Kino no Tabi:Volume14 Chapter4

“Land of Improved Luck” — The Fifth “C”, Cozenage —

A lone car was riding through a vast land.

It was a tiny, yellow car so shabby, it was a marvel that it was still running in its condition.

On the driver seat at the right sat a slightly short but handsome young man, while on the passenger seat was a beautiful woman with long black hair. Both of them wore light-tinted sunglasses.

At the back seat of the car was their traveling luggage, arranged in a not-so-very orderly fashion.

Of note was a persuader (Note: a gun) powerful enough to kill an elephant casually mixed among the sleeping bags, tents, and cans of water and fuel.

The landscape featured the brown earth with grass and various trees growing on it, as well as hills.

It was an extensive area, with a row of low hills barring the view of the horizon. As it was spring, leaves grew in verdant abundance. The sky was clear, and the sun’s rays were strong.

The snake-like winding stretch of the road was wide enough to let pass one truck.

Flanked left and right with bushes, the road was made of packed earth of a brownish hue with a tinge of red. It continued on without a single break. The tiny vehicle would shake each time it passed through one of the huge recesses scattered all over it.

“Are there people who go along this road, Master?” To avoid biting his tongue, the man on the driver’s seat waited for the jolts to settle down before speaking.

The woman called Master answered without breaking her cool countenance.

“Who knows? I only heard that the country at the end of this road is not usually visited by people.”

“I’ll bet on it, with this kind of road. It’s great and all that it’s the dry season, but if it were raining, this place will be a swamp. —Since we went through all this trouble, it would be nice if we find some easy-money-scheme in there. What’s the specialty of that country?”

“Right. I heard they produce ceramics.”

The man grimaced at the woman’s response.

“That won’t do,” he answered as he gripped the steering wheel.

Because ceramics break easily, transporting them is a troublesome task. And unless they were masterpieces, they won’t fetch too high of a price. In other words their import and export is unpractical.

“Well, if there’s some delicious food there, I guess that will do,” Completely disheartened, the man answered as he gazed at the walls that could be seen just at the bottom of the hills.

The country the pair entered in was a very big one.

The walls run far and wide, the ends of which couldn’t be seen at all. A huge river leisurely flowed through the country, and the green fields was spread all over like square carpets.

The tiny car drove leisurely along the road and eventually reached the country’s center, the most prosperous part of the country. Even so, there were only rows of one-storey buildings made of bricks and wood; a vision of a truly peaceful town. Driving through the main street that was lined up with shops, made them stand out as outsiders. The modestly garbed citizens gathered around them almost simultaneously, carrying with them their baskets filled with vegetables and fruits.

The vegetables looked delicious on the virtue of their freshness, however,

“Okay folks, please move aside. We’ll go shopping later.”

The man tried to chase away the crowd blocking their path with the car’s horn, but being broken, it only coughed out a weak honk.

Eventually they found a place to stay in. They left the car, and came back to the road on foot.

They returned to the main street they traversed earlier, and the woman looked around in the shops. The man followed her while munching on some fruit.

The adults and children who seem to have time to spare followed behind them curiously.

They looked on with fascination at the shiny revolver on the woman’s right thigh, as well as the automatic persuader hanging from the man’s left waist. The children pointed their fingers to the pair as if they were shooting at them.

“If you guys do that with real persuaders, you would’ve been dead by now. Five times over,” the man warned the children, but it didn’t have much of an effect.

The woman peeked inside a few stores, but they only sell some food, ordinary goods, and clothes.

And when they visited the shops selling the rumored ceramics, they found, surely enough, high quality products lining up the shelves and shopkeepers enthusiastically offering their merchandise. However, the woman did not buy anything.

“Well, there are some really well-made ones,” the man said while snapping his finger on a thin porcelain, creating a beautiful, high-pitched tune.

Just when they were about to finish going around the shops, all the time being surrounded by onlookers, a voice called out to the pair.

“Travelers, will you spare me your time? I have something I would like to discuss with you.”

It was an old man, roughly around his eighties, with a middle-aged man waiting on him.

“What is it? If it’s something that I can help with,” the woman said, and the old man guided the two to his own store.

It was a rather large store. The old man introduced himself as its shopkeeper. His wares were the same as the other shops — beautiful ceramics.

“Well, see here… Would you buy these?”

