The Myne Decimal System
“Fran, please go to the workshop and squire three gray priests, then summon all of my attendants except Wilma.”
“What will you be doing, Sister Myne?”
“I will look over the list the High Priest gave me and think about how to classify the books.”
Upon entering the book room, Fran cleared a path to a desk. He sat me down, placed the two boards the High Priest lent us in front of me, and then speedily left to acquire our help.
After seeing him off, I began looking over the list by myself. The list was written with small and compact letters that made it clear that the writer only cared if he could read them, not anybody else.
“Let’s see here. The High Priest brought... woah, what?! There’s so many!” The High Priest had brought an enormous number of books with him—half of the chained books and more documents than could fit on a shelf in one of the bookshelves.
“...Just who is the High Priest?!” All I knew for sure was that he was staggeringly rich. He said in the past that he entered the temple due to certain circumstances, but I could imagine his family was definitely on the higher echelon of status. If not for that, he couldn’t have brought five books with him into the temple when each was worth multiple large gold coins.
As far as I knew, books with hard leather covers, gold decoration, and gemstones fit into them weren’t normally something that someone just owned. They were family treasures and the like. Yet the High Priest had brought five of them into the temple as his personal belongings, and had opened them up for anyone in the temple to read them. That alone was enough to make my opinion of the High Priest shoot up sky-high.
“He’s such a good person... I don’t think many others would do this.”
My plan was to first roughly categorize the books on the list and then organize the shelves based on how many documents of each category existed, but I hit a sudden wall.
“...How should I classify books related to magic?” Unfortunately, the Japanese version of the Dewey Decimal System didn’t have a section for magic. But the High Priest had more documents related to magic than any other, maybe due to it being a field that only nobles were involved in or maybe because they needed it for research.
I tried writing out the categories used in the Japanese classification system.
0 — General Works
1 — Philosophy
2 — History
3 — Social Sciences
4 — Natural Sciences
5 — Technology
6 — Industry
7 — Art
8 — Language
9 — Literature
Considering that magic involved making magic tools, it would probably fall under technology. Or maybe it would be better to treat it like math or a natural science. It was hard to introduce a decimal system into a world where life was so different.
“Anyway, I’ll think about it after taking a closer look at the documents. I’m sure it’ll be more clear once I see what they’re like.” I couldn’t help but smile as I looked at all the documents scattered on the floor. ’Cause I mean, this is magic we’re talking about. How could my heart not beat fast at the mere thought of what’s written in these scrolls?
Everything outside of magic could be classified normally, so once everyone got here we would stack the documents first to clear up the floor. I would then mark the shelves with classifications and scan each document individually, putting it on whichever shelf that seemed to fit it the best. Ideally I would finish that by the end of today, which would let me spend the following days recording them in a catalog and creating more precise classification numbers. The second level of classification would probably need to be modified significantly to be usable here.
“Geez! Just what happened here?!” I heard a familiar shout and turned to see Delia in the doorway, her eyes flared open with anger. It was her job to keep my room clean, so naturally a mess like this would set her off. Behind her stood my other attendants and three gray priests, all of whom looked stunned at the state of the book room.
“Holy cow,” murmured Gil. “I dunno who did this, but I guess they want Sister Myne to kill’m...” Gil knew how much I loved books, and his observation made Fran press a hand against his stomach.
“What’s wrong, Fran? Does your stomach hurt?”
“...Somewhat, when I think of the culprit’s future.” I didn’t expect Fran to be so worried about the culprit that he would feel ill. I put a hand on my cheek and tilted my head.
“Perhaps I should cancel the blood festival, then. I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to show my firm backbone as a master and raise the morale of my allies, but if you insist...”
“Wh-Wha, Sister Myne! A blood festival’s not gonna pump anyone up! You’re just gonna scare everyone!” My attendants and the gray priests behind them all paled and collectively took a fearful step back. Only Fran walked up to me, knelt, and took both my hands to begin his plea.
“I beg of you, please cancel it. You have already shown the firmness of your backbone, Sister Myne.”
“You think so? In that case, I will cancel the blood festival. We can focus on cleaning up today.” Fran begged me to stop with such a serious look I decided to cancel it after all. Cleaning up the book room would be a lot more fun than a blood festival anyway.
“First of all, take care not to step on any documents. Separate the parchment documents from the board documents and stack them on this desk. Begin by picking them up in a way that forms a path to the bookshelves.”
