Didn't I Say To Make My Abilities Average In The Next Life?! Volume. 2

by Funa

  “Tonight’s tale is a story of three half-human lady knights, ‘The Three Beast Girls.’”

  So Mile’s story began.

  “On her way out of town, the spinster-fox Aramis came across D’arta-nyan, the clingy cat-girl…”

  Pfft!

  A few people spat out their drinks, but Mile continued.

  “D’arta-nyan asked Aramis, ‘Meow old might you be, miss?!’ And Aramis answered awkwardly, ‘Th-three times ten and four years…’”

  As they listened, Flaming Wolves’ eyes were wide.

  Tonight’s tale had lost nearly all traces of the original work, and although it had the label “Japanese Folktale,” it had nothing to do with Japan at all…

  Side Story:

  Home Tutoring

  Mile had some time off.

  After a job that required them to travel some distance, the Crimson Vow were taking a nice long break.

  Though they were nearly always together—both during work and their days off—there were things they needed to do on their own once in a while. Sometimes, they just wanted to be alone… or maybe not quite alone. Like when they went on dates with their beaus… not! No, sometimes, they wanted to be alone for real.

  Mavis and Pauline each had their families to visit, and Reina would go now and then to visit the graves of her father and the Crimson Lightning. On these occasions Mile, who was unable to visit the graves of her mother and grandfather, was left by herself in the capital.

  On the first of these free days without Reina’s constant chatter, Mile lay around in bed and then spent some time practicing prostrated apologies in case they came in handy someday. By the second day, she’d already run out of things to do. In her previous life, she was used to spending time alone, but now it was strange to have so much time on her hands. She was used to spending all her time with her friends—that was her new normal.

  The real problem was that, in this world, there were no TVs or videos or games or comics or books. Not even textbooks or encyclopedias.

  In any case, she couldn’t spend all her days loafing around the inn until everyone returned. She couldn’t stand the boredom and besides, it was embarrassing to have little Lenny treat her like a nuisance every time she came to straighten up the room.

  After pondering this for a while, Mile finally had a flash of brilliance.

  I should just do a solo job!

  And so she went to the capital hunters’ guildhall.

  The job Mile sought was one that she could do alone, one that sounded like fun, and one that would be finished in twelve days, before the others returned.

  “Hmm, something fun… er, hmm…”

  After poring over the request board for a few minutes, Mile stopped on one description.

  Home Tutor. 10 days. Request details: Help our daughter pass the scholarship exam for August Academy. Payment on completion: 3 Gold.

  This was it!

  Home tutoring.

  Just the sound of it made her heart leap.

  Mile had never been taught by a home tutor—even in her previous life.

  “This one, please!”

  Mile walked up to Laylia’s counter. Though she worked with all the hunters, she always seemed to end up handling the girls’ requests. Laylia looked over the paper that Mile had handed her. Her jaw dropped.

  “Miss Mile, you know that this is a home tutoring request, right? You won’t be the student, but the teacher.”

  “Of course!”

  Mile was indignant.

  “B-but, this is for a scholarship exam for the August Academy… um, the August Academy is a private school here in the capital, for wealthy commoners and poor—um, nobles who don’t have very much room in their budgets. It’s an all-girls school. The entrance exam is a written test and a magic practicum. The physical and combat exams are just a practical assessment, so…”

  “Wh-what are you implying?! I was an outstanding pupil at the academy in my home country!”

  “Huh?”

  “Whaaaaaaaaat????”

  Upon overhearing that Mile was trying to take yet another strange job, the other hunters all butted in at once.

  “And just what barbaric country was that?!?!?!?!”

  “What on earth do you think is wrong with me?!?!”

  Eventually, an employee from the guild who’d attended the academy in question came to ask Mile a number of questions and discovered that, apart from the history of their country, Mile was far more intelligent than anyone had expected. Finally, she was allowed to take the job.

  The hunters and guild staff were utterly stunned. Laylia, who had questioned Mile first, took her leave early, unable to process her surprise.

  “There must be some limit to how much you can underestimate me!”

  Fuming, Mile left the guildhall behind.

  “So this is the place.”

  Mile had arrived at the mansion of Sir Crady, her latest client and the head of a mid-sized mercantile operation called the Yohnos Company.

  Sir Crady seemed to live a rather carefree life, leaving the business to his eldest son except during the busiest periods or especially important negotiations. Perhaps he was thinking of retiring and hoped to prepare his son to inherit his legacy. His children were fairly far apart in age, so his eldest son had already reached adulthood and had a wife and child of his own.

  The child his request had been made for was Lady Mariette, Sir Crady’s third daughter and youngest child.

  “Pardon me! I’m here from the Hunters’ Guild!”

  Announcing herself like a saleswoman, Mile followed the maid inside.

  “…In any case, Mariette absolutely must make it into that school!”

  The particulars of Sir Crady’s request were extremely straightforward.

