Ascendance of a Bookworm

Ahh… if only I could have successfully baked my clay tablets. That would have been great. I never even imagined that they might explode.

If I had a knife like Tory’s, then at least I might be able to make mokkan.

(Note: Mokkan are thin, narrow wooden tablets that were used for keeping records in historical Japan. The Japanese term is what’s used in academic literature on the subject, so I’m leaving it as-is.)

After that tiny little explosion in the stove, I was forever banned from trying to make clay tablets again. I’d completely run out of book-making plans, so I was only left to ponder what my next method could possibly be. In the meantime, Tory turned seven years old.

Here, it’s customary for your seventh birthday to be an enormous celebration. More accurately, it’s not the precise birthday that’s being celebrated, but instead the season in which you were born. Every season, there is a large baptismal ceremony at the temple, where every child who has turned seven gather to be baptized. Afterwards, the children are able to start working as apprentices, and it seems like that’s when they start getting counted as part of the town’s population.

For whatever reason, it makes me feel kind of weird to think about religious ceremonies, but if I think of it like _Shichi-Go-San_, then it doesn’t bother me at all. Strange.

(Note: A Japanese festival for seven, five, and three-year olds, which is generally considered a kind of coming-of-age ceremony. The name literally translates to “seven-five-three”.)

Children under the age of seven aren’t allowed to enter the temple, so my father and I aren’t participating. Incidentally, while I already knew for a while that I wasn’t going to be able to attend, my father’s absence was forced on him abruptly. Due to some twist of unfortunate luck, he has been summoned for a meeting that he absolutely cannot get out of, on the very day of his oldest child’s baptism. On top of that, this is a meeting convened by some very high-ranking members of the aristocracy, so if he didn’t attend, his superiors might have his head. Literally.

Scary!

Despite that, my father has been sitting here since early morning, issuing complaint after complaint, seemingly in no hurry to actually head out for work.

“No… I don’t want to go to this stupid meeting! It’s Tory’s baptism, you know? Why’d someone have to schedule this pointless meeting on this really important day?”

It’s very true that today is an important day. I’m sure that aristocrats have children too, so if they also go to get baptized then they should have been well aware of exactly when the ceremony is supposed to take place.

“Huh?” I say, puzzled. “Do the nobles not baptize their kids like we do?”

“…They don’t go to the temple to do it, they call the priests out to their houses. So, they don’t understand how we feel in the lower classes.”

Last night, I was able to ignore him, since I figured it was better for him to get his complaints off his chest while he was still at home, but this man is obstinate. Perhaps it’s a trait common to fathers in every world who love their daughters that they feel this anguished and depressed whenever they miss their daughter’s track meet or recital?

I sigh as I carefully comb Tory’s long hair out to the sides. “Daddy, we can all go out together, so you need to get ready to go to work! You can walk Tory to the temple, you know. Anyway, only the kids can enter the temple today, so you’d just be waiting in the courtyard, right?”

I think he’ll cheer up a little bit if he can lead Tory to the temple and see her standing in line, all dressed up in her beautiful new clothes. Even though I’ve offered him a good suggestion, he still continues to ramble meaninglessly.

“But it’s a father’s duty to wait in the courtyard…”

“I thought it was a father’s duty to go to work for their family, though?”

“Ngh!”

“Is going to work with me really so awful? You’re going to go alone, then!”

I push him away, acting like I’ve lost all ability to care. He turns to me with pleading eyes brimming with tears, seemingly about to start crying at any moment.

“…No, I’ll go with you. As soon as the meeting’s over, we’ll come back, because everyone’s going to be celebrating tonight…”

Tory looks over at our father and smiles brilliantly, keeping her head as still as she can so that I can continue weaving her hair.

“Hey, Dad. I get it, already! You’re going to come back and celebrate with us, right? I’m really looking forward to it, so come back soon, okay?”

“…Yeah!”

With a single sweet smile, my father’s mood suddenly skyrockets. I mentally applaud Tory’s results. You truly are our angel, Tory.

