Ascendance of a Bookworm Chapter 35 - Lutz’s Maine

Chapter 35: Lutz’s Maine

“You want to talk here?” I say. “Not in the warehouse?”

“Here’s fine.”

Since this conversation might get complicated quickly, I thought it might be better to have it indoors, away from the public eye, but Lutz shakes his head.

“So, what did you want to talk about?”

Anger may burn in Lutz’s green eyes, but his behavior is comparatively calm. Without suddenly flying into a rage, he begins to speak in a low voice that hints at the anger he keeps contained, boiling in his gut.

“…Who are you, really?”

A difficult question right off the bat. I actually don’t quite know what to call myself. Even now, I still think of myself as Urano Motosu, but no matter how anyone looks at , all they could possibly see is Maine. Also, I’ve been living in this body for nearly a year now, growing accustod to life in this world, so I’m no longer really Urano Motosu, either.

Urano only read books, and didn’t really do anything else of her own volition. When I went to college, I was commuting to and from ho, so I never even moved out of my parents’ place. Thanks to the fact that my mother was fundantally a housewife, I didn’t have to do much housework, although I was technically capable of doing it if I ever felt so inclined.

Going to the forest every day like this to gather things for my family, devoting myself to finding new flavors so that I can broaden my diet even just a little, making paper from scratch so that I can read books in the future… none of these things are actually necessary. If you compare the of right now to the Urano of the past, whose desires were limited to reading whatever book happened to be nearby, we’re absolutely different.

As I worry over how exactly I should answer, Lutz takes my silence as a sign that I’m not going to answer at all. He glances at again, strength flaring in his eyes, and asks again.

“You know how to make paper like this, and you said you’ve done this before, right?”

“…It was very different the last ti I made it.”

“And that’s not Maine.”

“…Yeah.”

Although I still want to hide the truth, Lutz is already convinced of it. Even if I were to lie, nothing would co from it. I answer honestly.

“Maine couldn’t know anything like that,” says Lutz. “She barely ever left her house.”

From Maine’s mories, I know very well that Maine only rarely left her house. Thanks to that, I had almost no information about the world, and who knows how many problems that has caused ? Since Maine’s mories were of almost nothing but the inside of her house, I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of what this world would consider to be common sense, and my own modern common sense constantly clashes with that of this world. Even still, I think that I’m making a lot of mistakes.

“That’s right,” I say. “Maine really didn’t know much of anything.”

“So, who the hell are you?!” he shouts. “Where’s the real Maine?! Bring Maine back!”

Lutz raises his voice, his anger unleashed. However, whether it’s because the things I had imagined him saying were far more cruel than the words he hurls at now, or whether it’s because I’d already prepared myself for what was going to co when we’d finished making paper, I feel entirely calm right now. My reaction is vastly different from the panic I showed right after I wrecked myself earlier.

“Sure, I can bring her back, but… I think it would be better if I did that at ho, you know?”

Lutz’s eyes go wide with astonishnt, and he furrows his eyebrows. It seems he didn’t expect to agree.

“Why?”

“Well, it would look really bad if you ca ho carrying a corpse over your shoulder, right? If I go away, all that’ll be left is a dead body, after all. It wouldn’t be good if people thought you were a murderer, right?”

Lutz and I are the only two people who use this warehouse, and both our families and the people from Benno’s shop know that the two of us ca here today. If I were to lose consciousness and die here, it’s extrely likely that all of the bla would be put on Lutz. Even if it wasn’t, Lutz himself would know of his own sin, I think.

I, personally, was thinking of Lutz when I proposed that it would be better to do it at ho, but Lutz acts as if this ca entirely out of nowhere.

“Y-y-you, w-w-w-what are you saying?!”

Startled by my words, Lutz’s face goes completely stiff as he grows incredibly flustered. It seems that it was far beyond his expectations that Maine wouldn’t co back if I were to disappear.

“S-so, Maine isn’t here anymore?! She’s not coming back?!”

“Yeah, probably…”

I can’t describe it as anything else but “probably”. All I’m able to do is search through Maine’s mories. I’ve never been able to talk to her, and she’s never spoken up to demand her body back.

“Answer this!”

Lutz fixes a powerful glare on , the picture of an ally of justice facing down a hated evil. I can’t help but smile a little when I realize that. This is so perfectly like him. His frail childhood friend, who he treated like his own sister, has been hijacked by , a foul villain, and he is leaping to her defense, like the hero he is.

“What about that fever that Maine was talking about with Mister Otto and Master Benno? Did you make her fever eat her up?!”

I’m a little impressed that Lutz put together that Maine had been swallowed whole by the fever that still lurks deep within . I’m pretty sure he’s not wrong, at least not about that part.

“You’re about half right and half wrong. I also think that Maine was eaten away by the fever. Her last mories are all "it’s hot”, “help ”, “it hurts”, “make it stop”, that’s why. But I’m not the fever. It’s eating alive too.“

"What are you saying?! Isn’t this your fault?! Didn’t Maine disappear because of you?! Say it!!”

