Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 1.3 - Chapter 9

Family Meeting 

“Welcome back!” Tuuli opened the door for us with a smile, blinked a few times at us, then furrowed her brows with worry. “What’s wrong, Dad...? You look kind of upset. Was it cold outside? Or was Myne too heavy?” 

“Tuuli, that’s mean,” I pouted, and Dad forced a laugh. 

“Myne’s too light. She needs to get a little bigger,” he said while setting me down and patting my head. Tuuli giggled, relieved at the sight of Dad relaxing a bit. She then said “Sorry, sorry” while brushing off the snow still stuck on me. 

“The snow started turning into a blizzard on the way back, it was suuuper cold.” Clapping for Tuuli on the inside for lightening the mood, I pursed my lips and complained about the cold. 

Tuuli copied me and pursed her lips too. “Dad was carrying you and put you in his coat, so I bet it wasn’t cold at all. He couldn’t do that for me.” 

“I sure could,” Dad replied before scooping Tuuli up. 

“You probably couldn’t take her all the way to the gate, though,” I shot back before heading to the bedroom to put away my bag and coat. 

Mom was making dinner in the kitchen. “Welcome back. Let’s eat before we do anything else.” She had guessed from Dad’s tense demeanor and expression that something was up. She furrowed her brows for a moment, then got to work setting the table with a slight smile. “Okay, eat up.” 

At Mom’s urging we began eating a much, much more quiet meal than normal. I hadn’t said anything yet, but Dad’s brows were furrowed hard. Mom was keeping her eyes on the table. Tuuli was watching us, worried. The atmosphere was already dark. I spooned the hot soup into my mouth while glancing at my family. 

...Should I really tell them about this? Won’t Dad go on a rampage if he learns I have a year left to live? How should I tell them about it? I want to hide how much I spent on the magic tool, if possible... I could only think of the conversation we would have after dinner and my heart was pounding the whole time. 

“Thank you, it was very good.” We put our utensils down and Mom set cups of tea made from calming herbs onto the table. 

“I suppose now it’s time for the talk?” said Mom as she sat next to Dad, who slowly shook his head. His light-brown eyes were locked onto me. His normal grin was nowhere to be seen and his eyes were scarily serious, so much so that I gulped. 

“Myne’s the one who has something to say, not me,” revealed Dad, leading everyone else to lock their eyes onto me as well. 

I was just talking with my family, but I was so nervous that my throat felt bone dry. What should I start with? What kind of explanation would help them understand the best? Hesitant thoughts stirred through my mind and the actual explanation just wasn’t coming out. Sweat beaded on my brow and the more I panicked, the blanker my mind became. 

“Ummm, about it’s about my sickness, but, um...” My mouth flapped as I searched for words. 

Dad narrowed his eyes. “You stayed at the guildmaster’s house for a few days and came back cured. Am I missing something?” 

“Um, well basically, I can’t be cured.” My head was so empty that I forgot the preamble and just jumped straight to the point. That was a bombshell for my family and after a moment of stunned silence, everyone opened their eyes and somebody gasped. 

Dad immediately stood up so hard his chair fell back and he pounded the table with his fist. “What do you mean, it can’t be cured?! The guildmaster said you were better! Did he lie to us?!” 

“You’re not cured, Myne?!” 

Dad and Tuuli leaned towards me from the side. I waved my hands desperately to try and calm them down and get them back in their seats. “Please, um, stay calm and sit down. There’s not much I really know, and I’m not sure where to start my explanation, so I’ll just be saying the first things that come to mind, so...” 

Dad sat down, grinding his teeth so hard I could hear it. Mom picked up her cup with a shaking hand, maybe trying to calm herself down somehow. She took a small sip and urged me onwards. “Well, please do your best.” 

I saw Tuuli reaching for her cup, so I did the same and took a sip before continuing. “The thing is, I’m sick with something called the Devouring. It’s really rare.” 

“Yeah, I’ve never heard of it,” Dad said with a nod. 

Tuuli murmured quietly with her cup in hand, “...Myne told me about it. She said it takes a ton of money to cure.” 

