It was Thursday morning. I was washing my face during morning toilette when I noticed that my soap was running out. Now there were only a couple pieces left that quickly washed away under water when I tried washing my hands. *sign* I decided to ask Linda who was standing near me to bring some new:

- "Hey Linda, could you bring me some new soap from the supply room?"

- "Sure Monika, I will be right back" she said as she left the bathroom

I looked at my reflection in the mirror. The signs of tiredness were obviously visible. I had bags under my eyes due to a lot of stress and lost sleep. Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night and had to go on a walk around the school due to problems with sleep. Not to mention that it was often getting cold in the nights as we had no means of heating the school. I also had no make-up on at school, so I looked worse than normal.

That didn't mean that I was going to neglect myself and get dirty like some kind of cave woman. I took showers every day, even if only with rain water and hard soap, I took care of my hair. Sayori even once cut my hair with a pair of scissors when they got too long, although the results left a lot to be desired. I was not going to maintain myself as long as I was going to survive. Not to mention, I didn't want to attract any germs or worms. We had enough problems there, and I didn't want dying of some disease to be one of them.

After a while Linda came to the room looking visibly worried.

- "We have a big problem. We have run out of all the soap!"

- "What? Did you search everywhere?"

- "Yes, we kept all the soaps in one place, but now we have run out of them. You know, nine people are going to use them pretty quickly"

- "This isn't good, soap is absolutely vital for our survival. We should call a meeting on that" I said, as I covered my hair in a towel so as not to get cold and stormed out of the bathroom. I went to a cafeteria which has become our main meeting in the school. We were always holding important events there and discussing plans. This was also a place where everyone at some point was gathering to eat breakfast and dinner.

When I walked into the cafeteria, everyone was already there for breakfast. I walked to a table where Bernard was sitting with Arthur and chatting about something. I walked to them with Linda and sat in the seat next to Bernard.

- "Hi Monika!" he said

- "We have a problem, Bern. Quite serious" I responded

- "What is the matter?" he got tense

- "We have run out of soap," said Linda, who sat on the seat across from me and opened a can with some canned food.

- "No surprise, you girls probably used all of this in no time" commented Arthur with sarcastic face

- "Yes, because we are not a bunch of slobs, darling" said Linda

- "Anyway, we need to do something about it. Anyone have any ideas?" said Bernard

- "I have," said Arthur "I have once seen a youtube video about making homemade soap. We will need a cup of ashes, fresh water and some fats. No problem at all"

- "You saw it on a youtube video?" I said "Do you really trust it?"

- "Actually it makes sense" said Linda "That's how people made soap back in old times, without new technologies"

- "Yeah, you just need to combine a strong base of sodium hydroxide with fat. It can't be that hard" elaborated Arthur

- "Sure…" I had my doubts

- "Well, it sounds like a good plan. I will tell the others to gather all the required ingredients"

- "I suggest that we do it on the outside as there are dangerous chemical involved" said Linda

- "Sure. We will meet on the school yard"

When I arrived at the schoolyard Arthur and Bernard were already standing there looking at the shovel full of ashes that they brought from the school furnace.

- "Are you sure that it will turn usable? Will a person be able to use it?"

- "Don't worry, it all makes sense" responded Arthur "We need a lye to produce a soap. Historically one of easier ways to do it was to use potassium hydroxide, which can be simply produced from ashes from burning wood…"

- "Arthur, what are you talking about?" I said, unsure.

Arthur started laughing uncontrollably.

- "Haha that's a good one. Anyway, Linda is returning we can start already"

I saw Linda coming towards us with a bucket full of rain water. We were always collecting rainwater from the rooftop of the school using a system of multiple dishes to catch falling rain, so we didn't have a problem with it.

- "I am here, I am here. Oof, I had to lug this bucket through three floors" complained Linda

- "Thank you honey, you are irreplaceable," said Arthur, kissing her on the cheek.

"Now the only thing we need to do is to put all those ashes into the water. Now what is this bucket made out of?"

- "I don't know, some metal. Does it matter?" asked Linda

- "Looks like steel to me" suggested Bernard

- "Good, because the lye could burn through the aluminum…"

- "Burn? Is this that dangerous?"

- "Yeah, lye is very dangerous. That's why you shouldn't touch it without protective equipment… Anyway, now that we have the substance, we can do it in two ways. We can either cook it on a live fire for around 30 minutes or just let it slip through, but it could possibly take more than a day…"

- "Arthur, we need to cook. I need new soap today to take a shower!"

- "Fine. We need to place it on a grill stand…"

I grabbed the bucket with ashes by one handle, while Arthur grabbed it by the other handle. Together we put it on a charcoal barbecue grill that we somehow found in the school supplies and light a fire under it.

- "Now we just need to wait around half an hour…"

- "Is this gonna be safe?" I asked

- "If everything goes well, then I hope so… You know I never did it, just watched a YouTube tutorial" said Arthur nervously.

- "Then it is super safe" I said sarcastically

After some time, Sayori came in.

- "Hey guys, I noticed that you were cooking something, what dish are you preparing?"

- "We are cooking ashes, Sayori, so don't come in unless you want to get alkali burn! I doubt even you are that hungry" I said to her

- "What? Why are you burning ashes?"

- "We are making a soap because we are running out of it"

- "And how will it help?"

