow crops from warm regions even in cold regions, hence I’m thinking of making glass for the greenhouse.”

“Use glass?” Victoria asked.

I briefly explain the greenhouse to Victoria. To put it in extreme terms, greenhouses and plastic greenhouses shut out the cold outside air and take in only the sunlight, and that heats up the inside. It’s the same as turning on a stove or heater in the winter and closing the room, causing warm air to accumulate in the room. It’s just doing it with the heat of the sun, instead.

In addition to this, if you want to raise the temperature even further, you can turn on a stove or heater in the greenhouse, or bury a chimney in the ground and start a fire, like underfloor heating.

There is already some glass in this world. However, it cannot be mass-produced with high quality. There is no such thing as clean flat plate glass with low transparency.

Glass raw materials are silica sand, soda ash, lime, and lead oxide is added to make glass with high transparency. Silica sand is quartz, and it is the sparkling sand of beaches and river sands. A large amount of this can be obtained when the sand and sand are removed from Cien’s new port, which is trying to secure the water depth by removing the sea sand to create a port, and the Lubek estuary.

Soda ash can be refined by collecting ash, so you can also get this with Cien, which produces a lot of ash with salt cooked in a kettle. Limestone was found in the mountains when we investigated the northern mountains, so we can probably get limestone by digging into the mountains. In the worst case, even if lime is not available in House Caan’s territory, it’s not that rare, so it can be covered by imports.

If the manufacturing method of sheet glass can be industrially processed, if the molten glass is poured over molten metal which is heavier than glass, the glass will flow straight and flat, and sheet glass will be formed. However, it is impossible to do such an industrial thing suddenly, so there is no choice but to make a metal roller and press it flat.

If you try to make a greenhouse with plain glass, the glass here and there will probably break immediately, so you need to take measures against that.

First of all, metal is simply put inside so that the glass does not break easily. There are two types to try. One is a simple wire mesh. It is a metal that is intersected and woven into a mesh so that it pulls on each other.

The other is rasu, simply put, a sheet of metal that has been cut so it spreads out. You may remember making a net decoration for the Tanabata festival. It’s a decoration that looks like a net when you make cuts in the paper alternately so that they don’t connect and spread out when you pull the edges. Making that out of metal is called rasu.

A familiar type of rasu is a metal rasu that can be put into a wall or mortar. Alternatively, they may use the same structure as scaffolding. I think rasu is more troublesome, but I’ll try to make it for the time being and compare the two.

In addition, try to reinforce the surface by coating it with something like tar, or put two pieces of glass together to form a laminated glass with a natural resin sandwiched between them to make it more difficult to break. I don’t know what’s best, so I’ll have to experiment.

Once the cotton is produced, cellulose can be produced from short-fiber waste cotton. If cellulose can be produced, it will be possible to make transparent and thin sheets such as cellophane and films. And maybe a plastic type like celluloid could be made.

If we can make a transparent sheet of resin, we may be able to make something like a vinyl greenhouse. If that happens, large-scale production using large plastic greenhouses instead of expensive glass greenhouses may become possible. By making cotton, it becomes possible to make cellulose, and by making cellulose, the number of plastic greenhouses increases, which further increases the production of cotton. Such a cycle would be pretty easy.

However, these are not things that can be easily reproduced with my knowledge alone. I only vaguely know about it, and I don’t even know how to procure raw materials and chemicals in the first place. For example, it is easy to say that it is sodium chlorite or acetic acid, but it is not clear how to prepare sodium chlorite or acetic acid.

In the modern world, if you go to a place that sells it in some way, you will probably get it. There are things that ordinary people can’t normally buy, but if it’s a school or a research institute, for example, you can buy them from their suppliers. But in this world you have to start by preparing it, so I don’t know how to refine it.

I want someone who has a lot of scientific knowledge and can actually research and put my silly knowledge into practice. If we can entrust the development to such a person, there should be an increase in the number of modern and reproducible things.

Then, once plate glass can be made, it will become possible to make large mirrors out of tin foil, mercury, and silver. Not only glass but also mirrors will sell as popular products. In fact, France has a track record of making large profits by recruiting glass craftsmen from Venice and other places to make large mirrors and selling them all over Europe.

“I see… very impressive, Sir Floto,” Victoria said. “I didn’t realize you’d thought so far ahead…”

After giving her the rough idea, Victoria seemed to already be thinking of something as she nodded.

The fact that Flora has changed to Floto means that this is a Floto project in Victoria’s mind. I still don’t know what the standard is…

Victoria must have had a lot of things beyond her comprehension in my story. Even so, she must have understood that if we made glass, greenhouses, greenhouses, or mirrors, they could sell. All of them are actually just a by-product of my desire to make sanitary products, but that doesn’t matter.

“I understand… I would like to introduce you to people from Kruck,” Victoria said. “Would it be possible for you to hire them into House Caan? I’m sure they will be useful to you as your employees.”

“A personal introduction?” I asked.

Victoria smiled faintly. We are always understaffed, so everyone is welcome to some extent. I refuse to hire criminals, but… She said that she would introduce her at a later date, so the meeting with Victoria was closed for the day. 1

Three days after meeting with Victoria, Victoria brought three people to Manor Caan.

“These are the people I was talking about the other day,” Victoria said.

Two men and a woman are lined up in front of me. One was an old man with a slightly bald head, his remaining hair spread out in a mess as if it had exploded. The other is a young and gentle-looking beautiful woman with a bob cut. The last is a young and handsome man.

“First, Dr. Eins Stadt,” Victoria said.

“Fuhn! This is just a child! There’s no way a child like this can understand my mind!” the old man with the exploded head-of-hair snapped all of a sudden.

It seems he does not like me.

“Well, well… the woman next to him is Anneliese Stadt. She’s Dr. Ains’ wife,” Victoria said.

“Please to meet you,” Anneliese said.

Huh!? A wife, not a daughter!? This old fart! I wish I had such a young and beautiful wife!

“And the last one is Ehren Luchin. De in Dr. Ains’s assistant.”

“I’m Ehren Luchin. A pleasure to meet you as well,” he said.

Hmmm… it feels more natural for Anneliese and Ehren to be husband and wife. Well, everyone has different preferences. If they both consented, it’s not something I have anything to say about.

“I thought you were going to introduce me to a noble sponsor, why is this child here?!” Eins yelled.

And this old man is still snapping… I think it’s better to refuse him… we can’t seem to get over this…

“Dr. Eins, no matter how much you are a learned man, I will not allow you to be rude to Sir Floto. She is the sponsor I was talking about and the one who came up with many of the new products and inventions we offer at our company.

Ah… is that so? This old man was also involved in the product development of Kruck.

“What did you…?!” Eins yelled. “So it’s you! You came up with those ideas! Hahaa…!” Eins gasped.

“Umm……?” I asked.

As soon as he heard Victoria’s words, the old man got on his knees before he slammed his forehead on the floor. What is this? I’m already getting pretty tired just dealing with this guy, but…