104 - Winter Life with the Tutor 1
Now that I had a legitimate reason to send a letter to Aurelia, I tried writing one right away.
The words I could use were still few, so the sentences that came out were truly childish.
Knowing Aurelia's personality, if I asked about her circumstances, I felt like she'd get angry, so the main contents were about my current situation.
I had been attending the Menhishumi Church and learned the basic letters.
I could write short sentences now.
I guided the bereaved families at the Memorial Service.
I was raising a puppy.
I had named it Rich and Mellow Flavor.
My new tutor was strict but trustworthy.
Leonardo was, in any case, too soft on me.
After writing such trivial contents, at the very end I wrote one question to Aurelia.
Are you doing well?
...The Sedovara Church had told me to persuade Aurelia and all, but if I wrote something like that in my first letter, wouldn't that be too obvious?
With that in mind, my question to Aurelia was just that one line.
Since she apparently kept her contact with the outside to a minimum, if a letter suddenly arrived saying "Why don't you move to the city," she'd definitely be on guard.
At least, I would be.
I'd think, has this sender been tricked by someone?
I'd first think, did the Sedovara Church put them up to sending this letter?
...Well, I calculated everything and wrote my letter properly!
And yet, why was Aurelia's reply tinged with anger?
I sent the letter to the Sedovara Church to be forwarded to Aurelia, and there should have been a censorship process there, but the reply from Aurelia that arrived in the third week was brought directly as a verbal message by a Black Knight.
If it was Aurelia, who apparently thought I had forgotten the language of this world, I figured the Black Knight would read the letter aloud, but what came out of the apologetic-looking Black Knight's mouth sounded like nothing but a curse of resentment.
"...Matte kurasai. What do you mean, 'treating me like an old person' deshu ka?"
What I had written in my letter to Aurelia was only my current situation and one line asking about her health.
There was no way it was the kind of content that would provoke anger like "Don't treat me like an old woman."
Alf, who had been listening along with me since it was reportedly Aurelia's reply, tilted his head too.
I had Alf confirm whether the letter's contents were correct, and since he was quite eager about persuading Aurelia, I had consulted him about starting with casual conversation as a strategy.
Alf also understood that the contents weren't enough to provoke this much anger.
"You wrote it in your letter, didn't you, Tina-chan? Something like, 'You're already old enough, so instead of holing up in that valley forever, let's live in the city. In the city, I can assign servants to take care of you.'"
"...What's that deshu ka? I didn't write anything like that in my letter mashen yo."
If I sent a letter with contents like that, even someone other than Aurelia would get angry.
The Black Knight showed me the bruise that was starting to fade, saying he'd been hit hard with a staff when he read the letter's contents to Aurelia orally.
I looked up at Alf, asking what this meant, and Alf furrowed his brows irritably.
"They must have added it during the censorship at the Sedovara Church."
"So that's why she's this angry deshu ne."
Even just hearing one part of it was rude, but I decided to have the Black Knight confirm the full text.
There was no way he'd remember it word for word after reading it once, but he should remember the gist of it.
...My writing didn't get conveyed at all, huh.
As a result of the Sedovara Church's censorship, what reached Aurelia from my words was only the name on the envelope and the final line "Are you doing well?"
The closing sentence had been moved to the beginning, and the rest was the Sedovara Church's demands about moving to the city because she was old, written in polite yet mockingly respectful wording disguised as a little girl.
Moreover, because it was pretending to be a little girl, the wording was refreshingly insolent and condescending.
"I don't want Aurelia-san to think I wrote that content deshu."
"Aurelia is a wise woman. I think she's probably seen through what happened. You can rest assured on that point."
It wasn't much of a consolation, but I wasn't the only one feeling frustrated, so I decided to calm my anger for now.
Or rather, Alf's anger toward the Sedovara Church was so visible and easy to read that my own anger subsided quickly.
It's that phenomenon where, when you see someone getting more emotionally worked up about the same event, you end up becoming calmer instead.
Poor thing, the Black Knight who had only delivered the message was frozen stiff at the sight of Alf's face.
At first glance, Alf was only smiling quietly, but it was an indescribably intimidating smile.
"...Do the Sedovara Church people really want Aurelia-san to come to the city deshu ka ne?"
Their relationship was supposedly strained to begin with, and the tampered letter's contents were far too awful.
The tampering was so far from what you'd write to invite someone to live in the city that I could only tilt my head in confusion.
The first letter ended in failure, but Alf said something about having a good idea and left, so I wasn't too worried.
Even if things weren't resolved right away, Alf would surely take some kind of action.
He was more reliable than Leonardo.
Since Aurelia was involved, it was even more reassuring that he was already dependable as always.
...Well, at least I found out she's doing fine, right?
I remembered the bruise on the Black Knight's arm.
Maybe that was Aurelia's reply to me.
A message that couldn't be tampered with by the Sedovara Church's censorship, one that said she was doing well.
...Sorry to the Black Knight who got hit with a staff.
I thanked him with a hug for his hard work coming all this way, so even knowing he'd get hit again next time, he'd gladly volunteer as messenger.
At any rate, being able to learn about Aurelia's situation was something to celebrate.
