She Professed Herself The Pupil Of The Wiseman (LN) - Volume 5 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

SUNLIGHT PAINTED THE MORNING mist with a soft glow. As Mira slept in the tatami-floored Japanese room, a crisp chime sounded somewhere outside.

“Hrmh… What was that?” She pulled her head out of the blanket and squinted about.

“Continental railroad service status announcement. The Counterclockwise Loop train departed from Woodholm Station at 8:15 a.m. Expected arrival time is 12:45 p.m. Again…” It was an informational broadcast from the station’s PA system. Train arrival times were not perfectly precise to the minute every time, so the loudspeaker was broadcasting arrivals and departures through the entire town.

Mira opened her System Menu and checked the current time. It displayed 8:30 a.m.

Still got four hours and change.

She groggily got out of bed and stretched as she walked over to the window. Rubbing her sleepy eyes, she surveyed the outside world. People of all sorts walked about the city, and the station was already bustling.

Vacantly staring at the wave of people, Mira remembered the vast shopping district inside the station. It would take some time to look around there.

Excited by the prospect of wandering around the shops until her departure, she stepped back from the window, threw off her yukata—which was already half-falling off by now—and got to her morning business.

She washed her face at the sink, which resembled a shrine’s water basin. After that, she used the Japanese-style toilet once more and changed into her technomancy robes.

“Oops. Right, right,” she murmured, stopping to flick the bell next to the flower arrangement.

Mira finished changing, brewed tea, and sat on a cushion. She spent a lazy, peaceful moment simply doing nothing as she waited for breakfast.

“How tranquil,” she muttered. Then she wondered if this was how a retired person spent every day. She felt oddly sad for a moment.

Soon, a calm, eloquent voice came from the hallway. “Good morning. We’ve brought breakfast.”

Mira got up and opened the door to allow the staff inside.

The meal they placed on her table was a truly traditional Japanese breakfast. Mira sat through another lecture as it was laid out, then began her meal by mixing her natto.

***

Once her belly was full, Mira glared at herself in the mirror with a ribbon in hand. She couldn’t tie her hair as well as Mariana did.

Nngh… Those twin ponytails were as cute as could be, Mira agonized. 

A few weeks had passed since her arrival in this world, and she had begun to get used to her new self. Though this was her ideal form, she realized that others might think her vain if they could hear her thoughts. After some trial and error, she finally managed to get her hair straightened out. Mira posed before the mirror. 

Now ready for the day, she surveyed the room to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything and reluctantly left the Sky Room.

After getting only a tiny bit lost, she found the lobby. But she turned right around when she spotted the ledge at the building’s front entrance. Her room key was also the key to her shoe locker, and she couldn’t leave without its contents.

Now with shoes in hand, Mira returned her key to the desk. “Thanks for everything.”

“Thank you for choosing us. By the way, Miss…do you plan to leave with your hair like that?” The receptionist asked, a look of slight worry coloring her usual customer-service smile.

Mira felt her hair to make sure it was still in place. It wasn’t undone anywhere…

“Um… Should I?” she asked.

“May I have a moment of your time?” The woman replied, offering a gentle smile as she took a handheld mirror out of her desk.

Mira had somehow managed to tier her hair up in the most disastrous way possible. Setting the mirror down, the receptionist stepped around the side of the desk to render aid.

Deflated by her failure, Mira stood patiently as the lady fixed it anew. Upon looking in the mirror again, it was clearly much improved. The receptionist gently flipped Mira’s hair, which fluttered like feathers, to check her handiwork.

“That should do it!”

“Much obliged.”

***

Mira left Starry Villa and headed straight for Silverside Station. There, she once again looked up at the massive structure that was easily as large as Alcait Academy.

Mira passed through the wide main doors. Stores continued all the way to the back of the station like a shopping district, but near the entrance there were a few counters labeled TICKETING. She made her way over to learn more about the railroad.

“May I ask you a question?” she asked, her twin ponytails bobbing as she poked her head over the counter.

“Of course,” a female agent greeted her, with officious politeness. “Please feel free to ask me anything.” 

“I wish to travel by rail, but this is my first time. How does this work?”

“I see. First, allow me to explain ticketing,” she replied, her smile unfaltering as she showed Mira a display with three tickets on it. Instead of paper, they were made of a material like the one used for dungeon permits. “There are three kinds of tickets, one for each seating class. We sell all three at this counter. In order of increasing price, they are economy class, premium class, and first class. You will need one ticket per station, and their prices are 3,000 ducats, 10,000 ducats, and 20,000 ducats respectively.”

