Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 1 Volume 2

Lutz's Training Curriculum

Just as Lutz predicted, I caught a fever while I sat around in bed. It was a slight fever born from exhaustion, so the worst part of it was just my body feeling heavy. It wasn't like the devouring heat that came close to eating me alive, so it would probably get better after a little bit of rest.

Or so I thought, before three entire days passed. I was getting annoyed at the unending fever, but I would just get yelled at if I left the bed, so I had no choice but to keep lying around despite feeling groggy from sleeping too much. Aaaaah, I'm so boooored.

It was pig day. Unlike last year, my family trusted me just enough to leave me home alone, so they left early in the morning without me. They had left a sandwich for lunch and a bunch of cups of water by the bed, so I didn't end up hungry or thirsty. I could have gotten out of bed if I wanted to, but I knew that would just make the fever last longer, so my only real choice was to stay quiet in bed. But without anyone to talk to I was just so, so, so bored. I wish I had a boooook...

Although I had plenty of failed experimental paper lying around, I hadn't gotten the opportunity to do anything with it, so it was just packed in the bottom of the wooden box I put my clothes into.

Reason being, we had been really busy ever since completing the experimental paper, and I wanted to take my time with my first book so it would be as good as possible. Most importantly, though, the paper was experimental and thus varied wildly in quality, size, and so on. I had paper nearing perfection and paper so bad it would fall apart if I picked it up too fast. Some paper was so thin and flimsy I could see through it, some paper was so hard it would crack if I held it too hard.

It'd be easy to just use the paper that ripped a little when we were peeling it off the drying board, but it had big holes in it and it was a little hard for me to cut off just the usable parts with a knife. I wished I had two thin, sharp blades that could be used like scissors.

Making books with paper like this would take a lot of time. It seemed that this winter would be a busy one for me. ...Oh! That reminds me, it's not a book, but Benno gave me that board thing to read. I remembered that Benno had given me a wooden board and told me to read it after getting home. Reading while in bed wouldn't pose any problem at all. I got out of bed, opened the box containing my clothes, and took the wooden board about the size of an A4 sheet of paper out of my tote bag. I then read it while lying in bed.

"...This is a curriculum for training new apprentices." On the board was written the bare essentials that a newly hired apprentice had to learn. If split into six broad sections, it would look like this:

Know the customary greetings and how to dress well.

Be capable of writing the alphabet and all numbers.

Know how to use a calculator.

Have a reasonable grasp on how to count money.

Memorize which products our store deals in.

Memorize the names of our suppliers.

"Mmm, out of these, I think the only things we can learn together over winter are writing, math, and counting money. I think every apprentice will have to learn those last two things, so they shouldn't be our priority," I murmured to myself while setting up a study plan for the winter.

Now then. I wondered how many letters and numbers Lutz had memorized by heart by now. It was easy to forget if you didn't use them after first learning them. Once I confirmed how much he knew, I could start teaching him again starting with what he had forgotten. Maybe instead of using example sentences, I could teach him to write supply orders and letters about meeting reservations? Those would involve words he would use for work, so learning them now wouldn't hurt.