Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 1.2 - Chapter 8

Lutz’s Myne 

“Are we going to talk out here? Do you want to go into the storage building?” 

“Here is fine.” 

I thought it would be better for us to have this conversation in private, but Lutz shook his head. “So, what do you want to talk about?” Lutz’s green eyes were burning with anger, but he was still calm. He didn’t suddenly scream at me. Instead, he spoke in a low voice that made it clear something was boiling deep inside of him. 

“...Who are you?” 

His first question was a hard one. Who was I, indeed? I still personally considered myself to be Urano Motosu, but no matter how you looked at me, I was Myne. And having spent a year in this world in this body, I wasn’t really Urano Motosu anymore. Too much had changed. 

Urano was a girl who only ever read books and never had the initiative to do anything herself. She never even left home since her college was only a short distance from her parents’ place. She would help if you asked for it, but in general left all the chores to her mother. There was nothing she proactively did on her own. 

Basically, she never had the need to go to the forest daily to gather the barest essentials in life to survive. She didn’t have to experiment with cooking to enrich her meals as much as possible. She didn’t have to make paper in order to read books. Urano just followed her whims and read the books around her, which was nothing like who I had become. 

Lutz interpreted my silent struggle to find an answer as me deciding not to answer, so he glared at me and spoke with even more force than before. “You said you know how to make paper like this because you’ve made it before, right?” 

“...Well, I used pretty different methods the last time I made paper.” 

“Myne couldn’t have done that.” 

My repeated failures to hide the truth had brought Lutz to certainty, and no amount of lying would solve this. I nodded, hiding nothing. 

“Myne couldn’t know any of this. She barely ever left her house.” 

I also knew from Myne’s memories that she had barely left the house. Just how hard had I struggled thanks to how little she knew? It was immeasurable and the source of half my problems. Myne knew nothing but the inside of her home, and thus I had no opportunity to learn what was common sense in this world. My own ideals clashing with the world’s expectation of me had not been pleasant, and to this day, I failed to be normal on a frequent basis. 

“That’s true. Myne really didn’t know anything about anything.” 

“Then who are you?! Where’d the real Myne go? Give her back!” Lutz shouted, furious. But for some reason — maybe because he had been much more cruel in my imagination, maybe because I had been preparing for this moment ever since we finished making the paper — I felt surprisingly calm. This was nothing like my panic after self-destruction. 

“I can give you back the real Myne... But we should go back to my place first.” Lutz must not have expected a compliant answer. His eyes opened wide in shock, then narrowed in suspicion. 

“Why’s that?” 

“Well, it’ll be hard for you to carry back a corpse, right? If I leave, I think the only thing I’ll leave behind is a corpse. You don’t want my family thinking you killed me, do you?” 

My family, Benno, and his employees all knew that Lutz and I had spent the day together thanks to us using the storage building. If I passed out in the storage building and died just like that, it was very likely that all the blame would fall on Lutz. And even if it didn’t, Lutz would probably feel guilty anyway. I had suggested we go home first for Lutz’s benefit, but he looked like I had just dumped cold water on his face. 

“Wh-Wh-What the, what the heck are you saying?!” Lutz was shocked and he began floundering with a tense expression. He hadn’t expected that Myne wouldn’t come back if I disappeared. “Are you saying Myne’s gone for good?! She won’t ever come back?” 

“Uh huh. Probably...” I could only say probably. I knew Myne’s memories, but nothing more. As I had never talked to Myne, she had never asked for her body back. 

“Just tell me this!” Lutz glared at me sharply. Entirely like a superhero fighting an evil villain. Thinking about it that way made me smile a little. From his perspective, that was definitely how this looked. I was an evil witch who stole a weak little girl’s body and Lutz was a superhero trying his best to save her, the girl he considered a little sister of sorts. 

“You talked to Otto and Mr. Benno about some kinda heat, right? Are you that heat? Did you eat Myne?!” 

I was honestly a little impressed that Lutz had guessed that the heat in my body had eaten Myne. He was right about that part specifically. 

“You’re half right, half wrong. I think that the real Myne was eaten by this heat too. Her final memories were thus: ‘It’s hot, help me, it hurts, I hate this.’ Nothing but misery and pain. But that heat isn’t me, and the heat’s trying to eat me, too.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?! Aren’t you evil?! Didn’t Myne disappear because of you?! Tell me that’s what happened!” Lutz grabbed my shoulders and shook me. He was probably heating up since his expectations were off the mark, but his specific wording — “Aren’t you evil,” and “Didn’t Myne disappear because of you” — really ticked me off. 

