Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume Short Story-1 - Chapter 1

Tuuli — My Little Sister’s Gotten Weird

A previously unpublished chapter that appeared in the web novel around the time of Part 1 Volume 1. Tuuli muses that her younger sister has been acting strangely ever since recovering from her most recent fever. How did things seem from her perspective when Myne started making hair sticks, shampoo, and the like?

Author’s Note: Myne’s desperate for a bath but has to make do with being wiped down. Meanwhile, Tuuli struggles to understand why her little sister suddenly wants to wash every day. Please enjoy seeing the vast gap between their versions of common sense.

My little sister Myne has long straight hair the color of the night sky and eyes as golden as the moon. Even I think she’s cute, and I’m her big sister.

Myne has a problem, though: she’s always sick and gets fevers. Because she’s unwell, she doesn’t eat, and because she doesn’t eat, she doesn’t grow. She never goes outside, so her skin’s scarily pale, and she never plays with me.

Even though I understand the reason, it makes me sad that I can’t play with Myne like the other kids play with their brothers and sisters. She always says it’s unfair that I get to go to the forest, but what I really want is for her to come with me.

And it’s not like it’s my fault she’s sick.

Myne had a really, really high fever the other day. It got so bad that we thought she might die—especially when she couldn’t eat or drink anything for three days.

I wonder if that fever’s what made her go a little weird in the head...?

After my little sister’s fever went down, she started saying all these odd words I didn’t understand. She’d get mad over the weirdest things, and she was nowhere near as obedient as usual. Now, instead of staying in bed, she’d go through the house while we were washing dishes and stuff. After her most recent search, she’d spent a whole day sobbing about something I really didn’t understand.

Back then, I thought her strange behavior was because of the fever. But after she fully recovered, she got even weirder.

First of all, she began washing every single day!

It all started when her fever went away and she asked me to wipe her down because she was feeling super gross. I didn’t think much of it at the time; she’d probably sweat a lot while she was sick, and she wasn’t able to go to the river to wash herself. But every day after that, when we were heating water to make food, she had asked us to pour her some.

On the first day she cleaned herself, the water ended up really dirty. By the third, it came out clean. Yet she kept doing it every day.

I mean it! Every single day! That’s just weird, right?!

I’d always give Myne a hand, since she said there were some spots she couldn’t reach on her own, but it just didn’t make sense to me.

“Isn’t it a waste to use hot water when you’re not dirty?” I asked.

“It’s not a waste because I am dirty.”

No matter what I said, Myne kept washing herself every day. For some reason, she tried washing me as well. She’d start rubbing my face with a damp cloth even when I told her I was fine and didn’t need it. According to her, I was dirtier than she was because I went outside.

As usual, the warm water was still clean after Myne had a wash, but it went all dirty by the time I was finished. Seeing it actually made me a little uncomfortable, but Myne just smiled and said the water wasn’t wasted if we both used it.

How can I make her understand that she’s wrong? She doesn’t get how hard it is bringing buckets all the way up from the well.

Myne’s weirdness started to show in other ways too. Like, she suddenly began trying to put her hair up. We’d attempted that with her before, but her hair was so straight that it never stayed in place no matter how tightly we bound it. Eventually, we’d just given up.

But now here she was, trying all over again! She’d failed every single attempt, her cheeks puffed out in frustration, but then she started rummaging through my basket. It wasn’t long before she pulled out my dearest treasure—a doll that our parents had worked together to make for me. Dad had shaped the wood, while Mom had made the clothes.

“Tuuli, can I snap this part off?”

“That’s her leg! You’re so mean, Myne!”

How could she even think about doing something like that?! I yelled at her, and she apologized while hanging her head. Then, she brushed aside her bangs and gave a heavy sigh. It was such a grown-up gesture that I actually gasped a little. She was only five, so how did she act so much like an adult?

“Well, um, Tuuli...” she said. “I want a stick like this. How can I get one?”

So she hadn’t wanted the leg specifically... I could always make her a stick by cutting down some of our firewood, so I took out my knife and did just that, hoping to keep my precious doll safe.

Myne was really picky about the stick she wanted. She asked me to make one end a bit thinner without making it too sharp, but she was satisfied in the end.

“Thanks, Tuuli.”

My little sister happily took the stick... and then stabbed it right into her head!

“Myne, what are you doing?!” I cried.

But while I was panicking, she started wrapping her hair around the stick. Somehow, using nothing but that piece of wood, she had managed to keep her tresses securely in place! It was magic like the nobles used, but I was even more surprised that she’d gone for a grown-up hairstyle.

