Chapter 97: The Char-Core Quill Pen

Ren was copying a book he had brought from the study room onto a board.

He had screwed up his courage and told his father that he wanted to go to the Academy.

When his father had told him before that Ren wouldn’t be sent to the Academy, he had simply been too shocked to say anything. He knew his skill, “Small Box,” wasn’t the skill his parents had hoped for. But the wish to go to the Academy had been with him all along.

He had gathered his courage and said it to his father. He didn’t know how much the fees would come to, but he had hoped, a little, that if he said he would earn them himself his father might nod.

He had been turned down flat.

Even so, he hadn’t entirely given up.

Organising the guild’s reference room, he had run his eye over almost all the material at least once, roughly at least, and there had been nothing in it like the things in the textbooks his father and grandfather had used — the fundamentals of magic, how healing potions were made.

He had a feeling there was knowledge that was taught at the Academy but hadn’t spread beyond it. That there were things passed down only among the nobility. Ren was drawn to that knowledge.

(I want to know more about magic, and I want to try making all sorts of healing potions. And I want to know more about skills too….)

If he couldn’t go to the Academy after all, then at least, before he left the house, he would copy out the textbooks in the study room — that was what he had decided. And so he was copying out as much of them as he possibly could.

Ren’s hand stopped.

He had remembered the uneasy look on Yona’s face.

“Yona…, I’m worried about her…”

He had begun to think of leaving the house once he turned ten and could register as a proper adventurer, but Yona was on his mind.

(…I can’t take her with me, can I….)

Ren thought it would be beyond him to buy Yona dresses or to keep her. He didn’t even know whether he could keep himself.

(Food I can manage, but somewhere to live…. And clothes and things…)

When the travelling merchant had come, Yona had been bought a pale blue dress and had laughed, delighted with it. Remembering that, he felt she was being looked after.

Only, ever since the day of Yuan and Yona’s Blessing Ceremony, he had felt the house growing gradually more strained. He couldn’t help wondering whether it was all right to leave Yona behind in it.

It wasn’t only Yona he was worried about.

Royce and Yuan were on his mind too. Though he had the feeling that neither Royce nor Yuan would listen to anything he said.

Copying out the textbook, as though to shake off all the anxieties rising up in him. As he was copying by the light of the “small box,” the char part of his char quill pen ran out and the feather shaft scratched at the board.

“Aah…”

Ren thought he would make a new char quill pen and picked up an unused feather. He gazed at the shaft. Where it had been cut, it was hollow.

It occurred to him suddenly: could he not pack char into the hollow?

(What if I rolled char cloth up as tightly and thinly as I can…?)

He tried rolling char cloth as thin as it would go, but it bent limply and wouldn’t go into the hollow of the feather shaft. He tried setting it with glue, but that made it too thick, so he cut it lengthways into a slender strip. The char core slid smoothly into the hollow, and Ren let out his breath in relief and lifted the corner of his mouth.

Snap.

“Ah.”

Snap.

“Aah.”

A char core set with glue and cut thin was brittle. It broke while he was pushing it into the hollow of the shaft, and the ones he did manage to get in broke the moment he put the nib to the board.

“…This is no good…. And it doesn’t change the fact that only the tip is any use…”

Not only did the char core snap almost at once when pushed into the hollow of the feather shaft, but the only part of it that could be used was the bit sticking out of the end. And unless the thickness matched exactly it wobbled about, which made it awkward to write with and made it break all the more.

Being able to write a fine line was a point in its favour, but in every other respect it was no better to use than the char quill pens he had been making until now.

“What I really have to deal with is the breaking…. And the thickness not being even…”

Char cloth rolled round and round and then set with glue came out uneven in thickness however finely he cut it with a knife, and the surface and the inside felt completely different to write with.

He thought of using “Small Box Divide” to cut it evenly — and then, on a sudden idea, ground the char cloth to a powder in a mortar and mixed it with glue.

He split it with “Small Box Divide” to the size of a thin core, and dried it as it was. Making the “small box” drive the moisture out dried it quickly.

Slender square-sectioned char cores came out of it. To look at, they were even and neat.

But when he took one in his hand it snapped straight away. Even pinching them carefully between his fingertips, they broke at once.

“They’ve got to be a bit harder to break than this…”

He looked over at the cloth bundle. The resin he had bought from the travelling merchant.

Ren shaved a little off with his small knife and warmed it inside the “small box” until it softened.

When he sniffed at it, it had a smell all of its own. Into that he mixed the char powder and the glue.

The black mass turned somewhat tacky.

“…This might hold together better than before?”

The feel of it as he mixed was different. When he split and dried it and then tried it, he could feel a certain springiness to it.

He decided to use one of the thinner pieces of the hollow-stemmed plant he had gathered when he made the simple arrows.

He cut a slit in the narrow end and eased the char core in. From the end opposite the nib he pushed in the shaft of a quill feather. Pressing the shaft pushed the char core out of the tip of the hollow stem.

The fine down near the feather shaft he trimmed away neatly.

The holder part the core went into could be fixed by tying it round with a cord. Slide the cord that had been tied to fix it towards the narrow end, and the hold loosened.

“Ah — if I have the thick side as the side the char core comes out of, the cord might be easier to work.”

The hollow-stemmed plant was straight, but very slightly narrower at one end. He cut a slit in the thick side of it. When he stuck the fluffy part of a feather inside the hollow with resin, the char core was held more easily.

He cut the hollow stem to about the length of a finger and cut a slit in the thick side.

He put a little of the fluffy down inside the hollow stem. Once the char core was set, he slid the ring of cord he had loosened towards the thick end and fixed it.

“Right. It looks smart, anyway!”

For the feather he tried one from an orange bird-type magical beast he had hunted in the forest only that day. It was a bright, cheerful sort of colour.

He put the tip of the char core to the board and gently drew a line. Somehow it wrote smoothly.

“Mm, this is good…”

Besides writing smoothly, it looked neater than a char quill pen with char cloth wound round the feather shaft.

“…Char core…. Perhaps I’ll call it a char-core quill pen.”

Ren gazed with satisfaction at the char-core quill pen he had just finished. He pushed the char core in and pressed it out of the barrel with the feather several times over, and lifted the corner of his mouth.

“With this I should be able to write for a good long while!”

His spirits had picked up a little. He turned the page of the textbook again and started the copying afresh with the char-core quill pen he had only just finished.