Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 2.3 - Chapter 4

Winter Hibernation and Handiwork 

Dad and Tuuli took me to my chambers in the temple, where Fran greeted us with wide eyes. He looked between me and them, blinking rapidly. 

“Did something happen, Sister Myne?” 

“Sorry to barge in like this, Fran.” 

He started to usher me in, but I stopped him and said that I didn’t want Delia to hear before beginning to explain the situation in the doorway. I explained that the head of the Ink Guild was targeting me, that Lutz was accosted by a group of men, and that I would start living in the temple a bit sooner than planned for safety’s sake. 

I also mentioned that while we didn’t know what the head of the Ink Guild was after (nor did I know his name), we did know that he had connections to nobles and had a lot of bad rumors surrounding him, which meant we should avoid mentioning this to Delia. 

Fran listened to everything with a frown, then gave a deliberate nod. “Understood. I would ask you to tell the High Priest what you told me.” 

“Fran,” began Dad, squeezing his hand on my shoulder, “we’re gonna try to find out what’s going on here ourselves. For now, I’m leaving Myne to you. But I’ll be coming back to check up on her.” 

Fran nodded, looking right back at him. “You may count on me. Your visits will no doubt be the warmth that gets Sister Myne through the winter.” 

“Myne, don’t be too much of a handful for them. And be sure to tell the High Priest everything. Nothing good comes from a lack of communication with your boss.” 

Dad gave some very soldier-like advice, which I responded to with a smile and two taps of my right fist against the left side of my chest. His expression softened, then he gave a similar salute. 

Tuuli gave me a tight hug then looked at me, her big blue eyes wavering with unease. 

“Bye, Myne. I’ll come on my next day off. Be good while I’m gone, okay?” 

“Okay. I’ll be waiting for you.” 

After seeing Dad and Tuuli off, I went into my chambers. Despite having my own room here, spending the night in the temple made me a little nervous. 

My attendants were all surprised to see me arrive out of nowhere right before dinnertime. 

“What brings you here today, Sister Myne?” 

“Due to certain circumstances, my winter stay in the temple has been moved forward and now begins today.” 

“What circumstances?” asked Delia, her head cocked to the side. 

I shook my head. “I can’t give any details since nobles might be involved.” 

Delia tried to start changing me into my blue robes, but I stopped her since I didn’t have any plans to go out today. That said, I didn’t have much else to do. I looked around the room, thinking about how I was usually home by this time. 

“What do you all do when it gets this late?” 

I could tell what Rosina did without even looking—she was playing her harspiel. She really did play for as long as she could before the seventh bell curfew. 

Delia was carrying hot water from the kitchen, likely to prepare the bath. It seemed that bath time was where women polished their charms; I had a lot to learn from Delia’s girl power. 

Gil was writing a report on his slate about the Myne Workshop’s activity for the day and the products it had finished. It was a report based on how the Gilberta Company managed its stock, and Lutz was having Gil write them as part of his training. 

Fran was finalizing reports on the food and supplies consumed by the orphanage and my chambers so that he could prepare orders for more stock. He was busy every day with all sorts of different paperwork. Still, he said things were a lot easier on him now that he could split the work with Rosina and Wilma. 

“...I guess I’ll write a letter to the High Priest requesting a meeting with him.” 

I sat down at my work desk and began writing a letter to the High Priest, asking to talk to him so I could tell him what had happened. It would be days before he replied though, so who knew how long it would be before we could talk.

After finishing my letter, I began planning for the next picture books. Guided by Freida’s advice, I decided to make new children’s bibles with stories of the subordinate gods beneath the Eternal Five, organized by their season. 

I ate a fancy dinner delivered to my table, took a lavish bath in hot water with Delia’s help, and then got in my warm bed alone. It was so big that I could stretch my arms and legs as much as I wanted. To my side I could see a table with a water pitcher, a cup, and a bell to summon my attendants. 

“Goodnight, Sister Myne.” 

“Goodnight, Delia. Goodnight, Rosina.” 

The curtain around my canopy bed shut, leaving me alone on my wide bed in complete darkness. Despite the delicious food, the bath filled with warm water nobody got mad over me using, and the comfy bed with plenty of space... I would much rather have eaten around the table with my family, had a bath in a shallow tub that had only a little hot water while playing around with Tuuli, and be sleeping in a smaller bed while clinging to my family for extra warmth. 

...Getting homesick after a single day away sure is lame. 

I had attendants, but there was a firm line drawn between us—I was their master and they were my servants. They would treat me with respect, but I wasn’t allowed to get emotionally involved with them. I was stuck in bed, more sad and alone than I could describe, wracked with fear of whoever was targeting me.

