Fushi no Kami: Rebuilding Civilization Starts With a Village Volume 1

225 Pages·2020·18.59 MB·english

by  Mizuumi Amakawa

Chapter 1: The First Page of the Book
Books. Past and present. The answer to what connected our wills had always
been books. Throughout history, many tyrants tried to wipe out books. There
are even terms referring solely to the act of book burning, such as bibliocaust.
However, so far no one had succeeded in getting rid of them. Books had been
burned, turned to ashes, and scattered to the winds, but they had never
completely disappeared. There had always been someone who stealthily saved
them from the flames. Someone who buried them in their garden to escape the
tyrant’s eye. Someone who dug into their unreliable memories and recreated
them after the flames had ceased.
Books had always been fighting against tyrants alongside brave and
passionate rebels. Even at present, the fight continued. They were engaged in a
battle which had been going on since the birth of history, or rather the birth of
books, against perhaps the greatest tyrant of them all. A merciless and diligent
enemy who was constantly watching and incessantly trying to wipe them out. It
was the tyrant called time.
Indeed, even now, books were fighting against their erasure by the tyranny of
time. It was yesterday when I decided to volunteer for this grand and sublime,
noble and gorgeous, loud yet quiet, and—more than anything—exciting battle.
My name is Ash. I’m an eight-year-old boy with something like past-life
memories.
“I want to read books!” I passionately confessed while opening the church
door with a loud bang. No answer. The church was empty but for some rows of
shabby chairs and piles of dust greeting me upon entering. As expected, it
looked like Father Folke had retreated to his study at the back of the church.
Completely understandable. The church was not only supposed to be a religious
institution performing the rituals of the village, but also an educational
institution providing a certain degree of knowledge to the community. It’s like
those learning seminars at the shrine. There was even supposed to be a
learning seminar at our shrine.
The shabby chairs were for the attendees of religious service, as well as any
villager who wanted to come and study during their free time. However, this
village where I was born was without question a hick town in the middle of
nowhere. There was no such thing as a family register, but since there were
only about 100 people living here, everyone knew each other anyway. Now the
question was, in such a marginal village, was there any person who had the
time to come here and study?
In terms of civilizational development, this village was still stuck in the Dark
Ages. There was no such thing as the internal combustion engine; everything
relied on human power. There used to be one workhorse, but it died two years
ago. We held a funeral at this church and ate the same horse afterwards. It felt
more like a BBQ party than a funeral. I’m getting hungry. I wish I could eat it
again...
But let’s get back to the question. In a village without tractors, horses, or
cows, and with a community who would be hopelessly lost at the mere mention
of chemical fertilizer, was there anyone who had the free time on their hands?
As you might have expected, the answer was no. Everyone was working day in,
day out until they were dizzy. Given my age, I was actually already an excellent
worker myself. While I was exempt from most hard manual labor, I was great at
pulling weeds and getting rid of stones in the fields, as well as collecting edible
wild plants in the outskirts of the woods and catching fish at the river.
At the village chief’s house, they were exceptionally making time for their
children to study. However, even then it seemed like they were not making use
of the church at all. As a result, the number of people that Father Folke had
educated since his arrival one year ago was zero. Or rather, it had been zero
until now. I wanted to become his first pupil.
“Father Folke, Father Folke! It’s Ash, from the house of David! Since you are
not answering, I’m just going to let myself in!”
Standing in front of the priest’s study at the back of the church, filled with
idols and chairs, I knocked on the door—according to proper etiquette—before
barging in with brazen rudeness. I found myself in a cozy little room which felt a
little too small for its purpose. Inside the room, a man—who had been sleeping
with his head on the cleared-out desk—brushed back his long hair and looked
towards me.
“Oh, it’s the bra—it’s the son of the house of David.”
“Yes, it’s the brat of the house of David, Ash! Father Folke, your face looks
horrible!”
The man had rings under his eyes as if he had stayed up all night. He was very
thin and not well-groomed, to a point where he did not resemble a clergyman
at all. So much so that the villagers were secretly calling him ‘zombie priest.’
You know, the type that normal children would see in their nightmares. It
looked like the zombie priest was trying to shrug off the damage he had taken
from my energy-filled voice.