They all replied “Understood,” to which I nodded and continued my explanation. “Fran and I will organize the gathered documents. Please line them up on the shelf according to the classification given. The top shelf of the left bookshelf will be 0, the second shelf 1, and the bottom will be kept open. The right bookshelf’s two top shelves will be 2 and the bottom one will be 3. The documents outside of those classifications will be organized last. You can line the documents up in any order you like, just be sure not to mix up their classification numbers.”
Fran sat next to me as the others went off to pick up the documents on the floor. He blinked in confusion, having been given a different job from everyone else.
“Sister Myne, what exactly is this classification system?”
“Behold! This is the Myne Decimal System chart. Take a look at this and decide which document matches which number. You can ask me if you’re not sure, I’ll help.” I handed my diptych to Fran while explaining how it worked. Meanwhile, parchment and boards were stacked on the desk. Fran and I looked over them and organized them according to the most basic level of classification they fit into.
“Rosina, once a path is made to the left bookshelf, please place these documents on Shelf 1.”
“Understood, Sister Myne.”
I had expected this, but many of the church documents were about philosophy. There were also a lot about history and the social sciences. My eyes were particularly drawn to documents listing the total harvests of farming towns, along with how much of the harvest was taken by the church. But they were all old and I couldn’t find anything more recent. Furthermore, I could find no documents about language or literature. Not a single one.
“Delia,” cried out Rosina, “there is parchment within that scroll! Be careful.”
“Geez! Don’t get in the way of my rolling, stupid parchment!!” Delia shouted at the parchment while unrolling the scroll, partially out of embarrassment. Rosina giggled and picked up the pieces of parchment that ended up scattered across the ground. All scrolls were put in the same location, so we weren’t classifying them despite looking at their contents. We could finally see the floor again once the scrolls were picked up.
“Gil, please give these documents to the priest near Shelf 2.” The documents that had been scattered on the floor weren’t books and had no uniform size. I saw a gray priest fighting with a piece of parchment that kept falling over and concluded that it would be nice to have a filing cabinet or some such for everyone. We didn’t even have any bookends.
“...Maybe I should ask Johann to make some.”
“Sister Myne?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. Rosina, please give these boards to that gray priest. Tell him that he can push the parchment back with them.”
The book room still looked like a mess, but the valuable books within the locked shelf that could only be opened with a key from the High Bishop or High Priest had been untouched, and the chained books hadn’t been damaged or even scratched. The blue priest that did this really had just scattered the documents out of petty spite. The two empty bookshelves and the covered floor made it seem as if a huge number of documents had been scattered, but once the scrolls were rolled up and the documents stacked, there weren’t really that many of them. Fran and I didn’t have many boards and pieces of parchment to categorize.
“...I guess that’s it?”
We finished organizing all the parchment and boards so fast I couldn’t help but tilt my head in surprise.
“Yes,” confirmed Fran. “That did not take as long as I expected. Your classification system was very efficient.”
“We just organized them based on the first level of classification. I intend to make more precise subdivisions to make specific documents easier to find. It will certainly be difficult to devise precision classification numbers for these documents, but it will be worth doing.”
Fran stood up, smiling in relief, so I stood up as well and looked around. All the documents that had been on the floor were now stored on shelves. But the shelves I had reserved for the High Priest’s documents were both empty. I hadn’t found a single one of his documents pertaining to magic despite everything having been picked up.
“Sister Myne, is something wrong?” Fran’s voice snapped me back to reality and I saw the gray priests lined up by my attendants, awaiting further orders. It seemed they couldn’t leave until I told them to, even though their work here was done.
“The book room has been cleaned up thanks to your efforts. Thank you all ever so much. I greatly appreciate your assistance.”
Fran had to go return the book room’s key to the High Priest, so I followed. I wanted to ask him about the magic documents.
“I need to return the list he gave me, and I have a question to ask him.”
“What might that question be?”
“I couldn’t find any of the documents recorded on the list. Maybe they’re stored elsewhere, but if not, this could be a big deal.”
Fran paled. If all documents related to magic had been stolen by someone, I would be treated with the most suspicion given that I cleaned up the book room. The fact that none of the valuable books had been stolen made me think the documents were probably fine, but better safe than sorry.
“I would rather not see your face more than once a day, you know.” The High Priest gave a blatant grimace the second I entered his room. It’s not like I’m coming here to see you either, I protested on the inside while thanking him for the list with a smile.
“High Priest, thank you for lending me the list.”
“You finished organizing the book room? That was faster than I expected,” murmured the High Priest. But what did he expect? No way would I let precious documents rot on the floor.