Morning in the temple came late. Or to be more precise, morning came early for attendants while I, on the other hand, was stuck in bed waiting for them to finish preparing breakfast. If I tried getting up before they were done, Delia would yell at me, angrily saying that I had to go back to sleep until they called for me. There I learned that noble daughters had to fake being asleep in bed until their attendants were ready for them. 

Will she get mad if I sneakily read books to pass the time? 

“Now then, let us begin practice.” 

After a light breakfast, it was time to practice the harspiel with Rosina. She prepared the instruments with a smile, commenting on how lovely it was that she didn’t have to wait for me to arrive at the temple anymore. 

By the time she and I started practice, Delia and Gil were cleaning the room and drawing water while Fran was going to the High Priest to deliver my letter and give a brief rundown on the situation. When he got back, he said that the High Priest had given me a strict order to remain in my chambers until further notice while he investigated the situation. It seemed that I would be spending my days not only stuck in the temple, but stuck in my chambers as well. 

Music practice ended at third bell. Since I couldn’t leave my chambers, I passed my time teaching Delia letters and simple math while working out the plans for my next picture book. 

“You’re a surprisingly good teacher, Sister Myne. Muuuch easier to understand than Gil.” 

“You think so? Perhaps I should teach in the temple school as well,” I said, my voice coming out a bit shyly since I wasn’t used to Delia complimenting me. 

Fran gave me a somewhat dubious look and asked what the “temple school” was. 

“A place of education where I will teach the kids to read and write.” 

“...Is this plan set in stone?” 

“Yes, I’ve already made plans to hold sessions throughout the winter.” 

Fran blinked repeatedly in surprise, then slowly shook his head. “Sister Myne, I do not believe you have informed me about that. Please explain exactly what you intend to do and in what way.” 

“Wha? But it’s all written down right here.” 

I pulled out my winter schedule sheet and handed it to Fran. He looked over it, then murmured “This will be the temple school...?” with lowered eyes. 

It seemed that he hadn’t fully understood me when I said I was going to educate the children. He had thought that Tuuli’s sewing classroom and Lutz teaching them to do winter handiwork would be the extent of their education. 

“But y’know,” chimed in Gil, “I dunno how much you’re gonna need to teach them, Sister Myne. They can already read a bit thanks to the karuta and picture books you gave’m.” He shrugged and I faltered, stumbling over my words. 

“I-I want them to learn to write too. It’ll be easier for them to work for nobles as attendants if they know how to read and write, surely. And if they know how to count and do math, they’ll even be able to run the workshop and orphanage by themselves. I think knowing these things is better than not knowing them.” 

I brought up the workshop report Gil had been writing yesterday, which made my point click with everyone. Gil was still bad at reading large numbers, so he had been writing his reports with the help of the gray priests. 

“Sister Myne, where do you intend to hold this temple school?” 

“In the dining hall of the orphanage, so both boys and girls can participate. I’ll be the teacher.” 

“Please leave teaching to the gray priests. That manner of activity is beneath you, Sister Myne.” 

Fran and Rosina shot my idea down together. I was stuck working behind the scenes, as always. 

Eventually, I decided to make something resembling a school curriculum, which I would teach Delia first in my chambers. Fran and Rosina would learn from my example, then do the teaching themselves in the dining hall. They would train gray priests who were formerly attendants to teach as well, then quit whenever the time was right, thereby establishing the temple school. 

...Darn. I kinda wanted to be a teacher, seeing as I’m apparently so good at it. 

For the temple school, I established a goal of teaching all the kids to write the alphabet and do addition and subtraction with one-digit numbers. I had a bunch of stone slates and slate pens prepared, not to mention the children’s bibles to use as textbooks. 

Fourth bell rang not long after I had worked out the general flow of how things would go. I ate lunch and was drinking tea when Lutz visited. 

“You holding up alright, Myne?” 

He had finally been given the go-ahead to come and visit after Benno did a thorough check to make sure nobody suspicious was following him. 

I raced down the stairs and ran to Lutz as he waved at me from the hallway. 

“Lutz, gimme a hug!” 

“Woah?!” 

I jumped into Lutz’s arms, demanding a hug; I had been so starved for warmth that I needed him to recharge me. In my Urano days I had been fine with nothing but books in my life, but perhaps due to adjusting to this child’s body, or perhaps due to growing used to my huggy family, I now craved the warmth of other people. 

“I’m so lonely without my family here. I wanna go home already.” 

“It’s only been a single night, y’know?” Lutz gave an exasperated grin at my complaining and shook his head, but I couldn’t help how I felt. 

“I’ll get used to it eventually. This is the loneliest I’ll be all winter.” 

“I dunno about that. Who’s to say it might not just get worse and worse?” 

“...If it gets any worse than this, I might just die of loneliness.” 

