Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 1.1 - Chapter 22

Mokkan and A Mysterious Fever 

The soot pencil I worked so hard to make dried and hardened after I left it to dry for a while. I wrapped it in a cloth to make a handle that I could hold without getting dirty. Once that was done, I sharpened its tip with a knife and tried writing. 

...It worked! The pencil crumbled easily, but it did write. I had invented a form of recording information even more ancient than books themselves, but still. Success was success. 

“Yay! It can write, Lutz!” 

“Oh nice, congrats.” 

Excited to have finally created a writing tool, I began to excitedly make more mokkan. I could make mokkan while picking up the firewood our family needed anyway, so it wasn’t too hard to make more of them. The best part was that I could do all of it by myself without relying on anyone else. I would run out of space eventually if I kept making them, but the same would have happened with clay tablets. I just had to endure until I grew up and could live on my own. 

Basically, I was pretty satisfied with my mokkan. But one day, I came home from the forest to find them all gone. They weren’t where I left them. 

“What?! Where are they?! Huh?!” 

“What’s wrong, Myne?” Mom poked her head into the storage room while I searched for the mokkan. 

I asked her where they were, thinking maybe she had moved them. “Mom, do you know where the (mokkan) are?” 

“Mo... what? Mmm? What are they?” Mom tilted her head in confusion, so I explained what mokkan were as simply as I could. 

“Umm, some are thin and some are thick, but they’re all pieces of flat wood with words written on them.” 

“Oh, the pieces of firewood you gathered? I used them.” 

“Wha? Huh? You used them?” My head went blank. 

“You worked so hard to reach the forest and gather firewood for us, Myne. I wouldn’t want to disappoint you and not use any of it.” 

“But the firewood is stacked over there. Why would you go out of your way to use the firewood I separated from the rest? They were a collection of the stories you’ve told me before bed!” 

“Oh, if you wanted me to tell you more stories, you could have just asked.” Mom patted my head happily, smiling to herself. 

“That’s not what I meant...” 

...They were all gone. I felt the life drain out of me as I looked at the empty space where mokkan used to be. It didn’t matter how hard I worked to make mokkan. They would just end up burned. Why even bother, then? 

The moment I gave up, drained, the heat I had been squashing down inside of me began to go wild as if growing in size rapidly. It felt as if the fevers I got when excited or tired were all forming together to make a super fever that numbed my limbs and left me immobile. 

“What’s going on...?” Without even understanding what was going on within my own body, I suddenly collapsed, stricken by an extremely intense fever. My consciousness fluttered. It felt like the heat stirring inside was slowly swallowing up my soul, eating me away bit by bit. It was only then that I realized the original Myne had probably been eaten away by this fever. 

It was burning hot and it hurt more than anything. Lacking the strength of heart to resist, I felt myself getting eaten away as my worried family flitted in and out of sight. In the midst of all that, I saw Lutz’s face drift through my mind for some reason. Why Lutz? I tried to make eye contact with him, and in my efforts, I pushed my consciousness out of the heat swallowing it up. I tensed around my temple and tried to look at him as hard as I could, which finally resulted in me seeing Lutz properly, rather than just as a vague vision. 

“Myne?” 

“...Lutz?” 

“Mrs. Effa! Myne’s woken up!” yelled Lutz. 

Mom immediately burst into the bedroom. “Myne! You collapsed in the storeroom and just wouldn’t wake up. I was worried about you.” 

“I know. I saw your face sometimes. Sorry for worrying you. And... Mom. My throat’s dry. Also, I’m super sweaty. I want to wipe myself off. Can you bring me some water?” 

“Certainly. I’ll be right back.” After seeing Mom turn around and leave the room, I squeezed Lutz's hand while lying in bed, too weak to even lift my head. 

“...Lutz, it didn’t work again. Mom burned my mokkan.” 

“Aaah... Well, they probably just looked like pieces of wood with weird markings on them.” 

“But I worked so hard to make them, and separate them from the rest of the wood... I’m done. Finished. My dreams will never come true. I’ll never make a book.” I let out a sigh and felt the heat within my body intensify. I had to shake my head to stop my consciousness from fading away. 

“Cheer up. You just have to make’m out of something they can’t burn.” 

Wood’s no good. So I just make it out of something else. Something they can’t burn. Lutz’s advice gave me a flash of inspiration. ...Now’s not the time to be lying in bed with a fever. I need to figure out what else I could make something with. I tensed my whole body, determined to survive, and felt the heat shrinking into the middle of my body. 

“...What do you think I can use that won’t get burned?” I thought hard about it, but couldn’t think of anything myself. Maybe because the fever was making it hard to think, maybe because I wasn’t familiar enough with what materials even existed in this area. 

“Uuuh, like, bamboo or something?” 

“...Lutz, you’re a genius.” Bamboo exploded when burned, so Mom wouldn’t try using it as firewood without good reason. I felt hope brimming within me. And somehow, that made the heat shrink a little further, making it easier to breathe. 

“My my, what are you two talking about?” Mom walked in with a bucket of water. Lutz and I looked at each other, then laughed a little to ourselves. 

“It’s a secret, Mom.” 

“I’ll go get some for you. So, get better.” 

“Thanks, Lutz. You’re so nice.” 