- "Yeah, we will uhh use this water to make more soap. Ask Arthur if you want to understand"

- "Nah, I will trust you guys!"

Arthur who was laying idly so far on the grass, come in and said:

- "Allright, I think enough time has passed, I think we can take out the fire"

- "Sure I can handle it" I said, as I took my blanket and waved at the fireplace, taking out the fire. When we looked at the bucket, all the ash was laying at the bottom.

- "Is this good? What should we do now?" I asked

- "I think so… We need to let it rest for four hours. Please don't touch the water, everyone if you value your life. In the time, everyone can do whatever they want"

For the next four hours, I decided to spend them training my sword skills and working out to be better prepared for combat. I didn't count time, I didn't have a working phone to know the exact hour anyway, when suddenly Bernard entered into the gym:

- "Here you are Monika, we are almost ready. Come with me, we only need to get olive oil to finish!"

- "Sure, I will come. Olive oil, you say?

- "Yes, we will use it as a fat base for the soap. I think we had some decent amount of it in the supply room somewhere…"

We went to a supply room, looking for olive oil. We spent some time searching for it.

- "There it is, it is on the upper shelf here!" I said, noticing a bottle laying near other culinary supplies.

- "It's quite high, can you reach it?" doubted Bernard

- "Yeah, I will just need something to stand on". I quickly found some stool and placed it under the shelf. I stood on it and tried to reach the bottle. Who thought that it was a good idea to place it this high? I stood on my toes and managed to finally catch the handle. When I moved it, I suddenly lost my balance and fell from the stool.

- "Ahh, I'm falling!" I said frantically, while trying to firmly hold the bottle, as not to break it. I fell on the floor with a load *crack*.

- "Fortunately the bottle is intact" I said, looking at the olive oil I was holding in my outstretched hand.

- "I am very glad that at least the bottle is not broken.." said Bernard with audible upset. I rotated my head and noticed that I fell on him and my head was laying on his chest

- "Oh sorry, I wasn't paying attention and fell on you accidentally…"

- "No problem really, next time try to stand on something more stable"

- "It won't happen again, I promise", I said, very embarrassed.

We left the supply room and headed to Arthur who had already gathered all necessary equipment.

- "Finally, you're back! I already have the pot so we can begin!"

- "Yes, we had to find the bottle of oil and it took some time"

- "The lye is currently laying on the top of the top of the bucket. Do you see it?" Indeed, there was a layer of brownish substance flowing on top of the bucket.

- "Please put the oil into the pot first"

- "Surely I can do it" I said and opened the entire bottle into the pot.

- "Now, we need to carefully flow the lye to the pot. But don't shake your hands or someone will get hurt. Bernard, Monika can you both hold the bucket?"

- "Yeah sure" I grabbed one handle of the vessel while Bernard grabbed the other. With some hesitation we lifted it and placed it above the top. We then started very slowly tilting it until the substance started flowing in one stream. Everything was going great until suddenly my arm suddenly contracted, causing a few drops to fall on my skirt.

- "Ahh, it dropped on me!" I panicked.

- "It's just clothing, you will wash it. It could have fallen on your skin, it would be much worse"

- "I am so clumsy… I can't do anything right.." I lamented

- "Please don't lose your concentration, we are almost there!" Bernard reminded me.

Finally, the entire substance was inside the pot and we lowered the bucket with remaining water back onto the ground.

- "That surely was stressful" I said

- "Now, we only need to cook it and the soap should be ready," said Arthur, lighting the grill on fire again.

We waited around 15 minutes until Arthur finally took out the fire. Then Bernard grabbed the pan and flowed the entire substance prepared earlier into a rectangular container.

- "Are you done with your chemistry club?" asked Linda, who just came to us.

- "Almost there, almost there. It is cooling, here"

- "This lumpy white liquid?"

- "Don't complain, I am not a professional physicist"

- "I know that you are trying your best, Archie"

- "I sure am!"

When the soap crystallized, we cut it into multiple pieces using a knife.

- "Good job! With a bit of chemistry and ashes, we made our first home-made soap!" said proudly Arthur

- "Yeah, we need to test it. I will take five pieces to the girls' bathroom"

The sun was already setting, and I grabbed five white pieces into my hands. I entered the bathroom when Yuri covered in towel approached me:

- "You are finally here Monika, my soap had run out, and I can't take a shower"

- "Yeah" said Natsuki from behind her, "I had to take soap from Yuri!"

- "You did what?"

- "Don't worry guys, because I brought new soap that we made ourselves today!"

- "You made it?"

- "Yeah, we spent the entire day doing this and risked our mental and psychical health, so you better appreciate it. I gave each of them one piece.

- "It doesn't have any nice smell…" complained Natsuki

- 'Of course it doesn't, we didn't add any aromas to it, but it definitely will do what it is supposed to do!" I responded. What an ungrateful little brat.

I took off my clothes and went into the shower. I put my hands inside a bowl with rainwater that we used for bathing and started lathering my hands. It certainly didn't have a nice smell and had unpleasant consistency. Certainly it wasn't as good as one from the shop, and some pieces didn't want to dissolve.

- "Monika, what is this dud that you brought us"

- "it is not a five-star dish that you must enjoy. Unless you want, then I can make you eat it" I said looking semi-angry with the white brick in my hand pointed at her "Any more complaints?"

- "No, no, sorry Monika!"

- "Good. Now please appreciate our hard work!"