by SOW
Lud placed the case holding the bread on top of the small, rickety chapel’s table.
“Sorry to put you to trouble, Mr. Lud.”
“Its okay, these are leftovers.”
“Um... What exactly is this?”
Sven looked confused. Lud had not explained why he was bringing the leftover bread to the church.
“About once a week I come here to give alms.”
“Hmm... and what are... alms?” Sven asked.
“It’s a bit of a long story, but...”
It started about six months ago with the lack of customers at the Tockerbrot. Lud hated throwing out the unsold bread that he had worked so hard to bake every day. It felt like his body was being torn in two.
One day, Lud noticed some children with their faces pressed up against the bakery window, staring hungrily at the raisin bread. They were dressed in shabby clothes and clearly didn’t have enough to eat. Even though they had heard about the fierce-faced baker, their hunger was greater than their fear, and drew them to the bakery.
Lud invited the children in and let them eat the unsold bread. Lud was delighted that they enjoyed the bread, and put what remained in a bag and gave it to them. The next day, Marlene visited the bakery to thank Lud. The children he fed were from the church orphanage.
Her church had no benefactors so operating the orphanage was very difficult. The children and Marlene worked on the small church farm, performed some side jobs, and lived huddled together inside the church. Food was scarce.
Then the children appeared in front of Lud’s bakery.
“I am thankful for your concern, but I ask that you ignore them from now on,” Marlene said. She didn’t want the children to grow dependent upon charity.
“At first, people will give them charity with kindness. But if the children show up more often, they’ll be turned away and looked at as dirty pests. Then it’s the children who get hurt,” Marlene explained.
Lud opened his mouth with a sad look on his face.
“I just want someone to eat my bread.”
Lud told Marlene that he was a former soldier, and that after the war he had borrowed money to open the bakery, but no one would come in. Then, he had a single proposal to make.
“Could I bring bread for them once a week? As an alms substitute for when I come to pray?”
Marlene gently smiled and accepted the proposal.
Lud finished his story. It was a little embarrassing for him. Sven’s eyes welled up as she listened.
“I can’t believe that something like that could have happened...”
Wiltia won the war. But since Pelfe had been annexed by Wiltia, its people should have been treated as citizens. However, the postwar restoration occurred in the victor’s home country, with regions closest to the capital given priority. This meant that the rural and annexed areas were slow to receive any benefits from the war.
Poverty undermines the weakest among us first.
“I can’t believe that you have been driven to this... Master, how awful!” Sven cried.
“That’s what made you cry?!”
Lud agreed that it was quite pathetic for a baker to have to beg people to eat his bread. He felt a deep gratitude towards Marlene and the children who ate and enjoyed the bread he baked.
“I came to Pelfe after the war... so there is also a gulf between me and the people here,” Marlene said, with a forced smile.
Even though the telegraph network had spread far and wide, the railway extended to the edge of the continent, and airplanes flew around the world, the old suspicions and resentments toward outsiders in the rural towns did not change easily. Even now, the villagers treated the young sister as a foreigner.
“That’s why... I could understand Mr. Lud’s feelings, too,” Marlene finished.
As such, when Marlene saw Lud’s situation, she was sympathetic.
“So now I come and bring them bread. But, thanks to Sven, there have been more customers, and there is less leftover bread than usual today. Here, these are madeleines. Please share them with everyone.”
Since his alms were less, he had prepared a fresh-baked addition in a rush before coming.
“Oh my... They’re still warm. The children love sweet things.” Marlene smiled happily as she accepted the paper bag.
“Hm...”
From behind, Lud suddenly felt a glare stabbing him in the back. This wasn’t the first time. He had felt it last week, and the week before that, and the week before that. He turned around and glimpsed a shadow peeking through a crack in the door.
“............”
Hiding there was a young girl around fourteen, who was glaring at him with intense hatred. Lud knew the girl’s face very well. Her name was Milly, and she was an orphan who lived at the church.
“Wh-What’s up, Milly...” Lud called out to her, awkwardly.
The hostility in Milly’s eyes didn’t change.
“... I... never...” Milly quietly muttered with loathing.
“I’ll never eat any of your stupid bread! Get out of here!” Milly yelled at Lud, before running further into the church.
“What is wrong with that girl?!”
Sven looked enraged and began to run after her.
“Forget it, Sven. She’s always like this, don’t pay any attention.”
Lud rushed to stop Sven and was surprised at the force and power in her tiny body.
“Always? That child always speaks to Master like that?!”
Her anger was so fierce, it was as if too much coal had been thrown into a steam engine and increased its heat to a dangerous level. The only thing missing was the sound of whistling from her ears.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Lud. I’ll make sure to sit Milly down and talk to her later...”
“It’s okay, please don’t be upset with her.”
That was a lie. It wasn’t okay. There was nothing more painful than to be rejected with such fury.
Lud was certain Marlene understood this.
“... Well then, we’ll be going. I’ll be by next week.” Lud stood up.