“Maine,” she says, “keep an eye on Dad to make sure he gets his work done today.”

“Leave it to me! I’ll do my best, so you don’t need to worry about that all on your baptism day!”

“Hey, Maine!” objects my father. Tory starts laughing out loud.

Yeah, that’s a great smile. It seems like Tory won’t be lonely, even if our father can’t come to her baptism ceremony, since she’s so appreciative of our father’s oppressive love.

“All done,” I say. “…Yeah, Tory, you’re super cute.”

“Thanks, Maine.”

I’ve combed her hair out, separating it to either side, then braided some of the hair on each side back into a half-up style, which I then finished off with her hairpin. The hairpin is something that I made this past winter, using the same colors of thread that were used in the embroidery on Tory’s dress to make a bouquet of tiny lace flowers. The multicolored flowers on the pins match Tory perfectly, giving her a cheerful yet sweet sort of air.

“Well, Tory,” says my mother as she walks into the room, “You’re looking very beautiful.”

“Huh… Mom?”

My mother has dressed up for today, since she’ll be going to the temple with Tory. She’s wearing her only nice dress, a simple, pale-blue affair whose hem falls all the way down to her ankles, just barely letting you see her shoes. I never thought that she could become so beautiful just by changing her clothes and scrubbing away the red stains from crushing seeds at the dyery.

My mother’s got some raw potential underneath all that. She’s seriously beautiful.

“Mommy, come sit over here,” I say.

“I’m fine as I am,” she replies. “The way you do up hair is very beautiful, Maine, but also very extravagant. I don’t want to draw any attention to myself today; it’s the children who should be playing the leading roles.”

“Ahh, okay.”

It’s not like I can really use any ornaments, so I personally wouldn’t think that my hairstyling is particularly extravagant, but if my mother says so I guess it must be true. I don’t really know what counts as dressing up around here, but it’s definitely possible that I could overdo it.

I hop down from the chair I’d been standing on as I worked on Tory’s hair. “So, let’s go!”

I grab my tote bag with the things I’ll need to take with me to the gate, then head out the door with my dressed-up sister. My mother, Tory’s chaperone for the day, follows close behind, accompanied by my father, dressed in his work clothes.

Typically, my mother walks at a very brisk pace, even when carrying a lot of things, but today she steadily, carefully climbs down the stairway, holding the hem of her dress up so that it doesn’t drag as she walks. Tory hitches up her skirt a little bit as well, mimicking our mother, taking the stairway one steady step at a time. Since I’m in my usual clothing, I don’t care at all, and I actually manage to make it to the bottom of the stairs a step ahead of everyone else.

“Whoa…”

A great many people are milling about outside in the plaza around the water well. It seems like everyone’s showing up to congratulate the children who are heading off to their baptisms. I can see Ralph and Lutz in the crowd, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure they have nothing to do with today’s ceremony. Everyone seems to be here to give their well wishes to today’s stars.

I’m sure there were still ceremonies in the winter and the spring, but back then I really didn’t have much strength to leave the house very often, so this is the first time I’m seeing all of this first-hand.

“Fey, congratulations,”

“You’re looking pretty manly!”

It seems like pink-haired Fey is having his baptism today as well. Similar to Tory, he’s wearing a white outfit with an embroidered sash. His sash is green, though, and looped around his shoulder.

…Ah, I see. Being able to sew really is important.

Since everything around here is hand-made, relative differences in your skills can have a very noticeable effect. In Japan, being good at sewing was really never particularly useful, and everyone here always wears beat-up rags, so even though my mother had told me that being good at sewing was an important skill for a beautiful woman to have, it never really clicked with me until now.

I didn’t have anything to compare my mother’s sewing skill to, but now that I’m seeing the other kids’ clothes, she really is amazing at it. Enough to brag about it, even. As for me, it’s becoming clear that it won’t be at all possible for me to find a lover, let alone get married.

“Ahh, Tory! You’re amazingly cute!” cries Carla, her voice booming through the plaza and her hands clapped to the sides of her face as she praises Tory. Everyone’s attention is immediately drawn to Tory, and they start heaping congratulations on her.