  Sir Crady had two sons and three daughters. The eldest son was, of course, his heir, and Sir Crady wished for his second son to follow the first into the family business, lest something should happen to either of them. Therefore, the family had stretched their means somewhat and sent the second son to an academy.

  He had had no intention of sending his daughters to school, but now his third daughter was growing more beautiful than he and his wife had imagined, and she possessed some magical talent, too. If they sent her to the academy to put a bit of polish on her, it was plausible that she could land the heir of a middle-class merchant or the like—the second son of a high-ranking merchant at worst, and at best the heir of a high-ranking merchant or the third son of a low-ranking noble.

  However, it had already cost quite a bit of money to send Sir Crady’s two sons to school. If they spent any more money it would start to have an undesirable effect on the company’s finances. And so they’d decided to aim for a scholarship rather than regular enrollment.

  They would have up to three years after the daughter’s graduation to repay the scholarship costs, which should be plenty of time—especially if whoever fell in love with her was able to make the payment as an engagement gift. In the worst case, the girl could simply work for the government until her debt was repaid.

  The scholarship was part of a system designed to let particularly talented students attend the academy even if they were too poor to afford the tuition, but you could qualify regardless of your parents’ income. As long as you could pass the test, you were in.

  Pride prevented the children of wealthy merchants and nobles from aiming for the scholarship, no matter how poor they might be. But for middle-class merchants, particularly if the child was a younger son or daughter, there was no problem. It wasn’t such a rare occurrence.

  So in Mariette’s case there was no problem either, except for one point.

  That singular problem was: she had absolutely no hope of passing the exam.

  It was a fatal issue.

  Thinking he had to do something to get his daughter to pass, Sir Crady had hired a home tutor.

  Of course, he couldn’t afford a regular tutor, and no academy graduate, noble, or merchant
would have any interest in tutoring the third daughter of someone of his status. Even if they agreed, they’d request a ridiculously high fee and there was no guarantee that their teaching would have much impact. So, Sir Crady had put in a request at the hunters’ guild.

  There were a million and one different kinds of hunters. There were former nobles fallen from grace, and the savvy children of merchants among their ranks. In any event, if the hunter in question failed in their task and Mariette didn’t pass, he didn’t intend to pay them a single copper. That was what he thought as he made the request.

  The scholarship exam was administered earlier than the general entrance exam, and so they would know the results much sooner. That was so those who didn’t qualify for the scholarship could still sign up for the regular test. If you passed that one then you still had to pay a steep tuition fee, and the idea was to allow plenty of time for families to raise the funds.

  Sir Crady’s sole miscalculation was assuming that there would be someone to take the job of home tutor.

  That was a problem. There were few who fit the requirements in the first place, and since the reward was dependent on success, if their student was an idiot then there was little they could do to stop themselves from failing. The only hunters who’d take that sort of job were fools and softies… just like the girl before him now.

  Mile handed over the message from the guild to certify her abilities and provided all the correct answers to the test questions that Sir Crady prepared. Then the job began in earnest.

  “Nice to meet you, teacher.”

  Mariette gently bowed her head.

  Mile’s pupil Mariette was aiming to enter an academy, which meant that she was ten years old. Since she was of average height and build for her age, she was just a little bit smaller than Mile. Compared to little Lenny (who was the same age) she was a bit small, but that was because Lenny was bigger than average.

  Just as Sir Crady had implied, she was growing up well. That is to say, she was a cutie.

  She’s a rich girl and so cute… what a catch!!!

  That was Mile’s first thought, though if she had said it out loud she’d have caught looks along the lines of “Look who’s talking.”

  B-but she really is adorable!!

  It was true. Mariette was a cutie. It was natural for her father, Sir Crady, to hope that she might be able to find a husband of a higher station in the future.

  Mile was enraptured. Not in the future, but now.

  How can I make this girl happy? I must!

  Mile had always had a weak spot for little girls: in her previous life, it was her younger sister and now there was little Lenny. But while they were both cute, they were also rather stern.

  That went without saying for Lenny, but even her sister, when Misato was going out, would ask things like, “Big sister, did you bring your handkerchief? Do you have any tissues? If any strangers talk to you, don’t follow them like you did last time!” It was not exactly that she was coddling her elder sister—more like she was certain Misato was going to fall apart.

  Mariette was different. Her cuteness was of the sort that called up one’s every instinct to protect her. It had an attack strength comparable to a tamed songbird or a three-week-old kitten.

  Mile could feel her own courage rise just from looking at the girl—the feeling that she would do anything for her. It was the first time she had ever felt this way.

  Mile decided to do everything in her power to help Mariette.

  It’s like taking Monika and putting her in Aureana’s place.

  That’s how Mile interpreted Mariette’s position, and she was more or less correct.

  Mile was very familiar with both of those girls’ academic abilities, and had a fairly good grasp of the pupils at Eckland Academy overall. Even if this was a different country, the two equivalent academies couldn’t be all that different.

