by SOW
“She’s sure to lose her military rank. In the best case, they’ll only arrest and imprison her, but I’m not sure what will happen if they suspect treason. It’s certain that she will lose her family name.”
Hilde would lose everything she had. Possibly even her life.
“This is terrible!”
The corporal addressed Heidrig, who was biting his lips.
“This may be cold comfort, but they won’t charge you with a criminal offense.”
Heidrig was already a felon, but the nation didn’t want to turn dissidents into martyrs, so they wouldn’t execute him. He had been sentenced to indefinite imprisonment, so he would just go back to jail.
“Is there anything we can do? Should I just turn myself in now?”
The corporal shook his head at Heidrig’s question.
“It’s out of the question. Suppose you got caught stealing from a store. They wouldn’t forgive you if you returned the item, would they?”
“I suppose not.”
That brought back memories.
His apologies hadn’t mattered. When the shop owner discovered his crime, Heidrig had been unable to avoid his blows.
And this was the military. With the government’s backing, it could do anything. Heidrig knew that, too.
“Well, if this is solvable, I see only one way.”
The corporal’s tone suggested he was casually speculating, so that if someone tried to pull it off, the corporal would be safe from blame.
At last, Thanksgiving morning arrived. Everywhere, preparations were in the final stages, with people busily double-checking and reviewing plans. And it was no different at Tockerbrot.
“Finally, the day has come!”
Lud watched the sunrise with deep emotion.
“That’s good... MUMBLE MUMBLE...”
“Yeah, it really is. It’s great.”
Jacob and Milly looked sleepy.
“Are you all right? Why don’t you use my bed to rest?”
They didn’t appear to have the strength to return home, so he suggested they rest in his room in the back of the shop.
“Okay... Wake me up just past noon... for the dancers...”
“Wake me up after lunch... for the puppet show...”
As drowsiness overcame them, they reminded him about the performances they didn’t want to miss, and then stumbled to the back.
“Well...”
Lud considered what to do next. He had finished the difficult preparations, which left only the baking.
“You’re up early.”
No sooner had Jacob and Milly left, Heidrig appeared.
“No, I never went to sleep. I worked all night.”
Lud had worked and reworked his ideas for the bread he would serve at Thanksgiving. Yesterday, he finally decided, and then he had worked all night to prepare.
“You could have asked me to help you.”
Heidrig looked perplexed.
All night, Jacob and Milly helped Lud.
“No, now it’s your turn. Baking is heavy labor. The right man is necessary for the right job. Isn’t it the same in the military?”
“I guess so...”
A big part of a soldier’s work was heavy labor. Working overnight this once wouldn’t hurt Lud.
“For now, I’m thinking about baking some biscuits to hand out to the kids in town.”
“Biscuits...”
Heidrig’s face clouded slightly at Lud’s words.
“Don’t you like biscuits?”
Lud noticed a slight change on Heidrig’s face.
“I don’t like or dislike them.”
Heidrig answered without making eye contact and walked toward the oven room, but the door opened before he got there.
“I’m back!”
Today, Tockerbrot was closed for the first time in a year. It wasn’t a customer who spoke. It was Sven, who had also pulled an all-nighter.
“Good job! Have you made you-know-what?”
“Yes. It was a crash course but also a piece of cake!”
Sven’s hands held a dress with a cover over it.
“Is that for my superior officer?”
“Yes.”
Hilde was going to sing on stage at the Thanksgiving festival. Sven had made her a dress for the occasion.
She had made her own waitress uniform, and the uniforms for Milly and Hilde. Her skill at dressmaking, from measurement to sewing, was greater than even a professional dressmaker. For her, making a dress would usually be very easy, but creating a dress to wear on stage was a little more difficult, as one might expect.
Sven had borrowed space at a neighborhood dressmaker after closing the bakery yesterday, and finished the dress during the night.
“So it seems... nothing happened here?”
Sven asked after looking around the shop and staring at Lud for a moment. She tried desperately to avoid leaving her master in the shop alone with Heidrig and Hilde, who wanted to kill him.
“Please, give this to her.”
Sven brusquely handed the dress to Heidrig.
Lud had ordered her to leave the shop to work on the dress last night, and actually, she had agreed partly of her own free will.
Four days ago, she had made Hilde cry at the mine. She faithfully reported the whole incident to Lud and apologized for her thoughtlessness.
“My emotions got the better of me!”
Lud, however, had received her report with a look of satisfaction. He could see that Sven had grown, because instead of verbally abusing someone the way she used to, she just used strong words to scold Hilde for her poor behavior.
There was a yawn, followed by, “I’m sleepy...”
Hilde appeared.
“Geh!”
“What do you mean by that?!”
Frustrated, Sven snapped at Hilde, who looked troubled after seeing Sven.
“What good timing! Why don’t you give it to her now? She should try it on. It might need to be altered.”
“Y-Yeah...”
Sven looked uncomfortable when Lud suggested this.