“Congratulations, Tory!”

“Your hair is so beautiful, just like a nobleman’s daughter!”

Carla continues to lavish praise on Tory, who gives her an embarrassed smile in return. Unlike all of the other children, Tory’s hair cuticles are very healthy, so her blue-green hair is glossy. Between the white dress my mother is so proud of and the halo of light reflecting off of her hair, she looks positively angelic.

My Tory really is an angel. I think I can understand why my dad dotes on her so much.

“Maine worked really hard to braid my hair,” she says.

“Huh, she did?” asks Carla. “I guess she has another redeeming feature beyond her unusual recipe ideas.” f𝒓𝑒e𝙬𝒆𝚋𝘯૦𝘷𝐞𝑙.c𝑜𝐦

Carla, you’re so mean. I breathe a sigh of relief, though: there’s at least one thing that this worlds think that I’m good for.

“This is really complicated. How did you do it up like that?”

“Let me see, let me see!”

Regardless of age, an army of women has formed around us, trying to get a good look at Tory’s head.

Eeeek! This is a really standard hairdo, you don’t need to stare so closely! You people don’t comb your hair our properly, so of course it gets messy when you try to braid it…

“That looks great, Tory!” says one of the younger girls in the crowd, sighing enviously. “I want to do my hair like yours for my baptism this winter.” The crowd around her agrees emphatically, murmuring “me too, me too” in unending waves of sycophancy.

“So everyone wants to Maine to do their hair too?” asks Tory with a delighted smile. She turns to me. “Will you?” I immediately shake my head in refusal. “There’s no way!”

“Why not?” she says, taken aback a little.

“I don’t know when my fever’s going to come up again. You know that this is the first time I could actually go to a baptism, right?”

I feel a little bad for Tory, since all she wanted to do was brag about her little sister, but there’s no way I could braid the hair of a bunch of unknown girls every single time a baptismal ceremony came around. On top of that, I can guarantee that it won’t turn out even close to how Tory’s looks right now. These girls’ hair is like Tory’s was at the start of all this; rough, unwashed, and in dire need of repair. While I had to touch damaged hair like that when I was just starting out, by now I absolutely do not want to have to feel anything like that again.

“Ah, okay. You’ve been doing a little better lately, but your fever really does still come back unexpectedly. I was just trying to boast a little about my little sister, that’s all.”

I’m trying to give off the impression that I really want to agree to Tory’s offer despite the fact that I’m such a fundamentally useless burden. Honestly, though, doing that would be psychologically impossible for me.

“…I can still show everyone else how to do their hair like I did yours. I just don’t want to promise everyone that I’ll do it for them, that’s all.”

“Yeah, yeah, like Dad was just telling you the other day, don’t make promises you can’t keep. Hey everyone, Maine said that she can show everyone how to do their hair like mine!”

Tory seems satisfied with the compromise I came up with for her suggestion, so it seems that the plaza in front of the water well is going to become a hairdressing classroom at some point in the future.

I never would have thought, even for a second, that braided hair could draw this much attention. No wonder my mother didn’t want me to do hers as well.

“Hey,” says one of the girls, “what about that hairpin? Who made that?”

“Maine!” replies Tory. “Nuh-uh,” I say, “the whole family did! Me and Mommy made the flowers, and Daddy made the pin part of it.”

“Ahh, that’s right,” she says.

My mother, who is very skilled at sewing, didn’t know about lacework. It seems that it really is very rare to see it here. All of the older woman immediately pounce on me.

“Hey, Maine. Do you think you could teach me how to do that?”

“Showing you how is easy, but if you don’t have really tiny needles you can’t do it, you know? Also, I think it might be better for Mommy to show you how to make it, she’s way better at it.”

I’m already bad at talking to strangers. On top of that, there’s a good chance that I might say something really weird, since I lack a lot of the common knowledge people around here should know. As a result, I really don’t know what I should be saying to these women. I think the best way to interact with my neighbors is probably to keep them at arm’s reach.

