Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 3.2 - Chapter SS2

Hasse’s Orphans 

“Feels good that it’s sunny today, huh, Thore? We get to go to the forest now,” Rick said after breakfast, stretching in his raggedy outdoor clothes. We’d finished all the paper-making work we could do in the workshop, but two days of rain had stopped us from going outside. 

I speedily changed clothes myself and agreed. “Heck yeah. I’m getting real tired of just learning manners all day. I get that we’ve gotta master ’em, but still.” 

Those of us from Hasse had to relearn everything from manners to language, which meant we always had things to do during the day. But being expected to do the same stuff every day in a closed-up space like Ehrenfest’s temple was kind of suffocating. 

...Still, I knew I was lucky for that to be the worst of my problems. Now, Marthe and my sister wouldn’t need to be sold to anyone if they didn’t want to be. Even the eating situation was better, since the stronger kids weren’t given more food and didn’t steal from others. Here, everyone was given the same amount, even newbies like us. We weren’t even being unfairly beaten like before. 

I was glad that I’d decided to go with Lady Rozemyne, and I was thankful to her. We were seriously lucky and she was an amazing person. But even knowing that, everyday life in the temple was so much different from what we were used to that it made us uncomfortable. We just couldn’t get used to it. 

Unlike the normal priests who lived in the temple, we liked putting on comfy, raggedy clothes and going out to the forest to gather a lot more than learning to read and speak properly. Maybe it was because we were raised doing farm work in Hasse, but we always ached to go outside on sunny days when we were stuck in the workshop. We spent each day waiting for our chance to gather and work in the forest. 

Rick and I went down the stairs of the boy’s building where we found Lady Rozemyne’s attendant, Gil, handing out baskets and knives. We’d told him that we could just pick our own tools, but Gil said that’d make it harder to keep track of everything. 

“Here, Thore. And Rick, here’s yours,” Gil said. 

Rick and I went outside with the baskets on our backs and knives in hand. The sun was bright, but the chilly air made it clear that winter was on its way. Still, we were so pumped to go to the forest that the cold air didn’t bother us at all. 

“Thore, Rick.” 

I quickly turned around in surprise as I heard Nora say our names. I hadn’t expected her to be here, but there was a basket on her back and Marthe was beside her. They didn’t have gray priest robes on, but outside clothes just like us. 

“It’s been a long time since we’ve all been outside together.” 

“Yeah. It’s ’cause the girls and boys do different work here,” I replied. 

Back at Hasse’s monastery, the four of us studied, cleaned, and went to the forest together. But maybe because Ehrenfest’s orphanage had more people, duties were split between men and women here, which meant we couldn’t stay together as much. Men worked in the workshop and the forest, while girls made food and handled cleaning. 

“We’re going to the forest today, Rick! Wilma said we need lots of firewood and fruit for the winter. Right, Nora?” Marthe said, looking up at my sister with a smile. 

Since the orphanage was busy making preserved food for the winter, some of the apprentice gray shrine maidens were also coming to the forest to help gather. 

“Marthe and I still aren’t used to how they cook and clean in the temple. We’ll be more useful gathering in the forest than staying here, so it’s actually kind of relaxing,” Nora said. 

The orphanage was already packed with people, and now they had to prepare for four more on top of everyone else. A lot of resources were needed for each person, and here they were stuck with the four of us. That was why we needed to work harder than anyone else if we didn’t want to feel uncomfortable all winter. Not to mention, if we started running out of food, we’d be the ones who’d have our shares taken first. They liked to talk about fairness here, but we had street smarts; we knew it’d end up a bloodbath. 

...I gotta work hard so that Nora and Marthe don’t have to go through that, I thought, tightening my grip on the basket on my back.

“Whew. Always feels good to be outside,” I said. 

“Uh huh,” Nora replied. 

The southern gate opened up to sprawling fields, the forest’s trees, and the big blue sky. And on top of all that, the air suddenly got a lot cleaner. Outside the walls, everything was like our home town of Hasse again. That helped me relax a bit. I still wasn’t used to how the temple looked, or to how nasty the air in the lower city was. 

The gray priests, on the other hand, grimaced as soon as they stepped through the gate onto the road turned muddy from the recent rain. “It would be nice if the stone road would continue outside the city, but unfortunately the archduke’s power is contained within its walls,” one said. 

People raised in the temple were used to walking on white stone, but I hated the raw smell of the lower city when it was so humid from all the evaporating rainwater. 

“Muddy roads aren’t so bad if you just walk on the side of the road with all the weeds, though,” I said. 

“The temple is just so pretty that the people raised there don’t know how to walk on muddy roads,” Nora said with a giggle. “It’s the same as us being uncomfortable with how clean the temple floors are. They couldn’t handle field work like we can.” 

