After a hearty meal (Shia treated me), we read my book in the library for a while and then I went to sleep. Before sleeping I thought about what I did. How I screwed up, yet how I didn't regret it. I guess in the end that mattered more. Unlike last night, I actually slept like a log.
Chirp. Chirp.
Birds were up, and so was I. Like yesterday, I took a shower and went out. Granted I could have delayed the shower but given how there'd be a line, I didn't bother.
I ran around just like yesterday and ended up running into Mike. "Hey, thanks for yesterday."
"No problem."
I matched his pace and ran with him for a while. We didn't talk much. We just ran together. After a while, I got tired and took a break. He took one with me.
We said nothing though. I mean, we didn't have much to say to each other anyway. "I didn't know ya were that woman's brother," he said, eventually.
"To be honest, me neither."
"The hell is that supposed to mean."
"I was away from my family for a long while. I don't really know them…"
"I see. Happens a lot," he said, striking a thoughtful pose.
Dude, you're six. Then again, I was five, so who was I to say?
"Why didn't you say ya were a noble?" Mike said, staring.
"I'm honestly not interested. I mean, we're friends and that matters right? Why should our ranks interfere with that?"
He smiled. "That's right." He did some stretching. "Guess I'll see ya this afternoon?"
"You bet!"
I came back to the dorm, wiped myself and made way for the library. A little early but I was going to be diligent about the job. As long as I put in effort, I could read books, make enough money to sustain my food expenses and- No wait, I still need money for tuition…. Sigh.
Oh well.
***
My job was pretty simple. Put back the books where they belong. This world only had two standard languages: Western and Southern Tongue. Of course, there were other minor languages but almost all races spoke at least one of the two standard tongues, so I didn't really need to learn other languages. Till now that was.
Since I didn't know anything about the demon tongue and the sea tongue, the librarian advised me to at least learn the alphabet of one of them. Apparently not many people learned these languages and you could get a decent job as a translator if you were good enough. I could always just decline but in that case, she was going to decrease my pay to 5 silvers a month, since there were books here written in Demon or Sea tongue. Kind of a drag. But hey, at least she was going to teach me for free because I was young and could learn them easily if I tried or so she said.
"I wasn't expecting you to be this good," she said, as I put back some books. She was quite surprised to learn I could put back the books without an issue.
I used to frequent a library often. I was your typical bookworm courtesy of my mother who liked making me read everything. I could remember stuff with just a read, so reading a lot did help me retain a lot of useless knowledge. Knowledge that I wasn't going to use, ever. Now that I thought about it, I hardly used my knowledge from last world in this one. On one hand I wanted to change society and maybe make the world better. But on the other, I didn't want to bother. I mean, this world had its own rules and I didn't want to go out of my way to change the world just for my benefit. Guess I was afraid of creating a paradox of sorts. Or maybe I was just paranoid?
"And I wasn't expecting you to be this young," I said. Apparently, she'd dropped another ten years.
First time I saw her, she was over seventy. Now she was barely fifty. Judging by the pace, she was probably going to reach my age by the end of this week.
She did not comment, no. I helped her stack the books and we were done. Yes, that was it. People would come here all day and mess up the library and we would do a thorough cleaning before midnight and early morning. If she'd told me that yesterday, I might have come earlier but I guess I could always do that tomorrow.
"So, I won't have to do this throughout the day?" I asked.
And she's going to pay me 12 gold just for this?
"You could help out if you want to. I won't pay you extra though."
"Well, for now 1 gold is enough."
"For now?" she smiled, I smiled too.
I mean, now that she knew I was better than she thought and was totally dedicated to help her and could potentially get better at my job, I could always negotiate better pay. I still needed some extra gold toward tuition. If I could get it from here, then I could just…
With nothing to do, I focused on studying. Most of the things I already knew. Some were new though.
Mostly facts. I'd forgotten half of the stuff from the book I read about the history of Askavan. But I knew it wasn't this stupid. Stupid, as in, all these books glorified humans above everyone. And I thought that book was biased.
Rolling my eyes, I read some stories. Then skimmed through the etiquette book and finally gave the spirit taming book a read. The whole course only involved basic knowledge about spirits and contracting some spirits to reach intermediate stage. In order to reach advance stage, I'd need to contract 10 spirits and 1 High Rank spirit. That was going to be impossible for me. In order to contract spirits, you needed compatibility. I didn't have that. I did have something else however, namely some of Sisna's blood and a contract with Rexen. I couldn't tell them about Rexen who was technically a high rank spirit, albeit a malicious one according to society. You could only contract 1 high rank spirit at a time, so yeah, that was why it was impossible for me to reach advance rank.
Noon arrived and my stomach roared, reminding me I didn't have breakfast yet. I'm getting way too lax at this point.
Sighing, I made my way for the canteen.
Den never really came back. He'd left. Which was good. I wanted him to reach Mom as fast as he could and be with her. I couldn't be with her. She was hurting. But Den could ease that pain. Den could… if she had her own kid, will she remember me? The thought scared me, yet made me feel relieved at the same time. No, no, she won't.
***
When I actually thought about it, maybe making an enemy of a Sovereign family wasn't such a good idea after all.
I didn't regret it though. Am I getting invested in my fake family? Huh… I guess I was forgetting my goals already. I was never one to fully commit myself to anything. Always making goals, always making plans, always thinking about the future, but never really sticking to anything.
Yet, I wanted to stick to this one. I wanted to exercise. I wanted to study. I wanted to go back to Mom. And I wanted to do something about the world so it wouldn't be impossible.
Yet… at the same time, argh! I screamed, and clapped once. My fingers jolted in pain but it narrowed my focus. You can do this! I just had to find-
Someone grabbed my collar and pulled me into their room. Warm lighting, a lot of things here and there, rather unorganized. But that wasn't the problem. The real problem was the fatty blocking the way to the exit.
The fatty I badmouthed yesterday in front of everyone. Boy was he looking down on me. But no, not just him; there was someone on the other corner of the room… a girl... Nisa.
Well fuck.