Da-dong, da-donnng ring the bells of the temple. Whenever the bells in the center of the temple ring, the sound echoes throughout the entire town. In an instant, every flapping mouth in the plaza snaps shut. In the next instant, someone in the crowd yells out, “Time to go, people! To the main street!!”

With the children to be baptized leading the way, we head out towards the main street in groups. At the same time, other groups of children appear from the other alleyways here and there, followed by more groups of spectators. From the edges of the town to the gates of the temple, the procession gathers in the main streets, with the children in their white clothes at the head and their chaperones close behind. The rest of the people line the sides of the streets, seeing their children off as they join the crowd.

This scene really reminds me of, well, you know.

People, cheering and waving, are lined up by the sides of the road while a procession makes its way through the streets. Even if you can’t see where the procession is, you can hear the roar of the crowd swell as it grows closer to you. It really reminds me of the New Year Ekiden.

(Note: The New Year Ekiden is a long-distance relay race held every New Year between teams from major Japanese corporations.)

Starting from far away, I hear the cheering gradually grow closer and closer. When the procession is almost right on top of us, I glance over at Tory. She seems nervous, standing there with a stiff expression on her face. I reach up with my index finger, standing on my tiptoes as high as I can go, and poke her in the cheek.

“Huh?” she says, her eyes going wide. “What was that for?”

“Smile, Tory! You’re the cutest girl in the whole world when you’re smiling. It’s true, you know!”

After a moment, her wide eyes slowly crinkle up as her usual radiant smile spreads across her face.

“Ugh, come on, Maine,” she says, in mock exasperation.

“Hey now,” says my father, “even when she’s not smiling she’s the cutest girl around.”

What do I do about this man?

As we banter back and forth, the procession comes into view. Loud cheers, applause, and whistles fill the street around me as countless children, dressed in white, parade down the street towards the temple. Some of them are beaming, some have stiff expressions, some walk proudly, and some look very nervous.

Tory and Fey each take a step forward, leaving the crowds of spectators lined up on the side of the streets. They lightly walk towards the stream of children as they pass by, joining the line of children at the very end. Once we see that they’ve made it into the line, Fey’s family and my family both step forward to join the procession as well.

At every bend in the main street, another few children join the crowd. At this rate, I don’t even have the slightest idea how many we’ll have by the time we finally get to the temple at the center of town.

Even though we’re still just walking towards the temple, there’s already some parents that are so deeply moved that they’ve burst into tears. Such as my father.

I follow the procession through the thunderous cheers, halfway jogging to try and keep up. Voices ring out from everywhere around me, so I curiously look around the area as best as I can. People watch us from the windows of the houses that line both sides of the street, some of them throwing tiny white flowers from some unknown plant down on us as some kind of blessing. The flowers thrown from the highest windows drift down gently, almost seeming like they’re falling straight from the clear blue skies. The children at the front of the procession start laughing excitedly. I can’t see much through the crowd, since I’m far shorter than everyone else around me, but I can see the hands of the children reaching up towards the sky, perhaps to try to catch the flowers as they fall.

At the large fountain that sits in the middle of the intersections between two main streets, the procession comes to a brief stop. Another group of children, who followed a different path to get here, meets up with ours, and the crowd starts to swell. This is as far as my father and I can go.

“Daddy, come on, this way,” I say, pulling on his hand. It seems like he’s intent on following the procession all the way to the temple, but I grab tightly onto his hand and try to lead him away. I drag him out of the way of the procession to the side of the streets where the sight-seers are standing, and we join them in seeing off the procession as they resume their path towards the temple.

“Tory…” sobs my father, gazing forlornly off in the direction of the temple.

“Ugh! Daddy, come on!”

Now that the procession has passed, the crowd of people is starting to thin out as people head back to their homes. I turn us around to follow the crowd, heading back in the direction of the south gate. My father, however, keeps stopping to look back to where the procession has gone, lingering regret in his eyes, leaving me wondering if we’re going to actually make it to his meeting on time.