“Hrmm. One per station, eh?” Mira grumped as she looked upon the three tickets. Very different from Japan.

They differed in color and the text written on them. Economy class’s amenities were easy to imagine as someone who grew up in a working-class family. But Mira had always dreamed of premium and first class.

“I wish to go to Alisfarius,” Mira said. “How many stations away is that?”

“That would be five stations from Silverside, making a total of 15,000 ducats for economy class,” the woman answered with a smile.

“Then I would like five of these.” Mira pointed at the first-class ticket and set ten mithril coins on the counter—100,000 ducats.

The woman at the desk made a slight choking noise, but her smile quickly returned. “Yes, of course. To confirm: you would like five first-class tickets?”

“Indeed.” Mira nodded. Once she had accepted the tickets, she put them in her waist pouch.

The receptionist watched, seemingly searching for words. “First class tickets are quite expensive. I would avoid letting others see those if I were you,” she finally warned in a hushed tone.

“Right. I’ll be careful,” Mira agreed. She turned her waist pouch just a little closer to her belly.

She thanked the receptionist and strolled toward the line of shops, wondering with excitement what first class would be like.

***

Mira checked the time in her System Menu; it was now 9:30 a.m.

Knowing that the train would not arrive for more than three hours and faced with an even larger shopping mall than she’d expected, her heart leapt for joy.

The shops lining the walls of the two-floor atrium seemed to supply any want or need. Mira walked into the nearest store, ready to enjoy shopping until her departure time. She would use these three hours well.

The first shop was named Moon and Towers Boutique of Silverside, and seemed to be doing quite well. It was a chain souvenir shop and had many customers inside. Displayed quite prominently were nine very familiar-looking robes in child sizes. 

Mira winced.

They were those terrible replicas of the Wise Men’s robes. Chagrin aside, Mira couldn’t help but notice the uneven distribution of stock. All the other Wise Men had at least five in on the shelf, and there was blatant bias toward Luminaria in particular. 

Why do they only have three of mine? Surely that means they sell the most of mine, right? Right. I must be the crowd favorite. 

At least that’s what she told herself.

After the clothing racks, Mira continued to the food shelves. They seemed very popular. And very expensive, for some reason.

The first to catch her eye was a sleeve of cookies made with jam from the famous Alcaitian muscat grape. An emerald-green dollop of sweet-tart muscat jam was placed in the center of each plain sugar cookie.

There were also muscat candies and muscat drinks.

Mira continued on. The next shelf was full of another genre of common souvenirs. Pennants labeled Nine Wise Men, pins with the nicknames of the Nine Wise Men and King Solomon, mini paper lanterns labeled Kingdom of Alcait, and even replica Linked Silver Towers, each shining with artisanal skill. Mira wouldn’t know what to do with them even if she’d bought them, yet strangely, they had most of the customers’ attention.

Ultimately, Mira bought muscat cookies for 600 ducats and left the souvenir shop.

Next, she visited a bookstore. Given the contents of the store, it was full of people who looked like mages, some accompanied by brawny—and bored-looking—warriors.

Mira plucked a book from one of the stacks. The cover read Introduction to Magic, and the book presented the fundamentals of magical catalysts and maneuvering for newbies. Indeed, it was a basic introduction.

Mira realized that they sold all sorts of introduction guides. Enclosed at the very end of each was a pamphlet for Alcait Academy, not-so-subtly suggesting that readers should enroll if they wished to learn more.

She put the book back and smirked at the martial arts guidebooks piled next to it. They taught the basics of swordplay and spear-handling. Of course, each one had a pamphlet for a dojo enclosed at the end.

Bold marketing indeed. More amazed than anything, Mira headed further into the store.

She spotted magic encyclopedias, botanical encyclopedias, sightseeing guides, and collections of heroic tales. Yet further back, she found a shelf of picture books. They seemed to be children’s literature and novels, the most conspicuous among them being The Story of the Nine Wise Men.

In a far corner—well out of reach of children’s hands—she spied dubious titles for adults only. Mira tried desperately to reach them, much to the horror of onlooking customers and staff.

She finally gave up in apparent surrender, prompting a collective sigh of relief. A moment later she used an Immortal Arts technique to hop up and retrieve a book. One staff member panicked and dashed over to pluck it from her grasp.

Argh… Confiscated, eh? 

No matter. Her next discovery caused her to immediately lose interest. It wasn’t high literature for adults; it was amusement for the masses. 

