Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 1.1 - Chapter 12

The Sweet Taste of Winter 

“It’s sunny! Dad, it’s sunny! Come, wake up! Myne!” Tuuli’s excited voice rang through the dark bedroom and soon I was shaken awake. 

There had been harsh snowfall for the past few days, but upon waking up I saw dazzling sunlight streaming through the crack between our window doors. Wooow. Long time no see, Sun. 

Tuuli jumped off the bed in excitement and threw open the window covers without a care in the world for how cold it would be. A blue sky free of clouds stretched in all directions and the snow-swept city gleamed beneath the sun. 

“Look, the weather’s perfect. You have today off, right Dad? We gotta hurry!” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Dad, after scrunching his face from the bright sun hitting him head-on, jumped right out of bed. 

Everything following that happened fast. Tuuli and Dad scarfed down breakfast, got some things ready, and then hurriedly dashed outside. I was just getting to the table as Tuuli went through the door, wearing as much warm clothing as possible. 

“Bye bye, Myne. We’ll come back with lots of parues!” 

I waved Tuuli goodbye while blinking in confusion. Um... The heck’s a parue? I searched Myne’s memories and learned that it was a fruit that produced a sweet white drink that tasted really good. Tuuli said she’d bring some back, but I wasn’t really sure how she planned to do that. 

“Here’s breakfast, Myne. I need to go wash clothes. Those two will be bringing back parues for us, so I’ll be busy all afternoon.” 

Mom sliced up bread that I couldn’t cut or break on my own and dunked it into soup. Bread that had been baked until it was hard and black to prevent mold and last night’s leftover soup with a side of milk was our normal breakfast. 

Before I could even finish climbing onto my chair, Mom gathered up the dirty clothes that had built up over the snowstorm and left the house. I sat in the now-silent kitchen and chewed away at my breakfast alone. Once done, I began making baskets, the only thing I had ever done that anyone complimented me for.

Dad and Tuuli must have known when Mom would be getting home, as they got back with broad grins right after she finished preparing for lunch. Seemed like their mission had been a success. 

“We’re back, Mom, Myne. We got three parues!” 

“Welcome home, you two. That’s fantastic. I have the dishes all set up and ready.” Mom pointed to a particularly deep bowl and went to get an especially thin piece of dry wood from the storage room, the kind used to start a fire. 

Tuuli used it to start a fire in the furnace and then poked a parue over the bowl. The moment she did, the outer layer burst around her finger and thick white juice flowed out. 

“Wow, it smells so gooood!” 

A sweet scent drifted through our home as the fruit juice slowly filled the bowl. I swallowed hard, it having been the first time I had smelled something sweet in a while. This was definitely the kind of thing that would give me good memories. 

Tuuli grabbed the bowl, making sure not to let any juice spill out, and Dad used the pressure weights to crush the juiced fruit. 

“Parues are amazing,” Tuuli explained to me. “Their juice is super sweet and tasty, and you can get oil from them. Even the leftovers can be used to feed livestock. We don’t have any animals, so we take ours to Lutz’s place and trade it for eggs.” 

“I bet a lot of people fight over them, then.” 

“Uh huh. You can only find them in the snow on sunny days like this, so a lot of us in the city go to the forest right away in the morning. Everyone wants as many as possible. But gathering them is really hard.” 

“Hard how?” 

Tuuli poked a hole in the second parue with a thin stick and once again slowly poured the juices into the bowl. The only thing I could do to help was hold the bowl down so it didn’t fall over. 

“To pick parue from trees, you have to heat up the branch holding it to soften it, but you can’t use any fire when up on top of the tree. The tree’s special powers will poof the fire away. So you have to take off your gloves and warm it with your bare hands.” 

“You have to take your gloves off in a winter this cold?! That does sound rough.” That was a one-way road to frostbite. Even if Dad and Tuuli took turns, heating up branches with your bare hands was just terrible work. “You can’t wait until noon to pick them? Won’t it be better when it’s warmer?” 