  Plus, Mile had assisted with the entrance exam for the class after hers as a kind of part-time job. Therefore she had a fairly good grasp of the kind of questions on the entrance exam. Sir Crady couldn’t really ask for more than that.

  “Pleased to meet you as well. Now then, this might be a little soon, but I’d like to test your abilities, Miss Mariette,” said Mile, smiling sweetly before inundating the girl with question after question in the form of an oral exam.

  Hmm, I wonder if I was a little too hard on her…

  As it turned out, Mariette was not at all stupid. In fact, if anything she was quite bright.

  It was simply that the bar set by the scholarship exam was high. Incredibly high. Aureana was quiet and didn’t stand out, but her intelligence far surpassed Marcella’s. Yet because she used that intelligence mostly to support Marcella, few outside of their class had realized this.

  Should I do it…?

  Mile didn’t often show off knowledge from her previous life. Now and then, she’d use it to make life easier and more enjoyable, but she feared any substantial information might be used for evil or war, put the economy into a tizzy, or worse still, draw attention to Mile herself.

  On the other hand, so long as it was only a few small things, perhaps she shouldn’t be concerned.

  “To start, I’d like you to memorize your times tables. There won’t be time to accomplish this during our lessons, so please work on it tonight after I’m gone. Starting tomorrow night and thereafter, I’d also like you to memorize some facts about history and law. We’ll start with arithmetic tomorrow, after you’ve memorized the times tables. For today, let’s begin with some basic concepts in science in order to learn about the mechanics of our world.”

  “Wh…?”

  No matter how precious Mariette was—no, because of how precious she was—Mile’s instruction had to be strict. This was all for the sake of Mariette’s happiness, after all.

  And so, Mariette gaped as Mile rattled off term after term that she’d never heard of before…

  The general level of knowledge in this world was very low.

  That was not because the people who lived here were stupid. It was simply due to the fact that knowledge was not a priority to most.

  Even when it came to study and research there were few books to go around, and they were very expensive. Just making use of the library required a lot of money, textbooks were few, and they were biased when it came to subject matter. Furthermore, their contents were fairly superficial and often included misinformation and conjecture. Most researchers tended to keep their own findings confidential, writing their records in code so that no one could emulate them. As a result, when the researcher died, their findings often died with them.

  Even scholars knew little outside of their primary field. Due to their amount of general knowledge and its veracity, they weren’t even on the level of Japanese primary schoolers.

  There was nothing to be done about this. The amount of information circulated among people was simply far too small. There was no opportunity to reach everyone. Excluding the schools, academies, and research centers, all the knowledge and information that average folk learned came from conversations and tales. This was true for Mariette as well.

  And so Mile prepared a tough eight days’ worth of lessons.

  Her plan covered multiplication tables, arithmetic, diagrams, and the basics of solving equations. There was basic physics, chemistry, sociology, economics, and accounting.

  The final two days were for insurance. Of course, Mile didn’t intend to study health insurance or life insurance. Rather this was insurance time—in case Mile’s teaching methods should fail somewhere.

  “Now that we’ve reached our final two days together, let’s study some magic.”

  “Huh?”

  Mariette did have decent magical abilities, but that alone wasn’t enough to win her the scholarship. How much better could she possibly get in just two days? Wait, “just” two days?

  Mariette thought hard about how much had already been accomplished in “just” eight days.

  “
Y-yes please!”

  And so Mile’s special lessons began.

  Just like Marcella and the girls, there was no need to actually teach Mariette about the fundamentals of magic. Instead, Mile offered the sort of focused education she had given Reina and the others, without much range of application. As a merchant’s daughter, it was probably better to teach Mariette utility magic rather than combat, so Mile decided to focus her lessons on water and healing magic. However…

  She’s definitely improving, but there haven’t been any explosive results yet…

  That was to be expected. Reina and Pauline were already among the elite, having made it through the entrance exams of the high-level Hunters’ Prep School. It was wrong to expect the same result from lessons covering no more than the basics.

  Hmm, hmmmm, what to do?

  Fretting, Mile decided to turn to her last resort.

  The thing that Mile—the normal, average girl—had decided never to call upon except in great strife and emergencies.

  …Hey nanos, you there?

  YES, WE ARE HERE!

  Addressing them by their full name of “nanomachines” had grown a bit cumbersome, and she’d become quite close to them, so Mile tried this more expedient, friendly title.

  Um, so Nanos, is your assistance restricted by an exclusivity clause?

  …HUH?

  ***

  “Ah, Miss Mile! The Yohnos Company sent over a report of job completion. They gave you an A-grade and even included a special bonus. Would you like to receive your payment?”

  About ten days after the completion of the home tutoring job, Mile stopped by the guildhall with the other members of the Crimson Vow. Laylia, the receptionist, called her over. She’d already told her companions that she’d taken a solo job to kill some time while they were away.

  “Money is a merchant’s lifeblood, and yet they paid you extra? That’s a considerable amount, too!”