As winter approached its middle, my ban on going outside was lifted.
That said, I didn't have any reason to go out, so the ban had been fairly meaningless anyway.
Hermine, who was staying at the residence, was my twenty-four-hour tutor.
Did this world not have labor standards laws?
The fact that I was vaguely worried about this was probably because I was Japanese in my past life.
Apparently, servants who work while living in a mansion basically have no days off.
Come to think of it, Tabitha and Bart, who took care of me, were always working at the residence too.
In the residence of a fortress lord with only two servants, if even one of them took a rest, daily life would probably fall apart.
When it was just Leonardo, the master was often absent, so Bart and the others could rest, but now I, the master, however young I was, was always at the residence, so they were really working without any breaks.
I heard there had been talk about hiring more people since I came, but because finding a tutor was prioritized, hiring new servants had been put on hold.
...I hope Bart and the others don't collapse.
If it were just taking care of me, it would only mean one person's worth of housework increased, but now there were six more adults in the residence, and four of them were knights.
The amount of food needed to maintain their sturdy muscles went without saying compared to me or Hermine.
...Winter was supposed to be about a month off, but this year there were a lot of people because of the transcription work.
There really was no time for Bart and the others to rest.
"Soldiers can only capture pieces if they move diagonally, you know."
"Ae?"
I must have gotten lost in thought without realizing it.
Hermine's voice pulled my awareness back to reality, and the view that opened before me was a Saik board with the position clearly against me.
...That's right. I was playing Saik with Hermine-sensei.
When the time she set as study time ended, Hermine would bring out the board like this and be my playmate.
That itself was nice, but I was bad at Saik.
The way the pieces moved was too complicated for me, and I could never win.
...Hermine-sensei picked up Reversi right away too.
Did tutors also have to be well-versed in board games?
Hermine was good at everything she did.
And she was a true master who could deliberately lose or make it a close match too.
Hermine also liked Reversi for its simple rules, but Reversi's popularity was limited to Grenore Fortress.
Once you left the city of Grenore, it was useless for socializing.
Because of that, since I would eventually need social skills, I now had time set aside for learning Saik as part of my lessons.
Saik was a generally well-known board game, so apparently I could play it with anyone, anywhere.
...If I made Reversi popular outside the city too, wouldn't I not need to learn Saik?
When I put it more gently like that, Hermine replied with a straight face that if I married into royalty, Reversi could spread in no time.
Apparently, the first prince had a son who was around my age.
...No, I don't need such an impossible marriage recommendation, thank you.
For these reasons, though I was bad at it, I was currently studying Saik seriously.
"Think of Saik as war. If your king is captured, you lose. The queen supports the king, sometimes becoming the king's sword and shield as she advances across the battlefield. Soldiers are the weakest pieces, but if you use them well, they can even capture the opponent's king."
"It's difficult deshu."
I had somehow managed to learn the rules and how each piece moved, but I had no idea how to move them to win.
I was just no good at games that required strategy and not just simple piece-moving.
"...If I think of it as war, rather than sending the king to the battlefield, I'd first think of burning the enemy's food and cutting off their supplies mashu."
"Attacking food supplies isn't exactly a child's idea, you know."
"Food... supplies?"
She pointed out that it wasn't a child's idea, so I widened my eyes to hide my inner panic.
I realized that a child shouldn't be able to understand terms like food supplies.
When I looked up at Hermine asking what food supplies were, she explained simply that it was food for soldiers.
Hermine might have realized that a little girl like me couldn't possibly know a word like "food supplies."
"Is cutting off food supplies no good deshu ka? If you're hungry, you can't fight mashen yo ne?"
Also, I thought, wars where both armies bring out their kings and clash head-on in a neat flat plain like a board game board probably didn't exist in the first place.
When I muttered that childishly as it came to mind, Hermine put her hand to her cheek with a somewhat troubled look.
"...I see now. Tina-san, you can't concentrate on Saik because you get caught up in the little details."
"I've learned the piece movements and rules mashita ga, how should I put it nyo ka..."
I didn't know how to win.
My mind was so focused on the difficulty of the piece movements and rules that I couldn't grasp things like theory.
"That's true. Tina-san has only just started Saik, so you have no accumulated experience. Then let's begin by studying the game records of masters."
"Game records deshu ka?"
"Game records are recordings of matches. Even just moving pieces according to the records can be educational."
If I read through dozens or hundreds of game records of masters, the theory would naturally become clear, Hermine said.
I still couldn't imagine understanding it, but compared to groaning and racking my brain while moving pieces, I wanted to accept Hermine's study method of just arranging pieces according to the records.
I still didn't feel like I could beat anyone at Saik.
[Author's Note]
It doesn't look like I'll finish as planned, so I'll split it.
By the way, Bart and Tabitha used to have over a month off every winter because Leonardo, the master, would go to one of the other three fortresses.
Leonardo spends winter in Grenore once every four years.
But now Tina is here, so no time off.
Before Leonardo became fortress lord, there was no time off either, but there were more servants then, so it balanced out to about zero.
I'll fix typos and errors another day.
I found and corrected some typos and errors.