Welcome to Monstrous Miss Sophie’s Enchanted Salon of Healing Volume 1 by Sachi Konzome

Author:Sachi Konzome [Konzome, Sachi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cross Infinite World
Published: 2025-05-31T07:00:00+00:00

Yaora, the Greengrocer

SUMMER had arrived. Along with it, more letters to Sophie’s salon.

“Yet another one asking for wrinkle removal,” Sophie muttered absentmindedly, setting aside yet another plea from a woman seeking to reclaim her youth. The task of penning polite rejections for all these requests had become a job unto itself as of late.

Johann came to quickly check up on his daughter before he left the house, picked up the bundle of letters, and weighed them in his hands. “For your next flyer, we might have no choice but to print ‘Cannot reverse the ravages of time’ in bold at the top.”

The power to sway kingdoms and topple empires…

Sophie jolted. Who said that?! Mother?! But she glanced around, and Sherlotte was nowhere to be seen. Just my imagination, then… She quieted herself, then prayed quietly for her father’s continued health.

“When’s your next client?” Johann asked, blissfully unaware of the danger he’d just put himself in.

“Tomorrow. An eighty-year-old woman.”

“Eighty, you say?”

The letter had come in on basic writing paper, though the language was formal and polite: I would like some old facial scars removed, wrote Yaora, age eighty.

“You don’t say,” Johann said, passing his eyes over the page. “I suppose a woman’s desire to be beautiful doesn’t diminish with age.”

“No, it really doesn’t seem to,” Sophie agreed.

As Johann left the room, a warm summer breeze swept in, carrying a distinctive, heady scent. Is it that time of year already? she wondered, a faint smile touching her lips.

The people of this region observed a tradition reminiscent of Japan’s Obon Festival, a time for inviting the spirits of the departed to return home to their families. To welcome and guide those ancestral spirits, households would arrange stones into the shape of a hearth near their gate. Within the hearth, they burned a specific type of wood known for its distinctive fragrance, believed to light the way for the spirits.

To ensure the flames neither extinguished prematurely nor spread uncontrollably, a chosen family member maintains a constant vigil by the hearth. This role carried deep significance; parents often told their children that being entrusted with the task was a mark of maturity. As a result, it was a common and heartwarming sight to see young children standing proudly by their gates, buckets of water and wooden sticks at the ready, radiating a sense of responsibility. Under their watchful care, not a speck of errant ash escaped into the wind.

However, this, unfortunately, was never a responsibility that came Sophie’s way. The Olzons, as they were now, had no deceased ancestors to honor—or at least none Sophie had ever heard of. Johann had no known relatives, and Sherlotte had eloped to marry him. So, while she had grandparents on her mother’s side, Sherlotte always steered clear of the subject, and Sophie had always respected that. But now…perhaps it was time to have that conversation. There wasn’t any specific reason for the change. Perhaps Sophie simply felt more comfortable—enough to let her attention wander beyond herself and her affliction.

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