“At least stay for some tea.”
“Oh... next time...”
That was a lie, too. Lud always refused Marlene’s invitation for tea. He felt somehow that he was soiling the church, which was Milly’s only haven for rest and comfort. He never stayed long.
Marlene understood what Lud was thinking and didn’t say anything further. Lud said goodbye, and sitting next to Sven who was still shaking with indignation, he drove the truck towards town.
“Hmph!”
Sitting in the passenger’s seat, Sven was still in a bad mood, and puffed her cheeks out in indignation.
“Are you still angry?” Lud asked.
Lud just felt sad. The children at the church were afraid of Lud but none showed such open hatred as Milly. Lud knew why Milly detested him and she had a good reason. There wasn’t anything he could do about it. But, it still hurt. So Sven’s reaction to Milly’s behavior, as if she herself had been hurt, made him feel a little bit better.
“What was with her? I’ll never forgive her,” Sven spat out.
Gripping the wheel, Lud replied without moving his gaze from the road.
“There’s no point in getting upset. It won’t change anything.”
He didn’t say this just to calm Sven, but because he needed to hear it himself.
“Actually, you know, that girl...”
On the short drive back to Tockerbrot, Lud told Sven about Milly and why she hated him. It was a story that Lud wasn’t able to tell without whittling away at his heart, little by little. He felt like his dilapidated truck, stumbling with a bang and crash over a road filled with ruts.
The next day, Tockerbrot had not yet opened. The cleaning was finished, inside and out. The price tags were posted, and the bread trays and tongs were polished to look brand new. It was a lot of work for one person, but Sven took care of it quickly and easily. In fact, today, she had finished it all earli
er than usual.
“Hmmm...”
She had run out of things to do. Sven continued to ponder what Lud had told her about Milly. She had thought about it most of the night. Now she tried to forget by keeping busy in the bakery. But now, even that was finished. At this rate, she would again fall into the endless labyrinth of her thoughts.
“What...”
Sven found a small notebook in one of the drawers under the counter. It was the accounts book for the bakery. It was perfect timing because in moments like this, rows of unfeeling numbers put Sven at ease. She flipped through the notebook and began surveying the entries.
“My, my, my, quite splendidly in the red, aren’t we...”
Although the bakery had started to prosper, that success didn’t yet show itself in the end results. Sven decided to make some financial predictions and simulations based on their sales continuing to grow smoothly.
“Let’s see... this goes like this... that becomes that... Huh?”
Meanwhile, Lud had been baking bread since early morning. The flame from the kiln was hot, so even for a former soldier, the work was exhausting.
“Here we go... Alright, they came out looking great today, too!”
The number of morning customers was growing because people liked the bread fresh out of the oven. On Sven’s recommendation, they now offered a small breakfast special, which was already popular. Bread really was best straight out of the oven.
As an experiment, Lud had started including free homemade apricot jam with the fresh bread. He was excited to see if people would enjoy it.
“Master! What is this?”
Sven appeared, her face darkened in anger. Unlike Jacob, Sven didn’t barge into the kiln area whenever she felt like it. Instead she simply yelled from the entrance. She never went against Lud’s orders.
“Sven, what’s wrong?”
As he stuck his head out of the kiln area, the shop’s account book was thrust into Lud’s face.
“What is the meaning of this? All of the numbers on this balance sheet are wrong!”
But, that wasn’t the important part. Sven could fix the mistakes in the account book herself. The big problem was the repayment schedule for Lud’s debt. In order to open Tockerbrot, Lud took out an expensive loan and had been paying it back month-by-month.
“Master, with the interest rate on this loan, no matter how hard you try, you will never pay it off. This combination of simple and compound interest is illegal! Where in the world did you borrow from?!”
With simple interest, the interest rate is calculated on the original borrowed amount. Compound interest is when the amount of interest is added to the original amount borrowed, and then the interest increases based on that combined amount. It is also known as snowballing interest.
Lud had borrowed money from an illegal loan shark.
“This interest rate is absurd. This is from a back alley lender, isn’t it?” Sven asked.
“There wasn’t anyone else who would lend money to someone like me, with no guarantee or collateral.”
Even if you included the retirement money that soldiers are awarded when discharged, it still only covered the initial start-up and the first few months of operating costs. On top of that, without enough customers throughout the first year, the debt continued to grow. However, that didn’t mean they could let things continue this way.
“We need to draft a rebuilding plan.”
Sven showed Lud the plan she had drawn up on some leftover advertising pamphlets for the store. It was titled, “Operation Spring Storm: Plan to Defend Tockerbrot to the Absolute Last.” Sven opened the first page.
“First, we will take out a loan from the bank. We will use that money to pay off the illegal loan. It will be a lot of money, but as long as the interest rate is within legal limits, we can pay it back.”
The contract was illegal, but if Sven and Lud weren’t careful, there was a chance that the loan sharks might harm the bakery or Lud.