Lutz grabs tightly onto my shoulders and starts shaking . My thoughts thrown into disarray by agitation, the words “it’s my fault,” and “Maine disappeared because of ” bounce around endlessly in my head. Then sothing snaps.

“Like hell I actually wanted to co here and be Maine! I died, or at least I’m pretty sure I did, and then before I knew it I was this child. If I could have actually chosen where I was going to go, I’d pick a world with tons of books I could read, or maybe be an aristocrat in this world who could actually read, or even just a body that’s healthier than this feeble, pathetically weak one! There is no way that I would ever have voluntarily picked a body that is plagued by an incurable disease that constantly threatens to strike down with fever at any mont!”

The instant I so plainly say that I never wanted to beco Maine, Lutz’s face goes slack and hollow, and his hands loosen from my shoulders.

“You… didn’t want to beco Maine?”

“Would you, Lutz? In the beginning, just leaving the house left out of breath, and I’d have to stay in bed the whole next day, you know? Even though I can finally make it out to the forest, I’m still growing so slowly, and even now if I make the slightest mistake my fever cos back…”

Lutz thinks about it for a little while, slowly shaking his head. The energy he had when he’d grabbed has all vanished, and his troubled eyes drift off to the side.

“…You could be swallowed by the fever too?”

“Yeah, I think so. If I loosen the grip I have on it, it imdiately rushes back out, and I start feeling like I’m being devoured. It’s sothing like being swallowed, or maybe like being dissolved… it’s difficult to explain.”

Lutz frowns as he mulls over my words. It seems like it’s also difficult to imagine, just from my explanation.

“That’s why,” I say, “if you’re not happy with the fact that I’m using Maine’s body, and if you think you want to disappear, just say it. I can disappear whenever you want.”

Lutz, who just monts ago had been yelling at to bring the real Maine back, stares at with astonishnt. His terrified expression is asking what the hell I’m saying, which leaves a little bewildered.

“…It’s better if I disappear, right?”

When I ask for confirmation, Lutz suddenly raises his eyebrows and starts shouting, as if he’s the one who should be angry at , the victim.

“Don’t ask ! Why are you asking ?! It’s really weird to say that you’ll disappear if I tell you to!”

“It’s probably weird, yeah, but… if you weren’t here, I probably would have already disappeared a long ti ago.”

Lutz looks like he has no idea what I’m talking about. I start to explain what happened the last ti I nearly disappeared, thinking back to how it all began.

“Don’t you rember? When Mommy burned my mokkan, how I collapsed?”

“Yeah…”

With an “oh, that’s right, that happened, didn’t it” expression, Lutz nods. To him, that hadn’t been a big deal, but to it was an enormous turning point in my life.

“Back then, I was thinking I should just let my self be swallowed up. I really was planning to disappear. I didn’t have any lingering attachnts to this world without books, and no matter how hard I tried I wasn’t ever able to finish anything, so I was thinking I might as well give up.”

Lutz gulps nervously, so loudly I can hear it. He looks at , silently urging to continue, so I gently close my eyes and rember. As I was drowning in the heat, amidst the faces of my family dimly projected across my consciousness, Lutz’s face unexpectedly had risen to the surface.

“When I was being swallowed by the fever, I could see my family’s faces, but then suddenly I saw your face, and I wondered why you were there too. I focused on that, and gathered up my strength to drag my consciousness back from the fever. When I saw you really were there, I was a little surprised, you know?”

“That’s… you can’t seriously have co back because you were surprised that you saw , and not a family mber?”

He frowns, sighing, and I gently shake my head at him.

“What brought back was that I was surprised to see you, but then you said that you were going to go get so bamboo, so that my mother wouldn’t burn it? That made think that I should hold on for a little bit longer, that I should fight back against the fever.”

“Your mom burned the bamboo too, didn’t she?”

I nod. I can still clearly recall the anger and chagrin that pierced through , leaving with that deep despondency. Even just rembering it makes feel like the fever within is growing more powerful.

“If everything really is awful, and I don’t actually care about anything anymore, I was thinking, then the fever will just rush in and carry away. I didn’t care enough to fight back anymore, so dying like that might have been a relief, but… then I rembered our promise.”

“Our promise?”

“I don’t rember a promise,” he mumbles to himself. He looks up and to the side, as if he really doesn’t rember and is having to dig through his mories. Of course. I smile a little to myself. To Lutz, all he had been trying to say was that I’d better get well soon. Even so, those words were the all-important lifeline to which I clung.

“I promised I’d introduce you to Mister Otto. Didn’t you say that the bamboo was advance paynt for the favor, so I had to get better?”

Perhaps he rembered sothing that he didn’t want to, but when he hears clearly identify him as the source of my last lingering attachnt to this world, he groans in embarrassnt, holding his head in his hands.

“Th… that was! I wasn’t trying to make you feel like you owed … aaargh, no!”

“Then, what were you trying to say?”