“I finished the first tier of classification. I will begin work on the second and third tiers in the coming days. By the way, I couldn’t find the documents on your list. If you’re storing them somewhere yourself, that’s fine, but I thought I should report this just in case they were lost or stolen.”
“That is to be expected, as those documents are in my room. But more importantly, Myne, how did you know that only the documents listed here were missing out of that mountain of documents?”
“I prepared a classification number for them, but the shelf for them ended up being empty.” We were talking about real documents about magic, unlike anything I had seen before in my Urano days. Anyone excited about magic would notice that they weren’t there. Not to mention, the High Priest said there was a “mountain of documents” in the book room, but I was so used to Earth libraries that the book room seemed downright sparse to me.
“What do you mean by classification number?”
“Those are part of the Myne Decimal System. They’re used to organize books and documents.” I took out my diptych, which still had the chart I drew to show Fran. “I wasn’t sure if I should classify the magic documents under technology or under natural science, and ultimately decided to wait until I had read them.”
“Oh...? This is quite an interesting system. Did you think of it yourself?” The High Priest narrowed his eyes, looking at me with suspicion. Honestly, his suspicion was justified. No way could I think up something as wonderful as this.
“No, I based this on the (Japanese) Decimal System, which was in turn based on the Dewey Decimal System created by Melvil Dewey. I call it the Myne Decimal System.”
“Melvil Dewey? Who is that, and where is he from? I’ve never heard of him.”
“He died a long time ago, and I’ve never even met him myself. But more importantly. What do you think magic should be classified under?”
I pointed at the diptych and asked the High Priest about what number to classify magic under. He actually took the question pretty seriously, and began thinking hard while muttering things like “The fundamental aspect of magic is...” and “No, but when it comes to magic tools, one cannot forget that...”
I eagerly waited for his answer, and after a bit of waiting the High Priest suddenly snapped back to reality. He coughed and shook his head. “I can only say that it depends on the document, and in any case, it is not something for you to worry about.”
“...Why not? I can’t organize them without giving them a classification number.” The High Priest slowly looked around the room, then placed the sound-blocking magic tool in front of me. I gripped it and waited for him to continue.
“Only nobles wield magic. As the blue priests here have not graduated from the Royal Academy, the documents are not for their eyes. I have no intention of storing them in the book room.”
In short, the documents piled up in his hidden room were no doubt focused on magic. That made sense, but also seemed strange. The High Priest had made it sound entirely as if blue priests weren’t nobles.
“Only nobles wield magic...? But aren’t blue priests nobles?”
“Not exactly, no. Blue priests have the blood of the nobility and possess mana. But only those who graduate from the Royal Academy are accepted as nobles within noble society.”
“What? But you said that a bunch of blue priests and shrine maidens went back to noble society.” Maybe they were sent to the Royal Academy after being taken back. Though according to what I had heard about the gray priests in the orphanage, some of their former masters had been adult priests and shrine maidens.
“The Royal Academy temporarily allowed for them to be admitted due to how necessary it was to replace the enormous number of nobles killed during the purge. This allowed for the status quo to be maintained. Given the influence of their families, blue priests may appear identical to nobles despite not attending the Royal Academy, but that isn’t quite right.”
I had thought that anyone with noble blood would be a noble, based both on my historical knowledge of the nobility and on how the blue priests carried themselves. But since one had to graduate from the Royal Academy to be a noble, not all blue priests were real nobles.
“...You just can’t be a noble if you don’t graduate? That seems pretty harsh.”
“I would disagree. Nobles wield the enormous power of mana. One so ignorant that they cannot control their mana, use it properly, or make magic tools can hardly be considered a noble. It’s that simple. And it is for that reason that no matter how much you beg or plead, I cannot show you the documents. Nor would I want to. That is the end of this.” He finished his explanation that made it clear that he wouldn’t budge on the matter. It seemed that the High Priest knew all along that I had actually been hoping that he would show them to me.
“High Priiiest...”
“My answer will not change. Return to your chambers at once,” he ordered with an ice-cold glare. I slumped my shoulders and left the room.
...Tch. I wanted to see those magic documents. The High Priest’s just a big meanie.
When I got back to my chambers, Tuuli and Lutz were there, probably having finished their work. They were waiting for me in the first floor’s hallway.
“Tuuli, Lutz. Thanks for waiting.” I sat in one of the chairs with them, and after seeing Delia head to the kitchen to make tea, continued. “Did you finish the books?”