“You can’t do that, Myne,” I said. “Only adults can put their hair up like that.”

“Oh, I see...” she replied, her eyes wide. It was the most obvious fact in the world, so I didn’t know why she was acting so surprised.

Myne pulled out the stick, letting her hair fall down. Then she put it back in and tried again, this time only tying back the top half.

“Is this better?” she asked.

“I think so.”

From then on, Myne always used that stick to secure her hair. It was pretty weird—from the side, it looked like it was stabbing into her head—but she seemed to like it.

Mom had today off work and was looking after Myne, which meant I could join everyone gathering in the forest. It had been forever since I’d last gone. We would pick up firewood, gather lots of fruit and mushrooms, and look for herbs that were good for flavoring meat. Everything we found would be important for our upcoming winter preparations, so all the kids worked their hardest.

I really hope Myne gets well soon so she can start coming with us...

Myne welcomed me back when I got home. She seemed healthy today.

“What did you get?” she asked, peering into my basket. “Lemme see! Lemme see!” I’d gathered the same herbs and mushrooms as always, but she was looking at them like she was seeing them for the first time.

Myne’s acting so weird...

All of a sudden, her eyes sparkled, and she pulled a meryl out of the basket. “Wow! Can I have one of these?”

This was a surprise; I couldn’t remember the last time she’d asked for something like that. I gave her two.

“Thank you, Tuuli!”

Myne rubbed the meryls against her cheek, smiling like an angel, then disappeared into the storage room. She came back a few moments later with a hammer, looking all excited.

“Myne, wh—”

Before I could say anything else, she swung the hammer down on one of the meryls. There was a loud splat as juice squirted all over the place and all over me.

Smashing some fruit with a hammer is obviously going to make juice and stuff shoot all over the place, right? You shouldn’t even need to think about it, right?!

“Uh, Myne... Why’d you do that?” I asked with a very stern smile, not even wiping the juice from my face. She flinched and let out a weird “bwuh” in response.

“You see, um... Well... I wanted oil, so...?”

Myne gazed up at me, her eyes hopeful and apologetic at the same time. She hadn’t even thought about what might happen if she violently crushed the meryl.

“That’s not how you get oil from fruit!” I shouted. “What’s wrong with you?!”

“Oh...”

She looked sad, but I really had to wonder if she was okay in the head. Did she not remember us squeezing oil out of the fruit together just a couple weeks ago?

I think her last fever actually made her go crazy. I should speak to Mom about this...

Mom had gone to the well, and it was pretty obvious how she was going to react when she saw all this mess. I did my best to clean it up before she got back, but I didn’t stand a chance; she soon came through the door and was just as angry as I’d expected. She yelled at me too, which really wasn’t fair. At times like this, Myne wasn’t cute at all.

“Tuuli, Tuuli,” Myne said in a quiet voice, trying not to anger Mom any further. “How do you get the oil out? Can you teach me?”

You’re not being quiet at all, though. Look! Mom’s already staring at us!

“Mom, can I teach Myne?” I asked.

She sighed. “Well... go ahead. If you don’t, I’m sure we’ll end up with another mess.” She pointed at the storage room, where all the stuff we’d want was kept. I could tell that she was still a bit annoyed.

And so, I took Myne into the storage room. The first step was to show her all the equipment we’d need.

“First things first,” I said. “You can’t just smash the fruit on the table; the oil and juices will soak into the wood. You need to put it on this metal stand. Oh, and wrap some cloth around the fruit before you hit it. That way, the bits won’t fly all over the place. We want to keep the fleshy part to eat, but you can get oil from the seed inside.”

“The oil from the seed won’t be enough, though. I need it from the fruit as well.”

We tried crushing another meryl, this time using the proper method. Myne eagerly swung down the hammer again, but her aim was terrible, and her posture was all over the place. Plus, while she managed to smash the fruit, the seed inside wasn’t breaking at all, and she wasn’t strong enough to wring the cloth to squeeze out the rest of the juice.

“That’s not good enough,” I said. “The seed isn’t breaking, and there’s no oil coming out.”

“Aww... Tuuuulii...”

Myne was giving me such a pathetic look that I decided to help. I took the hammer from her, but it was covered in so much juice that I could actually feel it sliding around in my hand. If I tried to swing it like this, it would probably end up halfway across the room. I wiped it clean, then gripped it tightly.

“To begin, crush the seed. Like this.”