“Nope, nuh uh. You can only pick parues before noon.” Tuuli handed the drained parue to Dad and picked up the third one. She poked another hole into it and began squeezing out the juice. “Once noon comes and the sun rises, sunlight falls into the forest, and like, the parue leaves start shining, and the tree starts shaking, and the leaves all start making swishy swashy noises.” 

Er... The leaves shine, the trees shake on their own, and they make swishy swashy noises? What? Despite Tuuli’s best explanation, I couldn’t imagine that at all. 

“Once the leaves start making noises, the parue trees start stretching toward the sun. They grow taller than the rest of the trees in the forest and then they start shaking like a girl swinging her hair around. Like, rustle rustle, swish sway...” 

“...They stretch and start swaying around?” 

“Uh huh, right. The light hits its branches while it shakes around, and all the fruits we couldn’t gather shoot away, like pew! Once they’re all gone, the parue tree shrinks like it’s melting, and then it’s gone.” 

“They shoot away, and then the trees disappear...? That’s a weird kind of tree.” That was really all I had to say on the matter. What a weird tree. My weak imagination wasn’t enough to visualize that happening at all. 

“Okay, done. Want to try a little?” Tuuli poured most of the fruit juice into a jar, but left a little in the bowl. She drank two sips from it then handed me the bowl. 

I took two little sips just like Tuuli did. A thick, sweet flavor filled my mouth and on instinct I grinned ear to ear. This... This is what happiness tastes like! It’s like thick coconut milk! 

The moment I thought about drinking more, Tuuli said, “We don’t get a lot of this fruit juice, so we need to really, really, really treasure it. Don’t drink it all at once.” 

Okay, okay, I’ll take it slow. 

“Dad, are you going to squeeze this one too?” Tuuli held up the cloth bag and peered inside of it. 

“Yep,” said Dad as he crushed the parue bit by bit with the pressure weights. Parue oil could be used for cooking and in lamps, which made it kind of like olive oil. 

“Tuuli, let me see.” I peered into the bag from the side, wanting to see what parues looked like after getting their oil extracted. Inside I saw what looked like okara, which was a Japanese food made from soybean pulp. It smelled sweet. 

“This stuff smells really sweet. Can you really not eat it?” I stuck a hand into the bag and experimentally plopped some of it into my mouth. 

“Myne! That’s bird food!” Tuuli hurriedly took the bag away from me and told me to spit the stuff out, but I just chewed it thoughtfully. 

The squeezed-dry stuff was rough and not nearly as sweet as it smelled. Overall, I understood why it wasn’t exactly considered good food for humans. But it definitely could be used like okara, in a good way. I took a bit of the stuff and dripped it into the fruit juice bowl to hydrate it a little. 

“What’re you doing, Myne?” 

“...I think it’ll be edible if I do this.” 

“I’m telling you, that’s bird food! It’s not something for people to eat.” 

I nodded and stuck some of it into my mouth. It was actually pretty good. If I mixed the leftovers with fruit juice, and ideally added some eggs and milk, I could probably make a good okara pancake. 

“...Uh huh, it’s good.” 

“It’s not good!” I pushed a bit of the parue leftovers mixed with fruit juice into Tuuli’s mouth. At first she yelled “What’re you doing?!” but after a bit, she started chewing with a conflicted look on her face.

“Okay, let’s go.” 

Tuuli and I left to go to Lutz’s house. It was the sixth floor of the house directly across from ours in the circular cluster of buildings that made up our neighborhood. I did my best climbing up and down two sets of stairs in order to trade the leftovers of two parues for eggs. It was pretty rough climbing the six floors to his place after climbing down the five from mine. 

...I’ll make a faux-pancake for them after the trade. Eheheh. 

“Excuse meee.” 

“Lutz, here. We’ll trade you these for eggs.” I held out the bag with a full smile, but Lutz just frowned a little. 

“We’ve already got enough animal feed. Got any meat instead? My older brothers keep stealing all of mine.” 