This time Mom’s the one who stood up with her eyes wide. She looked horrified. I could guess that she realized we hadn’t paid the guildmaster for what he did to cure me. I had wanted to hide how much I spent on the magic tool, but I guessed that wouldn’t be possible. 

“Mom, I’ll explain, so just listen for now.” 

She sat down slowly, her eyes making it clear that she had a lot to say. With everyone’s focus back on me, I started explaining what the Devouring was. 

“The Devouring is a heat that lives in my body, basically, and it grows over time. When I get really mad, or so disappointed I want to die, it rampages inside of me on its own and basically eats me alive from within.” 

“Eats you alive...?” Tuuli stared at me, looking ghostly pale. She looked at my hair and fingertips, checking to see if any parts of me had already been eaten. 

“I can usually control the Devouring heat myself. I can, like, squeeze it into a box inside of me, which works, but then it just keeps growing.” 

“Wh-What happens when it grows too big?” asked Tuuli, squeezing my hand while shaking. 

“I can’t keep it in the box anymore, and it bursts out and starts to kind of overflow from my body. I’ll get swallowed by it before it overflows, and that’s what happened last time. It burst out, started leaking out of me, and I was almost eaten alive. The guildmaster used a magic tool to suck the heat out of me. It really did suck out a lot, but since it grows back, I’ll never be completely cured.” 

Tuuli groaned a little and glared at me with wet eyes, on the verge of tears. Or maybe I should say she was trying so hard to hold the tears in that it just looked like she was glaring at me. Looking at her made me tear up a little too, so I looked away and took another sip. 

“Um, Freida said that I’m not growing much bigger because the heat is eating me bit by bit. To ‘cure’ the Devouring we need magic tools to keep sucking the heat out, but only nobles have them, which means they’re super expensive and you can only buy them if you have a lot of connections to the nobility like the guildmaster’s family does.” 

“So that means... the guildmaster did save you, then...?” Dad collapsed into his chair and spoke in a raspy voice, having lost the one target he could have blamed for this. 

“Mhm. He gave me one of the magic tools he had gathered for Freida. But he doesn’t have any more to give me, and he said I’ll have to decide on my future for myself.” 

“Your future?! There’s some way to cure it?!” Dad leaned forward again, hope in his eyes. Tuuli’s eyes were shining with hopes as well behind the built-up tears. Their hope hurt me as I informed them that I had an option to potentially save my life at the cost of everything else. 

“They said I have two choices. Sign a contract with a noble and become their slave, or live with my family and rot away.” 

“Their slave? I don’t understand.” Dad’s expression twisted with bewilderment. Tuuli also tilted her head in confusion, not really understanding what I meant. Mom alone paled and tightened her grip on her cup. She was squeezing so hard that her fingertips went white. 

“Freida’s healthy because she signed a contract with a noble who gave her magic tools. She said she managed to get good terms because she belongs to a powerful and rich merchant family. We don’t have any connections to the nobles, so they’ll have full control over the contract and we have no idea how they’ll treat me.” 

“...Can’t really call that living,” whispered Dad weakly. I nodded solemnly. It was precisely because I had lived my life as Urano once before that I couldn’t bear to live a life as a noble’s slave. 

“Myne, what about the money? The magic tool they used on you couldn’t have been free, right?” Mom finally spoke, unable to wait a moment longer. 

I nodded, disappointed on the inside that I hadn’t been able to avoid this subject. “I paid for it, don’t worry.” 

“How much was it?” 

“Well, a lot, but when you consider it saved my life...” 

“I’m asking how much it cost. You’ll tell us, won’t you? No secrets.” 

I meandered around the subject and Mom’s brows shot up with anger. I groaned to myself and answered while looking away. “...Two small golds and eight large silvers.” That was the equivalent to two and a half years of Dad’s salaries. 

Everyone’s eyes widened and their jaws dropped. 

“Two small golds and eight large silvers?! How did you earn that much money...?” 

