The Third District of the trade city Pelua.
A narrow, damp alley where the poor gathered to live.
From the moment he was born, the life of Hans, a commoner, had always been a fierce battle against “itching.”
The only clothes he owned were a single tunic woven from coarse, thick wool, and a pair of trousers made from scratchy hemp cloth.
For the commoners of Pelua, clothing was a means of protecting the body, but at the same time, it was a shackle that inflicted dreadful suffering.
Wool was warm, but it could not absorb sweat, and when it got wet, it grew as heavy as a stone.
To wash it even once, his wife had to go out to the riverside, beat it with a club for half a day, and then dry it for several more days before it was barely wearable again.
Naturally, commoners could count on one hand the number of times they washed their clothes over the course of their lives.
The result was miserable.
“Ugh, I’ve been bitten again.”
Hans habitually scratched at his side.
Lice and fleas laid eggs and multiplied in the seams of his thick clothes.
His skin was always covered in red rashes and boils of unknown origin, and his sweat-soaked clothes gave off a foul odor like the rank smell of an animal.
But to Hans, his own itching was a pain he could endure.
What truly drove him mad was the newborn baby lying in the cradle.
“Waaah! Waaaaah!”
“Dear, what should we do? The baby’s skin is festering again……”
His wife, on the verge of tears, loosened the old hemp swaddling cloth.
The baby’s delicate skin had been rubbed raw by the rough fabric and was swollen bright red all over, with bug bites and oozing sores stuck together here and there.
All the poor parents could do was roughly rinse the smelly old cloth in water and wrap the baby in it again.
“I’ll find work somehow and buy even a scrap of soft silk.”
Hans soothed his wife and left the house with heavy steps.
Today was the day of an interview for laborers at the mill in Pelua’s Second Commercial District.
He had to find work somehow if he was to buy medicine for the baby.
But as Hans crossed the market, his steps suddenly came to a halt.
“Come, come! Take your pick! The finest cotton cloth, just brought in from the Carnoble factory!”
“The price is madness! This snow-white fabric, which people like you wouldn’t even have dared look at before, is only a few copper coins! Take this entire roll and it still won’t cost five silver coins!”
In the middle of the market.
Dazzling white cloth was piled like a mountain atop a huge cart.
At the edge of each piece, the name Carnoble was clearly stamped in a dark blue mark.
“A few…… copper coins?”
Hans approached as if possessed.
Cotton cloth.
Soft fabric worn only by nobles.
In the past, this luxury had been woven stitch by stitch on looms, its price rivaling gold, and now it had been released onto the streets for the price commoners paid to buy a few loaves of bread!
He did not know it, but Elpanso Carnoble was selling it at three silver coins a roll, so retailers were selling the rolls for around five silver coins.
Small cut pieces of cloth were being sold for a few copper coins.
Something that would once have cost silver was now only copper!
People’s eyes went wild.
“Here, give me some at once!”
“Only a few copper coins? Hurry up and bring out ten bolts!”
“This is something you have to buy right now!”
Hans, too, emptied every coin he had from his pocket with trembling hands and bought two bolts of cotton cloth.
The moment he held the fabric in his arms, its light, soft touch was like embracing a cloud, and he nearly burst into tears.
That night, a small revolution took place in Hans’s cramped home.
His wife stayed up all night cutting the snow-white cotton cloth with scissors and sewing.
What she made was not outerwear.
It was thin clothing that touched the skin first, and most directly.
A concept appearing for the first time in the life of commoners in human history: “underwear.”
The next morning.
Wearing white underwear made from cotton cloth and his old tunic over it, Hans shuddered at the wondrous sensation enveloping his body.
“My God…… It doesn’t itch.”
The coarse wool did not prick his skin.
The soft cotton cloth absorbed all his sweat, so there was no stickiness either.
Most of all, his body felt light enough to fly.
Moreover, his wife discovered the true miracle of this fabric.
“Dear! This cloth doesn’t shrink even if I put it in a boiling pot and scrub it hard after boiling it! And when I hang it out, it dries fluffy and clean in half a day!”
“Haha, of course. It’s something that originally would have cost three silver coins! Naturally the quality is good.”
Hans did not truly know it, but even if he had paid three silver coins, it would have been difficult to experience fabric of the same quality as Carnoble cloth.
Boiling it in hot water.
That meant perfectly sterilizing the lice, the fleas, and the invisible evil spirits—the germs.
