CH 88

Today is the first day off since school started. Today is also my day off, so I can relax all day long.

First of all, after completing the daily training in the morning and finishing breakfast, I carefully wash my body in the bath. The water was drawn with a hand pump, and I used Heat magic to boil the water, so I didn’t use fuel. As expected, using a large amount of firewood to take a bath in the morning is too luxurious. Heat magic doesn’t require fuel, so it’s convenient to easily boil water.

After cleansing my body that got muddy from exercise in the morning, the next step is to change clothes. It’s not the usual dress or formal attire for aristocrats, it’s plain and simple like the work clothes of the common people. For your reference, I wonder if it feels more like a plain dirndl.

The dirndl is a traditional national costume of Southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. However, unlike modern gaudy dirndl, it is simpler and shows less skin. The color is subdued, and it doesn’t have a miniskirt with a completely open chest, but a long skirt with a tightly closed collar.

The reason why I’m dressed like this is that today I’m supposed to be walking around the royal capital together with Louisa as a commoner, not as a noble.

Well, not only did I always get around in a carriage, but I also walked around the capital with Claudia when I was knighted, but even then, I was dressed like a knight and I wasn’t completely walking among the commoners as one of them. Years have passed and the castle town has changed.

That’s why today I’m going to walk around the royal capital together with Louisa as a normal town girl. I’ll also be going to the Caanza Trading Firm’s royal capital branch to see how the place is doing.

There are a lot of people who work in the royal capital and their superiors know about me, but ordinary shop clerks don’t know about me. In the first place, they probably don’t even know who runs Caanza.

Not only do they not know that I am a business owner, but they do not know that I am the daughter of Margrave Carruthers, or that I am the Head of the Caan Knighthood. How do they serve customers? I want to experience it firsthand.

In short, the president came incognito! It’s just a little bit of fooling around just because I want to do something like this. It would be a big problem if they saw me and Louisa as just ordinary citizens not worth entertaining even, but if that wasn’t the case, it would be nothing more than trying to experience my own store as a customer.

“Miss Flora…… do you really intend to go out in this outfit?” Katharina said.

When I was posing in front of my mirror, Katharina said that with a confused expression. Is there something wrong? I think I’ve perfectly dressed as a young common woman…

“Is there something strange about me?” I asked. “I think I look like a commoner’s daughter like the ones I always see from the carriage, but…”

I try pinching the hem of the skirt a little to make it flutter or turn to the side to check. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, but I wonder if there’s something wrong with Katharina.

“No, you’re dressed like a normal town girl,” Katharina said.

“Aren’t I?” I asked.

I don’t quite understand what Katharina wants to say. I definitely look like a normal town girl. There is nothing strange about it. What’s wrong with this?

“Haa……” Katharina sighed. “If you understand that, Miss Flora, then it’s fine……”

I do not understand. But I heard that I didn’t look strange, so I decided to leave without worrying about it. The house servants of the Carruthers Residence are looking at me with startled faces, but I don’t worry about it. Once I’m out of the gates, I’m transformed into a normal town girl.

“…”

“…”

I leave the gate and walk silently.

“…………”

“…………”

Walk silently… can I do it like this?!

“Katharina! Oliver! If you guys follow me, I won’t be able to go for a leisurely walk!” I yelled.

That’s the problem. For some reason, Katharina and Oliver have been following me ever since I left the gates. Even though I’m dressed like a commoner, it’s completely meaningless if I take two subordinates with me. If you’re not an ordinary person at a glance, you’ll be spotted.

“But Lady Flora, it’s our job to protect you,” Oliver complained.

“Oliver… I’m not a young lady today. I’m just a town girl Floto,” I said. “Does a town girl walk around with an escort detail?”

At my words, Oliver and Katharina looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.

“Lady Flo… Sir Floto, I can understand what you’re trying to say, but I can’t let you go alone…” Oliver said.