“Don’t ask! Nothing! Forget about it!”

I want to play the straight man in to Lutz’s completely unforeseen reaction, but right now I’m supposed to be being blad. As Lutz requests, I pretend that nothing’s happening.

“Ummm, well, I rembered the promise like that, and then I also thought that I really shouldn’t disappear without returning at least one favor, after everything you did for , so I worked hard to push the fever back, and, um…”

“…”

“So we t Mister Otto and Mister Benno, and I kept my promise, and then we made paper, so even though I want to make a book if I can, I think it’s okay if I disappear now, if you want to?”

Lutz looks at with a face like he’s swallowed a bug. He looks up and down, with eyes that wouldn’t miss even the slightest lie, then hangs his head limply.

“Since when…”

“Um, what?”

I can’t hear anything he’s saying as he mumbles with his head hung low, so I tilt my head curiously to one side and ask him to repeat himself. Lutz raises his head and stares at dead on.

“Since when have you been Maine?”

“…When do you think? When do you think that I wasn’t the Maine you knew anymore?”

I may have answered his question with another question, but Lutz doesn’t get angry. Instead, he looks vacantly off into the sky, thinking deeply. He looks back down at , mutters sothing too quietly for to hear, then looks down at his feet, kicking at the dirt with his shoe.

“…That,” he says, pointing at my hairpin. “Was it about when you started wearing that?”

I didn’t expect him to guess quite so accurately, but it’s true, I’m the only one who wears my hair with a hairpin like this. If my hair weren’t so silky and straight, liable to co loose no matter how many tis and how tightly I’d tie it, I’d probably be wearing it normally, tied back with a string.

“…Correct.”

“That’s basically a year ago!” he yells, with such force that spittle flies from his mouth. His eyes flare wide open with rage.

Co to think of it, I beca Maine at about the end of autumn. Right now it’s about halfway through the autumn, so soon the seasons will have co all the way around once.

“Yeah, I guess that’s right. Most of what I rember is being stuck in bed with a fever, but it’s been about a year.”

My mories of over half of the ti I’ve been living in this world have been of being feverish and bedridden, but if you compare that to the Maine of before who spent the vast majority of her ti stuck in bed, I’m remarkably energetic.

“…Has your family noticed?”

“I have no clue. I know they notice I’ve been doing so strange things, but I wonder if they really haven’t even considered that I’m not actually Maine?”

I especially can’t think that Tory and my mother, who had to spend so much ti looking after Maine while she was secluded in the house, haven’t noticed anything at all. However, they haven’t said anything about it, and I haven’t either. Living like that is very practical, so I think it’s more-or-less okay.

“Also, Daddy said that he’s overjoyed just that his daughter is starting to get healthier.”

“…I see.”

Lutz lets out a long sigh, then turns his back on as if to say the conversation is over. He runs a fingertip along one of the pages of paper clinging to the board, checking it to see how well it’s drying. I had been fully prepared to disappear, but when this conversation ended without a satisfying conclusion, I can’t help but be troubled about how my future is going to play out.

“Hey, Lutz…”

“…I think your family should decide, not .”

He interrupts before I have a chance to finish. He’s saying that my family should be the ones to decide whether or not I should disappear. However, if that’s the case, then nothing will actually change for right now.

“So, should we keep going like this for now?”

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

I don’t know what Lutz is really thinking, since he’s not looking over here. Does he not particularly mind that I, who am not Maine, am going to continue living like this for the ti being?

“And that’s okay?”

“Like I said, that’s not sothing I should be deciding…”

Lutz stubbornly refuses to look at , so I reach out and grab his arm. I want to ask him how he feels about , since I’m not Maine. But, if I avoid such a troubling topic of conversation and just maintain the status quo, I wonder if he’d be alright with that?

“Lutz, is it really okay if I don’t disappear? I’m not the real Maine, you know?”

Lutz’s arm twitches a little bit. I thought for a mont that his arm was trembling a little bit in my grip, but it was really my hand that was trembling.

“…It’s fine.”

“Why?”

As I ask him again, he finally turns around to look at . With an expression sowhere between shock and amazent, he reaches up and flicks on the forehead.

“If you disappear, Maine’s not coming back, right? Also, if you’ve been here for an entire year already, then you’re basically the Maine I know.”

He roughly scratches at his head as he speaks, ssing up his golden hair. Then, he looks firmly in the eyes. What I see reflected in the pale green of his eyes is calmness, the anger and threatening attitude from the beginning evaporating away. These are the eyes of the Lutz I’ve always known.

Because before, I hadn’t thought about exercising my body, so I was even weaker. Because if I counted the number of tis I’ve actually co face-to-face with Lutz or Ralph, I wouldn’t need more than my two hands.

“…That’s why, it’s okay if you’re my Maine.”

When Lutz says that, sothing deep in my heart clicks into place. Sothing that had been fluttering about within settles down with a thump. It really wasn’t a big change, so small that you couldn’t see it if you looked, but for , it was the biggest, most important change in the world.