“I didn’t come here and take Myne’s body because I wanted to! I died, and when I woke up, I was this kid. If I could have chosen where to go myself, I would have stolen a noble’s body, so I could read books. And I wouldn’t have chosen a weak and sickly body, either. Who would want a body that’s sick with a horrible disease, one that feels like fire is eating you alive?!” The moment I shouted that I didn’t want Myne’s body, a completely stunned look washed over Lutz’s face and he loosened his grip on my shoulders. 

“You... You didn’t want to become Myne?” 

“Would you? At first I couldn’t even leave my house without getting out of breath and catching a fever. I’ve finally gotten strong enough to reach the forest, but this body takes forever to grow, and even now, I’ll get sick if I let my guard down for a second. I can barely do anything.” 

Lutz fell into thought for a bit, then shook his head. His intensity from moments prior vanished and his eyes began wandering, uncertain. “...Is the heat going to eat you too, like it ate Myne?” 

“Mhm, I think so. If I stop holding it in for even a second, the heat bursts out and starts eating me alive. It feels kind of like I’m being swallowed up by it, like I’m being broken apart and vanishing... It’s hard to explain.” My explanation must not have been clear enough, as Lutz furrowed his brow and fell into thought. “What I’m saying is, if you don’t like me using Myne’s body and want me to disappear, just say so. I can disappear at any moment.” 

Despite having told me to give the real Myne back, Lutz was looking at me with a shocked expression for some reason, which really wasn’t great for me. I wanted a clear answer from him. 

“...It would be better for me to disappear, right?” I asked for confirmation, which made Lutz’s eyebrows shoot up. 

He yelled at me, angry. “Don’t ask me! Why would you ask me that?! Whaddaya mean you’ll disappear if I tell you to?! That doesn’t make sense!” 

“It doesn’t, but if it wasn’t for you, I would have disappeared a long time ago.” Lutz looked completely baffled, so I talked to him about the time I almost disappeared. “Do you remember the time I collapsed after Mom burned my mokkan?” 

“Yeah. Now that you mention it, something like that did happen.” For Lutz, it was just another day, but for me, it was one of the most important days of my life. A grand crossroads of fate. 

“When that happened, I didn’t care if the heat ate me. I was completely ready to just disappear. A world without books meant nothing to me, and no matter how hard I worked I couldn’t finish one myself, so I just stopped caring.” I heard Lutz gulp hard. His eyes told me to keep going, so I closed my own and thought back to that day. The heat was swallowing me up and as the faces of my family passed through my mind, Lutz’s face suddenly popped up. 

“I was thinking about my family as I was dying, and suddenly your face popped up in the middle of theirs. I didn’t get it. I craned forward to try and see your face, and before I knew it the heat was receding. I woke up. You were actually there, that really surprised me.” 

“I don’t get it. You just were surprised ’cause I’m not a part of your family, right? I didn’t help you or nothin’.” Lutz furrowed his brows and sighed. I shook my head. 

“I woke up because I was surprised, but don’t you remember how you were going to get bamboo my parents wouldn’t burn? Thinking about that helped me fight back the heat, I think.” 

“But your mom still burned that bamboo, didn’t she?” 

I nodded. I could still remember the hollow feeling I felt that day after the anger and frustration faded. It was so horrible I could feel the heat inside of me getting stronger just at the thought of it. “I just gave up on everything and the heat exploded just like that. I didn’t even feel like fighting back and would have just let myself die right there... But then I remembered my promise to you.” 

“Promise? I don’t remember no promise,” muttered Lutz, looking up a bit to try and remember. He must really have forgotten about it. 

“Figures,” I whispered to myself with a smile. To Lutz it had probably just been a way to say “get better” and nothing more. But still, to me, it was what kept me tied to this world. 

“The promise to introduce you to Otto. You wanted me to hurry and get better since you had done your part of the deal, remember?” 

The moment Lutz heard me say that, he let out an embarrassed groan and grabbed his head as if that was something he really hadn’t wanted to remember. “Th-That was just... I wasn’t trying to make you owe me or anything, I just... gaah, crap!” 