She had found manga! 

So many manga I’ve never seen before… I can’t wait to dig through these!

No doubt this aspect of Japanese culture had been brought over by former players. Of course, the titles were unfamiliar to her; every single cover was new. Mira grabbed each series from the shelf and checked their covers and summaries. Now that she was excitedly looking through the manga shelf, the crowd finally relaxed and began to disperse.

In the end, she gathered several series’ first volumes and a single map of Holy Kingdom Alisfarius to buy.

***

Afterward, she looked around many other shops. The chain store, Denoir Trading, which specialized in useful tools for adventurers, was especially interesting. She glanced around other jumbled souvenir stores, variety shops, drug stores, and everything in between. 

Waiting on a train was a fine time to enjoy window shopping.

Some time had passed since the beginning of her tour. Just as she’d extricated herself from a dress shop, Mira heard a familiar chime.

“Continental railroad service status announcement. The Counterclockwise Loop train is en route to this station. Expected arrival time is in one hour. Again…”

“One hour, eh?” Hearing the announcement, she calculated how much more retail adventuring she could do and resumed.

Apparently spurred by the announcement, crowds began flowing to the second floor via nearby staircases. Mira found herself caught in the torrent and allowed it to carry her upstairs. This new floor was lined with restaurants and shops that specialized in the kind of delicious bento lunches only sold at train stations.

The intermingling smells made her stomach rumble. Mira remembered the true joy of travel by train: train station bentos. That singular moment of extreme bliss in which one set upon their chosen bento as the sights rushed by. Before she realized it, Mira had begun examining every bento there.

The first looked to be a Western-style restaurant with pastel colors. It usually ran as a restaurant, but they switched to selling bentos close to arrival times. They mainly sold meat, fish, and veggie sandwiches. The many colors seemed popular among women. Mira pushed her way through the growing throng of ladies and checked out the next store.

The second floor continued to fill with more and more people as Mira visited Hot ’n’ Tasty Meals. It seemed to only sell bentos; their lunch varieties including fried chicken, seaweed, grilled meat, and meatballs—solid crowd pleasers. With their low prices and large portions, adventurers were their main customer base. Mira spotted a burly warrior buying two seaweed lunches.

I never realized how much I missed station food.

Though tempted by the fried chicken meal, Mira continued on. The next store was rather fancy, with elaborate options: omurice with demi-glace, cabbage rolls simmered in tomato broth, Scotch eggs with herbs, and so on.

Mira put her nose as close as she could to the exquisite omurice sample. The combined scent of demi-glace sauce and butter made her face melt into a smile.

But there might be better meals out there.

She put the omurice on her shortlist of candidates and headed off to her next stop. Mira would never know that on this day, sales of that particular bento would shatter the previous record.

The following shop was cut from the same cloth as Starry Villa. A saleswoman in Japanese attire worked at the counter selling packaged onigiri. Over ten different kinds of fillings were on offer, with pickled vegetables and tea sold on the side. The tea was even packaged in retro Japanese-style tea bottles.

They have fried chicken here, as well.

The onigiri varieties ranged from the usual suspects to otherworldly mysteries. Their simplicity seemed to make them flourish in this world.

The neighboring store was a part of the same chain as the onigiri store. This one sold bentos composed of mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and sweet chestnuts cooked in brown rice. The fragrance of the ingredients and the sight of the plump brown rice were truly superb, and the side dishes only added to their allure.

I recall the bamboo shoots cooked in rice that I ate back in the countryside were truly wonderful. 

Making a mental note of this one as her second candidate, Mira continued peeking into shops.

One was a classy one where even the cheapest meal was 2,000 ducats. The next used a charcoal grill to make extravagant skewered meats. Another had that true staple of fast food—the hamburger. And yet another was a sushi joint that suited all tastes and price points.

Eventually, after perusing dozens of them, Mira found what she considered the platonic ideal of train station bento shops. They were selling classic divided bento boxes filled with rice and several different sides at once. Their cheapest was 500 ducats, their most expensive 1,300. Simple, yet chock full of food. A pleasure on both the eyes and tongue.

Here, on Mira’s first railroad ride in a new world, there could be no more reassuring meal.

She looked at the samples greedily, comparing their prices and differences. The veggies differed in kind and number between the cheap and expensive ones, but the main attractions—the meat and fish—were the real difference. The cheaper ones had fried whitefish, while the more expensive ones contained salted salmon and Hamburg steak.

Having already made up her mind, she brazenly ordered the most expensive box of them all.