Kazuki Ascendance of a Bookworm: Part 1 Volume 2

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-7183-4602-4
Verlag: J-Novel Club
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 350 Seiten

Reihe: Ascendance of a Bookworm

It has been a year since our hero was reborn into a new world in the body of Myne, a sickly little girl from a poor family. She's been doing her best to fulfill her dream of making books, but her plans have been foiled at every turn.
But now Myne has a deal with Benno the merchant: With her friend Lutz's help, she will make a paper prototype that he can sell in his shop. In exchange, he will take her and Lutz on as apprentices. But making the prototype is filled with its own challenges, and can she trust a conniving merchant like Benno? And the most important question is, does Myne have the deadly sickness known as 'The Devouring'?
Follow Myne's efforts to become this world's first librarian in volume 2 of this biblio-fantasy dedicated to book lovers!

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kazuki, Miya

Weitere Mitwirkende

Shiina, You

Quof

Leseproben

The Road to Washi

It was time to make , traditional Japanese paper. I was finally in a position where I could make it. Or rather, in a position where someone else—Lutz—would make it for me. As a part of his job, even. How wonderful.

On the way home from the interview with a merchant, I was practically skipping along the road with excitement. Mentally speaking, I felt like I could jump in the air and spin at least twice before landing like a figure skater.

“Eheheheh. Ahahah.”

“Myne, I get that you’re happy, but c’mon. Don’t get too excited. Do ya want to catch another fever?”

“How could I not be excited? I mean, we’re making paper here! Paper! I can make books with paper. Ahaha, yes!” How could I stay calm with books getting ever closer?

Lutz, watching me start to actually skip along the road, put his hands on his head and sighed. “...Myne, alright, we’re making paper. But how are we gonna do it? I’ve got no clue myself. Don’t we need tools or something? Is this gonna work?”

Lutz’s calm questions threw a bucket of cold water over my excitement. After returning to reality, I paled at the truth of my situation. I knew how to make washi, definitely. I even had vague recollections of what tools were involved. There was a book I read about disappearing crafts and all that. But I didn’t remember the exact details on how to make the tools to make paper. Without those tools, I had no way of making the paper itself.

“Hey, Myne. You sure got quiet all of a sudden. Don’t tell me that you don’t actually know how to make paper.”

Lutz gave me a really uneasy look, so I hurriedly shook my head. “Don’t be silly. I definitely know how to make paper. I’ve been trying to make it for so long now. But I’m not strong enough to cut trees or draw water from the well, and I can’t even do things like start fires or crush fibers. I needed help, but I couldn’t ask others to make paper for me. That’d be too selfish, so...”

“You coulda just asked me if you needed help that bad.” Lutz pursed his lips a bit, looking a little frustrated. I was glad he was willing to help, but making paper was a lot of hard work. It was on a different level from digging holes or helping carve branches.

“The thing is, um, all I can do is tell you what needs to be done. It’s not like before where we worked together to do things. From start to finish, you’ll be doing almost all of the work to make paper yourself. Are you really okay with that?”

“Duh, ’course I am. You think up things, I make them. That’s the promise we made, right?” Lutz nodded immediately, but I had to make sure he was fine with that promise. It was possible that he had just gotten caught up in the atmosphere of the interview and didn’t really think about it before agreeing.

“So, like, Lutz we have to start by making the tools needed for paper. Do you think you can do that?”

“...You’ll be with me, right?”

“Of course. I’ll do everything I can.” With that said, I fell into thought. I had to remember what tools were needed before we could make them. While I was at it, I needed to search through my home to see if anything could be replaced with something simpler. That might get Mom mad at me, but I had no other choice given how poor I was. “I’ll write down the tools we need and start looking for things we can use in place of them. If I can’t, we’ll have to make them ourselves. First, I want you to find trees that will make good paper.”

“What about the trees in the forest?”

“Well, the thing is, I don’t know which trees in the forest will make good paper.” I knew which Japanese trees would make good washi, but the trees of this world were alien to me. “Umm, let’s see. What we want here are trees with long, strong fibers. The fibers also need to be sticky, so they’ll clump together. We need a lot of fibers from each tree, too, but... I don’t know how to check and see what kind of fibers a tree has.”

