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The door opened with a creak toward me.
“Bwuh?!”
I had been pulling down on the handle with my body weight, and the door shot toward me. I hurriedly let go before it hit me in the head, but it was too late. I fell backwards and rolled down the balled-up comforter before hitting the floor with a loud thump.
“Oooow...” I stood up, holding my head, and saw that at least the door had stayed open. This head pain is a means to a noble end.
I slipped into the open crack and shoved the door all the way open, sliding my parents’ comforter across the floor. It looked like that part of the floor had suddenly gotten cleaner, but I pretended I hadn’t seen anything. I hadn’t intended to make the comforter that much dirtier.
I’m... I’m really sorry.
“Oh, it’s the kitchen.” I left the bedroom and saw that there was a kitchen right outside it. Well, it wasn’t exactly fancy enough to be called a kitchen. It was like a place you could choose to cook, but wouldn’t really want to.
There was a smallish table in the center of the room with two three-legged chairs and a long box that likely also served as a seat. On the right was a cabinet with a handle, probably with dishes stored inside. The wall closest to the bedroom had nails in it with metal pots, ladles, and pans hanging off of them. There was a furnace near them that probably worked as a stove. A string connected two walls and had dirty rags hanging off of it—they looked so dirty they’d probably make whatever they touched even more unclean.
“Yuuuck. I think I know why I’m sick all the time.”
The corner opposite from the furnace had a large water jug and a sink-like water basin. As expected, there was no running water. To top things off, there was a large basket filled with potatoes, onions, and other food products. There were a lot of things I didn’t recognize, so it was possible that the potatoes weren’t actually potatoes at all.
“Hm? This one is... kind of like an avocado. I wonder if I can get oil from it?” I looked through the food and found one fruit in particular that interested me. If I could extract oil from it, I might be able to do something about my itchy head.
My mom from back in my Urano days had a habit of getting obsessed with one random thing after another. She could only be described as whimsical to a fault. She made whatever was in front of her at the time the focal point of her life: TV shows about saving money, magazine articles about living in nature, foreign activities in a cultural center, anything. She always dragged me along with her, saying she “wanted me to get interested in something other than books,” but I knew she only ever got involved with things that interested her. Having no other choice, I tagged along every time, and thanks to that I might’ve learned just enough to make shampoo on my own.
...Thank you, Mom. I think I might just survive over here. Encouraged by my findings, I looked around the room and saw that there were two doors other than the bedroom door.
“Eheh. Left or right door, which one’s the prize?” The kitchen didn’t look like it had a bookshelf anywhere. I saw that one of the two doors was cracked open, so I pulled it all the way.
“Mmm, a storage room? Guess this isn’t it.” It was a room packed with stuff I didn’t really understand the purpose of. There were shelves with stuff on them, but it was a real mess and it didn’t seem like the kind of place that would have a bookshelf.
I gave up on it and tried opening the other door. It made a clicking sound when I pulled on it, signaling that it was locked. Minutes of trying to open it yielded no results. The door would not open.
“...Wait. Is this the door Tuuli left from? Wha? Is that all?” If this door led outside, then our home had no bathtub, no toilet, no running water, and no bookshelves. It had nothing. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find any other rooms.
...Um, God, do you hate me? Is this a cruel joke? I asked to be reborn so that I could keep reading books even after I died. I didn’t intend to be transported to another world with my Japanese memories and customs, forced to live in a home with no bathtub, no toilet, and no water. I thought for sure you’d take me to a world filled with books.
“...Maybe books are expensive here?” According to my knowledge of history, books were extremely expensive until the invention of the printing press led to their mass production. Those not born into a rich or noble life would generally never read a single book in their lives. In which case, this wouldn’t be the kind of world where you give your neighbor’s kid a picture book as a birthday gift.
“Ngh, fine. I’ll start looking for letters first instead.” I didn’t absolutely need books in order to study this world’s writing system. Posters, newspapers, manuals, calendars, and all sorts of things naturally had letters written on them. Or they did in Japan, at least.
“...Nothing. There’s no letters anywhere! Not a single one!”
I had walked around the rooms searching every shelf and cabinet I could find, but not only had I not found any books, I didn’t even find anything with a single letter on it. I couldn’t find letters or paper.
“What’s going on here?” My head started to hurt, as if a fever had burst up within me out of nowhere. My heart throbbed and I could feel it screaming out, valves tightening. I dropped to the ground like a doll with its strings cut. My eyes burned on the inside.
Well, okay, I got crushed by books. No helping that. That was basically my dream of dying buried by books. Fine. And it was true that I myself had asked to be reincarnated. I understand all that.
...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.
“Myne! Why aren’t you in bed?! Don’t walk around without your shoes on!” Tuuli had gotten home at some point and, seeing me on the kitchen floor, shouted with her blue eyes open wide in anger.
“...Tuuli, there aren’t any (books)?”
“What’s wrong? Are you feeling okay?”
“Tuuli, I want (books). I want to read (books). I want to read them so much, but there aren’t any (books).”
Tuuli called out to me, worried, as tears dripped down my cheeks. But she was completely used to a world without books. She wouldn’t understand my pain no matter what I said to her.
...Is there anyone out there who can understand me? Anyone who knows where I can go to get books? Someone, tell me. Please.