Everyone spent a lot more time inside during the winter, so it was more likely for them to steal his food. Lutz grumbled about being hungry all the time. Tuuli just gave a sympathetic smile and said “It’s hard to fight back when they’re so much bigger,” but really, it was hard to describe how bad it felt to be hungry all the time. 

I held the bag out, planning to help solve his problem. “Okay, Lutz. Why not just eat this?” 

“Who would eat bird food?!” His reaction was as expected. Nobody around here ate it like okara. 

“...It’s edible if you make it right.” 

“Huh?” 

“It’s only inedible cause you squeeze all the juices out. They taste really good if you make them properly, even the leftovers.” 

Lutz looked at Tuuli in disbelief. He was definitely thinking that there was nobody in the world who would eat bird food. 

“Seriously?! You’re just being wasteful! Sure, you could eat the parue and be done, but it’s way more efficient to use them to make juice, oil, and bird feed! Nobody wastes the fruit by just eating them on the spot! I can’t believe anyone would work so hard to get the fruit and just eat it without using it properly. There’s nobody dumb enough to do that in this whole town, Myne! Except you, I guess!” 

Um... I didn’t eat the fruit itself, though. Maybe that’s just the only way he can understand? I put a hand on my chin and thought about Lutz’s harsh rejection. “You have enough bird feed now, right? Then the best thing is for we humans to eat it.” 

“Like I’m saying, the leftovers are so dry nobody would eat them!” 

“They only get so dry because people squeeze as much oil as possible out of them. If you put a little work in, they’re fine to eat.” 

“Myne, y’know...” Lutz showed no sign of changing his mind no matter what I said. 

I’d need to use a little force like I did with Tuuli to change his mind. He would definitely understand after eating them. I clenched my fist with resolve, ready to execute my plan, when all of a sudden Tuuli weakly hung her head and spoke. 

“Um, Lutz. I know it’s hard to believe, but they really are edible. It, um... It tasted so good it kind of shocked me.” 

“Wait, seriously? She made you eat bird food, Tuuli?!” Lutz looked at Tuuli with eyes full of sympathy. 

“That’s rude, she said it tasted good. I think you just need to taste it for yourself. Do you have any fruit juice left over, Lutz?” 

I walked into Lutz’s house and put some of our leftovers into a nearby bowl. I then mixed it with about two teaspoons worth of Lutz’s share of the fruit juice. After a brief taste test, I nodded to myself. It did indeed taste good. 

“Open wide, Lutz.” 

Likely due to having seen me eat some, Lutz timidly opened his mouth. I placed the juice-mixed leftovers into his mouth. He closed his mouth, chewed a bit, then opened his eyes wide in surprise. 

“See? Sweet and tasty, isn’t it?” I puffed out my chest with pride, “eheh”-ing to myself, when all of a sudden Lutz’s older brothers stopped just watching suspiciously from afar and instead swarmed down upon us. 

“Sweet?” 

“Tasty?” 

“Seriously? Lemme try some, Lutz.” 

His older brothers all jammed their fingers into his small bowl. No matter how hard Lutz tried to hide the bowl or run away, they were just too much bigger than him. Not only could he not run away, he couldn’t even dodge them. 

“Hey, let go! Don’t pick me up! What kinda older brother would steal his little brother’s stuff?!” 

“Your stuff is my stuff.” 

“Share your tasty food with everyone, Lutz.” 

“Alright! I got it!” 

Lutz’s resistance was futile. His three older brothers held him down and stole the whole bowl. They all jammed their fingers in, and in moments, it was empty. If his every meal ended up like this, I could understand why Lutz would complain. 

“Aaaaah! My parue!” 

“Tasty. Is this really bird food?” 

Lutz’s older brothers completely ignored his cries and looked at me, eyes opened wide in surprise just like Lutz’s were. This might be my chance. 

“I could make something even better here.” 

“For real?!” 

They all took the bait. Despite how disgusted they had all looked at the idea of eating bird food, they were now on hands and feet asking for more, likely due to hunger. 

