Wolf & Parchment, Volume 1

by Isuna Hasekura

  She was the one who forced him to bring her along, so if she understood that there was no place for her and obediently returned to Nyohhira, it would be a great help.

  “That’s what’s written on your face, at least.”

  “…”

  “Well, I’m not going home.”

  She smiled mischievously and poked the chest of an unmoving Col.

  “Now I know how Miss Helen and the others feel when they tease you, Brother.”

  How cheeky, he thought, glaring at her, and she took a step back.

  “It’s busy everywhere here, so I found work to do. Luckily, I get to wear this.”

  As she had yesterday, she was wearing the same clothes as the errand boys in the company.

  However, her hair was in its usual state, which looked incredibly untidy when coupled with her outfit.

  “If so, you must do your hair properly,” he said, then added, “I’ll braid your hair for you.”

  She probably had not braided her own hair on purpose.

  “Heh-heh. Okay!”

  She smiled happily and closed the distance between them. He felt she was doing as she pleased with him, but after a bit of thought, he decided it was fine as long as she was in a good mood.

  As he braided her hair, boys who were cleaning and company employees carrying goods passed them several times, and they all stared at the two, confused by the odd sight of a guest braiding an errand boy’s hair.

  Col was most definitely embarrassed, and only the free-spirited Myuri was content and did not mind.

  In the several days that followed, Col focused solely on his work.

  There were very few things Col had to fix in the translation Hyland gave him, and it was rather a learning experience for him. The translation was further along in Winfiel itself, so if he did any translating himself, it would conflict with that. The task was awe-inspiring but also enjoyable. At any rate, he was free and would not lose anything, so he did as he pleased.

  The scribes were also skilled, and the numbers of documents he received from Hyland increased. Without an illustrator decorating the margins, they could write five pages in a day. Out of the thirteen chapters of the scripture, Hyland gave him the manuscripts for the first four, and the number of copies grew and grew.

  Whenever the scribes completed one, Hyland would take it and distribute it to the city nobles in Atiph and the land-owning nobles outside the urban area. There were also requests from the townspeople, and the day after distributing two parts of it, managers from each association clamored for a copy for themselves.

  While Hyland’s campaigning certainly helped, the town likely already had the groundwork for this result. It was frigid by the sea, and there were deep snow-covered mountains just up the river. According to the craftsmen, there had been pirate attacks from the stormy northern seas until recently. The environment outside the walls did not lend itself to a relaxing life, and the entire town thirsted for the teachings of God.

  Such a situation allowed Col to work late into the evening, several nights in a row without distress. He had dedicated himself to studies that no one had ever found necessary until now. He would not consider any troubles he had to endure now as a hardship, as long as his efforts were of use later. The scribes left each day at sunset, but of course, he did not stop working then. Since he stayed up so late with the candle still burning, Myuri eventually forced him out at night. With no other choice, he placed a large crate and chair in the hallway, and then wrapped a blanket around himself as he worked to help him concentrate better. Myuri made a point of being angry about it, but she was probably just cold sleeping by herself.

  When he awoke, he could barely open his eyes—he was so happy thinking about the scripture that he did so even in his dreams. Back in Nyohhira, Lawrence understood him, but the work in the bathhouse was never-ending. This was the life Col had longed for.

  But the single thing that disrupted his routine, whether in Nyohhira or Atiph, was of course Myuri. Once her work helping the company was finished, she would return to the room and tell him in detail about everything that happened that day. When he responded with disinterested grunts, she would finally fall quiet and instead pull up a chair beside his and read the scripture. Perhaps that was also because he would give actual answers to her questions about the translated portions.

  However, as he pursued his work, Myuri grew worried about his health. That was to be expected since the food she prepared for him when she left in the morning was untouched when she got home.

  Even though Col was usually the one to scold Myuri about her lifestyle habits, their positions were now completely flipped. She stopped shooing him out at night and instead began pulling him into bed as the candle burned low. It would be funny from an outsider’s perspective, and he thought about how Myuri would make a good big sister if she had a younger sibling.

  That being said, he figured his fervor for his work was difficult for Myuri to understand. One day, after pulling him from the desk into the bed again, she spoke.

  “Hey, Brother? Can I ask you something?”

  He tried to answer, but he coughed violently when he tried to speak, likely because he had not used his voice in a while. “What is it?” he finally managed to say.

  “Why are you so obsessed with the teachings of God, Brother?”

  Perhaps Myuri meant it as a reprimand, but it was a rather fundamental question.

  “Ahem…Hmm. Have I never told you?”

  “No. So…it’s kind of scary.”

  She snuggled up to him and clung to his arm inside the blanket, perhaps out of fear that he would run back to the desk while she was sleeping. In reality, there were several times when he leaped out of bed as he was falling asleep after hitting upon a translation for a particular word that had escaped him.

  But once he really thought about it, he had no memory of talking about this to Myuri. They had conversed about many things ever since she was a little girl, so it was a bit strange.

