Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 1 Volume 3

Winter Begins

The day after I returned home, Lutz and I went to Benno's store together. Snow was sprinkling here and there, but if we didn't go to Benno's before the snow built up, I would lose my opportunity to report my recovery and thank him for his help.

"Benno's been super worried, Myne. He was convinced that the guildmaster was tricking you somehow or putting you in a bad spot."

"Oooh, maybe he heard me calling for his help?"

When Freida's family had me surrounded, I cried for Benno's help on the inside. Maybe I sent out some weird brain waves that he picked up or something.

Lutz frowned at my suggestion and glared at me. "You didn't ask for my help?"

Seeing Lutz's pouty face made ticklish laughter build up inside of me.

I ended up giggling, and his mouth bent into a sharper frown.

"Why're you laughing?!"

"'Cause I mean, you already saved me."

Lutz blinked in surprise and looked completely stunned, which made me giggle more.

"You told Freida I was going to get sick if I kept moving 'round, right? Thanks to that I got enough rest, avoided eating dinner with them, and basically everything went a lot better."

"Heh, is that right?" Lutz gave a pleased grin, squeezed my hand a bit, and took a step forward. It felt to me like the wind had calmed down a bit too, as less snow was hitting me on the face.

"Good morning."

"Ah, hello Myne. It's good to see you healthy again."

Benno's store was warm and full of energy. We let out sighs of relief as we went inside and Mark quickly walked up to us. Despite the snow, it felt like his store had just as many customers as always. Which was strange, since the hasty workshops had already closed for the winter. I looked around, murmuring those observations, and Mark smiled.

"Our store profits the most during winter."

With blizzards came more days where you couldn't work, so I had thought winter was a season where most people tightened their purse strings and lived as frugally as possible, but it seemed that wasn't the case.

"The nobles grow bored while snowed in, and their purses loosen to a surprising degree when presented with opportunities to kill time."

"Oh, I get it. Leisure products..." Video game consoles were slightly outside of my reach, but a bunch of card-based games I was used to like hanafuda, karuta, and Western playing cards ran through my head. It might be smart to make those when I had the chance.

For now, though, my thoughts were interrupted by Lutz pulling on my sleeve. "Did you just think of something to sell?"

"...Well, maybe if we had paper." Thin pieces of wood could function as cards, but a proper set of cards would need to be cut fairly thin with similar dimensions. That wouldn't be a problem if I could just hire a woodsmith to cut the cards, but I wanted to at least wait until my baptism before breaking the "I think things up, Lutz makes them" setup.

...Could Lutz cut thin pieces of wood? And I hadn't seen any paint in this world yet. It probably existed, given that people used dyes, but it was beyond me or anyone I knew to color playing cards properly. With some ink and wood it shouldn't be impossible to make shogi or reversi, but playing cards were ideal since there were so many games you could play with a single set.

I was apparently taken to Benno's office while I was thinking to myself, and before I knew it, he was staring right into my face.

"You back in the game, Myne?"