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Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 2.1 - Chapter SS2




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An Attendant’s Self-Awareness 

“Gil, you know what to do!” 

“Yeah!” 

Right after breakfast, we started preparing the workshop. Today we were going to the forest with Lutz, Gunther, and Tuuli taking the lead. Apparently the forest was totally different from the lower city. We’d learn how to make paper there, then make it in the workshop. 

I was fine doing it just ’cause Sister Myne asked me to, but the other kids weren’t too happy about having extra work. Kai, a kid I used to mess around with in the orphanage before becoming Sister Myne’s attendant, looked down at his clothes and grimaced. They were second-hand and all patched up, looking even worse than the gray robes he normally wore. 

“Hey, Gil. What’s the point in making paper?” That was a question I didn’t really have an answer to. I looked at Lutz, since he usually understood Sister Myne’s plans the best. He noticed my look and started to think. Life in the temple was so different from life in the city that explaining things could be hard sometimes. 

“You guys wouldn’t understand if I said we’re selling the paper to the Gilberta Company, huh. Let’s see... It’ll get Myne more money, so.. Ah, that won’t work either. Money’s not a thing here. Alright. Basically, you’ll get more food to eat.” 

“Really?!” Kai’s eyes shone with glee. The food situation at the orphanage had improved a bit thanks to Sister Myne, but it still wasn’t enough. More food would make anyone here happy. 

“Alright, let’s go. Let’s get this paper made.” 

“It’s crazy, huh? All we had to do was follow Sister Myne’s instructions and now we can make our own soup. We didn’t have to sit around waiting for more divine gifts at all.” 

Kai and the others talking reminded me of how the orphanage was not so long ago. With more and more blue priests and shrine maidens leaving the temple, more and more former attendants returned to the orphanage. There were more gray priests, but less food. Everyone got less divine gifts and everyone was hungry all the time. No new blue priests came to the temple at all until Sister Myne, so nobody got taken as an attendant and nobody got more food. 

“At first I thought a commoner blue shrine maiden would suck, but only Sister Myne would do all this, huh? Only she would tell us if we want to eat, we should just make our own food.” 

Sister Myne had taught everyone in the orphanage how to make soup and bought us ingredients to use. It was a revolution that upended the tradition of the orphanage of just waiting for prepared food to trickle down. 

“You know, she’s not just sending you guys to the forest to teach you to make paper. She’s thinking that if you learn even a little bit about the food that grows in the forest, you’ll be able to save yourselves from starvation if it comes down to that,” explained Lutz. 

Kai’s eyes widened, then he smiled a little. “I’m glad Sister Myne became the orphanage director. No other blue robe would try and make things better for us.” 

“Then you better work hard and make some good paper for her.” 

“Yeah.” 

We distributed knives, baskets, and so on to the eager children, then got the pots and steamers necessary to make paper ready. It was time to go to the forest. 

“Sister Myne, I’m gonna go learn. I’m gonna pay attention.” 

“Yes, Gil. Go learn to gather and make paper well,” said Myne. I nodded hard and then saw that Lutz was waving his hand high, giving instructions to everyone since he was the most used to the orphanage. 

“Be sure to stick close to Mr. Gunther. They won’t let you out of the gate if you’re on your own.” Gunther was Sister Myne’s father, and Tuuli was her elder sister. Or so I heard, but I didn’t really know what those words meant. Sister Myne explained that they were her family, people she lived with, but it just didn’t click for me. They were probably like her attendants that stayed with her when she was in the lower city. Or maybe they were like the other orphans were to me, since we used to live together. 

...I didn’t understand what families were, but I hoped one day she could rely on me as much as she relied on them. 

When we left the gate, the scenery changed instantly. Unlike the pure white temple, the lower city was brown and absolutely stunk. I was happy just to leave the pent-up temple, but some of the others were scrunching their faces up. Gunther noticed that and shrugged. 

“This place isn’t like your nice and clean temple, huh?” 

“...It’s dirty, smelly, loud, and there’s tons of people. Also, it feels weird that the buildings aren’t white.” One of the orphans spoke up and the others nodded while looking around. The orphanage felt cramped from all the gray priests being sent back, but there were so many people in the city that there wasn’t much more space. It was so loud here that it was hard to believe how silent they were told to be in the temple. The first time I left the temple, I got so excited at all the people and stuff to see that I actually felt a little sick afterwards. 