  “I see…It is a difficult question, though. I might not be able to answer in a sentence or two.”

  “Tell me. If it satisfies me, then I’ll set out two candles for you before I sleep.”

  It would not be bad to extend work hours by one candle. And if he could explain why he was so attached to the teachings of God, well, it would be a good opportunity to open Myuri’s eyes to his lessons.

  He slowly collected his thoughts and opened his mouth as he gazed up at the dark ceiling.

  “I didn’t believe the teachings of God and the Church at first.”

  “Really?!” Myuri yelled in his ear. She was as surprised as when she had first discovered that it cost money to boil water in the world beyond the hot springs of Nyohhira.

  “Yes, really. The village I was born in was home to so-called pagans. We prayed to things like the beautiful springs or giant trees, and ‘God’ to us was a big frog, passed down through legend, that protected the village.”

  “A frog?”

  “There was a legend about it. Perhaps it really existed a long time ago.”

  Myuri’s mother was the embodiment of a giant wolf, after all.

  “Well, that’s where I was born, so I never honestly thought to learn about the teachings of the Church. It is ironic, but I decided I should learn when my village was about to be razed by their knights.”

  He recalled why he had never talked about this to Myuri. It was not an amusing story.

  “The villages we interacted with disappeared one after another, and of course, there was nothing we could do. No matter how much we prayed to the village god, help never came. The adult men were prepared to fight until the bitter end, and women and children got ready to escape with the intention of never coming back.”

  A similar thing was probably happening somewhere in the world, but it was much more frequent back then. Myuri kept silent and gripped his arm even tighter. Her shoulders were hunched, as though she regretted asking him the story.

  “Well
, to jump to the end, coincidence after coincidence led to the village not being destroyed. It’s still there today.”

  Myuri was clearly relieved.

  “However, at the time, the entire northlands, which included my village, was called the pagan land. It was embroiled in a war.”

  “…Only Nyohhira was safe, right?”

  At the time, the old lands of Nyohhira were called the paradise of true believers in the land of pagans.

  “Right. That is why, regardless of whether or not the Church would attack us again, I figured there was only one way to protect the village. And that was to become an important person in the Church myself,” he said, and Myuri was clearly at a loss.

  Even he knew that it was a simple way of thinking.

  “At the time, I…I was even more of an ignorant child than I am now. All my ideas were simple but at the same time calculating. Or perhaps strangely insolent. That’s why, though I was learning about God’s teachings then, my faith lay in the strength and ferocity of the organization that was the Church. The people around me who were studying the teachings also just wanted to have privileged work in the future, so no one seriously practiced them.”

  A university city was a bustling town where the wise men recognized by the Church as sages would congregate.

  It cost money to study, and swindlers gathered wherever money was spent. There, all his savings were swept up, then he was burdened with debt, and in the end, he ran with his life.

  It was a terrible experience, but thanks to that, he stood where he was now.

  “But despite that, it must have suited my personality because I enjoyed learning about the teachings of God. Before I knew it, they became my flesh and blood, and once I had internalized them, the study itself became enjoyable. But no matter what, the thing called faith did not stick in my heart. That was because the world was too irrational and uncertain for me to carry that unwavering conviction.”

  There was a day when his village had been almost completely wiped out, a disaster prevented only by sheer luck, and then came the realization that the frog god they believed in only existed in their village—he had felt that there was nothing certain in this world.

  He believed the only thing right in this world was that the strongest one would win.

  “Those thoughts were completely overturned when I met two eccentric travelers.”

  “…Mother and Father?”

  “That is correct.”

  Though it was a minor thing, Myuri seemed happy to hear the compliment. Her tail, which she used at night to keep herself warm, rustled under their blankets, and it tickled him.

  “But…why? Wouldn’t you think that the Church’s God was a total lie after meeting Mother?”

  There was likely no evidence against the existence of an even stronger god.

  But his faith was of a completely different sort.

  “Your thinking is correct. But in a way, not quite. While the ontological discussion of whether or not God truly does exist in heaven was important, the difference was that they taught me that there are things in this world to believe in from the bottom of my heart.”

  “…I don’t get it.”

  Her tail moved under the covers, unsatisfied.

  “If you assume that unshakable truths exist on this earth, don’t you think their bond is one of them?”

  The question seemed to startle Myuri. Then, after a moment’s thought, she frowned slightly for some reason.

  “Well, maybe. Mother and Father are so close it’s gross.” That was how she felt as their daughter. “But how is that related to God’s teachings?”

  “Well, let’s see,” he said and closed his eyes, recalling the big adventures he had had since meeting them—the exciting and sometimes dangerous times—and how he had still been able to laugh.

  “No matter what danger they faced, even when they fell into hopelessness, they never let go of each other’s hand. That is because they knew that their feelings for each other were the only certain thing in the world.”

  “…”

  Myuri did not say anything, probably because it was embarrassing for her to hear such stories about her parents.

