Ascendance of a Bookworm

Volume 6, Chapter 4 Hibernation and winter work

Dad and Tuuli took me to my rooms in the temple, where Fran greeted us with wide eyes. He looked between them and me, blinking rapidly.

"Did something happen, Sister Myne?"

"Sorry to barge in like this, Fran."

He started to usher me in, but I stopped him and told him I didn't want Delia to overhear before I started explaining the situation at the door. I explained that the head of the Ink Guild was targeting me, that Lutz was approached by a group of men, and that he would start living in the temple a little earlier than planned for security reasons.

I also mentioned that while we didn't know what the Ink Guild boss was after, we did know that he had connections to the nobles and a lot of bad rumors surrounding him, which meant we should avoid mentioning this to Delia - especially since he apparently didn't even know my name (nor did I know his name).

Fran listened to everything with a frown and then nodded deliberately.

"Understood. I'd ask you to tell the Head Priest what you told me."

"Fran," Dad began, squeezing his hand on my shoulder, "let's try to figure out what's going on here. For now, I'll leave Myne with you. But I'll be back to check on her."

Fran nodded and looked back around at him. "You can count on me. Your visits will no doubt be the warmth that keeps Sister Myne going through the winter."

"Myne, don't be too difficult with them. And be sure to tell the Head Priest everything. Nothing good comes from lack of communication with your boss."

Dad gave me some very soldier-like advice, to which I responded with a smile and two bumps of my right fist against the left side of my chest. His expression softened, then he gave a similar salute.

Tuuli gave me a tight hug, then looked at me with his big green eyes wavering with trepidation.

"Goodbye, Myne. I'll come by on my next day off. Be good while I'm gone, okay?"

"Okay. I'll be waiting for you."

After saying goodbye to Dad and Tuuli, I went into my quarters. Despite having my own room here, spending the night in the temple made me a little nervous. All my attendants were surprised to see me arrive out of nowhere just before dinner time.

"What brings you here today, Sister Myne?"

"Due to certain circumstances, my winter stay at the temple has been moved up and will now begin today."

"What circumstances?" asked Delia, her head tilted to one side.

I shook my head.

"I can't give any details as nobles might be involved."

Delia tried to start changing me into my blue tunic, but I stopped her since I had no plans to go out today. That said, I didn't have much else to do. I looked around the room, thinking about how I used to be at home at this point.

"What does everyone do when it gets so late?"

I noticed what Rosina did without even looking - she was playing her harspiel. She actually played as long as she could before the seventh curfew of the bell.

Delia was carrying hot water from the kitchen, probably to prepare the bath. It seemed that bath time was where women polished their charms; I had a lot to learn from Delia's girl power.

Gil was writing a report on his whiteboard about the Myne Workshop activity for the day and the products he had finished. It was a report based on how the Gilberta Company handled their stock, and Lutz was having Gil write them as part of his training.

Fran was finalizing reports on the food and supplies consumed by the orphanage and my rooms so that he could prepare orders for more stock. He was busy every day with all kinds of different paperwork. Still, he said things were much easier for him now that he could split the work with Rosina and Wilma.

"… I think I will write a letter to the Head Priest requesting a meeting with him."

I sat down at my desk and began writing a letter to the Head Priest, asking to speak with him so I could tell him what had happened. However, it would be days before he would respond, so who knows how long it would be before we could talk.

After finishing my letter, I began planning the next few picture books. Guided by Freida's advice, I decided to make new children's bibles with stories of the subordinate gods below the Five Eternals, organized by their season.

I ate a fancy dinner delivered to my table, took a luxurious bath in hot water with Delia's help, and then crawled into my warm bed alone. It was so big that I could stretch my arms and legs as much as I wanted. Beside me, I could see a table with a pitcher of water, a cup, and a bell to summon my attendants.

"Good night, Sister Myne."

"Good night, Delia. Good night, Rosina."

The curtain for which surrounded my canopied bed closed, leaving me alone in my wide bed in complete darkness. Despite the delicious food, the bath full of warm water for which no one was mad at me, and the comfortable bed with plenty of room, I would rather have eaten around the table with my family, bathed in a shallow tub that had only a little warm water while playing with Tuuli, and slept in a smaller bed while clinging to my family for extra warmth.

… Getting homesick after a single day of travel sure is sluggish.