“...Benno bought the rights to my simple all-in-one shampoo. I traded him the right to make, sell, and price it. In return, he...” 

“Whaaaat?! The all-in-one shampoo was that expensive?!” Tuuli cried out in shock, which made sense given how she been squeezing the oil herself for so long. It took time and effort to make the shampoo, but cost nothing since all the materials could be gathered in the forest. Tuuli hadn’t expected at all for it to be worth so much money. 

“Mhm, it turns out that nobles will buy it for a lot of money. He already has a workshop making it, and...” I started talking to Tuuli about the rinsham workshop when Dad shook his head and looked at me with a grim expression. 

“That’s in the past. What we want to hear about is the future. You’re going to get real sick again no matter what, yeah?” 

“Mhm.” 

“...How long until then? It sounds like you already know. I’m guessing you changed the subject because you didn’t want to tell us.” 

“I can’t hide anything from you, can I...?” I let out a sigh at Dad’s unexpected sharpness. He had kicked his chair back and pounded the table just from hearing that my sickness was incurable. How could I tell him how long I had left to live? I couldn’t, but I didn’t have a choice. 

“I’m your father, it’s the least I can do. C’mon. Don’t look away.” He glared at me with his light-brown eyes. It was clear he wouldn’t be fooled by anything and wouldn’t let me leave until I answered, so I nodded in defeat and spoke. 

“...A year at best. They said I’d be lucky to live for another year, so I should figure out what to do before then.” 

The uncomfortable silence turned into a painful silence. I thought Dad would go berserk, but he just shut his eyes, brows furrowed and head lowered. 

The silence was broken by Tuuli choking up. “Ngh... Myne, you’re going to die?! In just a year?! That’s not fair!” She gave up on holding back her tears and started sobbing loudly, jumping off her chair to cling to me. I wrapped my arms around her and patted her back gently to calm her. 

“It’ll be okay, Tuuli. I honestly should be dead already. Think of this as me getting an extra year of life thanks to the guildmaster selling me a magic tool.” I said that to calm her down, but it was just oil on the fire. Tuuli shook her head as tears streamed down her face. 

“Nnn! Don’t say you should be dead! It’s only a year! I hate that! Sniff... You were finally getting better! You were finally going to the forest with me! I don’t want you to die!” 

As Urano I had died to a sudden earthquake, so I never saw my family’s grieving. I wondered if they cried for me like Tuuli was now. I definitely made them cry. And now, I was making my second family cry as well. I was a bad daughter no matter when or where I was born. 

“Don’t cry, Tuuli. Please. I’ll try to see if I can find something other than magic tools that can do something about the Devouring heat.” 

“What’ll happen if you can’t?! You’ll die, Myne! I don’t want you to die!” She clung to me and cried so hard it hurt my heart. My eyes heated up and even though I was trying to hold the tears in, they started flowing out. 

“Tuuli... Don’t cry. I’m the one who wants to cry...” 

“Sniff... Sorry, Myne. I’ll look too. I’ll try to find some way to cure you... Nnn... But...! I want to stop crying, but I can’t...!” 

I was crying and patting Tuuli’s back as she worked hard to stop crying herself when Dad quietly asked a question. “What do you think, Myne?” 

“Sniff... I don’t want to live apart from my family with nobles who could treat me like a slave. F-Freida said she only gets to live with her family until adulthood because the noble she signed with is allowing it. Maybe the one I sign with won’t. When, then?” I already knew the answer to that. “They’ll immediately take me away. I don’t think many nobles will wait.” 

“...Yeah.” 

I had no idea how nobles intended to use children with the Devouring. But I could imagine that it was rare for time to be given. If I was taken away right after signing the contract, I would have had even less time with my family before I die. 

“That’s why I think I would rather just stay with you guys until I die. Sniff... I don’t wanna live without my family.” 

“Myne...” Tears were forming in Mom’s eyes too. She looked away and rubbed her eyes so we wouldn’t see. Dad was looking at me with a blank look on his face that could barely be called an expression. 

“I have another year left. I want to live the rest of my life to its fullest so I can die without regrets. Can... Can I stay here? Or should I go live with a noble?” 