“What’s that? I’ve never seen any of these things before.” 

“Everyone’s wearing all sorts of different clothing. Is that a blue shrine maiden over there?” An orphan pointed at a woman wearing blue clothing, and immediately they all stepped to the side of the road and knelt down. 

“No, no! There’s no blue shrine maidens or priests in the city! You don’t need to kneel!” 

“R-Really?” Half-kneeling, they froze in place and nervously watched the woman, afraid that they were going to be yelled at. 

It made me want to cradle my head. Sister Myne and Lutz had definitely felt the same way when Fran and I had visited the city for the first time. Those who had been sheltered in the temple stuck out like a sore thumb in the city. They clearly weren’t used to anything and spent all their time looking around, which was extremely suspicious. I tried to teach them what I could from my trips to the lower city. 

“Only buildings for nobles are pure white. In other words, commoner buildings have lots of colors. Unlike the temple, there are no rules for how everything has to look. There’s lots of colors. People who are uh, rich? Like, people with a lot of money live here, so everything’s pretty, but the further south we go, the dirtier it’ll get. The people down there will be wearing clothes like ours.” 

“How come you know all this, Gil?” asked a kid while blinking in confusion. I puffed out my chest with pride. 

“I go outside the temple all the time to accompany Sister Myne on her commute.” In the past I had mainly just been sent to the repentance chamber by the caretaker priests. I never got attention for any good reasons. 

But despite my pride, Lutz patted my shoulder and reminded me that I had messed up in the lower city plenty of times myself. “Don’t touch anything you see until I say so. The first time Gil went to the city he stole some fruit thinking it was a divine gift and got yelled at. Unlike the temple, there’s physical punishment down here. Don’t do anything that’ll get people mad at you. They’ll shout out of nowhere and punch you in the face. It hurts and it’s scary.” 

Lutz revealing my past mistakes made the kids laugh. They chatted among themselves, saying “Don’t touch anything in the city! They’ll get mad!” 

...Tch. I was finally earning some respect, but Lutz ruined it. 

The scenery changed a bit again at the central plaza. The wood parts of buildings that used to be colored turned brown, and the buildings themselves got narrower. The clothes people wore lost their color and turned into the same raggedy patched clothes we were wearing. Even the attitude of people changed. 

“How many times do I gotta teach you this lesson?!” A shout unlike anything you would hear in the temple shot through the air and an older man dropped a fist on a young adult repairing some building. 

“Aaah! Physical punishment!” 

“Aah, aaah! Tuuli! Is it truly okay to be violent like that?” A gray shrine maiden squeezed Tuuli’s sleeve, trembling. 

Tuuli gave an uncomfortable smile. “Sometimes people won’t learn unless they get yelled at. And you don’t need to be scared. It won’t happen to you if you don’t do anything to make people mad.” 

The further south we went, the louder the voices got. Shouts echoed through the air and gave the city a scary atmosphere completely unlike the temple’s quiet ambiance. 

“There’s even scarier people in the alleys, so don’t go off on your own. Keep walking straight to the gate up ahead,” said Tuuli while pointing to a large gate at the other end of the street. 

The orphans weren’t just listening to Tuuli because they were scared of the city. She was their teacher, the one who taught them how to make soup. Lutz and Tuuli were basically the same age as me, but they knew lots of things, could do lots of things, and were a big help to Sister Myne. The only things I could do without help were clean and accompany her on her commute. Everything else I was in the middle of learning from Fran, so it was hard to call me very useful. 

Maybe due to how much scarier the south of the city was, everyone subconsciously sped up until we reached the gate. It resembled the temple gate, but was even larger. Apparently there wasn’t any more city beyond the gate. Before going through, Gunther held up a hand and told everyone to stop. 


“I’m gonna go make sure they know about us. Hey, Otto!” Gunther disappeared into the gate and we were stuck at the front of it. Curious eyes fell on us from the other people waiting at the gate. To those who had never left the temple, they were in an entirely unknown world. I had been told my whole life that I must never leave the temple, so being outside made a sense of guilt spread through my chest. The other kids seemed to feel the same way, judging by how they were looking increasingly uneasy. 