***

“Squad Leader! You’re late!” says Otto, glaring angrily at my father as we finally reach the gate. Otto quickly ushers him into the meeting room, leaving me, as usual, to sit down and practice writing on my slate.

It looks like, starting today, I’m going to be learning the names of the goods on the wagons that come in and out of the town, so that I can eventually read the merchants’ cargo manifests. These words are actually the first words I’ve learned from Otto that are actually usable in daily life. Today, all of the words that I’m learning are the names of vegetables that are in season.

There’s a lot of vegetables that I know about already, like “pomay” (the tomato that looks like a yellow pepper), “vel” (a kind of red lettuce), “foosha” (a green eggplant), and so on. Since I know about these, they’re easy for me to remember, but there’s also a lot of them that I haven’t actually seen on our dinner table. Those will take some more time to memorize.

I really want to head over to the market so that I can match these names to what they look like… but I don’t think I can stomach another encounter with the butchers’ shops.

As I sit there, alone, slate pencil clacking on slate, one of the younger-looking soldiers bursts into the room, holding some sort of document.

“Do you know where Otto is?” he asks.

“I think he’s in a meeting today.” I reply.

“Ah, that’s right! Now what do I do…”

It looks like today’s gatekeeper isn’t particularly good at reading official documents.

“Want me to read it for you?” I ask, holding out my hand.

“Huh? You?” he asks, looking at me with an incredibly dubious expression on his face.

“I can try; I am Otto’s assistant.”

I can understand his skepticism; after all, I look like a little girl, not the kind of person you’d expect to be able to read important paperwork. I’m used to seeing that expression by now. I really only offered out of the goodness of my heart, so if he doesn’t want to take me up on my offer I don’t particularly care either way.

He doesn’t react at all to my offer, so after a few seconds I turn my attention back to my slate and continue practicing writing out characters.

“…You can read it?” he asks after a brief pause.

My confidence in my reading ability actually depends a lot on what kind of document it is. I can’t yet say that I’ve memorized everything.

“Umm, if it’s a letter of character reference or a aristocratic introduction letter then I can read it. If it’s a merchant’s cargo manifest then I can read the numbers but not all of the words.”

“Ah, well, this is an introduction letter. Could you please?”

These aristocratic introduction letters are written in an unnecessarily overcomplicated style, making them a huge bother to read, but once you clear past all of the flowery language the meat of the document is actually very simple. All you really need to know is who is referring whom to whom, and whose seal is needed on the document.

I unroll the document, taking a deep breath of the smell of parchment and ink, then scan my skillful eye over the text within.

…Ahh, the leading private is in a meeting right now. This is a lower-ranking nobleman’s introduction, so it’ll be fine to make him wait until the meeting’s over, right?

“Umm, this is a letter of introduction from Baron Bron, and the bearer is going to see Baron Glatz. This needs the leading private’s seal.” (Note: “Leading Private” is a military rank. In the US Army, the equivalent rank it Private First Class.)

I hand the document back to the soldier, trying to remember how Otto did his job. If I’ve got the interaction manual in my head right, I can at least do things like this.

“Please ask the merchant who brought this letter to wait in the waiting room for lower-ranked nobility. Today’s meeting was called by a high-ranking nobleman, so they’ll have to wait until the meeting is over before the leading private can apply his seal. If you explain this properly, I don’t think the Baron’s guest will be unreasonable.”

“Thanks. You’re a lifesaver!”

He salutes me, tapping his chest twice with an upturned fist. I hop down off of my chair, face him, and return his salute. As Otto’s assistant, it’s only natural for me to be able to do these kinds of things.

Hmmm, at this rate, I’m going to wind up finding work as whatever equivalent this place has to a clerk, it seems…

I’d been thinking that I’d have figured out how to make paper before I started my apprenticeship next year so that I could start a bookstore, but things aren’t really turning out like how I envisioned. Reality is pretty crushing, sometimes.

I continue practicing writing out words on my slate for a long time before my father, finished with his meeting, suddenly bursts into the room.