“A bank... With the war over and an end to any special procurement, no bank would be willing to lend money to a town baker.”
“But, Wiltia is the victor nation. Between the restoration of the war-torn regions, town and city redevelopment, and the pioneering of the new frontiers, banks aren’t in any sort of credit crunch.”
The new region of Pelfe was annexed by Wiltia when they won the Great War, and since Lud had headed to Pelfe to start his business, he was a splendid pioneer. But, in order to receive new financing, they had to show the bank that if it lent money to Lud, he would pay it all back.
“If you can show that Tockerbrot is running smoothly, and that business is expanding with a bright future, it will be fine.”
“Sven, at this rate, I’ll never be able to return it all, even if we maintain our current customers. Any bank would think twice before lending to me.”
Sven had a different suggestion. “Yes, continuing with our present sales will be difficult. That’s why starting today, shall we begin our new sales activities?”
“What?”
“Yes!”
Sven told Lud the new strategy she had just come up with that morning.
Organbaelz was a mining town. However, the laborers in the mine rarely visited the bakery. This was, perhaps, because they didn’t know about it. If that was the case, the sales activity that Sven had in mind was to go directly to the mine workers and promote their breads.
Taking a case full of fresh bread, Sven and Lud got in the truck and drove to Baelz Mine.
“But, can we just show up without notice?” Lud wondered aloud. The mine was private property, and they would need permission to sell bread there.
“We aren’t going to sell anything today. We will give the bread to the mine workers as a gift.”
Sven’s objective was to get a contract to sell bread to the mine’s cafeteria. Baelz was a small mine, but it had more than two hundred hard-working men with big appetites. Selling bread in the cafeteria would mean several times more customers than they now had.
This could be a big break, Lud thought to himself, but he was still uneasy.
Arriving at the mountain, the two made their way toward the office.
“Weeelll, if you show up out of the blue like this... It puts us in a bad spot, you know?”
With an air of a middle-aged man who just couldn’t get ahead in life, the mine’s chief of general affairs did not seem pleased to see the two of them.
With her most angelic smile, Sven offered him some bread. “Here, will you have a bit of what we’ve brought? I can assure you that it tastes delicious.”
The chief resisted but before he knew it, Sven had moved next to him. Her movement was brilliant. If they were on the battlefield, she would have pierced through the general affairs chief’s heart three times over.
“We-Well... I guess it couldn’t hurt to try...” Completely enchanted by the young girl, and grinning like a fool, the chief was unable to refuse and ate a bite of the bread.
“Wow, this is good.” He widened his eyes in surprise and took another bite, and then another.
“This bread is a result of countless hours of quality analysis, on top of our minute attention to every detail of the creation process.”
“But, this is expensive, isn’t it? No matter how good it tastes, something this expensive is...”
“On the contrary, please look at this price list I have prepared.” Sven took out a price summary. She had written the list with lettering so accurate and easy to read, it was as if it had been printed on a typewriter.
“This is... pretty cheap.” The chief of general affairs was surprised.
“Absolutely! We have set our prices as low as possible.”
If they could sell to a business in large quantities, the risk of unsold bread would disappear. Further, the cost of individually packaging the bread would be unnecessary, so the price could be dropped a great deal.
“Today’s food becomes tomorrow’s energy! When you enter into a
n alliance with Tockerbrot, you are ensuring a shining future for your mine!”
The conversation was entirely in Sven’s control. She had a way of speaking that would make the faces of both first class salesmen and first class swindlers grow pale. It was as if the signed contract was only a matter of time. But...
“... I do think it’s a very good idea, but it is difficult.” The chief’s face clouded over.
“Why would that be? The bread tastes good and is cheap, there’s nothing to complain... Could it be collusion?” Sven’s voice rose.
It was common practice for someone acquainted with a business proprietor to buy low-quality goods at high prices and pocket the difference.
Lud knew that many industries had these long-term arrangements, and that it would be difficult for a new business to gain a foothold.
“No, no, no, that’s not it, it’s not like that!” the chief protested, waving his hands.
“It’s just... you two are, no... you... you’re the owner, right?” He pointed at Lud. “He’s the problem.”
“Me?” Lud was taken aback. There was no way that the big, burly miners could be scared of Lud.
“You, you’re ex-military, right?”
“?!” Lud had never kept his military background a secret. But, he never talked about it himself.
It must have gotten out somehow, maybe someone at the government office said something, or just speculation from the scar on his cheek, but whatever the source, there was no sense in denying it.
“Yes, I am.”
“I see... There are a lot of Pelfe-born workers at our mine. Please don’t misunderstand, I don’t harbor any ill-will but I don’t want to provide any unnecessary stimulus.”
Pelfe bordered Wiltia, and had always strongly influenced its neighbor, both politically and culturally, so when the annexation first occurred, Pelfe people were largely in favor. However, when Wiltia committed an act of treachery against Pelfe, public opinion changed in an instant.