Chapter 45
First condition.
“This will be my first and last time working as a model.”
“What?!”
Edmund shouted with exaggerated gestures.
It wasn't the sort of behavior one should display before a noble, but I wasn't an ordinary noble, so I let it slide and didn't bother mentioning it.
“What do you mean? Your beauty is a treasure that must be shared with the Empire—no, the whole continent!”
“Thank you for thinking so highly of my appearance, but I have no desire to make my face widely known.”
“Perhaps… is it that you don't like the clothes you'll have to wear for the advertisements?”
He seemed not to hear me.
“Phew, as you know, I'm a noble. Aren't I?”
“Yes, of course.”
“But if I become a model for your boutique and my face is displayed in the middle of the capital, what will the other nobles think?”
“That you're pretty?”
“Of course, they might.”
But some nobles might think this instead.
“That it lowers the dignity of the nobility.”
….
“It seems you can imagine that.”
Edmund, who had fallen silent, nodded with an awkward expression.
“Sometimes, nobles who come to our boutique with their children even ask why they should come to a store run by mere commoners.”
“The most important reason I want to model is to silence the baseless rumor spreading through the capital.”
And according to Edmund, a single advertisement would be enough to dispel the absurd rumor that I was a goddess.
“I don't see any reason to model multiple times and risk earning a bad reputation. Does that make sense now?”
“…It's unfortunate, but it can't be helped. I understand.”
Good, it looked like he would accept my first condition.
Next, the second condition.
“Have your boutique sell the soap produced in Fortune.”
“…Our boutique is a clothing store, though?”
“That doesn't matter. After all, the people who come to buy your clothes are likely to be similar to those who would buy soap.”
Judging by Ruby and Heter's assessments, Edmund's boutique must be quite an upscale store.
Anyone who went to such a place would care about making themselves beautiful, and anyone like that would certainly be interested in soap as well.
“Our customer bases overlap… You're certainly not wrong.”
“Then will you accept this condition too?”
“Hmm….”
After crossing his arms and drumming his fingers against his forearm for a long while, Edmund finally nodded.
“All right. I'll accept this condition as well.”
‘Great!’
When he accepted my second proposal, I silently cheered.
‘This solves the most important problem!’
What had been the hardest part of trying to sell soap?
Raising capital? Making the actual product? Both had been difficult, but neither was the answer.
The hardest part had been promoting the products we'd made to other people.
Just think of how much trouble I had gone through to sell a single bar of soap.
Sending tea-party invitations to the young noblewomen, riding in a carriage for several days to attend a wedding, and attending the tea party even after being insulted.
I had even considered going door to door with Heter in case even that failed.
But once soap was displayed in Edmund's boutique, the display itself would serve as advertising.
If we made the name Fortune known this way, people would remember it when we sold other products later on as well.
‘Fortune? Ah, that's where the soap was made,’ they would say.
Of course, if that impression were negative, it could backfire, but I trusted the people of our territory.
I believed that products our people had made through sweat and hard work would never be poorly received.
“Now for the third condition.”
“There's still another?”
Bewilderment appeared on Edmund's face.
He probably thought there were too many conditions for someone who was only going to model once.
If I'd known this would happen, should I have saved the first proposal for last?
‘No, that wasn't it.’
If he couldn't accept that one in the first place, the rest of my proposals would have been useless anyway.
“Still, this will be the last condition.”
I clasped my hands together and put on a serious air.
The condition I was about to put forward was just as important as the first.
“Gulp.”
As though he sensed the change in mood, Edmund swallowed with a serious expression.
“When I become your model.”
“Yes.”
“You must pay me a modeling fee.”
“…Huh?”
A dumbfounded sound escaped Edmund, who had been so tense.
“Is that really a condition that needed to come last?”
“Of course.”
But I was utterly serious.
Edmund, who had come all the way to the North to offer me a modeling opportunity for the sake of his work, might not understand, but money was extremely important to me right now.
***
Edmund said he'd contact me once preparations for the shoot were complete, after returning to the capital.
When I asked why he wasn't taking the pictures now, despite the urgency of silencing the rumor, he replied,
“This might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have you as a model, my lady, so surely we can't take pictures somewhere without proper equipment? Unless perhaps….”
Edmund's eyes gleamed like those of a hunter who had spotted an opportunity.
“You could waive your first condition.”
“You make a very valid point, and I have nothing to say against it. Travel safely.”
“Tch.”
That was roughly what happened.
So what was I doing after sending Edmund away?
“Nngh….”
I was wrestling with paperwork, frowning as usual.
The rumor problem had been resolved and we'd found a place to sell the soap, so why was I still so worried?
Because I was about to face a truly important problem.
“We don't have enough people.”
As I'd mentioned several times, Fortune was a rural territory tucked away in a corner of the North.
It was a small territory with few residents.
In other words, our labor force was absolutely insufficient.
“At this rate, we won't be able to keep up with the demand for soap….”
Before Edmund came, I had predicted that the demand for soap would gradually decline.
But what on earth had happened?
The demand for soap, which I'd thought could only decrease, might actually rise now.
Now that things had turned out this way, we needed to increase production, but the factory had already reached its production limit.
Even if we improved the factory, it would take a long time, and production wouldn't increase dramatically if we still lacked workers.
In other words, the problem was a lack of population.
“Sigh… At least we can somehow secure land.”
The problem was that I had no way to attract people to settle in the territory.
A job at a soap factory?
There were far more jobs like that in the territories of Mugwort and Cornet.
Was the climate good?
Hoping for a good climate in the North was as difficult as hoping to see snow fall in Busan.
Or perhaps there was a special tourist attraction like the one in Cornet?
I shook my head firmly.
No matter how hard I racked my brain, I couldn't come up with a suitable solution.
‘Why is this land like this….’
‘In other novels, people get reincarnated into prime land with a good climate and the sea nearby. Why did I have to be the only one to end up with a place like this….’
“…Are you all right, my lady?”
Heter spoke up when he could no longer watch my odd behavior.
“No….”
“What's wrong?”
“I was wondering why there was nowhere in our territory that could be made into a tourist attraction….”
“Hmm? Is that so?”
“Then can you tell me if there's anywhere worth seeing?”
“Hmm….”
Heter trailed off and smiled awkwardly.
“As I thought.”
I wasn't particularly disappointed.
I hadn't expected a good answer from an outsider like Heter in the first place.
If you don't expect anything, you can't be betrayed.
“Now that I think about it, you're right.”
If only the vineyard had been intact, there might have been a chance, but it was still covered in traces of the snow worm.
We'd had to clean up the mansion's garden first, and many other things had happened since then.
“Then why don't we go look for one?”
“Huh?”
When I looked up, wondering what he meant, I saw Heter holding out a hand to me.
“Look for what?”
When I looked at him in confusion, he smiled, the corners of his mouth lifting.
“Whether there really isn't anywhere that could become a tourist attraction, or whether we simply haven't discovered it.”
“What?”
No, what was he talking about?
The Fortune family had existed for so long; if there had been such a place, wouldn't we have made it a tourist attraction long ago?
Yet despite thinking that, I was already holding Heter's outstretched hand.
“Well, do you have somewhere in mind?”
“Not particularly.”
I had hoped that he might have found some special place while patrolling recently, but apparently that wasn't the case.
“Still, you never know. The two of us might wander around and find one by some miracle.”
“All right, let's go.”
It was obvious that suggesting we search for a tourist attraction was just an excuse; his true intention was probably to ask me on a date. Still, I'd grown tired of sitting at my desk all the time.
‘Well, shall I let myself be fooled just this once?’