“We’re leaving, Maine!” he says.

“Ah, a little wh―” I start to say.

“Let’s talk while we’re walking,” he interjects, cutting me off. “Tory is waiting!”

My father stuffs my slate and pencil into my tote bag, picks me up piggyback, and starts walking briskly home.

“Daddy?! Um! I have to repo―”

“Let’s get out of here before Otto catches us.”

“Wait!! I have to give Mister Otto a report!”

As we quarrel, Otto catches up with us.

“Oh! Mister Otto! A merchant is here, with a letter of introduction from Baron Bron to Baron Glatz. The leading private was in the meeting, so I had him wait in the lower-ranked nobility waiting room. Please take care of him quickly!”

“As expected of my assistant! Great job, Maine.”

“She’s my daughter.”

Otto sighs and rubs his temples in response. “I’d only entrust such an important task to such an excellent assistant,” he says to me. “This squad leader here should go home immediately. Thanks to his constant fidgeting during the meeting, the high-ranking noblemen there were glaring at me! I think I lost years off of my life.”

“Daddy, life is important,” I say.

“Look, you heard it from Otto too: we’re heading home.”

His heart is absolutely set on returning home immediately, so he carries me all the way home as quickly as he can.

***

In the evening, we throw Tory a birthday party. My image of a proper party involves cake as a very crucial element, but we don’t have anything like that in this house. So, after taking a look at our ingredients, I decided that I’d make some pseudo-french toast.

I took a loaf of hard multi-grain bread and had my mother cut it into thick slices, then took advantage of the fact that Lutz’s family really appreciated my recipes to get some eggs and milk from them. My mother finished everything off by frying each slice in butter. We don’t have sugar, honey, or anything like that, so I garnished it with a bit of jam made from some sort of raspberry-like berry.

I was able to do one more thing for Tory: I cut up the vegetables in the soup into cute shapes, like hearts and stars. She seemed very pleased by this.

“Here, Tory,” says my father, “we have a present for you.”

“Whoa… Dad, Mom, thanks!”

They’ve given her new work clothes, as well as the tools she’ll need for her job. Now that she’s seven years old and has had her baptism, she’ll be starting her apprenticeship. While there are some live-in jobs available, Tory’s work as a seamstress will not be one of them, so she’ll be commuting back and forth.

Aha, she has her sights set on getting good at sewing and becoming a beautiful woman. She wants Ralph to call her a good girl. I understand completely.

“You’re not working every day, right?” I ask.

“Well, when I’m just starting out, I’m not going to be able to do all that much, so I’ll only be there about half the week.”

“If they spend every day teaching apprentices, then they’ll never get anything done, after all,” explains my mother.

Certainly. I’ve experienced that first hand: on days when the apprentice soldiers have to be taught writing and math, I don’t get any of my own studying done, and Otto’s work only piles up further.

“And now this is for you, Maine.”

With a heavy clunk, my parents place a long, thin object, wrapped in cloth on the table in front of me. I blink my eyes, doubtfully tilting my head to one side. It wasn’t my baptism today, so I’m not sure why I would be getting a present as well.

“But it wasn’t my baptism today?”

“Since Tory’s going to be going to work, you’ll be in charge of going out and collecting firewood. You’ll be needing this.”

I unwrap the cloth, revealing a knife, dully gleaming in the candlelight. Its blade is thick, and when I heft it in my hands I can feel its considerable weight. In Japan, it would be unconscionable to give something so dangerously sharp to a young child, but common sense here dictates that a child that doesn’t have something like this can’t even defend herself, a baby that can’t help out or do anything useful.

They really gave me a knife.

Up until now, they’ve really been totally treating me like a baby. Tory was assisting the family, but I was only Tory’s assistant. Or, would it be more accurate to say that I was a burden that only did unnecessary things? However, now that Tory is starting her apprenticeship, it seems like I too must start to carry the proverbial knife.

But, now I’ve got a knife! I can make mokkan!

I’m going to make mokkan!!