by Miya Kazuki
“Sister Myne is particularly loath to allow the unclean to handle her food and cooking instruments, and as you will be seen by noble blue robes, you must always clean yourselves before arriving to work. This is true for all those in the temple, including those priests and shrine maidens in the orphanage who do not serve as attendants.”
...In other words, this Fran guy is bathing daily. That’s normal in the temple? Oooof.
After making sure that we were clean, Fran nodded and took us to the hall where Benno was waiting so that he could introduce us to his master, Sister Myne. Once there, he climbed the stairs to the second floor where her personal room was.
I stealthily slid over to Benno while watching Fran go. “What’s the deal, Benno? He said it’s normal to clean yourself and your clothes every day in the temple. Do we really have to do all that before coming to work every day? That would be way too much,” I protested. Benno widened his eyes in surprise, but Hugo backed me up.
“Ella’s right. We don’t even know if our clothes will be dry by morning. The single pair of clothes you gave us for this just isn’t gonna be enough.”
Hugo was far from wealthy, having worked in a normal lower city restaurant, and I myself didn’t have many clothes I could safely wear to the temple. While feeling a bond with Hugo over our similar circumstances, I protested to Benno that cleaning clothes every day would be too much for us when we didn’t have any servants to help like he did.
“Y’know, Lutz was talking about that too. Alright. I’ll sell you a bunch of clothes to use here for cheap.”
“Whew. Thank you.”
“Oh. Shut it, Ella. Sister Myne’s here,” warned Hugo, so I hurriedly shut my mouth and looked up the stairs just in time to see a little girl wearing blue shrine maiden robes walking gracefully down the stairs. That was Sister Myne, it seemed.
Wow! A real rich noble girl! It was my first time seeing Sister Myne, and she was an adorable little girl. She had dark-blue hair that looked like the night sky, which flowed behind her perfectly straight unlike my curly knots. Her nose, eyes, and mouth were all cute and shapely, giving her a neat and pretty face.
“Sister Myne, this the Gilberta Company’s chef, Hugo. With him is Ella, his assistant. Hugo, you will be taught the recipes of nobles here. Pay attention and learn well.” Benno spoke in a polite tone, and his reserved behavior made it clear just how important Sister Myne was.
“Allow me to guide you to the kitchen,” Fran said, and finally we were taken to our new workplace.
...Wow! It was a wide kitchen filled with all manner of equipment, including a large furnace oven that you only ever saw in bakeries down in the lower city. I would need to learn how to use all this equipment to get hired at that new restaurant Benno was talking about. This really was the perfect opportunity for us.
Everything in the kitchen was cleaned to a shine, entirely unlike the kitchen in my uncle’s place. I could tell that Hugo was getting excited too. You would never see a kitchen like this in the lower city. Nobles really did live in a different world than commoners. Everything would be different for me now; I would be expected to do work fit for a kitchen of this quality.
“What you must learn first is the importance of cleanliness. Keep your utensils and dishes clean at all times. Maintain the state the kitchen is in now.” Fran, holding wooden boards, was our instructor—passing the words of Sister Myne to us. He himself was an orphan and a gray priest, but he knew how to read the text on the boards, and he spoke so politely and eloquently that I could hardly believe it. All it took was a single glance to see how well educated and trained he was, which wasn’t what I expected at all based on what I had heard in the city about the orphans.
But the surprises didn’t stop there. The instructions he gave for how to cook for nobles were just shock after shock. He told us to wash our hands multiple times in the process of cooking, there was a ton of prep work to do, and the exact recipe was strict about the order in which we did things.
“Continue using the broth to cook the ingredients. Do not boil the vegetables and then throw away the water.”
“No throwing away the water at all?” The idea of not throwing away the water after boiling vegetables in it was troubling. That would let all sorts of tiny bits of dirt and filth get into the water, and it was well known that using boiled water like that would make you miscarry or become unable to have kids at all.
I looked at Benno, and he gave a light nod. I remembered his instruction that we should obey Fran’s every word, so I stifled my disgust and kept cooking.
But when I actually tasted the soup in a bowl, it tasted unlike anything I had tried before. The flavor of the vegetables was stronger than ever, and the slight amount of salting strengthened the sweetness, leading to a gentle flavor that felt like it was spreading through my whole body.
My eyes sparkled and it felt as if a door had been opened in front of me, shining bright light down onto me. I could feel my world expanding, and despite Sister Myne being nearby I was so happy I couldn’t contain myself.
“I still remember how shocked I was the first time I had soup for nobles. It feels gross to make, but the flavor is just amazing. I couldn’t believe what I was eating.”
