Chapter 32
Another couple months has gone by, and Chiyo reminded Sakura with sarcasm that the Emperor's birthday is coming and she should do something about it. Mainly to pick out the perfect gift for the ruler of this country. Every important household is doing it and Sakura cannot fall behind on this. She's the new bride of the Prince, therefore she should be particularly up to date with these sort of things.
Sakura spent a couple weeks of thinking what to get for the man who has an entire country within the palm of his hands, and the inspiration came when one morning when she's washing up and Tenten was helping her doing a particularly hard hairstyle and signed, "if only there's a mirror here."
Usually in the ancient time there were mirrors, but they're mostly carefully polished medal which reflect a crude image of the person. It's as if you're looking at yourself through a spoon. One can see the rough outlines but definitely not clear details. This made Sakura angry on more than one occasion when she felt a pimple coming up but could not get a reflection of herself clear enough to decide whether to pop it or leave it. Unlike most girls at this time, she has refused to wear any makeup. Sasuke thinks its part of her charm, but in actuality Sakura has been deathly afraid of lead and unknown chemicals make-up manufacturers are putting onto the powders.
To which Tenten replied, "but we have a perfectly good bronze one right here."
Yes, supposably the royal manor is able to afford something like this is amazing. Regular households probably can't afford a bronze mirror. But it annoys Sakura because she always felt like she's looking into a pool of water for her reflection every morning.
"I have an idea for a gift for the Emperor." Sakura exclaimed, "I'll make him a mirror!"
Tenten carefully reminded her of her husband. To which Sakura replied, "I have an even better idea! I'll make two mirrors, one for each bother!"
Sakura has no idea how to make a mirror in practice, but she has many ideas of how to make one in theory. It's glass plus a reflective dark material, and a coating, then an evaporator. She has read the fundamentals of mirror making in one of their various textbooks, but she never thought there'd be a day when she has to make one herself. She took Tenten and went visited the house staff blacksmith, and asked him to hire a glass blower in for the day, mercury, gold, and silver, and some aluminum sheets. The black smith apparently had tons of aluminum because he often makes handles and coating for various weapons.
It took her more than a day to make. She underestimated how difficult it was to make a mirror from scratch. Each piece of glass blown had to be polished, and Sakura was never happy with the size of the glass, until the glass blower suggested to make several smaller pieces at once and fuse them together then spend a ridiculous amount of time polishing them. This took the whole process of 3 days until they came up with two solid piece of full sized body glass.
The whole household stopped what they were doing at one point and went to the courtyard to see what Sakura was doing. Chiyo has expressed her distaste more than once, citing a good wife should be doing chores and mending instead of playing with metals and fire, but everyone ignored her.
Sakura learnt from her mistakes. She laid her polished smooths glass pieces aside and used failed pieces to coat with different chemicals as a test. She coated one with silver, one with gold, and one with mercury, and decided on the mercury to produce clearer image. Since she has already wasted many metals due to her testing of the temperature and melting them. She needs to know which consistency would produce the most smooth finish, and after countless attempts and melting down countless metals, she chose mercury.
After ensuring she would get a smooth finish, she carefully dipped both pieces of glass within a shallow pool of mercury one one side and then laid them out to dry under the sun. It took an entire day, in which she instructed everyone not to go near nor touch it, while everyone obeyed and carefully cleaned the courtyard and wiped it down. She coated them with several thin layers of gold to finish. The process took another few days as she worked tirelessly under the sun.
Then flipped the two pieces of glass around and to Sakura's surprise, they came out perfect. Well not as perfect as machine made industrial mirrors but as amazing as a modern mirror could be. Tenten saw it first and it gave her a complete scare, "it's like it captured me inside! This could be the stuff of stories and legends!"
Everyone in the household came by to check up on the new mirrors they credit Princess Consort Sakura has invented. Sakura stayed silent all the while hoping someone would see it and reveal to her that they themselves are also from the future and they could talk about how to get back. To no avail, no one made any strange comments other than to marvel at the extraordinary qualities of these clear mirrors.
Sasuke did not hope for something this amazing either. He let her tinker with whatever she wanted for the last couple weeks and he was thoroughly amazed with the result. He was particularity excited with the mirrors and ordered the best wood smith in town to make the most extravagant frame for these mirrors and encrust the frames with jewels and delicate carvings. Three days before their birthday, Sasuke took the one of the mirrors to the palace with him. He has eight servants carrying it for it's extremely delicate, and everyone who was carrying it knew that the fate of their lives lies within the mirror. They were transported into the Palace expeditiously.
Sasuke snuck into the Chamber first and instructed his guards to place the mirror right in the center covering it with a huge silk sheet. While he was waiting for the Emperor, he couldn't help but look around the room and realized that this is the same room that their father had died in. He wasn't here when father died, but Itachi was. He was probably standing right where he standing now, overlooking the ridiculously large bed and the vastness of the place.
Itachi came in, knowing his brother came to visit, he stopped one of the servants and asked them to bring some of Sasuke's favorite pastries over from the kitchen.
Sasuke was waiting anxiously when the Emperor came in. He paced back and forth and quickly exchanged pleasantries with him when Itachi sat down on the table and asked, "what is that?"
Sasuke quickly said, "I bet you'll never guess." Before Itachi could take a guess, he pulled the sheets off, and the mirror face was pointing right at Itachi.
The elder brother was startled slightly, but his expression didn't show. His eyes widened a bit before recovering and smiled kindly, "what is this contraption?"
"It's a mirror!" Sasuke said it in such way as if presenting the dearest possession to the world. "Princess Sakura made it," he cleverly omitted the word Consort, "I told her to take extra care of gift giving this year and she worked for two weeks straight to make this. I picked out and designed the frame. See? Dragons."
Itachi stood up and walked around the mirror with its smooth glass surface and intricate wood carvings and praised whole heartedly, "This is amazing."
"Isn't it?" Sasuke laughed, "You can see everything clear as day!"
Itachi took a few minutes to observe the instrument before looking into the mirror, then back at Sasuke, and said, "my dear little brother. We look so similar... I never realized."
Sasuke shrugged, "I guess people haven't been telling us how closely we look alike these days. They know we're sick and tired of hearing it."
Itachi smiled and returned to his regular demeanor of Emperor, "send my regards to your princess. I believe I do own her a gratitude for this wonderful gift."
Sasuke smiled softly, "will do."
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TBC