“Stay with me, Myne! I don’t want you to go away!” cried Tuuli, and my parents both nodded without saying anything. I was so happy that they would let me stay that I wiped my tears away and smiled. 

“Okay, so, I have something else I need to talk about too.” 

“There’s more?” said Mom, looking at me with surprise. 

Me telling them about my disease had partly been preparation for what came next. I wanted to discuss my future after they understood my disease as well as they could. “It’s about my job,” I said. 

“You’re gonna be a merchant, aren’t you?” Dad furrowed his brows in puzzlement. I continued, feeling relieved that Dad was calmly listening to me and not going on a berserk rampage. 

“That was the plan, but I realized I wasn’t thinking far enough ahead, or really enough at all. I’m really just not strong enough to work a job. Otto told me I wouldn’t be able to handle life as a merchant. He said I’d just be dead weight that drags Benno’s store down.” 

“Friggin’ Otto...” murmured Dad with clear anger. That was bad — I didn’t want Otto to get punished for telling me the truth. I hurriedly explained the suggestion Otto had given me. 

“But the thing is, he said it would be best for my health if I worked at home as a writer or something and continued selling things to Benno and helping out at the gate when I can.” 

“Yeah. Otto’s right, you should stay at home. No need to push yourself.” Dad grinned, looking a little more happy now. Tuuli, still clinging to me, and Mom both nodded in agreement repeatedly. 

“I promised Benno I would be his apprentice. That won’t cause any problems, right?” I asked the question that was the point of this entire discussion. My parents knew how jobs worked and I didn’t. Maybe breaking that kind of promise would be harder than I thought. 

“You’re not officially his apprentice yet, and he doesn’t want you collapsing during work either, so you’ll be fine if you tell him what you told us.” 

“Okay. I hate to lose the job I worked so hard to get, but I’ll try looking for one that suits my health better.” It might be smart to consult with Benno over what kind of jobs I could do at home. That can wait until spring. 

“Fwaaaah...” We had been talking for so long that the moment the conversation died, I let out a huge yawn. Seeing that, Mom clapped her hands together. 

“If that’s all you have to discuss, I think we should head to bed. It’s late.” 

“Okay, goodnight.” 

“Ngggh... Sniff... Good, night...” 

I headed to the bedroom with Tuuli, who was still crying, and got into bed with her. “Don’t cry, Tuuli. I like it when you smile. We’ll have lots of fun tomorrow, okay?” 

“Uh huh. Definitely. We’ll play together a lot. I’ll stay with you,” I consoled Tuuli as I got the covers over me. Tuuli wiggled beneath my blankets and clung to me before sleeping, as if saying she wouldn’t let me go anywhere. I closed my eyes too, not bothered at all if it meant calming her down. 

I had thought that Dad would have gone more berserk and made more of a fuss, but contrary to my expectations, he listened to what I had to say very seriously. I gently fell asleep too, while sighing in relief that I had finally talked to my family about this. 

I had let Tuuli sleep with me to help calm her down, but I woke up to her hugging my neck a little too tightly. It was so hard to breathe that I hurriedly unwrapped her arms and wiggled away to escape. Th-That would kill me. Devouring or not, I need air to live. 

I blinked while rubbing my neck. Normally it was pitch black when I woke up at night, but light was streaming into the bedroom. I rubbed my sleepy eyes several times, but it seemed I wasn’t dreaming. The door was half open and the hearth still had its fire lit. Since I didn’t hear anyone talking, it wasn’t likely that both my parents were awake. I looked at the dark bed next to mine and saw a bump in the covers, indicating that Mom had already gone to sleep. 

...Maybe she forgot to turn off the fire? I climbed off the bed, carefully so as to not wake up Tuuli, and walked to the kitchen. 

There I saw Dad alone, drinking beer with only the fire lighting up the dim room. He wasn’t drinking cheerily the way he normally did. He was crying quietly as he drank. It was like hearing the wordless agony he had kept hidden before. I quickly looked away and returned to bed.