“...Ah, but I might need some help. Since I’m so weak and all.” 

“Alright, leave it to me.” Lutz enthusiastically flexed his arms. Seeing that, his older brothers all rushed forward and pushed him out of the way. 

“You’re not getting it all for yourself, Lutz. We’ll help too, Myne.” 

“Yup, yup. I’m a lot stronger than Lutz.” 

“Yay! Okay, I want you three to get a metal pan ready for baking. Lutz can get the ingredients ready and Ralph can mix them. Oh, and it wouldn’t be fair to just use Lutz’s juice, so let’s all use a little bit of everyone’s. Come on, let’s see the juice. No hiding.” 

I clapped my hands together while giving Lutz and his brothers cooking instructions. I was too small and weak to do much, so it was up to these hungry young men to do the work for me. 

“Lutz, would you get two eggs and some milk? Ralph, mix them together with that spatula over there. Zasha and Sieg, heat the pan in the furnace.” 

Lutz prepared the ingredients for me as I put them one by one in the bowl. Ralph began mixing them with the wooden spatula. Zasha and Sieg behind us got the metal pan and heated it up in the furnace. 

“Okay, that should be good. Lutz, do you have butter?” 

Lutz held out some butter, which I scooped with a spoon and put onto the metal pan after climbing onto a somewhat tall chair. The butter sizzled on the pan and melted, filling the air with a nice smell. 

I then used a big spoon to pour the “batter” Ralph had mixed in the bowl. It hissed, cooking, and the butter scent was joined by the sweet smell of a parue. Since I was using the okara-esque leftovers in place of wheat, it ended up baking into more of a flat cookie than a pancake, but it was still basically what I had expected. 

“And that’s how you do it. Would you all work together to make more?” After showing them how to make one, I got off the chair and let the tall older brothers take care of everything. They had figured out what to do already, so they immediately borrowed the cooking tools from me and started making their own. 

“When they get bumpy it means they're ready. You should turn that one over now.” 

“Right.” Zasha flipped it over and I saw that it was cooking nicely. I heard everyone swallow hard. 

“Move this one over there. You can cook another one in the open spot.” Once it had cooked well enough, he moved it aside and poured more butter and batter in its place. After I checked to make sure they were cooked properly, we moved them from the pan to a plate, stacking one on top of the other. 

“Tadaaa! (Simple Okara Pancakes)!“ I held the plate and puffed out my chest with pride, “eheh”-ing once again. 

But my words must not have gotten through, given how Lutz was looking at me. “...Wha? Say that again?” 

“Ummm... Simple Parue Cakeeees...” The steaming-hot parue cakes were lined across the table, wafting off a sweet scent and looking super delicious. 

“Go ahead and eat up. But be careful, it’s hot.” I took a bite and chewed slowly. The parue cake was so tasty it honestly shocked me. It was surprisingly fluffy and wasn’t coarse or dry at all, unlike the bird food. Probably due to the parue fruit juice inside, it tasted plenty sweet even without jam or anything. 

“Hey, Lutz. These were pretty simple to make, right? And don’t they fill you right up?” 

“They do. Myne, I dunno what to say. You’re amazing.” 

Since tons of people came to Lutz’s house looking to trade for eggs, they had plenty of parue leftovers, and thanks to their birds, they had as many eggs as they wanted. They could trade eggs for milk, too, so they could make parue cakes all winter. 

“Now you’ll be able to spend the winter with a full stomach.” 

“Yep!” Lutz bit into his parue cake happily. As I watched him eat, several recipes that used okara passed through my head. 

“I know of some other ways to use parue leftovers, but I’m too weak to make them myself.” 

“I’ll make them for you if you just teach me how. Now that you’ve taught me about food this good, you’re kind of like a god to me, so yeah. I've got your back, Myne.” 

That event served as the beginning of me having Lutz and his brothers make recipes for me that required arm strength. I taught them the recipes and taste tested the results. Lutz and his brothers ate the food and got full. It was a nice give and take relationship.