Ascendance of a Bookworm

Volume 7, Chapter 5: Learning How to Make Coloured-Ink (Part 1)

The edge of a small window was lined with bottles filled with a variety of coloured inks. Each of them was labelled with a small wooden piece that also listed all of its ingredients. Joseph was busy packing them into a short wood box.

We didn’t plan on continuing our research because Joseph and Heidi started complaining about arm aches after mixing the ink for hours. It was almost lunchtime, but we had already used up the two diptychs we had brought along. We had used Lutz’s diptych after mine was completely filled with our research.

I scanned both of the diptychs.

“This is tough, it’s nearly impossible to predict the colours.”

“But we did uncover some patterns, right? It’s amazing to see our data this neatly tabulated. It’s such a blessing to have you around because you write so well, Lady Myne! You’re amazing!” Heidi cheered on as she browsed through the diptych.

Other than knowing how to read a couple of words and letters pertaining to her profession, she was pretty much illiterate. Before all this, she didn’t know how to tabulate her data and just memorised them.

“I feel that you’re much more amazing to be able to remember all these results.”

“Sadly, Heidi only has a good memory going for her when it comes to her work. She’s not that impressive,” Joseph let out a deep sigh

Lutz looked at me and grinned snarkily.

“Myne’s no different. She only works this hard as long as its related to books.”

Lutz and Joseph seemed to have formed a camaraderie over this and patted each other to console themselves. It’s great to know someone who can relate to you. It makes things much more enjoyable.

“Alright, I’ll finish tidying up all the data in the next two days.

“Oh thank goodness. I’m completely useless when it comes to writing, so I’ll leave it up to you.

Heidi and I shook each other’s hands and smiled before separating. I wanted to get home as soon as possible so that I could start analyzing our data, but Gil tugged on my sleeve with a pitiful look.

“What’s the matter, Gil?”

“Sister Myne, I would like a diptych…” Gil whispered with his eyes down.

That struck me - I promised Gil that I would give him one if he mastered reading by spring time.

“Alright, let’s drop by Johann’s smithy and place an order for you. After that I’ll head back home to wrap up these results.”

The ink workshop was just a stone throw away from the smithy as they were both located one Craftman’s Street. Johann probably wouldn’t want to see us right before his break, but we were still going to crash over.

“Good morning. Is Johann around?”

The foreman looked away from his customer towards us. The moment he saw me, he sucked in a gasp and greeted me with a stiff “Hello” and told us to take a seat.

“Wait here, I’ll call Johann,” he said.

“Hey, Gutenberg! You have a visitor!”

“Pfff!”

Lutz and Gil covered their mouths to hold back their laughter. It seemed like Johann was permanently stuck with the nickname “Gutenberg”.

“Boss, didn’t I tell you to stop calling me that!”

I thought it would be an amazing feat to be called “Gutenberg”, but Johann thought otherwise. He stomped in from the backroom with a large frown on his face.

“Good morning, Johann.”

“Oh, welcome Lady Myne.”

“I apologise for dropping by right before your lunch break. Could I make an order with you?”

“…But I’m still busy with your last order,” Johann gave a troubled look.

He was still busy making all the letter types I had ordered, but there was no rush to finish it now that the High Priest asked for the launch of the printing press to be postponed. Johann had all the time to finish them.

“Please finish this order first. I would like to order a stylus for Gil. The stylus only needs to be like the previous ones.”

“No problem!” Johann exclaimed and shot a fist up.

“I haven’t made anything but letter pieces… It’s been too long…” he mumbled to himself and I saw tears welling up in his eyes.

…Now I’m starting to feel bad. Sorry about that, Johann.

Since I was his only patron, all he had been doing was making letter pieces. Furthermore, his foreman and colleagues had been teasing him with his new title “Gutenberg”.

Maybe I should give him other things to do once in a while.

“I’ll be sending in more orders soon and it won’t be letter pieces.”