I had attendants, but there was a firm line between us: I was their master and they were my servants. They would treat me with respect, but I was not allowed to get emotionally involved with them. I was trapped in bed, sadder and lonelier than I could describe, shaken by fear of whoever it was that attacked me.

The morning at the temple came late. Or to be more precise, the morning came early for the attendants, while I, on the other hand, was stuck in bed waiting for them to finish preparing breakfast. If I tried to get up before they finished, Delia would angrily yell at me saying that I had to go back to sleep until I was called. That's when I learned that the noble daughters had to pretend to be asleep in bed until their attendants were ready for them.

Would they get mad if I sneakily read books to pass the time?

"Now then, let's start practicing."

After a light breakfast, it was time to practice the harspiel with Rosina. She set up the instruments with a smile, commenting how wonderful it was that she no longer had to wait for me to arrive at the temple.

By the time she and I began practicing, Delia and Gil were cleaning the room and drawing water while Fran went to the Head Priest to deliver my letter and give a brief summary of the situation. When he returned, he said that the Head Priest had given me a strict order to remain in my quarters until further notice while he investigated the situation. It seemed that I would spend my days; not only trapped in the temple, but also trapped in my quarters.

"You are a surprisingly good teacher, Sister Myne. Muuuch more easier to understand than Gil."

"You think so? Maybe I should teach at the temple school too," I said, my voice coming out a little shy since I wasn't used to being complimented by Delia.

Fran gave me a somewhat dubious look and asked me what the "temple school" was.

"A place of education where I will teach the children to read and write."

"… Is this plan written in stone?"

"Yes, I've already made plans to hold sessions throughout the winter."

Fran blinked repeatedly in surprise, then slowly shook his head.

"Sister Myne, I don't think you've briefed me on that. Please explain exactly what you plan to do and in what manner."

"What? But it's all written right here."

I pulled out my winter time sheet and handed it to Fran. He looked at it and then muttered, "This is going to be the temple school…?" With lowered eyes.

It seemed he hadn't fully understood me when I told him I was going to educate the children. He had thought that Tuuli's sewing classroom and her teaching them how to do winter work would be the extent of their education.

"But you know," Gil interjected, "I don't know how much you'll need to teach them, Sister Myne. They can already read a little thanks to the karuta and picture books you gave me." He shrugged and I hesitated, stumbling over my words.

"I want them to learn to write too. It will be easier for them to work for the nobles as assistants if they can read and write, surely. And if they know how to count and do math, they will even be able to manage the workshop and the orphanage by themselves. I think knowing these things is better than not knowing them."

I mentioned the workshop report Gil had been writing yesterday, which made my point click with everyone. Gil was still bad at reading big numbers, so he had been writing his reports with the help of the gray priests.

"Sister Myne, where do you plan to hold this temple school?"

"In the orphanage dining room, both boys and girls can participate. I will be the teacher."

"Please leave the teaching to the gray priests. That kind of activity is beneath you, Sister Myne."

Fran and Rosina shot down my idea together. I was stuck working behind the scenes, as usual.

Finally, I decided to do something like a school curriculum, which I would teach Delia first in my rooms. Fran and Rosina would learn from my example, then they themselves would teach in the dining room. They would also train grey priests who were formerly assistants to teach, then stop when the time was right, thus establishing the temple school.

…Damn. I wanted to be a teacher since apparently, I'm really good at it.

For the temple school, I set a goal of teaching all the children to write the alphabet and add and subtract with single digit numbers. I had plenty of stone slates and slate pencils at the ready, not to mention the children's bibles to use as textbooks.

The fourth bell rang once, not long after I had worked out the general flow of how things would go. I had lunch and was having tea when Lutz visited.

"Are you holding up well, Myne?"

He had finally been given the go-ahead to visit me after Benno did a thorough check to make sure no one suspicious was following him.

I ran downstairs and ran to Lutz as he waved to me from the hallway.

"Lutz, give me a hug!"

"Woah!"

I jumped into Lutz's arms, demanding a hug; I had been so starved for warmth that I needed him to recharge me. In my days as a Uranus I had been fine with nothing but books in my life, but maybe because of adjusting to this girl's body, or maybe because I was getting used to my family hugging me, I now craved the warmth of other people.

"I'm so lonely without my family here. I want to go home already."

"It's only been one night, you know?" Lutz smiled in exasperation at my complaint and shook his head, but I couldn't help how I felt.