“Th-This is just so you can introduce me to Mr. Otto, alright? I’ve already done my part, so I’ll be pissed if you don’t get better! Alright?” Lutz rushed out of the room, so I started to wipe myself down with the water Mom had brought me. 

...There was something weird about that fever. It felt like it was coming from within my body and eating me away. I don’t know of any fevers like that. I definitely don’t know of any fever that suddenly expands, or shrinks when you focus. Just what is the fever stirring inside of my body right now? 

When I first came to this world, I caught fevers so often I didn’t think anything of them. But now that I had built up strength and could move around without issue, there was definitely something weird. What in the world am I sick with? 

Unfortunately, this world wasn’t prosperous enough for commoners to casually see doctors, nor were there any home medical almanacs. It would take some time for me to investigate this. Since the fever shrinks if I focus hard on it, maybe I don’t need to rush? 

I passed two days thinking about how to deal with my fever, and then Lutz really did bring me some pieces of bamboo perfect for making into mokkan. He had already carved them flat so that I could write on them. 

“Don’t even think about touching them until you’re better. You break this promise and I won’t ever help you again, alright?” 

“Okay. Thanks, Lutz.” I watched Lutz hurry home, then gripped a piece of bamboo in my hand. 

I asked Mom to store the rest in the storage room. I still couldn’t get out of bed, but once this fever went all the way down, I would write on them and finish my book. I needed to get better. My eyelids slowly lowered as I held the bamboo Lutz had brought for me. But right before I could fall asleep, I heard loud explosions. 

“Kyaaah?!” 

“Wh-What?! What’s happening?!” I heard explosion after explosion bursting from the kitchen. 

Mom rushed into the bedroom, looking tense. “Myne! What did Lutz bring you?!” 

“...Bamboo?” 

“Gracious! You should have said something! I thought he had gathered firewood for you!” Mom’s complaining made me realize what had caused the explosions. She had burned the bamboo as firewood. Those explosions had been a lot more powerful than what I expected from bamboo, but well, this was another world after all. 

“Did you think it was firewood since they were carved flat...? Wait, you can’t tell bamboo and wood apart?” 

“You know that bamboo and the wood of banhit trees look alike.” 

“No, I’ve never seen a tree like that...” I didn’t even recognize the name. At the very least, I had never seen bamboo or any trees resembling it while going to the forest. 

“What are you talking about? It’s the wood Tuuli used to make baskets over the winter. Didn’t you help her, Myne?” 

“Oh, now I remember. They do look similar without any bark.” I did know about the wood, since I had watched Tuuli prepare for her winter handiwork. It looked like normal wood when it had bark, but once peeled, it looked similar to bamboo. 

“In any case, bamboo is dangerous. Don’t bring it into the house. Understand?” 

“...Okay.” After giving a quiet reply, I was consumed by an intense fever as I gripped the last remaining piece of bamboo in my hand. 

The rage of having my belongings burned. 

The frustration of my anger not being understood at all. 

The despair of repeatedly failing to obtain a book despite my best efforts. 

I threw my all at the world and got nothing in return. A sense of powerlessness spread through me. I didn’t feel like doing anything. I didn’t even care enough to fight the fever inside of me. At this point, I didn’t even feel mad at Mom for burning my mokkan and then the bamboo Lutz brought me. 

If only my body had been healthy and strong like an adult’s. If I were all grown up, I could have ignored papyrus, clay tablets, and mokkan to just make washi right away. If I at least were as healthy as Lutz and had the strength to do a fair bit of physical labor, I could have given paper making my best shot. But my weak, sickly child’s hands couldn’t even cut down the wood I needed to make paper. I couldn’t draw the water I needed, nor could I start fires. 

Maybe all my problems would go away if I waited until I was an adult. But that was just far too long to wait. And would I even grow like a normal person? Would I get bigger and stronger...? Doubtful. 

If nothing I did mattered, why not just let the raging fever inside of my body take over? What’s the point in living in a filthy, uncomfortable world if all my best efforts and all my endurance wouldn’t get me books? It’d be better to just disappear. 

The second that thought crossed my mind, the heat inside my body energized as if to swallow me whole. I stopped thinking about anything and encouraged the fever to spread so that I might disappear. 

I only had one regret: I hadn’t apologized to Lutz. He worked so hard to prepare those bamboo shoots for me, and I hadn’t apologized for how they had ended up getting burned. What Lutz said to me before leaving to get the bamboo flashed through my mind. 

“Th-This is just so you can introduce me to Mr. Otto, alright? I’ve already done my part, so I’ll be pissed if you don’t get better! Alright?” 

I hadn’t kept my promise to him. He helped me so much and I promised to help him in return. Should I really let myself give up and run away into this fever? Lutz was right. He already did his part. Letting myself disappear into the fever would be simple, but before that, I needed to get better and fulfill my promise to Lutz by introducing him to Otto. 

Repeating to myself that this was for Lutz’s sake, I pushed the heat back down. I could let the fever consume me after I had fulfilled my promise to Lutz. Settling matters before death was important. Last time I died so suddenly, I didn’t have the time to do anything. 

...Yeah, exactly. I was totally not ready to die in that earthquake... Aaaaah! What even happened after that?! It’s so embarrassing! I have to know, I have to! Aaaah! I can’t die yet! 

All the embarrassing memories of my past life drifted up one by one, and after enough shouting that I couldn’t let myself die yet, the fever within my body somehow got a lot smaller.