Marlene had told her what Hilde had confided about herself. Now Sven knew the suffering and sorrow the girl had experienced, and that she wasn’t just a silly, proud girl with an overdeveloped sense of elitism.
Speaking to Hilde was hard for Sven now, and the two hadn’t even looked at each other over the last four days, which made work awkward.
“Here, this is your dress for today! I made it, so be grateful and try it on!”
Sven thrust out the dress but immediately rephrased her words.
“I mean... you don’t have to be grateful. I made it because Master ordered me to and because it’ll help make the festival successful...Yes, that’s why! This was just the minimum degree of cooperation for a temporary joint operation.”
“Um... uh...”
Hilde was confused as Sven struggled for words.
Over the last few days, perhaps because she was no longer hiding from her past, Hilde hadn’t spoken or acted aggressively as she had before. She had practiced her singing at the church with Marlene after work, and tried hard to do her best.
“Just try it on! If it’s too loose or too tight, I’ll fix it right now!”
“What are you so angry about?!”
Sven didn’t understand her own feelings. For some reason, she had a growing desire to cheer up this girl, even though she was perhaps still plotting to kill her and her master, whose life was more important than her own. That’s why she had offered to make a dress for Hilde.
“Well, we should make ourselves scarce. We mustn’t intrude on a girl trying on clothes!”
Lud left Sven in charge and told Heidrig to go to the oven room.
“Well, what do you think?”
A few minutes later, Hilde had put on the dress and Sven made sure nothing needed to be altered.
“Wow! You could become a dressmaker anytime!”
Hilde was honestly impressed. Sven had measured
Hilde once, but not carefully.
This kind of dress should be tried on and refitted over and over until it fit perfectly. The dress Sven made for Hilde was perfectly designed not to constrict her chest and abdomen when she sang, but would still make a pretty silhouette.
“Aw, it was nothing!”
Sven answered without hesitation.
The dress featured a design that looked like what a shrine maiden would wear when standing before the altar, and resembled a folk costume native to Organbaelz.
The dress was so perfect that it was hard to believe that Sven had made it in four days. But for Sven, the design was the “optimal solution,” generated by collating a vast amount of data.
For example, you could fabricate a novel, if you took countless bits from existing novels and extracted detailed patterns from their common elements to create a template. However, the result would just be an approximation. It might succeed once or twice, but it wouldn’t make you a renowned author whose work would be remembered by future generations.
“I can’t sing. I can manage an approximation of singing, but no more than that.”
Although Sven was close to human, singing was beyond her powers.
“That’s why only you can do this, Hilde. Work at it.”
“But I’m... your enemy.”
Hilde’s desire to kill Lud was fading. She was already asking herself whether she could continue as a soldier.
But there was still something she couldn’t get past. Just as Sven couldn’t sing no matter how much she might want to, Hilde was unable to give up her feud with Lud and Sven.
“Do what you believe in from the bottom of your heart.”
Sven’s comment was casual. Sven would have secretly destroyed anything that posed a danger to her master.
“You don’t seem to have any actual experience fighting.”
“—!”
Hilde cringed at Sven’s truthful observation about Hilde’s weakness in combat.
“What do you think the most important thing is for a soldier?”
“To complete her duty, by carrying out orders to attack the enemy and—”
Sven interrupted her. “That’s only half of it.”
Hilde’s answer was correct if applied only to the military. However, the answer was different for a soldier.
“The most important thing for a soldier is fulfilling her role and that’s all.”
A great warrior once said that the military is like a living creature. Inside a living creature, the heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, blood vessels, and nerves each perform specific functions to support the animal. Likewise, soldiers safeguard an assigned location to support the living thing that is the military, thereby fulfilling their role.
“This isn’t just true for soldiers. Society works the same way. It functions correctly when individuals perform their roles.”
Some people cultivate fields to grow wheat. Blacksmiths make hoes and plows for the wheat farmers. Others transport that wheat, and still others refine it. A baker kneads that wheat into dough to make bread.
There wouldn’t be bread on the table unless all those roles were fulfilled.
“My master makes a living in the role of a baker. The role of a baker is to bake bread, not kill enemies.”
Sven thought about this as she spoke.
Lud hadn’t killed Hilde even though she had tried to kill him. If she tried to kill him again, most likely he would still choose not to kill her.
Eating is living and living is eating. A person would lose the right to make food forever if he were to kill someone. Lud had told her that.
It wasn’t about kindness or compassion. Lud, who had killed so many people that he became a war hero, made that oath so that he could keep on living.
“And the role I chose is to support my master. Therefore, this is also my role to bear.”
“I don’t get it... What are you talking about?”
“Well, I guess you wouldn’t.”
Sven responded to Hilde’s confusion with a bit of sarcasm.
“Not much for thinking, are you? First, just carry out the role in front of you. Then, you might be able to see something else.”
“Do you really think so?”
“That’s how it is for my master.”
Amid the roar of gunfire on the battlefield, the lofty causes of those back home meant nothing. Soldiers just did their best and grasped the slightest hope of surviving that day.