“I see… understood,” I said. “Then please trail behind me and come with me secretly. There’s no point in being right behind me like this. Today I’m Floto, a commoner’s daughter. Is that alright?”

I offered a compromise. I don’t understand what Oliver and Katharina are saying. My family and subordinates have a job to protect me. And yet I can’t tell them to quit doing their jobs. So hang back and protect me from there. That’s the best concession I can make. If I can’t even do this, I’ll go to Louisa’s place alone even if I have to lose these two in a chase.

“… Understood,” Oliver said. “Then we’ll follow you from a distance…”

It seems Oliver has given in. Then there would be no need to force the two of them. I somehow managed to compromise and reach an agreement, so I immediately headed to the meeting place and Louisa.

When I went to the meeting place with Louisa, she was already waiting.

“I’m sorry Louisa,” I said. “I’m here now.”

“Mmm,” Louisa hummed as she turned around. “I just arrived, so … Floto?”

She stared at me blankly. I wondered if Katharina and Oliver were following behind me and turned around to investigate, but they were walking quite far away and didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. Normally you wouldn’t notice the connection.

“What’s wrong? Is something up?” I asked.

Today I have to be careful not to sound like a noble or a young knight. Besides, since I can talk to Louisa in a casual manner, the distance between the two of us can be shortened at once.

“Ah~… yeah… if you think this is okay, Floto, then it’s okay…” Louisa said.

Again. Something similar to what happened with Katharina. Is there something wrong with my clothes?

After looking at my disguise, I look at the appearance of the girls around me. There’s nothing wrong with us. The town girls and I look the same. What is this feeling though?

Well, even if I think about it, I probably won’t come up with an answer, so I’ll forget about it. This is a pattern for which there is no answer. If that’s the case, I have no choice but to believe them because they said that I don’t look strange.

“Then let’s head out, shall we?” I asked. “Where will you guide me first?”

“About that… to be honest, I think Carruzan was better than the royal capital…” Lousia said.

Oh, really? Why is that? Carruzan is large enough to qualify as a city, but just as I was called a Country Girl at school, it’s just a rural city. The size of the town, population, state-of-the-art fashion, and products, etc. are more advanced in the royal capital.

Recently, thanks to my ideas and Caanza Trading Firm’s products, I feel that Caanburg and Carruzan are at the cutting edge of fashion, but even so, it’s still a provincial city that can’t help but be called part of the countryside.

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Umm, you see… Carruzan has public toilets and pipes for those, right? The royal capital… right?” Lousia said.

“Ahh……” I said.

I know what Louisa means. In the royal capital, the drainage ditches in the middle of the back alleys are still overflowing with filth. The main streets are fine, but if you go to the back streets, it’s impossible to walk without stepping on filth.

And you never know when filth will be thrown from above. There is a warning shout for the moment, but whether or not you can avoid it after hearing it depends on your luck. If they’re in a hurry, the shout might be meaningless as they dump at the same time. There is no point in a warning if there is no time to heed it.

So, in the end, it was only the main street that we strolled through. This is no different from walking with Claudia in the past. But there was no place I wanted to go to while the back streets were covered in filth, so I decided to walk the main streets while seeing the difference from the old days.

While walking with Louisa, we spent leisurely time at the shops on the main street. However, unlike Japanese shops, there are not many clothes hanging in the clothing store, so there’s not much to browse. The main things I see at stalls and shops are daily goods, food, and things that can be eaten on the spot.

There’s no point in me looking for meat and vegetables, but I’ll just take a look. It’s not completely meaningless because it’s a good place to study things like prices or market rates. As expected from the royal capital, there are vegetables that have never been seen in either Carruthers or Caan territories.

I was also surprised that there was a fishmonger. The royal capital of Berne, which is inland to the southeast of Caanburg, does not face the sea. The route of going up the river and transporting it by boat is also slightly far away. Is it possible to run a fishmonger under such conditions?