Two male workers carried a big wooden box at their feet. The box, which was big enough to be used as a desk, contained plenty of stones.

The stones were white and somewhat transparent. They were oval in shape, the smallest like the tip of a finger and the bigger ones as big as one’s fist. It’s not known as to how many hundreds or thousands of these stones clattered within the box.

“These are crystals, right?” the male traveler muttered.

The woman quietly crouched on the floor, stretched out her arm towards the box, and picked up a piece. It was oval in shape, milky white with a light pink tinge, not unlike a confetti candy.

“…”

The woman stared at the stone for about nine seconds, then nonchalantly returned it to the box. The stones lightly rattled against each other.

“Did you collect these within the country?”

The woman’s question as soon as she stood up was answered by the old man.

“It is as you say. But these are of no use to us. To produce our ceramics, we collect fine mud grains from the river, but stones are left in our sieves in the process.”

The man nodded. “I see. I guess these must be getting in your way… but won’t it be fine as long as you throw them away?”

“Well you see, if we throw them back into the river, the people who collect mud downstream will get angry. They’ll get caught in the sieves again. We tried throwing them in the road, but the people walking barefoot came to complain that the stones hurt their feet. Obviously, we can’t throw them in the fields, nor do we wish to pile them in an area that could be turned as a field in the future. It would be too troublesome to throw them outside the country. That’s why we collect them like this, and keep them. We have enough to fill a storehouse.”

“Oh… Then what about processing them into pretty accessories? That’s what they do in other countries.”

The old man only shook his head.

“We used to that back when I was young, but eventually, everyone in this country learned how to do it. If they don’t sell, it would be a waste of time processing them. Right now, no one’s willing to do that, and no one wants them. That’s why we were hoping at least that you would buy these and take them with you outside the country.”

“I see. But I don’t think travelers of merchants would be interested in these. These won’t fetch a good price, at least in nearby countries,” the male traveler said with all honesty, and the old man’s shoulder dropped.

“So it’s just as we feared… What should we do…?”

And then, the female traveler who had been quiet for a while began to speak, her expression the same as ever,

“I have an idea.”

—

The woman talked indifferently, while being basked in the attention of the male traveler, the workers, and the old man.

“The reason why no one wants these stones is because they do not have any value.”

“Well, that’s true,” the male traveler interjected.

The woman continued. “If that’s the case, then all we need to do is to make it valuable.”

“To make it… valuable?” The old man cocked his head.

“Yes. Make this stone not just an ‘ordinary’ stone, but one that has the power to ‘improve luck’. If you say that this has been an age-old tradition in this country, they will get sold.”

“…”

The woman continued, ignoring the flabbergasted expressions on the faces of the people around her.

“It goes without saying that the cooperation of everyone in this country is needed. If it sells, you can give the proceeds to the government, and that would be the end of the problem.”

“B-but…,” the old man interrupted. “Won’t that be… deceiving the customers? It’s like selling a teacup with a hole. This stone has no such powers at all…”

“Indeed it doesn’t have such powers. But it has the ability to make someone ‘believe’. If the person who bought it thinks, ‘I got something great! With this, my luck from now on will turn around!’ it will affect his self-confidence. A confident person’s actions often result in success, which will then be attributed to his ‘improved luck’. There are cases when a patient’s illness gets cured just by taking a sugar pill he believes to be an effective medicine. It may have been a lie, but the patient was cured for real. To put it in another way, whether a person is deceived or not depends on the person’s way of thinking.”

“…”

“Besides, there will be people who wouldn’t buy it, thinking, ‘You expect me to believe that!’. But as there will be people who would think, ‘I want to try it!’ there will be no problem. There’s no need for you to be guilty about deceiving anyone.”

“…”

“And when you sell it, you should make the price as high as possible. If it’s cheap, they will think that it’s not really that effective. On the other hand, if it’s really expensive, they will think that the demand for it is high, precisely because the stone must be effective. The trick is to sell little by little, in high prices.”

“…”

“Also, this stone is good enough as it is. You don’t have to polish or change its shape. You can just tell them that it is more powerful the more its natural look is preserved. That way, you can avoid labor and processing expenses. Moreover, you’d best keep it a secret that there are these many. You should tell them that this stone is rare even in this country. Even if there’s someone who would like to buy a lot at once, you should tell them that at the time, you only have a few pieces. That will add to the reasons why it is so expensive.”

