Ascendance of a Bookworm (Light Novel), Part 1 Volume 1

by Miya Kazuki

Time not spent reading books was time wasted. Even if people said her skin was gross and pale and laughed at her for being weak due to lack of exercise, even if her mom yelled at her for forgetting to eat, she had no intention of ever letting go of her books.

Three days of constantly losing to my family resulted in my young maidenly heart and sense of shame getting torn to shreds.

I’m a young girl. My family has to take care of me. This is just how things have to be. ...If I don’t think like that, I’ll just die! I can’t take this any longer! This life is too much!

That said, my head was still itchy. I knew we didn’t have any, but I wanted shampoo.

I hadn’t read any books in a long time and withdrawal symptoms were beginning to show. It wouldn’t be long before I started screaming “Books, give me boooks! Waaah!” while sobbing and flailing.

...But you know, there aren’t any books here. There aren’t even letters. Not even paper! Can I really live in a place like this? Do I have any reason to live? A tear dripped down my cheek. I had never even once thought about a world without books. Such a thing was unfathomable to me. And yet here I was. Unable to think of a single reason to live on in this world as Myne, I felt my insides go hollow. I couldn’t stop crying.

...Oh wait, am I going down the child prodigy path here? At age ten I’ll be God’s gift to mankind and at age fifteen I’ll be a genius, but once I hit twenty I’ll just be a normal person. Oh well.

You would think learning something from a book would be enough to just do it, right? But think hard about that, and you’ll realize that things really aren’t that simple.

“...So I can go to the forest if I throw a tantrum?” “No need for that. Don’t be dumb.”

Otto had understood my musclehead father’s love for his daughters and given him the perfect argument to convince him. I was so grateful that I could almost cry. I hadn’t expected at all that he would officially let Otto be my teacher.

Both Tuuli and Dad considered me a burden. Dead weight. I knew it was true, but hearing them say it right in front of me really did hurt.

As the saying goes, if you love your work, your work will love you.

Apparently, past Myne had barely ever participated in neighborhood social events, so the local children considered her something of a rare monster with a low encounter rate.

Apparently, I reigned as the queen of the rumored “Top People You Should Never Make Angry” rankings for some time.

I wanted to heat the tablets up as soon as I got home, so I waited for Mom to be distracted and immediately put the tablets on the hearth. Whereupon they exploded. I’m not kidding. You may think I’m just telling a joke, but it really happened. I heated them on the hearth, and boom! My first book turned to dust and rubble.

“I don’t know what you intend to use it for, but consider all the soot yours. This means you’ll clean the hearth for me, right? And just saying, you’ll get more if you clean the chimney too.” “Bwuh?! Aww... Okay. I guess that makes sense...”

Mom sewed some rags together and made me a new outfit, looking pleased when she finished. I changed into it, putting my hair up in an adult fashion to minimize contact between it and the dirty rags, though I wore another rag on my head as a bandanna. Wooow. This would suck really bad if I weren’t fooling myself into thinking I’m cosplaying Cinderella.

She’s going to become a living natural disaster that destroys the market and remakes it anew.”

It was true that when Myne got truly mad, her eyes narrowed and her atmosphere totally changed. Then, her normally golden eyes would start changing colors, as if a layer of oil had covered them.

It was very likely that she had just been kidnapped while waiting in front of the library. She’d probably get tricked in a second by any kidnapper saying “Get in the van, I’ve got books.”