"I'll get used to it eventually. This is the loneliest I'll be all winter."

"I don't know about that - who's to say it might not just get worse and worse?"

"… If it gets worse than this, I could die of loneliness."

I was stuck in my rooms without even the option of going to the reading room to read, and there were no books in my rooms other than the children's bibles. If I had to continue living without my family here, I might well lose the will to live.

"… That doesn't sound like a joke, because you always end up close to dying when I take my eyes off you."

"I'm going to hang on and survive the loneliness, so I want you to bear with this and let me hug you."

"Good, good."

Lutz let me cling to him until I was satisfied. Then, with my arms still around him, he looked at the report Gil had written and compared it to his own, pointing out any errors in his calculations.

I received several complaints from my assistants as I steadied my emotions by clinging to Lutz. Some of them I remember:

"How brazen!"

"A proper woman would never…"

"Geez! You should at least pursue a rich, noble guy with lots of money."

"Why don't you trust me like that, Sister Myne…?"

But I ignored them all. The winter ahead of me would be long and cold; So for the sake of my mental health, I needed warmth from where ever I could find it.

"Right. Myne, the shop is out of things to do; What's our next step, starting the winter work?"

The second round of printing was over, and although we had the templates to print more, there was no more paper to turn into books. We couldn't make any more either since the river was freezing now. Not to mention that now that winter preparations were done, we would be running out of soot for our ink.

"Good. I'll explain what the winter work will be like, so could you go get the tools and boards for reversi from the workshop?"

"Sure. Let's go, Gil."

"Okay."

Lutz and Gil returned with boards and tools. They laid them on the table in the hallway and I began to explain how to make reversi boards and disks.

"These thick boards are what we're going to use as game boards. Using a ruler and a pen, keep drawing straight lines until you have eight squares by eight squares," I explained, drawing example lines on the board using my own pen.

"Once you draw the lines, cut grooves along them with one of the ones you dug, draw the lines again with ink. You'll just trace the grooves, so I think the ink should stay inside them pretty well, but be careful not to let anything splatter."

"Good."

"Cut the thin boards into sixty-four squares to match the size of the squares on the game board, then polish them so they're smooth and nice to the touch. After that, just cover one side with ink, so once you're done cutting them, all the hard work is over.Also…"

I explained that for fake shogi, or rather fake chess, I cut the board as I would for reversi. But instead of covering one side, I'll write a letter over them. That made Lutz grimace.

"Hey, Myne, do you think we could print the letters instead?"

"Why?"

"Not many people at the orphanage can write, and not everyone who can is that good. These letters will be small, and I think it will be a problem if the handwriting is too bad to read."

"Mmm, good point… I guess I'll make a template for it."

Lutz wrote all the steps on his diptych as I continued. I myself wrote down the things I would need to improve or think about in my own diptych.

Gil, who had been watching our usual discussion, looked at Lutz with his purple eyes.

"…Have you been having Sister Myne teach you all that, Lutz?"

"Yes. She can't work in the workshop since she's a blue shrine maiden, so she has to teach me what to do ahead of time so I can make sure the workshop runs properly."

"I thought you knew everything and were amazing, but it's actually Sister Myne who is amazing." Gil pouted with puffy cheeks.

I nudged them with my finger.

"Gil, Lutz is really amazing. He only needs to listen to my explanation once before he can repeat it in the workshop and get things done. Now you were listening too, but you wouldn't be able to teach someone else what to do, would you?"

"…I wouldn't." Gil looked at the floor, then raised his head and pointed to Lutz's diptych. "But that's only because I don't have a diptych! It would be awesome if I had one, too!"

"Oh, right, you've learned to read and write now. I guess you'll need one soon if you're going to write those workshop reports. I can't get out now, but I'll get one for you when spring comes."

"Really!!! All right, I'm definitely going to beat Lutz!" Gil raised his head and declared himself Lutz's rival, getting a casual reply, "Good luck winning before spring." It looked like Lutz would be going with Benno to the neighboring towns next spring to check out the vegetable paper shops; he wished Gil would run the entire Myne shop before then.

"Oh, right," Lutz added. "Next time I come here, there will be an apprentice with me. Aaah, he's actually pretty close to the age of majority, but yeah."

"Why, is he going to take your place while you're gone?" I tilted my head in confusion, and Lutz frowned a little.