“A-ah…” The old man moaned. The other employees also made faces out of either admiration or shock, or probably both.

The female traveler went on. “But of course, whether you go through with this plan is still up to you to decide.”

“Ah… You have certainly made your point. First of all, I would like to thank you. I would like to show you my appreciation, but I don’t know how,” the old man said.

To this, the woman only said, “Then as a remembrance, let me keep one stone.”

And she took a single stone from the box. It was not too big, just the size of a coin.

“Will that be enough?”

The woman nodded. Then she added, “I have no aversion to ordinary stones. —I’ll keep it to remember this country by.”

——

The two travelers spent one night in the country and departed the next day.

In the end, all they bought was their own food. Other than dried meat, they bought fresh food just enough to be finished in several days.

Once more, the run-down vehicle traversed the rough road. It was one tough item.

“There wasn’t anything we could profit from after all,” the man said as he drove.

“On the contrary. It was a very fruitful visit,” the woman in the passenger seat replied.

The man looked dubiously beside him. “You mean that stone?”

He noticed the object that the woman fished out of her jacket’s inner pocket. It was the stone from before, wrapped carefully in a cloth.

The man returned his gaze forward and spoke while moving the steering wheel.

“I wonder if they will do what you told them?”

“That honest old man won’t, but the rest will probably give it a try.”

“I see. Then I shall pray that the next traveler of merchant is someone who sincerely believes in luck,” the man said, expecting the conversation to end.

However, the woman continued.

“You’re just as clueless as those people, aren’t you?”

“Huh? —About what?” The man asked in surprise.

The woman held out her right hand, and let the stone be shined upon by the rays of the sun filtering through the front glass. And then,

“This here is a raw diamond.”

“…. Eh? Master… what did you just say?”

“I said, this, and all those other stones in the box, are all diamonds. I couldn’t even imagine how many carats there are. We’re probably dealing with kilograms now.”

“…”

The man mutely drove the car for a while, and then asked,

“We’re not going back?”

“We’re not going back.”

The woman answered without delay.

The man’s lips formed a word of disbelief.

“You could have told me…”

“It’s your fault for not noticing. Because there were a lot, you went and concluded that they were mere crystals, right? Learned your lesson?”

“So harsh… But knowing that, why didn’t you get more? Like a bagful or something?”

“This is more than enough for the work that I have done. If this stone gets processed into a gemstone and sold in a big country, the proceeds will be enough to cover several years of traveling expenses.”

“T-then, if we took that whole box…?”

The man’s breathing became rough.

In contrast, the woman remained as calm as ever.

“I would like to hear your opinion on that.”

“Well, if we have so much raw diamonds with us, won’t we be able to sell them for a really high price?” The man considered, but eventually shook his head. “No…. They will strike a hard bargain. Moreover, they will do everything to find out which country we got them from. We might even get killed in the end.”

“That’s why one’s enough. We should also make up a story that we found it in some nameless riverside while we’re traveling.”

“I see… Ah, I got it…,” the man said groaningly.

The woman remained silent and waited for the continuation of his words.

“If the next merchants or travelers that will come to that country does not notice that those stones are diamonds, they will not buy them, thinking that it was just some fake ‘lucky charm’… Of course, there will be among them generous ones who would buy the stones in large quantities out of superstition, or those who really believe that the stones have power.”

“That’s right.”

“But those who have sharp eyes like you will notice that they are diamonds and buy as much as is viable, and will sell them somewhere else while keeping the source a secret. And will repeat it again. As a consequence, the people from that country will benefit, while the merchant or traveler will gain an even bigger profit. Moreover, they will avoid being bargained down on a large quantity of stones. It’s also a protection against malicious people who may come to that country blinded by the diamonds.”

“Exactly. —Of course, there is also a possibility that a person who couldn’t read the circumstances will reveal everything.”

“I wonder what will happen,” the man murmured as he imagined the country’s future and looked at the sky. And then,

“Even so—” The man said with an amused laugh. “If those men who pay for diamonds at incredibly high prices to offer to their lovers or fiancées find out, they’ll faint in agony.”

To these words, the woman only replied remorselessly,

“It’s all good as long as they don’t find out.”

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