“Oh? But the soup we’ve made here isn’t how nobles make soup,” said Monika curiously while looking at Nicola, who nodded in support.
“All the food in the orphanage comes from nobles as divine gifts, but only the soup from here tastes this rich.”
Hugo, Todd, and I all looked at each other in surprise. We had thought that the recipes were strange due to being from a noble, but it seemed like it was just Sister Myne’s recipes that were weird.
“It’s just Sister Myne’s recipes? Just her soup? All her other recipes are special too...? I guess there must be a pretty big reason why the contract Benno had us sign said that we couldn’t make the food from the recipes we learned here without his or Sister Myne’s permission,” I mused.
“Euuugh, this is awful. I didn’t want to learn any big-time secrets like this,” replied Todd while shaking in fear, terrified that he was now not only connected to, but also knew the contents of tightly kept secrets.
Hugo, in contrast, gave a confident grin. “Heh. Recipes that no other nobles know, huh? Sounds pretty interesting.”
His confidence inspired me, and with a hand on my hip I puffed out my not-so-large chest with pride. “Hugo, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I’m the one who’s going to be learning more and more of Sister Myne’s recipes.”
Hugo looked at me with confusion, so I gave a smug grin before continuing. “’Cause I mean, I’m going to be staying here and cooking for her all winter. She’s definitely going to teach me new recipes. Let’s do our best, Nicola, Monika. You two so that you can become Sister Myne’s attendants, and me so that I can beat Hugo.”
“Right!” Nicola and Monika gave an excited reply and smiled at each other while I looked at Hugo.
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind teaching you the new recipes when spring comes, Hugo. If you ask nicely.”
Everyone laughed as Hugo gave a frustrated groan.
...I’ll make lots of food over the winter, learn all sorts of new recipes, and finally catch up to Hugo! As autumn ended and winter preparations began, I pumped myself up with a new goal in sight.
At the time, I still hadn’t realized exactly why it was that I had my eyes set on Hugo and catching up to him.
Afterword
Hello again. It’s me, Miya Kazuki. Thank you for reading Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 2 Volume 2.
With her mother pregnant and a little brother or sister on the way, Myne gets serious and dedicates herself to making a picture book. She secures an artist, is assigned an attendant to educate her, and despite everything has even less freedom than before due to what is expected of her as an apprentice blue shrine maiden.
Still, she finally managed to finish her first book. Lutz and Tuuli have been helping her from the very beginning, and with the
m at her side she finally finishes it at her home, where everything started.
It’s been a long journey since Part 1 where she was flailing around with faux-papyrus and clay tablets, but this is not the end. She now begins her new quest, one to establish printing and mass production of books. After all, her dream is for there to be so many books that she can’t hope to read them all.
And of course, in this volume Myne finally makes contact with the world of nobles that she had almost entirely been avoiding as an apprentice shrine maiden. There’s the white bird that passes on a message, the Knight’s Order getting sent to exterminate a feyplant that has grown too large, the Healing Ritual that heals the drained earth, and finally, the magic tool that peers into memories.
Ferdinand synchronizes with Myne and experiences the world of her dreams, and despite being exasperated by how much her mind is filled with books, he ultimately concludes that she is not a threat. But Myne will be targeted by other nobles for her enormous quantity of mana.
Out of all the requests, I chose to write short stories for Rosina and Ella this time. One showed what Rosina went through when deciding to serve Sister Myne. The other showed why Ella chose to study in the temple despite having been an apprentice chef in a bar, which I think was a perspective not before seen from the other craftsmen shown. I hope you enjoyed them.
I tried my best to lower the page count as much as reasonably possible, but this volume ended up quite thick as well. Thank you to everyone at TO Books who is working to accommodate this.
The cover art this time was Myne wearing her ceremonial robes. It’s so cool, showing off the staff, armor, and all sorts of other things that reflect how this volume got dramatically more fantasy-like in just a few chapters. Thank you, You Shiina-sama.
And finally, I offer up my highest thanks to everyone who read this book. May we meet again next volume.
November 2015, Miya Kazuki
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Copyright
Ascendance of a Bookworm: Part 2 Apprentice Shrine Maiden Volume 2
by Miya Kazuki
Translated by quof
Edited by Aimee Zink
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 Miya Kazuki
Illustrations by You Shiina
Cover illustration by You Shiina
All rights reserved.
Original Japanese edition published in 2016 by TO Books, Tokyo.
This English edition is published by arrangement with TO Books, Tokyo
English translation © 2020 J-Novel Club LLC
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
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Ebook edition 1.0: January 2020