I was stuck in my chambers without even the option to go to the book room to read, and there were no books in my chambers other than the children’s bibles. If I had to keep living without my family here, I might very well lose the will to live. 

“...That hardly sounds like a joke, ’cause you always do end up close to dying when I take my eyes off you.” 

“I’ll suck it up and survive the loneliness, so I want you to suck this up and let me hug you.” 

“Fine, fine.” 

Lutz let me cling to him until I was satisfied. Then, my arms still around him, he looked over the report Gil had written and compared it to his own, pointing out any errors in his calculations. 

I got various complaints from my attendants as I stabilized my emotions by clinging to Lutz. A few I remember: 

“How shameless!” 

“A proper lady would never...” 

“Geez! You should at least go after a rich noble boy with lots of money.” 

“Why don’t you rely on me like that, Sister Myne...?” 

But I ignored them all. The winter ahead of me would be long and cold; for the sake of my mental health, I needed to get warmth wherever I could find it. 

“Oh, right. Myne, the workshop’s out of stuff to do. What’s our next step? Starting the winter handiwork?” 

The second round of printing was done, and although we had the stencils to print more, there was no more paper to turn into books. We couldn’t make any more either since the river was freezing cold now. Not to mention that now that winter preparations were done, we would be running out of soot for our ink. 

“Okay. I’ll explain how the winter handiwork will go, so could you go get the tools and boards for reversi from the workshop?” 

“Sure. Let’s go, Gil.” 

“Right.” 

Lutz and Gil came back carrying boards and tools. They set them on the table in the hall and I began explaining how to make reversi boards and disks. 

“These thick boards are what we’re going to use as the game boards. Using a ruler and a soot pen, keep drawing straight lines until you have eight squares by eight squares,” I explained, drawing out example lines on the board using my own soot pen. 

“Once the lines are drawn, you cut grooves along them using one of those.” I pointed at a carving tool with a triangular blade. I had ordered it from the smithy after asking a carpenter about triangular-bladed tools. “Once the grooves are dug out, draw the lines on again using ink. You’ll just be tracing the grooves so I think the ink should stay inside them pretty nicely, but do be careful not to let any splash out.” 

“Alright.” 

“Cut the thin boards into sixty-four squares to match the size of the game board’s squares, then polish them so they’re smooth and nice to touch. After that you just have to cover one side with ink, so once you’ve finished cutting them out all the hard work is over. Also...” 

I explained that for faux-shogi, or rather faux-chess, you cut out the board just like you would for reversi. But instead of covering one side, you wrote a letter on them. That made Lutz grimace. 

“Hey, Myne. Think we could print the letters on instead?” 

“Why?” 

“Not a lot of people in the orphanage know how to write, and not all of those who can are that great. These letters are gonna be small and I’m thinking it’ll be a problem if the writing’s too bad to read.” 

“Mmm, good point... Guess I’ll make a stencil for it.” 

Lutz wrote all the steps down in his diptych as I continued. I myself wrote down the things I would need to improve or think about in my own diptych. 

Gil, who had been watching our standard discussion, glared at Lutz with his purple eyes. “...You’ve been having Sister Myne teach you everything like that, Lutz?” 

“Yeah. She can’t work in the workshop since she’s a blue shrine maiden, so she’s gotta teach me what to do ahead of time so I can make sure the workshop gets it right.” 

“I thought you knew everything and were like, amazing, but it’s actually Sister Myne who’s amazing,” Gil pouted, his cheeks puffed out. 

I poked them with my finger. “Gil, Lutz really is amazing. He only needs to hear my explanation once before he can repeat it in the workshop and get stuff done. You were listening as well just now, but you wouldn’t be able to teach someone else what to do, would you?” 

“...I wouldn’t.” Gil looked down at the floor, then shot his head back up and pointed at Lutz’s diptych. “But that’s just ’cause I don’t have a diptych! I’d be amazing too if I had one!” 

“Oh, right, you’ve learned to read and write now. I guess you might need one yourself soon if you’re going to be writing those workshop reports. I can’t go outside right now, but I’ll get one made for you when spring comes.” 

“Really?! Alright, I’m definitely gonna beat Lutz!” Gil held his head high and declared himself Lutz’s rival, earning him a casual “Good luck winning before spring” in response. It seemed that Lutz would be going with Benno to neighboring towns next spring to look over the plant paper workshops, so he would want Gil to be running the whole Myne Workshop before then. 

“Oh, right,” Lutz added. “Next time I come here, there’s gonna be an apprentice with me. Aaah, he’s actually pretty close to coming of age, but yeah.” 

“Why? Is he going to take your place while you’re gone?” I tilted my head in confusion, and Lutz frowned a little. 

“On paper he’s here to help with the workshop just like me, but Master Benno actually wants him to learn to act like an attendant.” 

