Maydare Volume 3 Chapter 5 - The Children of the Garbage Dump (Part 1)

 The next chapter might come pretty late since it's exam season for me

---

Previous | TOC | Next

“Come on, everyone, let’s try our best in the Everyday Magic Tool Contest!”

In the glass bottle atelier where we had our base of operations, I turned to the members of Garnet Team 9 and loudly encouraged them. They looked at me with blank stares.

Today, we were supposed to continue our discussion of the final group assignment, the “Everyday Magic Tool Contest.”

A magic tool related to clothing, food, or shelter.

Now, which theme shall we choose and what shall we make.

“I definitely think we should make a magic tool related to ‘food.’ Miladriede has a lot of delicious food.”

I immediately began my presentation in front of the blackboard with great enthusiasm.

If it was clothing, food, or shelter, then food was by far the most interesting.

However…

“Food, huh? I had to suffer through the Potato Report recently, so I don’t wanna do anything related to food.”

Frey said. Certainly, that was a tough assignment.

“We don’t have to keep eating potatoes until we die this time. Unless we make a potato steamer.”

Just as Frey and I were about to talk about this and that, Nero put his hand on his chin, pondered for a moment, and then slowly asked a question.

“Supposing that we narrow our focus down to food, what kind of magic tool do you think we should make, Makia?”

“Let’s see…a rice cooker.”

“...Rice cooker?”

Everyone had a blank look on their face, like they never heard of it before.

That was as it should be. There was no such thing as a rice cooker in the Kingdom of Ruschia.

But as a former Japanese who loves rice, I drew a picture of a rice cooker on the blackboard and explained.

“A rice cooker is a machine shaped like this that is specially designed to cook rice.”

“...”

Oh? A mysterious silence.

My team members looked at each other.

“But how is that different from cooking rice in a pot?”

“I-It’s completely different, Nero! It’s a special tool just for cooking rice. You just push a button and it cooks the rice on its own. You can set a time and it will start cooking the rice, and when it’s done, it will keep it warm…isn’t that convenient?”

The other members didn’t seem to really get my enthusiastic presentation.

“Isn’t that only convenient for you because you like rice, Leader?”

Frey’s quip cut deep.

“Ugh…” While faltering, I desperately made my case.

“That’s not it! Rice dishes are all the rage in Miladriede these days!”

“Oh, come to think of it,” Lapis interjected, as though remembering something. “I heard about it before. With the importation of so much rice from the East and Miladriede-style rice dishes becoming popular in the world, rumors are spreading that the Savior from another world likes rice dishes, and it’s becoming a boom.”

“S-See! Lapis is saying it too!”

I took the arm of Lapis who backed me up and squeezed it.

As expected of my best friend. I love Lapis. 

“But…rice dishes in Miladriede, like paella and risotto, are cooked or simmered in a frying pan or pot. Along with other ingredients and soup. Whether or not tools for only cooking rice are needed in daily life…is a bit of an unknown.”

“Ugh. You might have a point. A culture that eats white rice on a daily basis doesn’t exist, after all…”

I was once again losing ground against Nero’s sound arguments.

Unlike the Japanese, who ate rice daily, or the people in the eastern part of this world, the Kingdom of Ruschia wouldn’t use a rice cooker a lot. Even if they had a rice cooker, it might end up sleeping in a cupboard with dust on its lid. 

After all, if you were going to cook rice dishes, you might as well just use pots and pans.

“Then, I guess that idea’s rejected~~”

“Uuuu~~”

And so, my presentation failed, barely getting off the ground.

Since I had been so confident, I was disappointed.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, dechi!”

“Don’t give up on your dream, poyo~”

My spirits, Donsuke and Popotarou. The two ham-chans comforted me by shoving sunflower seeds into my mouth. I wish they were the shelled kind, at least.

“I’ll go next. I’m gonna go with ‘clothing.’ I want a magic washing machine that can do my laundry in an instant. And one that dries and folds it for me.”

Ooh. Frey actually prepared a proper idea.

“That already exists,” Nero said with a serious face.

“But it’s too expensive and not widely available to the general public. Doesn’t the palace use them?”

“Huh, really!?”

“You don’t even do your own laundry, right?”

“In my case, I can just ask a pretty lady to do it all for me~”

Then he didn’t need it after all.

What you actually need is a pretty lady who would do everything for you, instead of a fully automated washing machine.

And so, Frey’s presentation was also rejected.