“What do you want? Would you mind lowering your voice a bit? It hurts my
head.”
“Please forgive me, I was just a bit excited. I have come to ask you to let me
read some of your books!”
“My books?” Folke looked at the bookshelf behind him and snorted. His
motions propelled some of the dust on the books into the air. “What do you
plan on achieving by reading books in a forsaken village like this?”
It seemed like he was trying to imply that books were useless in a poor village.
The masochistic smile on his face made the priest indeed look like a zombie. If I
wanted to get my hands on a book, I had to get past this aloof zombie guarding
his graveyard of books.
“I guess I just want to have some fun reading.”
The zombie priest tilted his head. “What did you say, you brat?”
“I don’t know what you are trying to say, but we are talking about books! Isn’t
the purpose of reading books to enjoy yourself? If you can’t have some time
where you are just enjoying yourself to your heart’s content in this oh-so-cruel
world, then what is the point of it all?”
For someone like myself, who knew an affluent life from my apparent past-
life memories, the poor standards of this world were unbearable. It was at least
ten times as painful for me than for anyone else. How often had I thought about
ending it all? I was not even sure of my own sanity at this point; that’s how bad
it was. However, the day before, I realized something. When the village chief’s
wife was reading me a story, I realized that I could travel to some other place by
delving into the world of books! It seemed so obvious now! If reality was too
painful, you could always just find pleasure somewhere else, and that
somewhere was the world of fantasy!
“And this is not just a mere baseless assertion,” I argued. “When you are
hungry, do you need a purpose to eat? When you are drowning in the water
and suffocating, do you need a purpose to get back to the surface and take a big
breath?”
Compelled by the questioning of an eight-year-old, the zombie priest nodded
hastily. “Of course, you would eat and breathe without thinking about it.”
“Exactly! In the same way, books are something you just read and enjoy!”
“I see.” Folke nodded in agreement and reluctantly reached for the bookshelf.
“Wait a minute, that reasoning doesn’t sound right.”
“No, it’s perfectly logical! What is wrong about my reasoning? Those are my
pure and sincere feelings toward books!” I gathered all my passion and gave
Folke a fierce look. If looks could kill, he would have died a hundred times over.
I don’t know if it was due to my stare, but the priest’s face turned even paler
than usual and he cautiously nodded. “Alright, you can have a book. But can
you even read?”
“Father Folke, do you know how many people in this village can read?”
“Two. Three including myself.”
“Precisely. I see you already know the answer to your question!”
“Of course, you can’t read.”
It had already been eight years since I was born into this world, but I could
count on my fingers how many letters I had seen in that time, so it couldn’t
really be helped. If we were talking about letters from the civilization of my past
life on the other hand, I could read and write them fluently.
“I don’t know where you learned to talk the way you do, but I have no
interest in teaching a little brat like you how to read.”
“Oh, you are not being very helpful,” I said, even though I had anticipated this
outcome.
Listening to rumors and judging from my own experience, Father Folke
appeared to have a rotten personality. Not in the sense that he was evil; this
man in his early thirties had just lost all motivation and sense of purpose after
being relegated from the city life in the capital to this remote, impoverished
village—the end of the line for a demoted elite. It was to be expected that
asking someone like him for a favor would not go over well.
“In that case, could you please lend me an easy-to-read book? That’s all I will
ask of you in your capacity as the educator of this village,” I requested.
“Don’t be ridiculous! Do you have any idea how valuable books are? What am
I going to do if you ruin or sell them?”
“Come on, no one will notice if one book is missing.”
Hearing my words, Father Folke turned around to look at the bookshelf,
where the dust was shamelessly piling up. Seeing how poorly it was maintained,
even he couldn’t oppose my statement. “Tsk. You have a lot of nerve saying
that to a priest, you stupid brat.”
“There’s nothing to fear; no matter how angry you get, I’m sure none of the
other villagers will mind. Especially if I managed to get some money for those
books.”
In this village, books weren’t worth anything. Even if I stole a book, people
might judge me for the act of stealing itself, but no one would bat an eye for
the book. And if I bribed them, I was certain that the act of stealing would be
forgiven too. If the books weren’t worth anything, stealing them would have
been akin to taking a stone from the roadside and putting it in your pocket; no
one would consider it theft.
Wouldn’t you agree, Father? I’m sure you would. I looked up at the priest
while smiling.
“You stupid brat, are you threatening me?”