Maria-sama ga Miteru Volume 31 Chapter 9

"That's right. If I remember correctly, in the room on the first floor there's … "

Shimako-san left the room as she spoke, so Yumi and Yoshino-san followed after her, thinking, "What's going on?"

The room on the first floor of the Rose Mansion was normally used as a storeroom. When required, they'd tidy it up and make use of it for some other purpose, but there hadn't been any need for that recently.

It was into that room that Shimako-san slowly walked. Occasionally she'd bend down, and occasionally she'd stand on tiptoes, as she slid boxes that were blocking her field of vision out of the way.

"What are you looking for?"

Lacking patience, Yoshino-san asked the question instead of waiting for Shimako-san.

"The sewing machine."

"Sewing machine!?"

"And the iron too."

"Iron!?"

Yumi joined in the questioning.

"Do we really have those in the Rose Mansion?"

"I haven't used them, but I was looking for something in here a while ago and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something that could have been them, or could have been something else."

That was an exceedingly vague recollection. Still, Shimako-san believed they were somewhere in the room.

"We don't have to use them, but if we do it will definitely make things easier, and the end result will probably be neater too."

Quite right. And so, Yumi and Yoshino-san joined in the search.

"It's an electric sewing machine, right?"

"That's right. The case is about this big."

Shimako-san used both hands to indicate the size. About the same size as the sewing machines in the Home Economics classroom, perhaps a bit larger. Given the size, Yumi thought it should be fairly easy to find.

"Whereabouts did you see it?"

She asked, looking for a clue.

"I can't remember, but I think it will be relatively close to the ground."

"Why's that?"

"It's a sewing machine, so it'll be quite heavy, right? And usually you don't put heavy things on top."

Just like Shimako-san had predicted, the sewing machine was found close to the ground. It was underneath an old desk, and behind a cardboard box, so it had been quite difficult to locate.

The words, "Rosa Chinensis - Donation," were written on the sewing machine's case. When they opened the case, they saw a fairly old sewing machine, so it looked like it had either been bought new by a Rosa Chinensis many, many years ago, or it was an old sewing machine that had been brought in from home. Since "Rosa Chinensis" was the only name written there, it wasn't possible to tell when it had been brought in.

The iron was beside the sewing machine. It didn't have anything written on it, but somebody had probably brought it in from home. Or perhaps it originally had "OO - Donation" written on it, but the letters had been completely erased by the passage of time.

"They should still be good to use."

At any rate, they decided to take both the sewing machine and iron to the second floor.

After plugging the iron into an outlet and waiting a while, it heated up. Similarly, when they pressed the start button of the sewing machine (without putting in a needle or thread) it made a healthy up/down motion over and over, so it looked like both were usable.

"I didn't see an ironing board, but I think we should be fine to use the table."

With that decided, they commenced work. It was decided that Shimako-san would make one first as a test, to see how it turned out.

The first step was ironing all the scraps of cloth, to straighten out the wrinkles, and then cutting them according to the pattern. Following that, a double mountain fold was applied to the sections that would form the mouth of the case, then this was ironed to form the sleeve for the cord.

Perhaps because it was hindering her work, Shimako-san took a hair tie our of her pocket and used it to gather all her hair together behind her head.

"Shimako-san, may I braid your hair?"

Yumi inquired. She found herself wanting to touch that fluffy, flowing brown hair.

"Leave it alone while I'm using the sewing machine, okay?"

Which meant that it was currently okay, since she was using the iron. Although that was probably a reluctant acceptance, since it involved finding a loophole in the refusal. Yoshino-san joined in mid-way through too, since someone else's hair is, after all, fascinating. It reminded Yumi of the simple joy of playing with dolls.

Starting at the hairband, Yumi's fingers weaved Shimako-san's hair into a braid. Since Shimako-san's hair was so wavy, it was actually longer than it looked. Since it was starting to get too long, Yumi took the end of the braided hair and used a ribbon to tie it next to the start of the braiding. In other words, the shape beneath the ribbon was a loop of braided hair.