“Then, I’ll go next. I think we should focus on ‘shelter.’ I think it’s easy to come up with ideas for useful tools, because there are many things you can do depending on the way you think about it. For example, a heater.”

Lapis went in front of the magic fireplace in the atelier.

“In the Kingdom of Ruschia, there is a magic fireplace in every home, but despite the time-consuming effort of cleaning soot from the fireplace, there is no other fireless heating device. The fact that this country is warm to begin with, and that there’s no need to use a fireplace is probably the reason why the development of home heaters has been hindered. Therefore, it would be a good idea to develop a heater with more utility, don’t you think?”

“Oh…Lapis gave a serious presentation…”

Indeed, the Kingdom of Ruschia never got extremely cold, even in winter, and unless you lived on top of a mountain or something, the cold was rarely a matter of life or death.

Therefore, there were few heating devices other than fireplaces, and heating wasn’t turned on if it was just a little chilly. Even if the fireplace was turned on, it took some time to warm up an entire room.

However, when I woke up in the morning, I often felt a little cold, so I would have a more comfortable life if I had an easy-to-use heating device that warmed me quickly at a pinpoint, even without turning on the fireplace. 

Nero nodded at what she was saying many times, impressed.

“I think the magic heater approach isn’t a bad idea. Even if the range of warmth is smaller than that of a fireplace, as long as it’s faster, it would be in demand just for that.”

“I like that idea. It’s true that it’s a little cold in this atelier until the fireplace gets going.”

Frey said. He spoke in a careless way, but it seemed that he was in favor of the project.

“Hey, if it’s compact, it’ll be even better. Something portable. Fireplaces aren’t portable.”

“Makia, you feel cold too?”

“Of course, Lapis. I have a heat constitution, but I don’t generate heat unless I exert myself, and I can only handle the cold a little bit, so it’s a bit hard to get out of bed in the morning.”

And so, Garnet Team 9’s plan was finally settled.

“It’s decided then. We’re going to make a magic heater.”

Nero’s declaration caused us to applaud Lapis, the planner of our project.

However, even if our idea was settled, whether or not we could make it was a different story.

There were technological problems as well the issue of materials. Other than the materials and tools provided by the school, there were things we could buy within the specified price, but if we failed too many times, they would be gone in an instant.

Then, Nero made this suggestion.

“Why don’t we go to the magical dumping ground? There are a lot of used magic tools and foreign magic tools washed up from the sea there. There might be some junk there we can use.”

“Huh…”

Everyone froze at this suggestion. No way…

“Oi oi. You’re not gonna tell me to go dumpster diving, are you?”

“I certainly am.”

Nero said nonchalantly.

As a silent Frey was about to get up and escape, Lapis asked, “Mr. Frey, where are you going?” and grabbed his robe and forcibly made him sit down.

“As I recall…there is a large magical dumping ground outside of the capital.”

I returned us to the topic.

Magical garbage was exactly what it sounded like: waste from magically processed products.

They couldn’t be disposed of with regular garbage, and had to be treated specially, so a dumping site was set up outside of Miladriede.

But the processing lagged behind, and the garbage had piled up into a huge mountain.

I nodded several times as I said,

“It might be a little startling at first, but it’s not a bad idea to recycle magical garbage. I’ve heard from my father before that the large amount of magical garbage in Miladriede is a societal problem. And if we’re going to reuse magical garbage, that might serve as a selling point in the contest…”

“Then, let’s go to the magical dumping ground right now!”

“...”

Nero was somewhat excited.

Now we had to go. To the magical dumping ground.

Born into this world as a daughter of a baron, now sixteen-years-old.

I never thought I would have to scavenge through trash at a garbage dump.

In the capital Miladriede, people were conspicuously installing magical illuminations on roadside trees.

Somehow, it reminded me of Christmas season in the other world. And during this season, for some reason, couples became more noticeable in town. Why was that…

Next to this flighty city, we were heading for the magical dumping ground.

A gondola ride through the canals to the outskirts of Miladriede brought us to the vast magical dumping ground where the air was dark and heavy, in contrast to the colorful and lively atmosphere just a while ago. 

“Wow…”

A graveyard-like place where useful magic tools were used up and went to at the end.

There was a deep crater surrounded by a slightly elevated fence, into which a massive amount of magical garbage had been thrown. There was a mountain of magical equipment and furniture.

We descended down the ladder to the garbage dump, dumbfounded.

“Oh, look. The Team 3 people are here.”

Several students in magic school uniforms were wandering around on the other side of the dumping ground.