“Oh, right. He was mentioning that he wanted waiters for his Italian restaurant.” I added a note on my diptych to plan around that too. 

“...Hey, Myne. I get reversi and all that, but what about the playing cards?” 

“I wish we had different colored ink to use here, but there’s no point in wishing for the impossible. We’ll just use plain black ink for now.” 

I drew the four card suits and the nine numbers used on my stone slate, then drew three diamonds in the middle of a large rectangle as an example. 

“We’ll make four different sets of cards, one for each symbol, and differentiate the cards of each set using numbers.” 

“That’s gonna be a lot of cards,” said Lutz. 

“Hey, that symbol looks a bit like a divine instrument,” Gil observed proudly while pointing at the diamond symbols. “It’s kinda like Leidenschaft’s spear. And that other one looks like Flutrane’s staff.” 

According to him, diamonds looked like the God of Fire’s spear, whereas spades looked like the Goddess of Water’s staff. Now that he mentioned it, the decoration around the divine spear’s tip and the divine staff’s feystones did indeed resemble those shapes. Incidentally, calling magic stones by their proper name “feystones” was getting drilled into my head since that was important knowledge for the upcoming Dedication Ritual. Nobles and their quibbling over details never gave me any time to rest. 

“In that case, Gil. What about Schutzaria the Goddess of Wind?” 

“Her shield’s a circle, so none of these fit. Geduldh the Goddess of Earth’s symbol is the chalice, so it’d look kinda like this...” 

It seemed that a circle symbolized the Goddess of Wind’s shield, while an upside-down triangle symbolized the Goddess of Earth’s chalice. That neatly covered all four suits, and the change would probably make those in the temple more likely to accept them. 

On Gil’s recommendation, I changed the card suits to spades, diamonds, circles, and upside-down triangles. 

“I think I’ll make the jack, queen, and king cards be symbols too, then. Drawing art for each one would be a pain anyway.” 

I replaced the jack with a sword to symbolize the God of Life, the queen with a crown to symbolize the Goddess of Light, and the king with a black cape to symbolize the God of Darkness. The main aim here was to make the designs as simple as possible. 

I thought about what to do with the joker, and settled on a twisted ring to symbolize the Goddess of Chaos, who had fallen in love with the God of Darkness despite it being taboo, and spurred the God of Life’s jealousy to turn him into a stalker. 

“Okay, perfect. Now they really do look like cards made in a temple.” 

“Yeah, and they’ll be easy to understand since they show up on the karuta too.” 

Gil and I congratulated ourselves on the card designs, but Lutz looked at the slate with a conflicted frown. 

“Myne, you really gotta make stencils to print these. No way will these all match up if we try and wing it.” 

“...That’s true. I’ll make the stencil.” 

I made a stencil out of thick paper—a process I was now very used to—so that we could print the ink directly onto the board. I had more than enough time after all, and making stencils for something as simple as playing cards was a breeze.

“Alright, Myne. I’ve gotta go home now.” 

I didn’t want Lutz to leave, but I couldn’t exactly ask him to stay overnight. 

“Okay...” I nodded sadly, and Lutz pinched my cheeks with a troubled smile. I covered my cheek and glared at him. 

“...Don’t look so sad. I’ll be back tomorrow with Tuuli.” 

“You better, if you don’t want me to die of loneliness.” 

After we saw Lutz off, Gil looked down at me with worry. 

“You’re feeling lonely, Sister Myne?” 

“Uh huh. I’m so used to living with my family that I really miss them already.” 

I knew that staying in the temple was safer for me, but I wanted to go home. It had been my choice to come here, and yet I felt as though I had been abandoned. 

“Want to hug me like you hugged Lutz?” asked Gil, trying to help. But before I could even respond, I heard a loud “Absolutely not!” from behind me. 

I turned around in surprise to see Fran standing there with a scary look on his face. He walked up to Gil and chastised him quietly. 

“Gil, Sister Myne is your master. Comforting her is not the place of an attendant. Lutz is a friend who she considers to be like family, and you are not in the same position as him.” 

“...Got it.” Gil nodded, his teeth clenched in frustration. 

Seeing that, Fran’s expression softened a little. He then knelt in front of me to look me directly in the eyes, his expression hardening once again. 

“Sister Myne. I understand that your extreme circumstances have left you feeling uneasy. Out of concern for you, I will overlook Lutz and your family comforting you. However, I request that you maintain the proper distance between you and your attendants.” 

He gave me a strict reminder not to be too friendly with my attendants, and I couldn’t help but look to where Lutz had been moments ago. He was already gone, and a cold wind blew in from the empty doorway. It stung as it brushed my cheeks, but I was more worried about how lonely the winter would be than how cold it would be.