“You don’t need to worry, everyone. Dad’s with us,” said Tuuli, smiling gently. Guards needed to keep watch every day to stop people they didn’t know from going in and out of the city, apparently, so it was their job to look us over. 

“They know the faces of city kids, but they don’t know any of you guys since you’ve never left the city. Dad’s a guard here, so once he tells them who you are, they’ll let us though.” 

“Looks like bringing Gunther was the right call. I never coulda got them to let all these orphans out,” said Lutz while watching Gunther talk to a guard. I blinked in surprise. 

“There’s some things you can’t do, Lutz?” 

“Yeah, of course. There’s more I can’t do than stuff I can.” 

It always looked like Sister Myne was asking Lutz to do everything, but even he had some things he couldn’t do. That was a big relief to me, somehow. 

“Huh. I guess if I work hard, I’ll be useful to Sister Myne too someday.” 

“You better. I can’t keep my eyes on Myne when she’s in the temple, so yeah.” Lutz grinned. 

Kai, who had apparently been listening in on our conversation, blinked in surprise and peered at me. “You’ve changed. Not long ago you were hating hard on having to serve her. Pretty sure you called her a commoner brat.” 

“...Yeah, I guess I did.” My life and the orphanage had both changed so much that it felt like a lot of time had passed, but in reality it hadn’t even been a season since Sister Myne joined the temple. 

“I sure was shocked when Arno said you were gonna be the new blue shrine maiden’s attendant, man. You’re always stuck in the repentance chambers and I thought I woulda been a way better attendant than you.” 

Everyone nodded with Kai. Each and every one of them had wanted to become the new blue shrine maiden’s attendant. Naturally, since becoming an attendant meant leaving the orphanage. But Arno had shot them all down and stated that the High Priest had decided on Gil. At the time I was super pumped to leave the orphanage and get a higher status than the caretaker priests always putting me in the repentance room. But my happiness was shattered in an instant. 

“Hey, I remember how you all laughed at me when Arno said the new shrine maiden was a commoner, and that I wouldn’t get to leave the orphanage since she wasn’t even being given any chambers.” 

“Yeah, I remember that. I was all like, what’s the point in serving someone who won’t even give food or a room? I even said a commoner blue shrine maiden was a perfect fit for you, and that I was glad I didn’t get picked. Good times.” 

They laughed at me, saying they were giving her the most useless person in the orphanage since she was a commoner, and that frustration stuck with me when I first met Sister Myne. She was shorter than me, didn’t act or talk at all like the other blue shrine maidens, and I just snapped. I couldn’t believe she was supposed to be my master. 

“You kept complaining about her not being a normal blue shrine maiden, and now look at you.” 

“Yeah, now I’m glad she isn’t a normal blue shrine maiden. If I work hard, she recognizes that and compliments me.” It was because Sister Myne was a commoner where being rewarded for work was normal that she patted my head and complimented me just for cleaning her chambers. Thinking about her praising me made me happy. She would pat my head with her little hand while saying “Thanks, Gil. You worked hard” or something similar. It always made a warmth spread through my chest that made me smile without realizing it. 

Nobody had patted my head like that after I was baptized and left the orphanage basement. Not only that, but I was apparently a kid who came to the orphanage instead of being born there, so the women in the basement didn’t hold me or rub my head much at all compared to the other kids. 

“I’m gonna learn lots of things and be useful to Sister Myne just like Lutz is.” 

“Mmm. But y’know, I think I’m a faster learner than you. And Sister Myne’s gonna be getting more attendants ’cause she has so few right now, yeah?” said Kai, and the kids around him nodded. But that caught me completely off guard. 

“Yeah, yeah. Sister Myne appreciates hard work. We just gotta work hard so she’ll appreciate us too, not just Gil. If we work harder than Gil she might even replace him with us. Not like you’re doing much work at all right now, Gil.” 

It was only then that I realized. Sister Myne was a new blue priest that had just joined the temple, so she only had the attendants given to her by the High Priest. She hadn’t picked any of her own yet. It was possible that she would start picking new attendants and replacing old ones soon. That horrible realization made my heart start beating fast. 

Sister Myne has a heart filled with compassion, enough to care about all the kids in the orphanage. She would never be cruel to her attendants. And since everyone in the orphanage knows that, it wouldn’t be odd at all for everyone to start fighting to be her attendant. 