Well, there are not only sea fish but also river fish, so there may be a river fish supplier, but there were also sea fish on display. I was a little curious, so I asked the owner about it.

“Excuse me. May I talk to you for a minute?” I asked.

“Yeah?” he snapped. “What is it? If you don’t want to buy, go away… aah! What do you need, Young Lady?”

The shop owner, who was trying to drive me away with a weary look, changed his attitude as soon as he saw me. Something is wrong after all. Everyone I spoke to throughout the day was like this. I wondered if my outfit was strange, so I grabbed the hem of the skirt and checked the sides and back, but there was nothing particularly strange about it. What in the hell is going on?

“There’s sea fish on display here, but how? Berne should be far away from the sea…”

I can’t help but worry about it, so I’ll ask what I want to hear for the time being.

“Ah~… yeah, you may not be aware of this, but there is a specialized transporter supplying ‘em,” the fishmonger said.

“Huh?!” I yelled in surprise.

After sorting out the fishmonger’s story, it seems that there is a company that specializes in transporting fish. It seems that they can transport fresh fish up to about 100 km. As expected, it is difficult to keep it raw and edible if it has to travel so long, so it seems that it is dried, smoked, or salted first.

Come to think of it, about half of the fish lined up in the store are processed products such as dried fish and smoked fish. It seems that the fish are landed at the nearest port to Berne and are immediately transported, so they seem to be able to bring fresh fish somehow.

I’m supposed to be eating fish at home too, but I never thought about it until now. After all, if you don’t walk around town and see it with your own eyes, you won’t understand this kind of thing.

I was also surprised when I entered a store for lunch. Apparently ,there is no such thing as breakfast in this world. That’s strange. My family used to have breakfast. However, if you say so, it seems that effectively two meals during the day and night were normal in this medieval Europe like-world and even on Earth during its day, so I wonder if that’s what it’s like.

We are a family of muscle-brained soldiers where your body is your most important asset, and soldiers and manual laborers seem to eat breakfast and snacks, so that may be the case. This is something I finally learned after going out and experiencing the lives of ordinary people.

“Thank you very much,” I said.

“No, I’m honored I could help!” the fishmonger said with a strange salute-like gesture as I left.

“That man was interesting, wasn’t he?” I said.

“Hahaa… I guess…” Lousia said.

I feel like I can hear the dryness in her laugh, but let’s not worry too much about it. That’s all for today.

“Then let’s head to Caanza Trading Firm soon, shall we?” I said.

“Hey Floto… are you really going to go?” Louisa said, seemingly uneasy.

“Why? Are you worried about something?” I asked.

“The thing is… there are rumors going around that even aristocrats can’t afford to buy Caanza’s products, you know? I wonder if a pauper, or even just a commoner like me, would get yelled at if we tried to enter…”

Is that what she was so worried about? Caanza has a luxury goods department that only members can buy from, and a daily necessities department that anyone can buy from. I don’t think Louisa, who is a supervisor at my ranch, is a pauper, but Caanza is a business where anyone, whether a commoner or a pauper, can easily enter. And it’s meaningful just to go see it.

If there is a problem such as the clerks making fun of the common people and not properly serving customers, they are breaking my policy. Whether or not they are properly educated is also important, and today’s inspection includes that.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You may be fine because you’re a noble, Floto, but I’m…” Louisa said, still worried.

I take Louisa’s hand and stare straight at her.

“I’ll protect you, Louisa! Okay?” I said.

“… Mmm,” Louisa said.

Oh? She seemed to blush slightly and nodded after looking down. How pretty. Somehow, Louisa feels relieved. Maybe it’s because I was originally just a commoner in Japan, I feel at ease when I’m with Louisa, who has the sense of a commoner. I feel more at ease than dealing with other nobles and the people surrounding them.

Louisa’s face is by no means a beauty. But I like her for her charm. She makes me feel at ease.

Taking Louisa by the hand, the two of us stepped into the Caanza Trading Firm’s royal capital branch.