A Clever Life in the Boondocks
I had a grand plan.
I would put modern knowledge to work crafting all manner of inventions, then fleece the village folk of every coin they had and build myself an escape fund.
A flawless plan, if I do say so myself.
Our village was a frontier backwater where the entire day consisted of hard labor, getting drunk, and making babies in bed. What do you suppose would happen if modern conveniences, packaged as a little genius's inventions, hit this suffocatingly dull town?
I guarantee I could strip even the two hens from Hans next door. Practical goods or toys — everything I made would sell.
But this damn era grabbed me by the ankles before my grand plan could even begin…
"What nonsense is that? Spare paper? Where would we get something that precious?"
That was right.
In this endlessly impoverished age, paper was classified as a luxury good.
Unable to accept this brutal reality, I sought out a traveling merchant staying in the village to check the going rate for paper. He was a man who had no hesitation whatsoever in shattering an eleven-year-old child's hopes.
"Let's see — last time in Montpellier, thirty sheets of paper went for twelve florins—"
To brutally summarize the merchant's lengthy explanation — which he clearly wanted to use to show off his economic knowledge — the conclusion was this:
A single book easily cost tens of thousands of dollars.
More precisely, it was the kind of sum a commoner could only afford by saving every last coin of a full year's earnings without spending a single one. And that was just for a printed paper book. Bring parchment or a scribe into the equation and the price shot into the hundreds of thousands.
Of course, what I needed wasn't a finished book but paper to draw blueprints on, and cheap low-quality stock could theoretically be scraped together even on a commoner's budget…
But that was in the cities. The moment the boondocks premium kicked in, prices jumped at least two- to three- or fourfold.
And young Miss Asty had all of two florins to her name.
Moreover, getting paper wasn't the end of it. Drawing blueprints required a quill, and a quill required ink—
"Forget it. Just forget it."
It was my own fault for trying to draw blueprints on paper in this backwater. I'd just ask my brothers for wooden boards instead.
Country girl Asty had four older brothers.
Robert, Peter, Oliver, and David.
And of those, two objectively did not qualify as human beings.
Peter was claiming ownership rights over their still-living father's fields and clashing with the eldest, Robert. David was a piece of trash who lusted after his own little sister.
Cooper really was an excellent farmer, it seemed. Seeds rotten to their very core should normally die without ever sprouting, yet he had fully leveraged his incredible farming skills to raise them into splendid scoundrels.
No — honestly, I understood Peter going crazy over the fields. Without them, he was headed straight for a serf ending.
But what the hell was David's deal?
Harboring the urge to combine with a family member — why was talent that belonged in the Habsburg dynasty stuck in a rural village like this?
Anyway, David was rejected without question. Peter, who was itching to drag the whole family into his ownership dispute, was also out. The most reliable eldest brother, Robert, had gone independent and was busy duplicating the population with his wife.
"Hmm. You want me to make wooden boards? I've got some leftover from the chairs I made last time…"
"I need a lot of boards. Like, about thirty?"
Which left only Oliver — free of personality defects, girlfriend-less, and still living at home. He was already on the carpenter route and had excellent hand skills, making him the ideal human resource to exploit with family affection.
"Thirty of them?"
"Yes. W-well, if that's too hard, even ten would be fine…"
"No, I can make them. I'm just curious what you need so many for."
I'd been worried he'd say he couldn't make that many boards either, but thankfully the Middle Ages weren't that hopeless. They were hopeless in a different direction, which was the problem.
"Paper's really expensive, so I was going to draw blueprints on wooden boards…"
"Blueprints? A kid who can't even read wants to design something? You just want to draw pictures, don't you?"
Asty couldn't read.
Of course, Oliver couldn't read either.
"This big brother of yours taught himself the alphabet, you know. Sentences are hard, but I can manage words somehow."
That meant he couldn't read.
The abysmal medieval literacy rate brought tears to my eyes. Digging through my memories, the only person in this household who could read was the eldest, Robert — and even he was only better than Oliver. Calling him literate would be a stretch.
When am I supposed to learn to read on top of everything else? I'm going to lose my mind.
I swallowed the sigh that threatened to burst out and hit him with the facts.