“Only about half of’m. Those orphanage kids haven’t even held a needle before,” said Lutz, to which Tuuli nodded hard.
“He’s not kidding! I couldn’t believe that none of them had used a needle before. Which is bad, ’cause they won’t be able to fix their clothes if they get torn. Should I teach them how to sew, too?”
Those working in the workshop used the same second-hand clothes that the kids used when going to the forest. It wasn’t uncommon for them to rip their sleeves and hems. But since they didn’t know how to sew they had no way of fixing their clothes, unlike kids from the lower city. I wasn’t good enough to sew myself, so I had just been thinking about using their messed-up clothing as rags and buying new pairs.
“I’ll get sewing kits ready if you’re willing to teach, Tuuli. I’m not allowed to work here, and I’m not good at sewing anyway, so...”
“That’s true. They definitely wouldn’t get better with you teaching them. I think even just teaching them to sew the cuffs of their sleeves would make a difference, so okay. Those sewing kits would be great.” It was probably hard for Tuuli to believe that someone could grow up without learning to cook or sew given how important those skills were in life. She looked like a cooking teacher worried about her students.
“The orphanage kids can make their own soup thanks to you and Ella teaching them, and now you’re moving on to sewing lessons. Maybe you should have been a teacher, Tuuli.”
“Do you want me to teach them or not?” Tuuli pouted a little at being called a teacher, then lowered her eyes. “But... they know how to read, a little. They were reading some when making the books. I didn’t expect that little orphan kids would know how to read.”
“They’ve been playing with the karuta set I made for them. You should play with them sometime, Tuuli.” The karuta seemed to be teaching the kids to read somewhat effectively. Since I had put all the karuta words into the children’s bible, it would be easier for them to read. But it wouldn’t be that easy to read for someone not in the temple. I wanted to show one to Benno and see what he thought.
“Lutz, do you have a book ready to give to Benno?”
“Yeah, I got enough for everyone who helped us.” Lutz held up four bound books proudly.
“Yay, thank you! Let’s go deliver one to Benno tomorrow.”
“Yeah.”
We could basically just waltz into Benno’s store whenever we wanted, and even if he wasn’t there we could give the books to Mark. But to meet with the High Priest properly I first had to write a letter requesting a meeting.
“...Looks like I have to write another letter. Dealing with nobles proves to be a pain in the neck once again.”
“Sister Myne,” said Fran, “shall I have Rosina write it for you?” Despite asking a question, Fran’s expression and the nuance of his timing made it clear he wanted to see whether Rosina could manage to write a proper letter yet. An attendant’s duty involved writing letters for their master, and there would be no better practice than writing letters to the High Priest. He would no doubt thoroughly correct any mistakes that she might make and then send it right back to her.
“That sounds like a good idea. I shall leave it to her.”
Rosina twitched in fear, but nodded with a graceful smile. I could really learn from her, I thought, then noticed that Delia was looking at Rosina full of envy over her being given a new job. Gil was being given all sorts of new work thanks to his involvement with the workshop, and Fran’s work depended entirely on how active I was. Rosina wasn’t skilled with paperwork, but she could manage it and thus Fran was giving her increasingly large portions of his work. Delia probably thought she was being left behind, stuck in a rut of cleaning my chambers and not much else.
...She is working pretty hard to learn to read and do math, though. Gil learned faster since he had the orphanage kids to compete with. Meanwhile, Delia felt like she wasn’t getting better no matter how hard she worked, which was honestly something I could sympathize with. I often felt like I wasn’t getting any better and Lutz was leaving me behind despite both of us being the same age.
Maybe I’m not praising her enough? It was easy to compliment Gil since he always asked for it whenever he did something, but Delia did her daily work without any big fuss at all, which made it hard to find opportunities to compliment her. Taking one’s daily duties seriously was definitely important and impressive, but in the moment it’s kind of hard to just say, “Thanks for continuing to do what you always do.”
“Delia, I would like to deliver this book to the High Priest later. Please store it in my desk drawer.”
“Certainly.” Delia took the book, and then I gave her another one.
“Could you leave this somewhere in the hall? I would like for you to read it first and give me your thoughts before anyone else. “
“...Me, first?” Delia blinked in surprise. I nodded.
“Yes. Gil’s working hard in the workshop, but my chambers would fall apart without you, Delia. I would like you to see the completed product first.”
“Th-That’s right. It’s all thanks to me!” Delia lifted her chin high and raced up the stairs with her arms wrapped around the books. Everyone watched her go with warm smiles.
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