Aristocrat: A Transmigration Story

Chapter 3 - The Goddess of Fortune

The governess scrutinized Elana's work for the third time, possibly finding fault. She cannot quite imagine that the rumored good-for-nothing young miss of Han household could write an impeccable tanka. 

Have you ever seen magic?

Magic of body and soul
And my heart trembles.
Red roses and doves above,
It's the magic of true love.

The words were woven flawlessly, like singing into one's ear. She might actually recommend this piece to The National Tribune, if the young miss permits. 

She looked at the girl and saw the opposite of what the public has been telling--she was an ephemeral beauty, calm and composed. While she did not generally share Madam Han's features, Miss Han Lia certainly inherited her mother's countenance. 

"Is there anything wrong?" The girl asked.

"This piece is perfect. If I may ask, what inspired you to write this?" 

Romance novels, Elana mused. But of course she would not say that. So she just stuck with the usual, "It just came to me when I wrote it."

Hmm, a genius, the governess praised in her head. "May I ask permission to publish this in The National Tribune?" 

"By all means, yes you may." Elana did not think that there was harm in doing so.

"Well then young miss, this is it for the day. I will report your progress to Madam Han." The governess stood up and bid Elana farewell while clutching the papyrus like it was her dearest treasure. 

Elana also rose and said, "Thank you for your time today. I'll see you tomorrow." 

When the governess left, Mizu entered the room with a tray of tea and pastries. "Good work today Miss! Tomorrow's the last day finally!" She happily placed the delicacies on the table for Elana to eat. 

"Mizu, on the matter that I asked you to investigate, do you have an update?" Elana asked while she munched on a butter cookie. 

Few days prior, Elana tasked Mizu to give her all documents pertaining to the family business so she could review them. It proved to be difficult because Elana was not the heir of her father and thus she actually had no business in reading those. But a few coaxing with her grandmother, she finally laid her hands on them--all except the recipe for the making of samera stone. 

From what she learned, the family's flagship product was the samera stone which was personally created and produced by the head of the family. And since her Father had already passed away, production of the samera stone also halted. Those available were still surplus supplies created a couple of years ago. 

Which meant that at least, her family had a contingency plan. But she wondered, how about the demand for the stone?

Based on historical sales data which she painstakingly graphed in the absence of MS Excel, the spikes occurred every 7 years, when the Seo Royal Family bulk orders 700 samera stones for who-knows-what. From the inventory records, the 700 samera stones were already prepared and kept in a secret warehouse which meant they were just waiting for the royal order.

The profit from that sale was already immense, enough to save her family from ruin...if this was 10 years ago. Oddly, her family kept the selling price from 20 years ago, but the cost of production had an average increase of 10% in the last 5 years alone, perhaps due to inflation. They needed to re-price the stone to be able to account for the cost increase of the production and thus be able to gain a fair profit.