Sven had watched Lud live that truth for a long time.
“That’s all I can tell you. You’ll have to figure out the rest for yourself.”
Sven smiled as she spoke.
This time, her smile was lively and joyful, like a veteran patting the back of a frightened new soldier.
“............”
Hilde reacted suspiciously to Sven’s smile.
“Um, have we met before?”
“What are you talking about? You chased us like crazy in that Teepneuen!”
It wasn’t long ago that Hilde had played a high-stakes game of tag with them at the mine.
“No, it’s not that... I feel like you lectured me this way before.”
“You’re imagining things!”
Sven was quick to laugh this off.
When Hilde had tried to kill them in the mine, Sven had connected to a Hunter Unit and thoroughly “educated” Hilde on how to improve her clumsy battle skills.
This girl is smarter than I thought.
Sven felt a twinge of anxiety as she realized this.
While the girls were fitting the dress and starting to understand each other a little better, Lud and Heidrig were working in the oven room, where the atmosphere was complicated.
“Leave the biscuits we baked. Marlene and Charlotte will come later to help wrap them.”
“Charlotte? Oh, that pretty woman?”
Charlotte was Jacob’s mother. She helped with Tockerbrot’s out-of-town sales. She came to the shop a few times a week, so Heidrig met her before.
“May I ask a question?”
“What is it?”
Heidrig’s voice and face were serious as he asked permission.
However, Lud’s voice was cheerful. He usually grimaced when he wasn’t speaking but Lud’s friendly voice indicated that he was happy.
“What are you thinking?”
Heidrig repeated the question he had asked a few days ago when Lud had hired Heidrig and Hilde, who had come to kill him.
It was true that the bakery needed help. Everyone at the shop was busy over the last few days. Nonetheless, his decision to hire them was extraordinary. It wasn’t what one would expect a hero would do.
“Yes... No, um... How should I explain?”
As he checked the bread in the oven, Lud’s voice was relaxed.
Heidrig usually tried to hide his emotions, but his irritation was evident.
“Forget about that and look at these. I finally finished the new bread for Thanksgiving!”
“Forget about it?”
Lud casually dismissed a matter that affected his very life.
“Are these nussbeugel?”
The bread Lud pulled from the oven was rolled dough shaped into a ring.
“You know nussbeugel? It gave me the idea for making these.”
Lud thought for a moment.
“Let’s see... Shall I call it Maple Autumn?”
“Maple Autumn?”
The bread lined up on the iron tray reminded Heidrig of something.
“Surely that isn’t...”
As Heidrig was about to continue, Lud spoke first.
“You’re not him, are you?”
“—?!”
Because Lud had asked so casually, Heidrig was unable to hide his emotion.
“I knew it.”
Seeing Heidrig’s reaction was enough to confirm Lud’s suspicions.
Why had Lud made Heidrig work with him in the bakery for the past ten days? Now Heidrig understood why. So Lud could ask
this question.
He wanted to shock Heidrig to elicit an honest answer, so that Heidrig would be unable to just respond with “What are you talking about?!” or “Hunh?!”
“How did you know? Did you suspect from the beginning?”
Heidrig could no longer stop his voice from trembling.
“Did you know right away that I’m not the Wolf Man?”
Thanksgiving at Organbaelz started in the afternoon. Today, people rested from work and celebrated by drinking and singing. The sound of musical instruments was everywhere, and fireworks were launched into the sky. Food stalls were set up end-to-end, providing drinks and food.
“It sure is spectacular again this year!”
“The puppet show was so much fun!”
Jacob and Milly had joined the celebration right after waking up, and both enjoyed the festival.
“Hey there, you two!”
Sister Marlene called to them as they walked along the main street, which was bustling with entertainment.
Marlene was working at the festival committee booth. The booth offered a new cocktail, and dishes made with vegetables and meat, fresh from the harvest.
“Wow, it all looks delicious!”
Milly’s eyes shone as she looked at the tasty food lined up before her.
“The wurst and klopse were just made. Would you like to try some?”
“You bet I would!!”
Jacob and Milly nodded in unison at Marlene’s question.
“Yum! These are crisp and juicy! I like the boiled one, but I love the grilled one!”
Jacob smiled with joy, his mouth stuffed with wurst.
Wurst was a type of white sausage. It was made of minced lamb and pork, mixed with onion, parsley, lemon, and cardamom. It was juicy and delicious, and difficult to stop eating.
“Y-Yummy! Yummy-yummy!”
The klopse was a meatball stew made with herbs and white sauce that Milly was happily eating.
“There’s also going to be roasted horsemeat, hamburgers and steak.”
“Yahoo! I can’t wait!”
“Mmph-mmph-mmph!”
Organbaelz wasn’t a poor town, but there was only one day a year when the town folk could eat so much meat. That luxury was out of reach for Milly and the orphans living at the church on the hill, and for Jacob and his mother. Milly and Jacob were both still growing, so they stuffed their faces now as if to store up a year’s worth of food.