Now that she mentioned it, the priests would probably hate the idea of tilling a field. I’d always really enjoyed doing it since the soil gets softer over time, but I didn’t think people in the orphanage would feel the same way.

“Please gather at the riverbank when fourth bell rings,” Gil said when we arrived at the forest. We had all been split up into groups; some of us would make paper, others would get firewood, and the rest would gather food. The four of us had been assigned to gather fruit and mushrooms. That was my favorite job. 

“Let’s get going, everyone!” I said when it was time to start, a wide grin on my face. But it wasn’t just Rick and Nora who replied; a gray priest whose name I still didn’t know butted in. 

“Thore, gathering in groups is inefficient. And please take care to speak properly. In this situation, you should say ‘Shall we go?’ instead.” 

...When I said ‘everyone,’ I wasn’t including you! I yelled on the inside. I’d normally protest out loud, but since I knew that he’d probably end up giving me some lengthy lecture, I just said I’d be more careful next time. 

At that, I took Nora’s hand and pulled her away. When I turned around, I saw that Rick and Marthe were hurrying after us. And since I didn’t want the priest to get in the way of us hanging out for the first time in a while, I called one last thing to him, doing my best to sound polite. 

“We’ll be gathering rafels over there if you need us!” 

“You four certainly are good at climbing trees. In that case, we shall gather taniehs off the ground elsewhere,” the priest replied peacefully, before disappearing into the trees along with the others. 

The priests had only started visiting the forest a year ago, and honestly? They really sucked at gathering. They were slow runners, couldn’t climb trees, and could barely tell mushrooms apart. Lady Rozemyne was a real weirdo for sending people like them to the forest, and I could guess that Lutz had a real hard time organizing them all at the start. I never would’ve agreed to do it. 

“Oh, there’s a rafel!” Marthe declared with a smile, rushing to a tree not too far ahead of us. 

Rafels were a nice autumn fruit. They looked a lot like summer ranshels, but were more sour and chewy. Cut rafels dipped in honey were super good in winter. 

“...Ah,” Marthe said, suddenly stopping in place. We all rushed up to her. 

“What’s up, Marthe?” 

“The two days of rain knocked most of the rafels down. And I promised Delia that I’d gather a lot of them, too...” Marthe said, slumping her shoulders as she pointed at all the smashed fruit that had fallen from the tree. 

Delia was a girl in the orphanage with a little brother called Dirk, and she was one of the very few people in the temple who understood the four of us wanting to stay together as a family. There were times when she was harsh, but she was good at taking care of people, so Marthe had really warmed up to her. I’d heard that they’d become friends after Marthe said to Delia how cute she thought Dirk was. 

“I promised Delia we’d make lots of honey-dipped rafels together. She can’t leave the orphanage, so I said that I’d gather them for her, but...” 

Delia had committed some enormous crime at the end of spring half a year ago, and while she hadn’t been executed thanks to Lady Rozemyne’s compassion, she was sentenced to never leave the orphanage again. Delia herself said she was fine with the punishment since she could stay with Dirk, but I felt bad that she couldn’t even go to the forest to blow off steam. 

Rick patted Marthe’s back and pointed up at the tree. “Don’t feel so down, Marthe. Take a good look; there’s still plenty left. Plus, rafels that aren’t fully ripened are the best for dipping in honey. We can still get plenty to bring back to Delia,” he said, being as kind to her as always. 

At that, he took out a cloth meant for catching the rafels. It was my job to knock them down, and after making sure the knife was in my belt, I searched for a fruit big enough to dip in honey. Once I’d spotted one, I started climbing the rafel tree. 

“Alright, it’s coming down!” 

“Wait, wait! You climb way too fast, Thore!” Marthe exclaimed, looking up with a smile as she spread open her cloth. When I saw that she was ready, I cut the rafel down and watched it fall. 

Marthe caught the fruit, and Rick let out an excited shriek as it hit the cloth. I could see Nora picking rafels from the ground and cutting off the parts that were still edible. We could wash those in the river and then eat them at noon. 

“Thore, Thore! Cut down some more!” 

“Yeah, gotcha!” 

Working together with everyone made me feel like we were back in Hasse. Once we’d finished getting rafels, accompanied by lots of shrieking and excitement, it was time to gather meryls. They were almost out of season, which meant there weren’t too many left. 

“Oh, that’s fourth bell,” I said. “We’ve gotta go back to the river.” 

It was time for lunch, and so we headed to the river with our baskets full of gathered stuff. Once there, we found the priests cooking soup and steaming branches alongside the potatoffels. We went straight over to the river and started washing the rafels we had cut. 

“Oh? May I ask what you’re holding there?” a priest washing his hands in the river asked Nora. 