"I've seen that hairstyle somewhere before."

Yoshino-san said, watching on from a short distance away.

"Now that you mention it."

Yumi nodded too.

"I don't remember where exactly, and it wasn't a photo but a black and white drawing."

It was Shimako-san herself who provided the answer.

"I think it might be in our Japanese textbook."

Shimako-san had neither looked in a mirror, nor had eyes in the back of her head, yet she was apparently still able to recognize the style her hair had been put into. During all this, she hadn't been distracted from her work either, as she cut the cocoa colored cloth to match the pattern, ironed the folds, stuck pins into the corners, and reached the point where she was ready to start sewing.

"Textbook?"

Shimako-san reached into her bag, took out her Japanese textbook, opened it and handed it to the puzzled pair. Then she smiled and said, "This one, right?"

"Ah - that's it."

Seeing the actual article, they quickly agreed.

"Hey -, the name of this hairstyle is Marguerite."

There was an illustration of it on the 'hairstyles' page, among pictures of hair parted in the middle, hair tied in the back and other Japanese hairstyles. According to the text, it was a Western hairstyle that had apparently been popular with young women around the year 1890 or so.

"Even today, it looks good."

At the very least, it really suited Shimako-san, since she looked like a Western doll with her light brown hair.

"Say, Shimako-san, do you take after your mother?"

Yumi idly asked as Shimako-san was threading the sewing machine.

"Huh?"

"I mean, since you don't really take after your father."

And, according to what Noriko-chan had told them a while ago, she didn't really take after her older brother either. Since her older brother and her father were so much alike.

"Ah, right."

Shimako-san smiled.

While on that topic, they knew a lot about Shimako-san's school-life, but not much about her home-life. Until the beginning of second-year, she'd kept the fact that she lived at a Buddhist temple a secret. But with that out in the open, it felt like they'd missed a chance to ask her about it.

"And what drew you to Christianity in the first place? Was there some event that provided the spark?"

Unlike Yumi and Yoshino-san who'd been brought up in the Catholic faith since kindergarten, Shimako-san had entered into Lillian's Academy during middle school. And given her family environment, it's unlikely Christianity would have been recommended to her.

"Well, that's because,"

Shimako-san answered.

"When I was young, I was playing in one of the storage closets in our house, and right at the back there was a trunk. Inside the trunk was a rosary. I'm certain that's when the door to Christianity was opened."

"Why would there be a rosary in a shrine?"

It was an innocent question.

From the Buddhist perspective, Christianity was just a form of paganism. So why would a temple contain a tool that those pagans used to pray.

"It was one of my deceased older brother's possessions, so I suppose they couldn't bear to dispose of it."

"Your older brother's deceased? But, umm, that's odd. Noriko-chan said she met him. Plus, a while back, you told us about him baking a cake at a kindergarten - "

As she spoke, Yumi became increasingly confused. The time-line was all mixed up.

Shimako-san straightened out the time-line quite simply.

"The brother that Noriko-chan met, the one who baked a cake at a kindergarten, who is just like my father is Masafumi. In addition to him, there was another brother, called Norimichi."

And he's the deceased person. So that's how it was, huh.

"Shimako-san, your parents had three children?"

Wait, there weren't necessarily only three. For a long time, Yumi had thought that Shimako-san was an only child, only to one day suddenly find out that she had an older brother. Now it had been revealed that she had another older brother. If this pattern continued, it was possible they might gradually learn that she had five older siblings and five younger siblings, totaling eleven children in the family.

"Yeah."

Shimako-san agreed, while continuing to thread the sewing machine. But then, almost immediately, she seemed to reconsider and corrected herself by saying, "No."

Just as Yumi was bracing herself to learn about even more siblings:

"My father - "

That was an unexpected way to start the sentence.

"Yeah?"

Yumi and Yoshino-san both asked simultaneously. Shimako-san straightened her posture, then continued.

"Norimichi is my real father."

"Huh!?"

What the heck was going on?

Chapter end