Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 1.3 - Chapter 7

Lutz’s Tutor 

While Tuuli and I were working on our handiwork, a knock came on the door. We exchanged glances and she went to see who it was. 

“Yes, who is it?” 

“It’s me, Lutz. I brought some stick parts for the hairpins.” 

Tuuli unlocked the door and pulled it open with a creak, allowing Lutz to walk in with a gust of cold air and the snow stuck to his clothes. “Wow, it seems cold. Is it snowing a lot?” 

“There’s a lot of snow built up on the way to the well, but it’s not as bad as it could be,” said Lutz as the rest of the snow fell off of him. 

“Here, the sticks. There’s nine since each of my brothers made three.” Lutz lined up the pins on the table. Once that was done, Tuuli stood up and brought over the finished flower parts. 

“Want to go ahead and finish them up? That way, we’ll know how many more sticks we need.” It seemed that Tuuli had made quite a lot of flowers while I was sick and bedridden. 

I looked at the flowers on the table and asked Lutz something. “We have twelve finished flower parts. You brought nine sticks. How many more sticks do we need?” 

“Huh? Uuuh, three.” 

“That’s right. Good job. I see you’ve been studying. Mom, Tuuli, please take care of finishing the hairpins for me. I’m going to go tutor Lutz,” I said after seeing the stone slate and calculator in Lutz’s bag. 

Tuuli blinked several times, then tilted her head. “I heard that you were doing math stuff at the gate, but do you know enough to teach someone?” 

“I’m hurt you think I don’t know enough math to teach it.” I pouted at her continued lack of faith in me and Lutz gave grinned. 

“Tuuli, the thing about Myne is, she’s crazy good with letters and math. Sure, she’s crazy weak too, but still. She knows some things.” 

You know, I would have liked you to stop after the first line. I glared at Lutz, but Mom and Tuuli just laughed. It accomplished nothing. 

Lutz took out his stone slate and pen, so I raced to the bedroom to get the bundle of usable failed paper I had shaped into a memo pad and my soot pen from the box. My plan was to use tutoring Lutz as a cover for making a book. Under normal circumstances it felt like I was being lazy and avoiding work by trying to make a book while Mom and Tuuli worked on handiwork, but I shouldn’t stand out too much if I was just writing alongside Lutz while tutoring him. 

...Okay. It’s time to make a book. I was writing on the memo pad whenever I found the time, so it had a decent chunk of Mom’s stories written on it by now, but it was far from being called a book. I hugged my memo pad, soot pen, stone slate, and slate pen close to me and excitedly headed back to the kitchen when I suddenly heard Mom say something. 

“You know, Lutz, Karla and your family are against you becoming a merchant, aren’t they? Are you fine with that?” 

I gasped at the sudden serious topic and slowed down, silently tip-toeing to the kitchen. Tuuli had frozen in place after hearing Mom’s question. Lutz was sitting in front of her, looking at Mom with a stony expression. I sat next to Lutz and Mom looked between us before continuing. 

“I’m wondering if you said you want to become a merchant because of Myne. Are you following along just because you’re a nice kid and want to take care of her?” 

“No way! I asked Myne to introduce me to Otto ’cause I wanna be a merchant. I’m the one who wrapped Myne into this, Mrs. Effa,” Lutz corrected her immediately. Lutz had wanted to become a traveling merchant, talked to a former one, learned about city citizenship, and decided to instead become a normal merchant. I honestly had nothing to do with that series of decisions. 

Mom gave a small nod and looked at Lutz quietly. “Okay. I understand that you want to become a merchant yourself. But you’ll try to keep looking after Myne even once you’ve become apprentices, right? Apprenticeships aren’t so easy that you can survive like that. You’ll be so distracted by her that your work will suffer.” 

I was right next to Lutz and thus heard him gasp in surprise. He hadn’t considered that. Mom’s words also pierced my heart. She wasn’t wrong. I bit my lip and Lutz shot his head up. 

“...I wanna become a merchant no matter what. It’s happening right now thanks to Myne. That’s why I want to help her as much as I can. But that doesn’t mean I want to become a merchant for her sake.” 

“So, if Myne were to theoretically quit due to her weakness, would you continue your apprenticeship? Would you keep being a merchant?” 

Lutz, clenching his fists tightly on the table, looked Mom in the eyes and nodded slowly. “I would. Definitely. My mom and dad just keep telling me to be a craftsman, but I’ve worked to get where I am without them and I don’t want to quit now. Even if Myne told me to give up, I would still keep working.” 

Lutz had his own dreams. His decision to be a merchant rather than a craftsman had only strengthened as he spent more time with Benno and Mark. Working with me was the best way for him to become a merchant, but he wasn’t becoming a merchant for my sake. 

“I see. In that case... I think you’re doing the right thing. I’ve only ever heard Karla’s side of the story and never yours, so I wanted to clear things up here. Thank you for being honest with me.” 

To Karla, it probably looked like I was just dragging Lutz everywhere. That wasn’t completely wrong, since my health was putting him through a lot. Which is probably why she only listened to half of what Lutz ever said, and why she thought that Lutz might change his mind if she was harsh enough. It wasn’t too long ago that she asked me to stop him, but I turned her down, so... 

“Mrs. Effa, there’s something I want to ask you too.” 

“And what might that be?” Mom tilted her head a little. Her quiet eyes made it clear that she would answer honestly. 

Relieved, Lutz sucked in air and continued. “Mrs. Effa, why aren’t you opposed to Myne becoming a merchant? If merchants really are hated by everyone like my dad and mom say, why don’t you mind?” 

I knew that craftsmen didn’t like merchants since they took handling fees and were always stingy about profit, but still. Saying merchants in general were hated by people was just going too far. 