After washing himself clean and putting on white underwear that had been boiled and laundered, Hans no longer gave off the sour stench distinctive to the poor.
Instead, he smelled soft and fresh, like cloth well dried in the sun.
And so Hans arrived at the mill interview.
Amid dozens of shabby, foul-smelling paupers, Hans’s neatness shone like a crane among chickens.
The mill owner looked Hans up and down and nodded.
“The white cloth showing inside your collar is very clean. You don’t smell, either. In a mill that handles foodstuffs, a diligent fellow like you who manages his hygiene thoroughly is just right. You’re hired. Come to work starting tomorrow.”
“H-hired…… Thank you! Thank you so much!”
The other poor men who had failed the interview looked at him with jealous eyes, but Hans was as happy as if he had gained the whole world.
It was not that his abilities had suddenly improved.
All of this was thanks to the clean cotton cloth wrapped around his skin.
“Dear! I got a job! Now we can buy medicine for the baby!”
That evening, Hans bought freshly baked bread and a lump of meat and ran home, only to freeze as he opened the door.
Because the baby’s piercing cries, which should normally have reached him from the entrance of the alley, could not be heard.
His heart sank.
What if the baby had failed to overcome the fever and something had gone wrong?
“Dear! The baby, the baby is……!”
Hans hurriedly rushed into the room, and the sight that entered his eyes—
It was a peaceful scene he had never even imagined in his entire life.
His wife was smiling as she sewed, and the baby in the cradle, instead of being wrapped in old, rough hemp cloth, was bundled snugly in snow-white cotton swaddling that had been thoroughly boiled in hot water and dried crisp in the sun, sleeping like an angel.
“……Huh?”
Hans approached in a daze and stroked the baby’s cheek.
The skin that had been covered in oozing sores and red rashes was settling down as if by magic, regaining its fair softness.
The pain that had made the baby scratch all night from insect bites had disappeared completely with a single piece of clean cloth.
“Amazing, isn’t it, Hans?”
Just then, old Marta from next door, who had been boiling a savory soup in one corner of the house, approached with a smile on her wrinkled face.
She was a wise old woman who had lived in this alley for decades and experienced every hardship there was.
“M-Marta. Our baby……”
“Yes. Sleeping very well. The fever’s gone down too, and the breathing is steady.”
Old Marta carefully stroked the white cotton cloth wrapped around the cradle with her rough hand.
“I’ve lived in this alley for more than sixty years, and I’ve seen hundreds of newborn babes sicken and die from red-spot disease. Everyone thought it was the fate of the poor and the curse of evil spirits.”
The old woman’s deep eyes turned toward Hans.
“But it wasn’t a curse. It was simply that bugs and sickness were hiding in these filthy, stinking, heavy fabrics. Those dreadful scraps of cloth that couldn’t be boiled clean, and couldn’t be changed often.”
The old woman clicked her tongue, then pointed out the window toward the banks of the Rene River on the outskirts of Pelua.
There stood a massive red-brick factory, its machinery turning without rest.
“The man running those machines over there, they called him Grand Merchant Carnoble, didn’t they? The noble lords may chatter only about how much money that factory is raking in……”
Old Marta patted Hans on the shoulder.
“But that gentleman didn’t just earn money. He let commoners like us wash and wear the cloth that touches our skin every day. He let us wrap newborn babes in clean swaddling.”
“……”
“If Grand Merchant Carnoble had not released that cheap, clean cloth into the market, your child would have fallen ill and died within a few days. That gentleman saved your child’s life.”
At those words, Hans’s eyes reddened.
He gripped the tiny hand of his sleeping baby.
The smell of the soft cotton cloth coming from the baby had never seemed so fragrant.
A life where itching had vanished.
A world where one could change into clean underwear every day, and children did not die from skin diseases.
While the nobles and great merchants calculated only the secret struggles of power and the flow of gold coins, slandering and tearing at one another,
among the commoners living at the bottom of Pelua, the name Elpanso Carnoble was being engraved not as a mere magnate, but as a “savior.”
“Thank you…… Truly, thank you, Grand Merchant.”
Hans bowed deeply toward the red-brick factory outside the window, like a believer gazing upon a temple.
It was proof that a great fortress of public sentiment, one no one could break, was being firmly built from the very bottom of Pelua.
The strongest rampart, one that no conspiracy of any powerful man could ever destroy.