episode_0050

As I waited for the two to finish preparing, Duke Herbert entered first, holding a piece of paper.

“Princess Fannie said she needed more time to prepare, so I will speak first.”

“Alright.”

Could that be all he prepared?

I was expecting something, but if that’s all he prepared, I’ll be very disappointed.

“I’m not yet familiar with design, so I approached it in a slightly different way.”

“Hmm…”

Still, I denied the suspicion that ‘there must be something more’, ‘that can’t be all’, and waited for the Duke’s words, but that didn’t happen.

“I thought about how to make people find new alternatives; since we can’t suddenly get rid of all corsets, I thought about what motivation there would be to get rid of them. I was inspired by Sir William’s interview.”

“What? My interview?”

I was already uneasy.

Of all places to get inspiration…

“The words ‘hourglass’ and ‘heavily armed knight’ that Sir William said in the interview were a great shock to people; some people even began to doubt the beauty that corsets bring.”

“That’s an exaggeration.”

“It’s not an exaggeration; otherwise, why would there have been so many young ladies at the interview?”

“Umm…”

Even Princess Elizabeth joined in to support Duke Herbert’s words, but I frowned and made a sullen expression.

What I said may have been unpleasant, but it wasn’t to the level of being a shock or doubting corsets.

If they were going to be so shocked by a few words, they would have changed their corsets a long time ago.

“Thanks to Sir William, the seed of doubt has already been planted. If we water this seed so it can sprout, we can spread negative opinions about corsets more easily than expected.”

“What is it?”

“It’s about revealing the reality of corsets very starkly to give people a big shock. If we widely publicize how corsets ruin the human body, people will avoid corsets, just like pants were avoided as a symbol of barbarians in the past.”

It wasn’t a bad method.

It’s easier and simpler to degrade someone else’s product as trash than to promote my own product as good.

“But most people already know about the discomfort of corsets. What more can you do here?”

“It’s important to inform them about the discomfort ‘specifically’. Warning ‘You can get hurt’ and warning ‘Your bones can break and you can live as a disabled person for the rest of your life’ are similar, but the weight they carry is different, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“With the help of Princess Fannie, I looked into the harms of corsets. It was terrible.”

The Duke held out the paper he had brought to me.

“This is the wickedness of corsets that I wrote with the help of Princess Fannie. I would like you to read it.”

“Alright.”

I received the paper with the Duke’s writing and held it.

A short piece of writing, filling about two pages front and back.

I tried to exclude prejudice as much as possible and read the text slowly.

The Duke’s writing was quite good.

It was the kind of writing that would make anyone who was interested realize how terrible corsets are at once.

However, because he tried to express the suffering of corsets in as much detail as possible, I felt something strange in the writing.

‘The woman whose breath is choked by the corset gasps pitifully, trying to replenish a meager breath.’ or

‘The woman who has imprisoned herself in a cage for a moment of beauty will be tormented by a protruding, hideous lower abdomen due to crushed intestines, and a uterus that has lost its function by being out of place, by obtaining a thin waist that is likely to break.’

Something like that.

It would have been fine if it had been described very plainly in a medical or scientific way, only stating the results and causes, but with the addition of the aristocratic embellishments, the writing felt like a gory BDSM novel.

Of course, expressions like that make the danger more tangible than dry expressions like ‘the intestines are out of place’ or ‘lung capacity is reduced by up to 29%’, but I was worried about what would happen if someone became interested in bondage play because of that.

Of course, I know that this is too much of an excessive worry.

If someone is going to open their eyes to sadism or masochism after reading that article, they were likely that kind of person to begin with.

The biggest problem with the Duke’s method is that people don’t really like writing.

Writing has too little impact, and people don’t pay much attention to it.

Because it’s boring.

Doctors in my previous life also tried hard to prevent the harmful effects of corsets by publishing them in newspapers, similar to the Duke, but it still took decades.

Even in a world where there are no priests’ heels and you suffer for life if your ribs are twisted, will they listen easily in a world where divine power can cure diseases in an instant?

“This won’t work.”

Judging that it would never happen, I rejected the Duke’s proposal with a single stroke.

“Yes? Why…”

Duke Herbert couldn’t hide his embarrassment and stared at me with wide eyes.

“From my point of view, let me say a few things. First, the problem is writing. People don’t read writing well.”

“Don’t educated aristocrats read newspapers at least?”

