Books: Unobtainable
“Okay, we’re getting meat next. We need to buy lots of it and then salt or smoke it to make it last.” After buying some vegetables and fruits, Mom headed deeper into the market. The stands selling meat were apparently closer to the outer walls.
“Why are we buying lots of it?”
“We need to prepare for winter, don’t we? It’s late autumn, so all the farms are butchering most of their animals and leaving just enough to survive the winter. More meat is sold now than at any other time of the year. Plus, animals tend to pack on weight in preparation for hibernating. Tasty, fatty meat is a lot easier to get right now.”
“...Umm, does that mean the market goes away during the winter?”
“Isn’t that obvious? There’s hardly any crops you can farm in the winter. The snow’s terrible too, so barely any markets are held during the winter.”
It was obvious now, but I hadn’t thought about that at all. Even in Japan, back in the time before home greenhouses became popular, fruits and vegetables were seasonal and would disappear from store shelves until they were put back on the market later. In an age before freezers and refrigerators made it possible to store food in a fresh state, people had to make non-perishable food in their own homes. So basically, in this world, it’s natural to buy and cure food.
To be honest, I didn’t really see myself being that helpful with any of that. I’m really glad I was reincarnated as a little girl that won’t get yelled at for not being a help around the house.
“...I-It stinks.” The foul air got worse the closer we got to the meat stands. I had to hold my nose to bear it, but Mom kept walking forward without batting an eye. I could hardly believe it. The smell was so bad not even holding my nose closed was enough; it snuck through my mouth and hit me so hard tears formed in my eyes, and yet she didn’t seem bothered at all.
Has meat always smelled this bad? Ngggh, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
We reached the meat stands. Strips of bacon and ham were hanging from the top, plus completely recognizable animal corpses that had obviously just had their skin peeled off. Within the stands were dead animals hanging off hooks, being drained of blood, and beneath them were wide-eyed rabbits and birds.
“HIGGYAAAAAAAAH!” I may have seen pictures of skinned animals before, but all the meat I ever saw in real life had always been pre-sliced and put in packs. The meat stands of this world were far too shocking for me. Goosebumps rose across my skin and tears dripped out of my eyes. I wanted to shut my eyes to block it all out, but my eyes remained locked open, as if I had forgotten how to close them.
“Myne?! Myne!” Mom shook me a little and spanked my rear end. But a second later, I saw a pig squealing in fear as a butcher prepared to chop it up. A crowd of grinning people surrounded it, eagerly awaiting the moment of its death.
“Ah!” I let out a small cry and, right before the pig’s last moments, passed out on my mother’s back.
Something flowed into my mouth. It was a liquid that smelled so strongly of alcohol I wanted to gag. I didn’t want to drink it, and the unexpected liquid went into my windpipe. Coughing hard, I shot up while blinking rapidly. Cough! “Ngggh!” Cough, cough!
Um, was that alcohol?! Who in the world would give an innocent little girl strong alcohol like that! What’ll you do if I get acute alcohol poisoning?! I opened my eyes wide and saw my mom, holding what looked like a wine bottle.
“Myne, you’re awake? Thank goodness. The stimulant really did work.”
Cough! “Mom...?” She was holding me with a really relieved look on her face, so I couldn’t just say it out loud, but allow me to rant a little on the inside.
Stimulant or not, why the heck would you ever give a child alcohol that strong?! And I mean, a weak little girl that’s always sick and just recovered from a bad fever that nearly killed her, too!
“Okay, Myne. Now that you’re awake, let’s go buy some meat.”
“Bwuh?!” I shook my head on instinct. What I had just seen was already burned into my retinas. It was so horrible I’d probably have nightmares about it, and just thinking about it gave me goosebumps. I never wanted to go there again. “...Ummm, I still feel kinda sick. Can I stay here? You can go on ahead, Mom.”
“What? But...” Mom furrowed her brows.
I looked around and decided to ask the older lady managing the stand behind us for help. I needed somewhere to stay before Mom dragged me away.
“Um, ma’am, can I please stay here for a little bit? I’ll be still and won’t get in your way.”
“You sure are a polite little girl, aren’t you? Your mother bought some alcohol from me, so I don’t mind. Miss, go ahead and finish your shopping. You don’t want to pull your sick child around and make her pass out again, do you?” The alcohol-selling lady, who had seemingly sold mom that “stimulant,” cackled to herself and easily accepted my request.
The middle-aged man running what looked like a pawn stand nearby looked at me sympathetically and gestured me over. “You can come stay behind my stand. Nobody will kidnap you back here.”
I went behind his stand and sat on the ground without hesitation. The strong alcohol from before was stirring around in my body. It’d be dangerous for me to walk around in that state.
“I’ll be right back. Myne, don’t go anywhere, okay?” As Mom hurried off to finish her shopping, I stayed sitting down and lazily stared at the wares of the two stands. This was apparently the season where she got new shipments of fruit wine, so customer after customer walked up to buy small barrels of it from her.
On the other hand, not many people stopped by the pawn stand. Hm... I wonder what people even pawn in this world? I took a look at the wares surrounding me and I didn’t recognize what more than half of them were used for.
I pointed at the stuff lined in front of me and asked the older man what one of them was. “Mister, what’s thiiis?”
“You haven’t used one before? It’s something you use when weaving cloth. And this is a trap used for hunting.” The older man seemed a little bored from the lack of customers, so he gave me explanations for everything I pointed at.
Almost everything considered normal for daily life in this city was something I didn’t recognize. Even when searching through Myne’s memories, I found that she hadn’t been familiar with any of them either, maybe due to a lack of interest.