...Crap. There’s a ton of people in the orphanage better than me. I felt a cold sweat run down my back. There were plenty of gray priests with experience being attendants and plenty of gray shrine maidens who could help her with the girl things I never could. Fran used to be the High Priest’s attendant, so he could do everything. He was already doing most all of the work himself. Delia’s a girl, and every blue shrine maiden needed a girl attendant to take care of her. Not to mention that since the High Bishop ordered Delia to be Sister Myne’s attendant, she wouldn’t be able to replace her now that she was doing her job seriously. 

...If I didn’t learn to do lots of things, I’d be the most useless attendant she had. But how? An indescribable sense of unease spread through my chest. I knew more than anyone else that I had been a real brat and that I was barely capable of helping her at all. 

“We can pass through!” Gunther called out and gestured us forward, so the clump of orphans started passing through the gate. 

I followed while holding down my throat. It was prickling so hard it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I had skipped lessons for so long that everyone else could do more than me. I didn’t know how hard I’d have to work to make up for that. 

“Gil, you look awful. Are you feeling sick or something?” 

“Lutz. I dunno if I’ll ever be able to help Myne out, no matter how hard I work. She might switch me out for someone else...” I confessed my worries to Lutz, who blinked in surprise. 

“Don’t be stupid,” he said, shaking his head and going through the gate. 

I didn’t understand. ...What’d he mean by that? Am I being stupid? The dark tunnel of the wide gate felt symbolic of my mood. The kids were saying “This reminds me of the basement.” “Yeah, it’s scary.” “So dark!” and their voices echoed surprisingly loudly. I walked among them, feeling helplessly uneasy. 

...How hard should I work? Is it too late for me to catch up to the others? 

After passing through the complete shade of the gate’s tunnel and reaching the other end, we were outside. It was so bright that just opening my eyes hurt. When the pain faded, I saw scenery unlike anything I had ever seen before spreading out in front of me. I only knew the sky surrounded by walls, so seeing the vast sky expanding endlessly surprised me more than I could say. The kids around me must have felt the same way, as they all started shouting in awe. 

“Wooow! Amazing! Look! The sky’s so wide! It’s not a square!” 

“It’s very bright, and the sun feels more dazzling than usual.” 

“The sky makes me think of Sister Myne. This feels as bright as the first time I left that basement.” 

Their comments made me remember that day when Sister Myne cleaned the orphanage and everyone got to eat food with smiles on their faces. That was the day I was really glad that Sister Myne was my master. I felt proud to be her attendant. 

“Lutz. I don’t wanna quit being Sister Myne’s attendant. I’m gonna be useful to her.” 

“You really don’t get it, do you?” Lutz looked at me with his jade eyes filled with surprise and exasperation. “Listen. You’re the one who brought soup to the kids every day after Myne first learned about all this, right? You’re the one who led the cleaning, right? You’re already being useful to Myne. If you’re still anxious about it, just try and learn to do more. Myne won’t cut you off so easily if you’re working hard to improve. You can start by learning how to make paper here.” 

Apparently, she would soon be in dire need of attendants to manage the workshop in her place as it got busier. Lutz, grinning, said I’d probably get more confident if I started managing the workshop that was so important to both Myne and the orphanage. The second he said that and gave me a clear goal, my worry vanished. 

“Managing the workshop, huh...?” 

“The Myne Workshop’s paper-making is definitely gonna be vital for buying the orphanage’s food, and it’ll be Myne’s most important source of income. Do a good job, Gil. You’re her attendant.” Lutz slapped me on the back and I looked up at the sky. It felt much brighter and bluer than before. 

“Gil, Lutz, hurry! You’re getting left behind!” Tuuli’s yell brought me back to reality and I saw the kids running toward the forest with cheers and smiles, filled with the excitement of finally being free. 

“We’re gonna find stuff for Sister Myne in the forest!” 

“Hey! Wait! I’m going in first. I’m Sister Myne’s attendant!” I chased after them, and the kids ran away squealing. 

“You’re all getting too excited. Gotta save your energy for the way back,” warned Gunther with a grin. 

Tuuli looked up at him and smiled happily. “These kids really do love Myne.” 



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