As if she had heard my thoughts, Mom looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “Different people have different opinions of merchants, so I don’t have anything to say about that. But, well... I suppose I’m not opposed to it because Myne’s been sick and weak for so long.” 

Lutz blinked in confusion, which made Mom laugh. “To be honest, I never thought that Myne would ever be able to work a job at all. I never even considered that someone would rely on Myne for anything. So if she’s found something she’s good at, something that benefits others, something that she’s willing to put her all into... I couldn’t imagine opposing it.” 

Mom’s words squeezed my heart. I felt her motherly love for me so much that my eyes teared up. 

“Alright... Maybe if I put my all into this, they’ll accept me too,” murmured Lutz with such an uncharacteristically bitter tone that I squeezed his hand. 

“I hope they do.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Which means it’s time to study.” Lutz smiled and the room lit up instantly. The serious atmosphere vanished and Tuuli finally breathed out in relief. She had been holding her breath. 

Mom took her sewing box and worked on sewing the flower parts of the hairpins onto the pin parts. I watched that from the corner of my eyes and tapped my stone slate with a finger. 

“First up, we’re going to practice the alphabet. Try writing them all out so we can see if you have them memorized.” 

“Alright.” After giving Lutz an assignment, I got to work writing down Mom’s stories onto the memo pad. The soot pencil resulted in pitch-black lines, which was problematic in some ways, but unlike ink they didn’t cost money to use. 

I glanced at Lutz’s stone slate from time to time while writing the stories. I could see him writing letter after letter without pausing whatsoever. His studying was going so well it was almost unbelievable. He knew that the other apprentices would have an advantage over him due to his limited opportunities to study and thus devoured as much knowledge as he could. Not to mention that in the worst-case scenario, he was even preparing to leave his home if his family remained opposed to him becoming a merchant. I knew that was exactly why he was hurrying to learn as much as he possibly could before it was too late. 

“Looks like you already know the alphabet. The letters are neat, too. Very nice, Lutz.” 

“It’s just ’cause you wrote your example ones so good.” 

It was hard to write neat letters without drawing the lines over and over to implant the movements into your muscle memory. He didn’t have memories of a past life like me helping him. I really had to respect the amount of hard work he was putting into this. 

“Let’s start working on your spelling now that you have the alphabet down. We can practice with how to write supply orders, since you’ll probably be writing a lot of those.” 

I wrote a supply order for lumber on my stone slate. It didn’t take long at all since I had written so many supply orders when making paper. While I wrote, I taught Lutz the names of workshops and foremen that Benno worked with often. 

“This is the name of the lumber yard foreman. Here is where we put the name of the person ordering the materials. In our case, Benno bought the materials and sent them to us, so we put his name. This is the name of the lumber, and...” 

Lutz looked at my stone slate and copied what was written with utter seriousness. 

“Try and practice these so that when spring comes, you can order what we need to make paper.” 

“Huh?! Me? A-Alright. I’ll give it a shot.” 

It was easier for him to work hard if he had a goal in mind, so once I gave him one he immediately started poring over his slate to make sure he hadn’t made any mistakes, then started practicing writing them. I watched him for a bit, then opened up my memo pad again and resumed writing. At this rate it would be a long time before I finished writing all the stories. 

“Let’s practice math next,” I said to Lutz after finishing a story and stretching. Lutz looked up from his slate, now covered edge to edge with words he was practicing, and nodded before wiping it clean and taking out his calculator. 

I wrote math problems on his slate. Today we were going over three-digit addition and subtraction. After writing eight problems in total, I stepped back and watched him work the calculator. Unlike before, his fingers glided across it with no hesitation. 

“You’re faster at using the calculator now.” 

“I memorized how to do one-digit math ’cause you told me to learn how to use this thing, and that’s really all you gotta know to work fast.” 

“Mhm, I think you’re learning faster than I am...” With simple problems like the ones I was giving Lutz, I subconsciously did mental math despite my best efforts and thus my fingers didn’t move like they should. Which meant that as always, I was faster at doing written math than using the calculator. 

But well, I’m lending the calculator to Lutz most of the time, so there’s really no way I could be faster than him. I was making excuses to myself. It was true that with little opportunity to use the calculator, it was hard for me to get better at it. But at the same time, if you asked me if I would actually bother to practice if it were at home with me all the time, well, that would be a hard question to answer. 

“Looks like you have addition and subtraction down pat. The method doesn’t change even with more digits, so that should be it for them.” 

“It’s easy to get mixed up with a ton of digits, though,” said Lutz while scratching his cheek. He had improved an impressive amount considering he started using the calculator just a month ago. 

“I don’t know how to multiply or divide on this thing, so we’re kind of stuck here for now.” 

Since neither of us knew how to use the calculator in full, I decided to just teach him the theory behind multiplication and division, along with multiplication tables. I wasn’t being particularly elegant about it and just introduced them in a “one times one equals one” structure without any fancy mnemonics for them like the ones I knew in Japanese. That made it harder for him to memorize them, but as long as he could shoot back an answer as soon as I lined up two numbers, everything was fine. 

Lutz could now read large numbers and make change from larger units of money without error. With his learning speed, he had the knowledge necessary to get through his apprenticeship with some hard work. 

...But what should I do myself? Lutz had his own work and I would definitely be dead weight to him. I was weak, got tired fast, and was basically useless. I would hold him back no matter what. I could contribute by thinking up ideas for products, but since I knew so little about the culture of this world, I needed Lutz around to guide me. 

...Speaking of which, Benno was worried about whether I could work or not too. I remembered Benno once asking me if I could even work at all with a sickly body like mine and fell into thought. Winter afforded one plenty of time to think, so I wanted to really work this through while I had the chance. Could I work as a merchant without being dead weight to Lutz and the other employees working there?