"On paper, he's here to help with the workshop like me, but Master Benno really wants him to learn how to act as an assistant."

"Right. He mentioned that he wanted waiters for his Italian restaurant." I added a note in my diptych to plan for that as well.

"… Hey, Myne. I've got reversi and all that, but what about letters?"

"I wish we had different color ink to use here, but there's no point in wishing for the impossible. We'll just use regular black ink for now."

I drew the four sets of cards and the nine numbers used on my stone slate, then drew three diamonds in the middle of a large rectangle as an example.

"We'll make four different sets of cards, one for each symbol, and we'll differentiate the cards in each set using numbers."

"That's going to be a lot of cards," Lutz said.

"Hey, that symbol looks a bit like a divine instrument," Gil observed proudly as he pointed to the diamond symbols. "It's like the spear of Leidenschaft. And that other one looks like Flutrane's staff."

According to him, the diamonds resembled the spear of the God of Fire, while the swords resembled the staff of the Goddess of Water. Now that he mentioned it, the decoration around the tip of the divine spear and the magic stones of the divine staff resembled those shapes.

"In that case, Gil, what about Schutzaria, the Goddess of Wind?"

"Her shield is a circle, so none of these fit. The symbol of Geduldh, the Earth Goddess, is the chalice, so it would look like this…"

It appeared that a circle symbolized the shield of the Wind Goddess, while an inverted triangle symbolized the chalice of the Earth Goddess. That covered all four letters perfectly, and the change would probably make those in the temple more likely to accept them.

On Gil's recommendation, I changed the card suits to swords, diamonds, circles and inverted triangles.

"I think I'll make the jack, queen and king cards symbols, too, then. Drawing art for each would be a pain anyway."

I replaced the jack with a sword to symbolize the God of Life, the queen with a crown to symbolize the Goddess of Light, and the king with a black cloak to symbolize the God of Darkness. The main goal here was to make the designs as simple as possible.

I thought about what to do with the joker and decided on a twisted ring to symbolize the Goddess of Chaos, who had fallen in love with the God of Darkness despite being taboo, and spurred the God of Life's jealousy to turn him into a stalker.

"Okay, perfect. Now they really look like cards made in a temple."

"Yes, and they will be easy to understand since they also look like the karuta."

Gil and I complimented each other on the letter designs, but Lutz looked at the board with a frown.

"Myne, you really have to make stencils to print them. There's no way this will all match if we try to stamp it."

"…That's right. I'll make the template."

I made a stencil out of thick paper - a process I was now very used to - so I could print the ink directly onto the board. After all, I had more than enough time, and making stencils for something as simple as playing cards was very easy.

"All right, Myne. I have to go home now."

I didn't want Lutz to leave, but I couldn't exactly ask him to stay the night.

"Okay…" I nodded sadly, and Lutz pinched my cheeks with a worried smile. I covered my cheek and glared at him.

"… Don't look so sad. I'll be back tomorrow with Tuuli."

"You better, unless you want me to die of loneliness."

After dismissing Lutz, Gil looked at me with concern.

"Are you lonely, Sister Myne?"

"UH Huh. I'm so used to living with my family that I really miss them already."

I knew staying at the temple was safer for me, but I wanted to go home. It had been my choice to come here and yet I felt like I had been abandoned.

"Do you want to hug me like you hugged Lutz?", Gil asked, trying to help. But before I could answer, I heard a loud "Absolutely not!" from behind me.

I turned around surprised to see Fran standing there, with a terrified expression on his face. He walked over to Gil and chastised him in a low voice.

"Gil, Sister Myne is your master. Consoling her is not the place of an assistant. Lutz is a friend whom she considers family, you are not in the same position as he is."

"… I know." Gil nodded his head, his teeth clenched in frustration.

Seeing that, Fran's expression softened a little. Then he knelt down in front of me to look directly into my eyes, his expression hardening once again.

"Sister Myne. I understand that your extreme circumstances have left you feeling uncomfortable. Out of concern for you, I will overlook Lutz and your family comforting you. However, I request that you keep the proper distance between you and your attendants."

He gave me a strict reminder not to be too friendly with my assistants, and I couldn't help but look at where Lutz had been a few moments ago. He was already gone, and a cold wind was blowing from the empty doorway. It hurt as it brushed against my cheeks, but I was more worried about how lonely winter would be than how cold it would be.