Annan stood at the window in the Living Room, staring blankly at Free City through the rain.
"Professor Annan, would you like me to clear the rain clouds?" Dean Breichim asked. He had come to teach Lilith.
Annan felt a pang of envy. Mages could change the weather and do anything with spells, while he could only summon a greedy dragon...
He declined the dean's offer. The rain would give the two leads more time to get to know each other.
With nothing else to do, Annan asked the maid Abby to bring him paper and a pen. Leaning against the windowsill, he began to sketch.
Rich People hated rainy days. In most cities, sanitation was so poor that rain swept the waste hidden in alleys and along roadsides everywhere. It splashed onto people and flowed up to their doorsteps.
Annan suspected that was how high heels had come about on the Allen Continent.
Watching the few pedestrians on the street, Annan sketched a bar of Soap too.
The Allen Continent had soap, but it was nothing like what he had in mind.
Their "Soap" was a special liquid concoction that cleaned the skin, invented by alchemists. A bottle cost several gold coins and lasted only a few uses. Supposedly, it contained gold dust—though Annan couldn't tell whether its ingredients were truly precious or the alchemists had all agreed to keep prices high.
Most people in Free City resisted the Public Bathhouse. They would rather work longer than waste time cleaning themselves "like women."
Annan had criticized that prejudice and explained the benefits of good hygiene. Still, Soap would make the whole thing much easier.
Once he had finished sketching, Annan took his drawings to Olmedo.
"What are these?"
To Olmedo, they looked like symbols from some kind of pictographic