I needed an iron to flatten out the wax stencils, along with a new stylus plus a slicer for the mimeograph. I needed him to make lots of things, and they were mostly for printing.

“I will look forward to making more things other than letter pieces.”

Seeing Johann this happy for getting an order for a stylus made me feel kind of bad. However, that wasn’t going to make me change my mind that he was a Gutenberg.

After finishing my order for Gil’s stylus, just as we left the smithy, the fourth bell rung to signal that it was noon

“Are you heading home now, Myne?”

“Yep.”

“I’m getting hungry and I need to return to the store soon. I’ll carry you, hurry up.”

Lutz crouched down so that I could get on his back. Apparently there would not be much food left if he returned late. I knew that I was holding him back, so I didn’t fight back and got on his back. He got up and sped up towards the square towards the well outside my house.

“Just stay in and work on your test results after lunch. I have to drop by the Myne workshop and meet Mister Benno to tell him what went on today. Do not leave the house, alright?”

Lutz set me down in the plaza and put his diptych into my hands before immediately running off toward the Gilberta Company. It looked like he really was worried about his lunch. After seeing him off, I turned to look at Damuel and Gil, who were both blinking in surprise.

After Lutz had left, I looked back towards Damuel and Gil who looked flabbergasted by what had happened.

“Sir Damuel and Gil, I thank you very much for accompanying me. You are free to head back to the temple, I will not be heading out anymore.”

“Sure. You will be going back to the temple, right?”

“Yes, please. I would like to visit the ink workshop again, but Rosina wouldn’t be happy if I missed harpiel practice again.”

I stored Lutz’s diptych into my basket and walked up the stairs back home by myself.

“I’m home,” I greeted under my breath as I slowly pushed open the door even though the door hinges didn’t make a squeak.

“Welcome home, Myne. You’re early today,” Mum greeted me as I came in. She was probably getting ready to make lunch as she was near the stove.

“Hi Mum, how’s Kamil? Is he sleeping? I didn’t wake him up, right?” I asked and peeked at the bedroom.

“He’s doing well, don’t worry,” Mum nodded with a gentle smile.

I tiptoed to the bedroom to peek at Kamil, after that I placed my basket down and washed my hands to eat lunch with Mum. We were barely halfway done with our meal before Kamil started to wail. Mum wolfed down her food and rushed over to get him.

“Sorry Myne, but I need you to help me clean up.”

I washed our dishes before sitting down at the table. I began to transfer our data from our experiments onto my notebook that was made from a stack of failed paper. The data made more sense once I neatened them up. Linseed oil made blue, misse made green, then bedgam made red, and ise made yellow. Term seemed to make a mess of colours, but they were all pastel.

“Hm… Though there are some outliers to these rules, but I can somewhat predict how they work.”

We could make lots of colours with different combinations and amounts. We only needed to compare which materials made the oils change its colour.

“You’re so focused, Myne. What are you working on?” Mum asked me. She popped out of the bedroom with Kamil resting in the sling that was used to carry babies. He was wide awake now probably because he was satiated from milk.

“I’m going to make a picture book for Kamil. It needs lots of colourful ink, I’m trying to figure out how to make them now.”

“You’re going to make it from scratch? That will probably take some time, huh.”

“I guess it would. So what did Kamil do today?”

I gently patted his head and he stared at me with his large eyes. I wasn’t a formidable sister like Delia, but I was happy enough to see that Kamil didn’t cry with me around.

“Kamil, Kamil. I’m your big sister, Myne.”

I played with Kamil for some time before he started to get sleepy again. Mum carried him back to bed and I went back to working on the list I had compiled.

“Wait a second.”

Now that I had relooked the list, I realised that the very familiar parue oil wasn’t in it.

“Maybe we should give that a shot, too. Who know what would happen? I should probably give some to the workshop too. We also need to check if the ink’s colour will appear different on paper and how long it lasts. On top of that, we need to check if the colours can be overlapped.

I made sure to note down everything I needed to do, and I would share them with Heidi the next time we meet.