Garnet Team 3.

As I recalled, that team was made up of boys and girls from the royal orphanage. When they noticed us, they gathered on a small hill and glared at us.

“Hey, it’s Garnet Team 9.”

“What do we do? Make them cry?”

“We’ve got an evil witch, a useless prince, an iron-masked woman, and a guy who doesn’t talk.”

Oh wow. They were really going at us.

And we immediately knew who they were talking about.

“Oi, what are you doing here? This ain’t no place for greenhouse-raised little boys and girls. This is our turf!”

Standing tall atop a pile of junk, looking down on us, was Dan Holland, the leader of Team 3. He had dark skin, a nasty look in his eyes, and his bright hair was gathered back with a hairband.

He was a street-type boy or whatever they were called, a rarity for a magic school student.

“Turf? This is a public magical dumping ground.”

I indignantly tried to argue back.

“Are you stupid? That’s exactly why we, who grew up in Miladriede, have the right to claim this place.”

“Yeah, that’s right. This garbage is all garbage generated by the citizens of Miladriede. We’ve been playing here since we were born.”

The ones who answered me were the twin siblings, Caroline and Kitar Mars.

They were wearing matching berets, and their carrot-colored hair and freckles were their charm points.

They were nonsensical statements said with sarcastic faces, but they had a force behind them that didn’t let me talk back.

“Hey, stop fighting. They have the descendant of the〈Scarlet Witch〉and a prince. We grew up hearing that if we do anything bad, the Scarlet Witch will burn us up.”

And lastly, Francis Downey, a chubby boy who seemed to be the gentlest in Team 3, was discreetly trying to stop their belligerence.

The four-member team of Dan, Caroline, Kitar, and Francis didn’t associate with, butter up to, or yield to the nobles. In fact, they hated the aristocracy.

However, I knew that the grades of Team 3 were generally high, and they always got good grades on every assignment. Unlike the aristocratic students raised in greenhouses, they had a stoic determination that was as tough as weeds and were never to be underestimated.

I rolled up the notebook I was holding into a megaphone.

“Okay. I’m telling this to you, Garnet Team 3. I don’t really get what you guys are saying, but I get it. But we also want to look for something in this place. We want to keep things civil here, so if you have any demands, just let us know.”

“Hey, wait a minute, Leader!”

Frey was taken aback by what I said, but I looked Team 3’s leader Dan Holland right in the eye. Dan narrowed his eyes, crossed his arms, and grinned.

“I’m surprised you get it, O’Drielle. Then, you’re going to find 10 gummies a day and deliver them to us. If you do that right, we’ll give you the right to scavenge here as you please.”

“...Gummies?”

I said, tilted my head, and looked at the Team 9 members. In particular, Nero. 

“Hey, what’s a gummy? A kind of candy?”

“No. It’s a magical substance that stores magic power. It’s an old type of magic fuel, a necessity in old everyday magic tools, but nowadays it’s rarely used due to the decrease in the amount mined. …What are you guys going to do with used gummies?”

“Shut up,” Caroline snapped at Nero’s simple question. “You just stay quiet and pay your taxes to us!”

“...Paying taxes.”

Apparently, Team 3 wanted a significant number of gummies.

Since our goals didn’t overlap, it seemed unlikely that there would be a war over gummies, but I was a little curious about what they were trying to make.

“Haha, now you’re our slaves!”

“Get to work~you nobles!”

Team 3 threw snide comments at us as they scattered back to their respective garbage piles.

Having been told all that, we were a bit flabbergasted for a while.

“Tch. Let them say whatever they want. You don’t have to follow what they say, Leader. And I’m not a noble, I’m royalty!”

“I am not even a noble. …What shall we do, Makia? Shall we crush them?”

Frey and Lapis couldn’t seem to hide their annoyance with Team 3.

I understood how they felt, but I looked up at the sky and thought of something different. 

“Let’s just accept what they say for now.”

“Haaah!? We gotta find some valuable junk from this mountain of garbage too, you know! We don’t have time to help them!”

“I don’t need you to tell me that. That’s why I’ll look for the gummies for tax payment by myself. I’ll leave the rummaging through garbage to you all. Besides…I think it’s better if we work hand in hand with them.”

I turned to my team and gave them a nasty grin.

Team 3 was a strong rival. While acting subserviently, I would vigilantly gather information on what they were making for the assignment.

We can outwit them at the end and win.

Yes, because I was the descendant of the worst witch in the world…

---

Previous | TOC | Next