"You look at designs when you make furniture too, don't you, Oppa? You just need shapes and numbers carved in, so not knowing letters is fine."
"…Ugh."
Defeated by the solid facts, Oliver quietly went off to fetch the wooden boards.
Beneath a table lined with assorted tools lay an old book.
"Why would anyone leave something this precious just lying around like— wait."
I nearly jumped out of my skin seeing a book worth at least ten thousand dollars casually left on the floor, and when I picked it up, the title written in Latin letters naturally caught my eye.
"Fundamentals of Woodworking?"
This was French.
I may not have been great at English, but I was pretty good at French. Back in college, a senior I was close with had been part of Doctors Without Borders — and Doctors Without Borders required French proficiency from their applicants. So I'd gone through hell teaching that guy French… I should have just refused.
"Come to think of it, the spoken language seems to share some similarities too."
Of course, the writing was the same — the speech wasn't. Even in modern times, people sometimes couldn't communicate because of dialects. There was no way modern French and a medieval French rural dialect would be identical.
…But for speaking, Asty's memories alone were enough, weren't they?
In that instant, an enormous inspiration and boundless confidence seized my mind. I immediately burst out of the house and went looking for the boarding house where the merchant was staying.
Thinking about it, I didn't need living expenses or seed money at all. In an age overflowing with idiots who couldn't read a single letter — who would turn down a talent who could actually read and write? And one who was cute, obedient, and smart to boot.
Even more importantly, I had figured out that this place was medieval France. In that case, where I needed to go was all but decided.
I rushed to the merchant and begged him to take me to Paris.
Paris, the City of Light. The eternal capital and sole heart of the centralized French state. If you wanted to unveil some history-changing invention in medieval Western Europe, just mindlessly charging into Paris was always the correct answer.
And the reply I got was:
"Hmm? Paris? Why are you looking for a city that was destroyed a hundred years ago?"
You've got to be kidding me.
Clutching my blanked-out head, I scurried back home. Then I demurely sat in a corner of the workshop belonging to my proud future carpenter, Brother Oliver, and waited for the wooden boards I'd ordered.
France without Paris is not France. But Paris had fallen, he said. Then this wasn't the France I knew. It wasn't even the Earth I knew.
I was screwed.
Completely and utterly.
"Ugh, pulling this out of the warehouse kicked up so much dust… Why the long face? Did something happen?"
Saint Oliver, the light and salt of this hopeless medieval age, mercifully fretted over the well-being of this pathetic reincarnator. Not that it was even remotely comforting.
The reason I'd been able to keep my sanity after falling into a world I barely understood was that this world still fit within the framework of the Middle Ages. Even if microscopically it was full of things I didn't know, I had the conviction that macroscopically it would flow in directions I understood.
But just now, the premise supporting my mental state had collapsed. And with it, eighty percent of my historical knowledge had turned to garbage.
"Brother Oliver, I want to study…!"
This was fucked.
This wasn't a modern society protected by public authority and the law. For a rural girl with no bloodline and no backing to change history, political power was absolutely essential. No — this was a world where, without power, dying at any time in any way wouldn't be strange at all.
I'd planned to use historical events to gain that power, so why the hell had an entire nation's capital suddenly been destroyed?
It was dangerous. Without the historical knowledge I'd picked up in the twenty-first century, I was just a smart kid. A kid who could die anytime, anywhere, in any way, and it wouldn't be strange.
"Please help your cute little sister study…!"
Knowledge is power. You have to learn to survive. Those precious maxims I'd seen and heard in twenty-first-century Korea drifted hazily through my mind.
With the feeling of coughing up blood, I squeezed out some cutesy charm I'd never attempted before.
"Alright."
And Oliver nodded with a pleased smile.
My eyes had been right. Saint Oliver truly was a great man of this cesspit of an era. Right — wasn't the Messiah's profession originally a carpenter, as per the rules? Indeed, my third older brother was the light and salt of this Middle Ages, a ray of salvation itself—
"This big brother will personally teach you to read. Words may be hard, but the letters at least…"
What. I don't need that. Get lost.
I'd rather teach myself.