“However, people prefer people’s words to writing, and prefer seeing things with their own eyes to people’s words. No matter how much I rant in the newspaper, the rumors circulating around me don’t disappear.”

Now there are even rumors that I prefer bestiality because I hired demi-humans.

I’m so frustrated I could go crazy.

Since the perception that corsets are already a tool for beauty is ingrained, there will be few people who pay attention even if you criticize corsets.

Unless it’s something other than writing.

“It would be better to show it in pictures than in writing.”

“Pictures?”

“Hmm… it’s better to see this with your own eyes.”

I picked up a pen and quickly started drawing on a new piece of paper.

I drew a picture of a woman’s body viewed from the side, with the lower abdomen bulging out due to the intestines being crushed by the corset, as Duke Herbert had described in his writing, and an anatomical diagram of the internal organs being pushed downwards in the abdomen.

“Look, the image that Herbert, you described in several hundred characters comes into view at a glance, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Have you ever studied medicine? It’s quite detailed.”

“… I just picked up a few things.”

I was more curious about Princess Elizabeth, who knew that this picture was accurate, but I ignored it because that wasn’t important right now.

“What if we drew a normal woman’s body next to it?”

“The comparison will be clear.”

“Right, but people who see it for the first time will doubt it, saying it’s exaggerated and that there are lies mixed in to criticize corsets, but they will feel uneasy while looking at their own body shape and their servant’s body shape, because they will actually be different.”

“Oh… I see. But why haven’t you done it until now?”

“Doctors have already done it a few times.”

“Yes?”

“Doctors have already appealed in newspapers several times, with more detailed anatomical diagrams than the ones I drew.”

I remembered it clearly because pictures of internal organs and skeletons suddenly appeared in the newspaper.

But even so, all I heard was the mockery of ‘Take off your wife’s corset first’, and nothing changed.

“That can’t be…”

Duke Herbert seemed to have had high expectations for his method, and sat down listlessly on the chair with an expression full of despair.

I felt sorry for him, but I couldn’t let him have false hope…

“Well… cheer up, I’ll consider putting it in an advertisement with my name on it.”

“……”

Still, I couldn’t leave the Duke, who was so depressed, alone, so I offered words of comfort, but there was no response.

_

While the Duke’s alternative was spectacularly sinking and he was falling into depression.

“I’m sorry it took so long.”

Princess Fannie, who had finished preparing, entered.

Unlike Duke Herbert, who only had a few sheets of paper, Princess Fannie had a lot of things wrapped in her arms.

At first glance, it looked like large paper with blueprints and small pieces of fabric.

“I came up with a new design that improves existing corsets.”

“Ooh~”

My heart fluttered and my expectations soared at the four letters ‘new clothes’.

As I looked at Princess Fannie with sparkling eyes, the princess unfolded the large, rolled-up paper on the desk.

“This is the new corset I designed.”

What was drawn on the paper was a slightly shorter type of corset that covered from above the pelvis to just below the chest.

However, the unusual thing was that there were no strings to tighten the corset, and there was no sign of parts that could be called a frame.

“The biggest feature of this corset is that it corrects the body shape without using frames such as steel and whalebone.”

“Hmm… there’s no way that’s possible?”

“Of course, the effect is less than that of a frame, but I focused on the fact that it can play a middle ground role that is better than nothing.”

“Then how does it hold the body shape?”

Princess Fannie smiled and picked up one of the fabrics she had brought.

It wasn’t silk, cotton, wool, or linen, but it was a somewhat familiar fabric.

I narrowed my eyes and stared at the fabric.

“Recently, the witches of the southeast discovered a new elastomer.”

“Ela… elastin?”

“Hehe~”

Isn’t that for making hair shiny?

There may be soap and perfume here, but there’s no hair conditioner.

As I stared at her with a bewildered expression, Princess Fannie smiled and stretched out the fabric she was holding.

The fabric, which had gradually increased in length, continued to hold its shape at about twice its original length, and as soon as Princess Fannie released her strength, it returned to its original shape.

“Huh?”

As I stared blankly at the princess with a dumbfounded voice at the sight, she began to explain with a smiling face.

“A substance called an elastomer is a collective term for substances with strong elasticity and flexibility, as you have seen. It is also called an elastic body, and natural latex is included in this.”

The princess paused for a beat and continued in a confident tone.

“I have designed a corset that corrects the body shape without using a frame by using elastomers.”

“……”

My mouth was wide open and I froze.

Real.

Princess Fannie has really found something enormously big.