I looked at his line of products, letting out awed murmurs at their various purposes, and eventually reached the corner of his stand, where I found a thick and heavy stack of papers bound tightly — just like a book.
The binding was masterfully done, with gold carvings pressed into each corner of the cover. It was about forty centimeters tall and looked exactly like something I would have seen in a glass case back in the libraries I used to go to.
A book? Um, wait, isn’t that a book? The moment I realized the bound papers were actually a book, the world around me lit up in pink. My heart brightened and I felt as if the dark clouds that had surrounded me for days had finally been swept away.
“M-Mister! What’s this? What is it?!”
“Oh, that’s a book.”
...Yes! I finally found one! Here’s a book! It’s just one, but it’s here! In the midst of my despairing over whether or not books even existed in this world, I had finally found one. I looked at the bound paper while trembling with emotion.
It was a fairly large and heavy-looking book with rich decoration. I wouldn’t be able to carry it with my weak, sickly arms. Plus, it definitely looked expensive, and I knew for sure my mom wouldn’t buy it no matter how hard I begged. But if books existed at all, that meant for sure that there would be smaller, easier to carry books out there.
I spun around and began interrogating the older man with clear desperation. “Mister, do you know where they sell books?”
“What, like in a store? There aren’t any stores for books.” The older man looked at me, baffled at the mere idea.
My excitement immediately plummeted. “...Um, why are there books, but not stores that sell them?”
“You have to copy each book by hand to get a new one. They’re so expensive, there’s no market for them. Even that book is just something a noble pawned to pay back a debt, it’s not for sale. It’s looking like he won’t be paying me back in time, and although I’ll start selling it soon, only nobles will be interested, I’ll bet.”
Grrr, friggin’ nobles! This means I could’ve read books too if I were reborn as a noble, right? Why’d you make me a commoner, God? I felt a slightly murderous rage toward nobles. They were unfairly blessed to live surrounded by books from birth.
“Is this your first time seeing a book, little girl?”
I nodded over and over without looking away from the book. It was the first time I was seeing a book in this world, anyway. And since only nobles deal with books, plus the lack of bookstores, this might end up being the last time too. Which means!
“M-Mister! I have a request!” I clenched my fists tightly and, after standing up straight, immediately knelt onto the ground.
“Hrm? What’s this all of a sudden?” The older man opened his eyes wide in surprise as I grovelled on my hands and knees before him. It was just basic stuff that you need to show your sincerity when making a request. And the ultimate form of sincerity was pitiful grovelling. With my head held low, I told him my true feelings.
“I know that I can’t afford this book, but please, at least let me touch it. I want to rub my cheeks against it. I want to sniff the book and inhale the scent of its ink before it’s taken away from me!” Despite my passionate request, the only thing that followed was painful silence. He wasn’t replying to me.
I timidly rose my head bit by bit and saw that, for some reason, the older man had a shocked and disgusted look on his face, as if he was looking at an unbelievable pervert up close. Um...? It kinda feels like my sincerity didn’t get across to him.
“I-I don’t know what’s gotten into you... But I get the feeling I shouldn’t let you touch that book.”
“N-No way!” I tried to ask him again, but before I could, my time limit ran out.
“Myne, I’m back. Let’s go.”
I nearly cried after hearing Mom’s voice. There was a book so close, but I hadn’t read it. I hadn’t touched it. I hadn’t even smelled its scent.
“What’s wrong, Myne? Did he do something to you?!”
“N-No, he didn’t!” I hurriedly shook my head after Mom suddenly glared at the older man. If I didn’t clear the misunderstanding up fast, I would be bringing trouble to the nice man who had sheltered me from the butcher and taught me about books. “My head feels weird. Mom, what did you make me drink? I’ve felt weird since waking up.”
“...Aaah, the stimulant may have been a bit much for you. You’ll be fine if you drink some water and rest when we get home.” Mom nodded to herself, but didn’t seem to regret making her child drink alcohol. She took my hand and pulled to get me walking home.
I twirled around to the two stand owners and smiled brightly. “Thank you for letting me stay here.” It’d be bad for my mental health if I didn’t thank them. According to Myne’s memories, it wasn’t customary to bow in this world, so I just settled for smiling and waving. Smiles were important in making human interactions successful. They saw me off with smiles on their faces too, so it must have worked.
“Myne, do you still feel bad?”
“...Mhm.”
We talked little on the way home, me on Mom’s back again. I looked again along the way, but there really weren’t any bookstores. I had thought that I would beg for a child’s picture book and slowly learn letters, but the day ended without me getting anything.
All I learned was that there weren’t any bookstores. I now lived in a city with a castle and magnificent stone gates, but it didn’t have a single bookstore. Since that man said that books weren’t really for selling, it was possible that this city wasn’t special. Maybe there were no bookstores in the whole world.
This is awful. I loved books so much I could go days without eating as long as I could read, and now you’re telling me to live life without books, God? That’s just cruel. Even if I told my parents I wanted to become a noble in order to read books, they’d just treat me like a cute kid with big, silly dreams.
I couldn’t tell them I didn’t want to be born in this family. But at the very least, I would have liked to be born in a family with enough wealth to fish through a fallen noble’s belongings and maybe get a book that way. My family’s circumstances are so awful that I’ve already been beaten down by them. I know I won’t get a book no matter how hard I cry or how many tantrums I throw. With no bookstores, I have no way of getting books.
...And what do I do if I can’t get them? Well, what choice do I have but to make them myself? When the going gets tough, the tough get going. I’ll get books no matter what! I won’t let life beat me!
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