Language Class
On the third day at the school, we had the same language and magic classes as on the first day. It seemed that sitting three to a table had become the norm for lectures, and when I entered the classroom as usual, Len took my hand and had me sit in the middle chair.
“I’ve gotten better at writing my name since then!”
“Me too! My mom praised me for it.”
The two of them happily wrote their names on their small chalkboards to show me. Just two days ago, they were still holding their pencils in a fist grip, but now, while they still had to check their fingers when they started writing, they were holding them properly. Come to think of it, back in Japan, we had tools to help kids fix their grip—wasn't it supposed to take longer for children to learn to hold a pencil correctly? Aren’t these two unusually talented? While thinking that, I looked at their names written without a single tremble and gave their heads a good ruffling in praise.
“Amazing! Len, Hachi, you both wrote your names so well! You even remembered how to hold the pencil properly even though you said it was hard. That’s really great!”
Taking the opportunity, I also petted their dog ears and cat ears. Ahh, bliss.
“Ohh, that really is wonderful. The two of you have worked hard, but Vio, who taught you how to write, is wonderful too.”
“Yeah, thanks, Vio!”
“Yeah, Vio, thank you~”
Just when the teacher had gently patted my head and I smiled “Ehehe~”, the two of them stood up with big smiles and gave my head a good ruffling in return. It felt a bit embarrassing, but it made me happy.
“Well then, let’s have you two learn to write your friends’ names and the village name as well. Ah, and once you recognize the letters, try writing your family members’ names too.”
The teacher wrote four words on the large blackboard at the front: Hachi, Vio, Len, and Samania Village. As I looked at the board, I copied the words onto my own chalkboard, except for my own name. Since it’s just memorizing the letters, it doesn’t seem too hard to write them.
Come to think of it, card games seem to exist in this world too. One of those typical isekai cheats, Reversi, apparently already exists. It seems like there are also playing cards, but they’re not available in this village. My dad said he’d seen them in other guilds or taverns back when he was an adventurer.
This village lives self-sufficiently by farming, hunting monsters, and crafting various things—it’s a hard life. When it comes to entertainment, it’s mostly singing and dancing, and there's a festival-like event in autumn. Other than that, people work seriously throughout the year.
Being in the frontier and near the mountains, they have to deal with monster outbreaks more often than other villages, and most of the adults aren’t just your average villagers—they’ve got power that rivals adventurers. So when they have spare time, they’re either taking care of the kids, working the fields, training, or culling monsters. A few days ago, I was surprised to learn that the muscular butcher wasn’t just a typical "meat shop guy" but actually went out to hunt the beasts himself.
Ah, I got off track. What I meant to say is that this village doesn’t have entertainment like toys. Of course, there's no such thing as educational toys either, so I started thinking about making a karuta game for the two of them.
If I made it with wooden tiles, it would probably be pretty durable, and since it would be wooden cards, my dad would be good at crafting them. It could also serve as practice for my wood magic. I want to give it my best.
While the two of them were writing on their chalkboards, I started jotting down words for the karuta in my notebook. It would be nice to use words they’d like, maybe something about adventurers or monsters? Though using names of medicinal herbs might be helpful for memorization too.
I’ll ask Dad to prepare the wood pieces and then polish the cut wood myself. Practicing wood magic should help me improve, and writing in this world’s script for the karuta cards would be good writing practice, too.
What do you think about this chapter?
