Ascendance of a Bookworm

Just as the preparations for winter were wrapping up, the snow began to flutter down. The arrival of true winter had come.

During the winter, this area would be sealed off by snow, so unless there were exceptionally clear days, people basically stayed indoors.

Originally, since I could stay shut-in forever as long as I had books, spending long hours inside wasn’t a problem for me.

But there were no books.

Could I manage a long period of staying inside without any books?

Once the snow started falling, blizzards often followed, so to keep out the cold, the wooden sliding doors were tightly shut. On top of that, thicker cloths were stretched over them or stuffed into the gaps to block out as much of the draft as possible.

“...Ugh, it’s so dark.”

“Well, it’s a blizzard, so it can’t be helped.”

Surprisingly, inside the tightly sealed house, the only light came from the hearth and a candle. Even though it was daytime, the windows were completely shut, and the room was pitch dark with no electric lights at all. This was a first for me.

Even during typhoon blackouts, we had flashlights or the light from phones, and power was restored quickly. I wondered if spending extended times in darkness wouldn’t bring on a gloomy mood.

“Hey, Mom. Are all houses this dark?”

“Well, apparently, if you’re a bit wealthy, you might have several lamps, but we only have one.”

“What? Then let’s use that lamp!”

When I insisted that if there was a lighting device, we should use it, my mother sighed and shook her head.

“We want to save oil, so we try not to use it as much as possible. Imagine if the candles ran out after a long, cold winter—that would be troublesome, right?”

When it came to saving, I had no words to argue.

Come to think of it, when I was Reno, my mother was always saying “save, save” and coming up with various tricks.

She would unplug the TV to save electricity but then fall asleep with it still on, or turn off the tap when brushing her teeth to save water but leave it running while washing dishes — she taught me the importance of self-satisfaction.

Following my mother’s example, I wondered if I could make this room a little brighter.

“What are you doing, Myne?”

“I was just thinking if it could be a little brighter...”

Thinking that if I arranged mirrors like a three-way mirror or an optical illusion, maybe it would reflect more light, I polished a metal gauntlet my father said he had used back during the war and placed it beside the candle.

“Myne, stop it.”

“It’s hard to see my hands.”

Both immediately rejected my idea.

Unfortunately, the gauntlet wasn’t made of flat metal; its surface was uneven and didn’t reflect smoothly. The strange scattered reflections made my eyes hurt and actually made it harder to see what I was doing.

“Ugh, a failure. What else can I use as a ‘mirror’...”

“Please don’t do unnecessary things.”

My mother flatly refused, so I gave up on the light reflection plan.

Even though I wasn’t reading books, I sighed at the thought my eyesight might worsen in this dim environment and settled near the cozy hearth.

Nearby, my mother began assembling a loom.

The cloth weaving equipment wasn’t the huge loom I’d seen in Japan; it was something much more primitive.

I wondered how they made cloth in such a small house, but it seemed they had a loom of a reasonable size.

“Tulli has a baptism ceremony coming up, so she needs to learn various tasks properly.”

Saying that, my mother started to teach Tulli how to weave, guiding her carefully. Tulli took the spool of thread with a serious expression.

“Place the spool like this, and first prepare the warp threads. Pass the thread through like this...”

Making clothes started with weaving cloth using dyed thread from autumn. First weaving the fabric, then sewing the clothes, and embroidering them. At the same time, they spun yarn from purchased wool for the next year.

Only the raw materials were purchased. Newly made clothes were not sold here, and even cloth itself was apparently unaffordable for commoners.