Not to mention that some trees were only good for chopping at certain points in their lifespan. I knew of a tree species that made great paper after one year, but then hardened up after two years such that its fibers were unusable. That knowledge didn’t help me actually look at trees and identify how old they were, though. I really was useless.

“...I mean, I dunno which trees are like that either.”

“Basically, there are probably soft trees and hard trees, but I want young, soft trees.”

“Yeah, they do get harder as the years go on.” Any kind of tree was too hard for me to cut, but Lutz had a lot of experience in the forest and could apparently tell which trees were soft and easier to cut than others.

“Well, you can make paper out of basically any plant, even bamboo, but the easier it is the better it will be for us. Plus, if we’re going to commoditize this stuff, we want wood that’s easy to work with.” If plant paper entered the marketplace, we had to plan ahead to avoid running out of material. “If possible, we want a tree that can be cultivated and grown just for paper. But I’m guessing you can’t tell which are easier to grow?”

“Actually, I can. They’re pretty different. I know of some trees that are really easy to grow.”

“Really?!” I could only grit my teeth in frustration over my own ignorance of the world born from being a sick shut-in.

Only a month had passed since I had worked up the strength to go to the forest. I had never even chopped wood before; it was beyond me to pick wood for something. “I’ll leave picking the wood to you, Lutz. We’ll try out lots of different kinds and find which one works best, so just think of any soft trees you can. Also, I want you to find (tororo).”

“The heck is that?”

“Well, it’s like sticky stuff that can help keep the fibers together. I don’t actually know if there’s any of it around here. Do you know of any trees... or, well, fruits even, that have thick and sticky juices?”

Lutz fell into thought. Apparently nothing immediately came to mind. “Eeeh... I’ll ask someone who knows more about this stuff than me.”

“Okay. I’ll try to remember what exactly we need, and then write down the steps to make paper. Then I’ll think about how to make those tools.”

Our conversation came to a close right as we reached my place.

“We’re here. Alright, let’s get to work!” Lutz’s eyes were gleaming, filled to the brim with motivation. I gave a firm nod and went inside.

“Welcome back. Don’t feel bad, Myne. You’ll be useful to someone someday.”

“Bwuh? Tuuli, what’s going on?”

“You just have to try harder next time. Okay?”

The moment I went inside, both Mom and Tuuli started consoling me for some reason.

“The interview went really well. He had some conditions, but he agreed to potentially hire us.”

“Whaaaat?!” The two of them looked extremely shocked.

I turned my back to them and took out my stone slate as they started talking about celebrating. I had to write down what tools we needed while thinking about how to make washi. “I have to get ready for stuff, so...”

“Tests for apprentice work are really serious. Good luck!” said Tuuli supportively.

I nodded, readied my stone pen, and began imagining the process of making paper. First, I needed to chop down the trees and plants that would become the core of the paper. Lutz had something like a hatchet, so he could cut trees whenever we needed. Which meant we didn’t need any special tools for that step. Next.

Generally, you would steam the wood to peel off the black outer layer. We needed a steamer. If we had one in the kitchen, I could use that. I checked but didn’t find one, which made me realize we hadn’t had any steamed food before. It wouldn’t be surprising if we didn’t have a steamer. I wrote down “steamer” and “pot” on the slate. Next.

The steamed wood would be dunked in water and have its outer layer peeled while it was still hot. We would have to do the steaming and peeling by the river, but since we had knives, that step wouldn’t be a problem. Next.

Drying them, leaving them dunked in the river for over a day, and peeling the inner white layer didn’t take any particular tools either. A knife would be enough. Next.

The white layer would need to be boiled with ash, softened, and have the impurities removed. In short, we needed ash and a pot. We could reuse the pot from the steaming, but getting ash would be more difficult. Mom would never give me any, and I didn’t know if the ashes formed from steaming would count. I wrote down “ashes.” Next.

After leaving the boiled white layer dunked in the water for a full day, we needed to wash off the ashes and let it dry under the sun, which would also bleach it. After that, we would take out damaged fibers. We could do all that with our hands, no tools necessary. Next.

Hit the fibers like crazy until they look like cotton. We would need a mallet or something to land decent blows on the fibers. We could probably make something resembling a mallet out of firewood. I wrote down “wood shaped into a rectangle.” Next.

...