  “When I watched them, I thought that as long as you had something to believe in, you could overcome any hardship. And then I learned that that ‘something’ most definitely existed. Looking around me with that in mind, I finally understood that faith was incredibly important to surviving in this cold world.”

  Faith could be feelings for a loved one, loyalty to the organization or lord that one served under, or even the less praiseworthy convictions of misers.

  What they had in common, however, was that they could be strong because of their faith.

  “And at the same time, I was painfully aware of the misery and powerlessness of the helpless, because I was once like that, too.”

  He could no longer fathom his despair from that time, nor did he want to. His loneliness had withered him away into nothing, like a malady pulling him into the abyss of death even as he lived.

  “Then, for the first time, the teachings of a God flowed through my blood.”

  God was always with you.

  He felt like the lid over his head opened when he finally understood it.

  “When I understood the meaning of ‘God will never abandon you,’ it was like a warm waterfall suddenly washed over me.”

  He thought that Myuri might laugh at his exaggeration, but she surprisingly did not. On the contrary, she gripped his arm even tighter and rested her mouth on his shoulder as though she would bite it.

  “I…get that. When you told me that you would always be my friend, I felt the same.”

  She sounded like she was sulking, perhaps because she was being bashful. She was talking about the time when her mother, Holo, told her about the blood of wolves flowing through her veins.

  “If I can become a priest, I would be able to spread that warmth throughout the world to all the people shivering in the cold of loneliness. When I was at such a loss as a child, I just so happened to run into Holo and Lawrence, but many people in the world will not have such luck. I realized, however, that I could be the one to bring that luck to those people. God’s love is limitless and will not lessen when it’s shared.”

  To that end, he had to understand God to the greatest extent possible. He had to be able to confront all sorts of doubts. He could dedicate himself to his studies, munching on raw onions to ward off sleepiness, because of his very faith.

  “Um…,” Myuri said, nonplussed, and Col was immediately apologetic that his speech might have been too intense.

  “I’m sorry, that was fairly dramatic. But it is rather close, I think.”

  “No, that’s not it…I was just surprised that you actually had a reason for studying. I was sure my brother was just a bit weird.”

  “Huh?”

  He was slightly hurt, and when he looked at Myuri beside him, he could tell, especially through the darkness, that she was smiling mischievously.

  “But now I understand. You really are weird if you think so seriously about that, and you never react when Miss Helen and the other dancers flirt with you, either.”

  “Myuri.”

  He lowered his voice to scold her, but Myuri continued on happily.

  “And I think I understand a little why you left the village. I wasn’t sure why you were so angry over whether or not the pope was collecting money…He’s damaged something really important, hasn’t he?”

  That was exactly it. Her assessment was so accurate, he wanted to raise his voice in joy.

  The pope was using the teachings of God that were meant as deliverance for the people as a tool in his desire for money. Col could not forgive such a thing.

  “I am sad that I cannot express how happy I am right now that you’ve finally understood me.”

  “What? Then give me a big hug, like you used to when I was little.”

  She grew up to look exactly like her mother, Holo, then realized
the appeal of decorating herself over chasing animals in the mountains—when he thought about how much she had grown, he felt sad. However, she was still a child on the inside.

  He smiled as he thought that, and when he hugged her, she cackled.

  “But, Brother?”

  “What is it?”

  “When Mother told me about my ears and tail and I cried, why didn’t you tell me about such an important God?”

  It was a given that the flow of their conversation would lead them here.

  And the reason for that made him feel ill.

  “Well, you see…”

  “Yeah?”

  If he lied to her now, Myuri would instead bully him to no end. He decided to resign himself to it.

  “Even I have never seen God myself.”

  “Huh?”

  “But I’m here. You can see me, touch me, and talk to me. That’s why. It is…well…inconsistent…as a servant of God…”

  There was nothing more shameful than this. Most of the deception of the Church must have been born from situations like this. As he thought surely Myuri would be dismayed, she spoke out of the blue.

  “Just hug me again.”

  “What?”

  “You can see and touch and talk to me, right? Hurry, before I lose all my faith!”

  The day Myuri would develop a faith in God seemed far off, but perhaps that was a good thing, in a way.

  He did as the princess commanded.

  Either because she had been working hard or perhaps due to her usual skill, before long Col could hear the sounds of soft snoring coming from between his arms. She was always footloose and fancy-free. Though she was small, his arms quickly grew tired hugging her, unlike when she was a little girl. He let go, careful not to wake her, and breathed a sigh of relief.

  He looked at her sleeping face once again, and his face spontaneously broke into a wide smile.

  Perhaps it would be acceptable to add the innocence of this sleeping face to the list of things that were certain in this world.

  It was a face that encouraged him to work hard tomorrow.

  Col’s days of prayer and contemplation continued, and as the copies of copies of Hyland’s manuscript spread throughout town, Myuri finally caught up to where he had finished his work. She could not help but interfere with his business, deliberately rushing him on to work faster and faster, but he felt the same way. When he finally finished translating the seventh chapter, he felt as though he was gasping for air and finally breathing again.