“There were crushed rafels on the ground, so I cut off the edible parts to chow down— I mean, to eat at lunch,” she replied. 

“That’s a splendid idea. There aren’t enough for everyone, so we will need to cut them into pieces to distribute,” he said. But we had been planning to just share the fruit among the four of us, so there really weren’t that many. Trying to share them among all the priests just didn’t make any sense. 

Why do we gotta share with you all...?! 

I angrily stood up, only for Rick to hold me back. “Thore, you’ve got a knife too, right? Nora, we’ll help you cut them,” he said, before getting right to slicing the rafels into pieces. 

I watched the priest head to the pot, then glared at Rick. “Why are you just accepting that, Rick?! We gathered those ourselves! We won’t even get a mouthful if we divide ’em between this many people.” 

“I mean, that’s just how they do things in the temple. We’re getting as much food as anyone there even though we’re newcomers. Only makes sense that we’d split our food with them, too. You want them to cut down the amount of winter food we get ’cause we kept these rafels from them?” Rick asked. 

At that, everything clicked. Everyone was treated equally here. We had to follow that, too. 

I took out my knife and started cutting the rafels. “We were having so much fun with each other that I thought we were back in Hasse. I got kinda mad at him, like they were taking away our fun again.” 

“I get how you feel, Thore. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little frustrated too,” Rick said with a sigh, watching as the rafels were sliced into tiny, tiny chunks. 

“Maybe next time we should hide and eat them on our own,” Nora said with an impish smile, earning laughs from all of us. All my anger faded away as we jokingly planned out how to bring water with us to wash the rafels out of sight from everyone else.

“Didja have fun hanging out with everyone again?” I asked, plopping down onto the bed beside Rick’s once it was time to sleep. 

“Yeah... But what do you think’s gonna happen to us now?” 

“Whaddaya mean?” 

“Er, y’know... Back in Hasse, we kept going ’cause we’d get land when we grew up, right? But orphans in the temple are completely different. I’m glad Nora and Marthe aren’t getting sold, but what’s gonna happen to us now?” Rick asked, worrying about the exact same things I was. 

Sure. I was glad that Lady Rozemyne had saved us, and I was thankful to her. Every day I was glad that Nora and Marthe hadn’t been sold away by the mayor. If we could go back in time and do it all over again, I’d stick with Lady Rozemyne to protect Nora every single time. 

...But what was our future gonna be like? I’d assumed that orphans were treated pretty much the same everywhere, but I was dead wrong. Those in the temple weren’t given land when they came of age, and they didn’t even get to leave the orphanage. Apprentice gray priests became gray priests, and that was that. The only way for them to leave the orphanage was to be taken on as a blue priest’s attendant, sold to some noble, or die. 

All the life plans I had thought up in the past had been crushed in an instant. I had no idea what our futures would be like. 

“...I really didn’t think we wouldn’t even get to go to the Harvest Festival,” I murmured. It was the biggest festival of the year—a great day where everyone could go nuts, even orphans. We had all been looking forward to it, so when we were told that we wouldn’t be able to join despite it being held so close by, we couldn’t understand what we were hearing. 

But the priests didn’t understand us, either. They just looked confused, and with very serious expressions asked why we would ever be allowed to join the festival. 

“We are not involved in farm work, and we have paid nothing in taxes. Furthermore, this monastery is not part of Hasse; it belongs to Lady Rozemyne. Why would we be allowed to join Hasse’s Harvest Festival when we are not its citizens? Blue priests and shrine maidens accept the taxes and perform religious ceremonies, but there are no religious ceremonies that require our presence,” I remember one priest saying. 

That alone was enough for me to feel like I’d been cut away from the world I knew and sent somewhere else entirely. I was happy to have escaped Hasse’s mayor, but I was just as nervous about my future. 

Lady Rozemyne saved us when we didn’t want to be sold away because she was a kind person. But all orphans were treated equally, and she hadn’t said anything about the priests expecting us to all act like family but not quite. She wouldn’t allow us to keep our own little family within the temple, since everyone there had to be equal. 

“I just hope spring comes soon... I at least wanna go back to the monastery,” I murmured while getting under the covers. 

Rick agreed. Back in the monastery, the few priests there had adjusted themselves a bit to make things more comfortable for the four of us as we got used to our new lives. But here, we were the ones who had to adjust to everyone else. To make things worse, we were in an entirely different city, and the only time we got to be with our sisters was during meals. 

I missed Hasse and its sprawling fields, nearby forests, and wide-open skies. It wasn’t even winter yet and I was already homesick. There was nothing I wanted more than to run away from the temple, with all its high walls that blocked out most of the sky. We weren’t Ehrenfest orphans. We were Hasse orphans. 

...I wanna go back to Hasse in my dreams, at least, I thought while closing my eyes.