Dad didn’t need to rely on a hammer or break the fruit into small pieces like we did—he could use juicing weights instead. We were too weak to use them ourselves, but that wasn’t much of a surprise; only boys were expected to have enough muscle to do tough jobs like that.

“Then squeeze the cloth like this...”

“Wooow! You’re amazing, Tuuli!”

It was cute to see Myne celebrating over something as simple as oil dripping into a small cup. Her joy didn’t make my arms hurt any less, though.

“Thanks, Tuuli.”

“You need to clean up now, Myne. Don’t be lazy.”

She floundered, looking all over the place like she didn’t know how to. I taught her what to do while putting the tools away.

It was easy to forget that Myne was already five years old. She was so weak and very small—like, a lot smaller than was normal. She only had two more years before her baptism at the temple, then she’d need to find apprentice work. I was only a year away from being baptized myself.

Myne would need to start helping around the house when I became an apprentice, but how would she manage when she didn’t even know how to find or use our tools? She was already at a disadvantage because she was so tiny. Would anyone hire her after seeing that she couldn’t do any work either?

I need to get Mom to stop being so soft on Myne and start teaching her how to do things herself.

“Tuuli. Can I have some herbs too?” Myne asked.

“Just a few, okay?”

Myne started carefully smelling the herbs I’d gathered, then took a few and added them to the bowl of meryl oil. I figured she was trying to improve the smell, but some of the leaves she’d picked were for getting rid of bugs and weren’t appetizing at all.

Waaah... We should probably use that oil for dinner before Myne gets it all smelly.

But as I reached for the bowl, Myne stopped me with a crazy look in her eyes. “No! Tuuli! What’re you doing?!”

“We have to eat it soon, right? Otherwise those herbs you added are gonna make it taste nasty.”

“You can’t eat it!”

No matter what I said, Myne swung her head in protest and tried to keep the oil away from me. I looked to Mom for help.

“Myne! Don’t be selfish!” she yelled. “Tuuli went out and gathered those herself!”

“I’m not being selfish!” Myne cried. “She gave them to me!”

That was true, but I didn’t want any of the things I’d gathered to be wasted. This time, however, Myne didn’t back down, no matter how furious Mom got.

We eventually gave up on Myne—then she asked for some warm water. It was her usual request, but she looked especially excited for some reason. I poured some into the tub for her, then gawked as she dumped in some of the oil and started swishing it around.

“Myne?! What’re you doing?!”

“Washing my hair...?”

Once again, I didn’t have a clue what she was on about. She’d said and done so many weird things over the past few days. I continued to watch her, confused, as she dipped her hair in the tub and started rubbing the water into it. She splashed some of the water onto her scalp too.

Myne repeated this over and over until she was satisfied, then started squeezing her hair and dabbing it with a cloth until it was dry. From there, she used a comb—and it was then that I realized her hair was gleaming a lot more than I’d ever seen before.

“Myne, what’s this?”

“Mm... It’s (simple all-in-one shampoo).”

“Oh. So that’s what it’s called.”

After seeing Myne’s hair get so clean, I wanted to try some of whatever it was she’d made. I couldn’t just ask after I’d gotten so mad at her, though. Just imagining it made me feel awkward.

“Do you want to try some too?” Myne asked me with a smile. “There’s enough here for both of us. Plus, you gathered the meryl and the herbs, right? You even did all the juicing for me!”

In an instant, all of my awkwardness blew away. She was right that I’d gathered and prepared all of the ingredients. I undid my braid, then put my hair in the tub and tried to copy what Myne had done. She even helped out, sticking her tiny hands in the water and using them to wash the places I couldn’t quite reach.

“That should be enough,” Myne eventually said.

And so, I got to work drying my hair. It was normally so poofy that I struggled to comb it, but now it was all smooth and straight. On top of that, it was so glossy! Just like Myne’s! It was like she’d cast a magic spell on me.

“Wow, your hair’s super pretty now!” Myne said as she eagerly ran the comb through it. “And you smell so nice!” For some reason, she seemed even happier than I was.

I’m glad to be clean now, but... why does Myne know so much about this stuff all of a sudden?

My little sister had definitely gotten weird. And the thought of her getting even weirder each time she came down with a fever was kind of scary.

“Okay. Let’s clean up.”

“Hold it right there.”

Just as we were about to put the tub away, Mom came over and started washing her hair too. I turned to look at Myne, and we both giggled. My little sister was weird, that was for sure... but I was actually looking forward to whatever strange thing she might do next.