“Why did you say it, then?” 

“Don’t ask me that! Let it go! Forget about it!” 

I wanted to tease Lutz, but I was the one in the middle of an interrogation. I granted his request and let it go, pretending not to notice his embarrassment. 

“Mmm, anyway, I remembered the promise and thought I shouldn’t disappear before doing my part of the deal, so I pushed the heat back down. We met up with Otto and Benno after that, which means I fulfilled my promise. Now that we’ve made paper, I’d really like to keep going and make books, but if you really want me to disappear, I will.” 

Lutz looked at me with his face scrunched up, conflicted. He looked me up from head to toe, as if saying he won’t let a single lie slip past him. “Since when...?” 

“Hmm? What?” I couldn’t hear what Lutz mumbled since he was hanging his head so low. His head shot up and he looked me in the eyes. 

“Since when have you been Myne?” 

“...When do you think? At what point do you think the Myne you knew disappeared?” I answered his question with a question, but he didn’t get mad. He just glared at the empty air with a serious expression on his face, thinking. He looked at me, let out a quiet mumble, and kicked his feet at the ground. 

After some time thinking, he let out a gasp and looked up, pointing at my hair stick. “Since you started wearing that thing?” 

I hadn’t expected him to get it exactly right, but it was true that nobody but me used hair sticks here. If I didn’t have such smooth and straight hair that would break free of any hairband, I probably would have used a string instead of a stick like this. 

“...That’s right.” 

“So it’s been a whole friggin’ year?!” Lutz’s eyes shot open and he yelled so loud spit came out of his mouth. Speaking of which, I had become Myne at the end of last autumn. We were in the middle of autumn now with winter fast approaching. 

“Uh huh. I’ve spent most of my time here sick in bed, but it’s been about a year.” About half of my memories here involved passing out and catching fevers, but still, that was better than the original Myne who spent almost every waking moment in bed. 

“...Your family hasn’t noticed?” 

“Who knows. They’ve noticed I’m different, but I don’t think anyone has realized I’m not actually Myne.” It was hard for me to believe that Tuuli and Mom weren’t at least somewhat suspicious, given how they had been constantly taking care of the old Myne before my arrival. But they hadn’t said anything to me, and I in turn wouldn’t say anything to them. Our lives were going just fine. No need to rock the boat. “Plus, my dad said that he was just happy I was finally getting healthy.” 

“...Alright.” Lutz let out a sigh and turned his back to me, as if to say the conversation was over. He touched the paper stuck to the board and felt that it had begun to dry. 

But I had come here expecting to disappear. The conversation ending without a conclusion was too much for me to bear. “Hey, Lutz...” 

“...I think this is something for your family to decide, not me.” Lutz interrupted me before I finished. He thought that my family should be the ones to decide if I should disappear. As it stood, that meant nothing would happen. 

“So we’re going to stay like this for now?” 

“That’s how it is.” I couldn’t tell what Lutz was thinking since he wasn’t looking my way. Did he not care if I kept on living in Myne’s body despite not being her? 

“You don’t mind, Lutz?” 

“Like I said, it’s not up to me.” Lutz just wouldn’t look at me, so I grabbed his arm. I wanted to ask what Lutz thought of me, the girl who wasn’t Myne. He got so mad talking about this. Would he really be fine with things just staying the same? 

“You don’t want me to disappear, Lutz? Even though I’m not the real Myne?” 

Lutz’s arm twitched. I thought that Lutz’s arm was trembling in my hand, but in reality, it was just my own hand that was shaking. “...I don’t.” 

“Why?” 

After repeated questioning, Lutz finally looked my way. Then he flicked my cheek. “Myne won’t come back even if you leave, right? And if you’ve been her for a whole year, then the Myne I know is mostly just you,” he said, scratching his blonde hair. He then firmly locked eyes with me. His light-green eyes were calm, his rage and seriousness from earlier having completely evaporated. He looked just like he usually did. 

Myne had never thought about exercising to build up strength, so she was even weaker than me. In truth, you could count on both hands how many times she had ever met Lutz or Ralph in her entire life. 

“...Yeah. I’m fine with you being my Myne.” 

Lutz’s statement made something click inside of me. Like something that had been floating suddenly fell into place. It was a small thing that didn’t seem so important on the outside, but to me, the change couldn’t have been more significant.