Enji the Scholar

Chapter V

Enji the Scholar

Enji felt stiff and confused, then recalled that Nilsei had made him drink some potion she said was good for sleep. Why did I need a... The monstrosity from the night before suddenly came to mind. An involuntary tremor shook him. After the incident, he had been too shaken to be of any help. Sol and Popa took care of the remaining two monsters outside the house and later disposed of the head in the main room.

After getting dressed, he went down the stairs to the main room. He peeked into the kitchen, and it was deserted. Not hearing any noises coming from inside the house, he decided to step outside. When he reached the door, he hesitated before opening it. His hand trembled. Closing his eyes and filling his lungs with air, he opened the latch and stepped out.

He found the girls behind the house. They all wore simple, loose dresses in muted colors and had their hair tied in ponytails. Popa hung the laundry on a clothesline, Silma helped her, and Nilsei fed the chickens. It was an idyllic pastoral scene in a serene and peaceful morning, with a cloudless, blue sky that invited one to sit and laze around with no cares in the world. “The hell is this?” He shouted. “Why is everyone so calm as if nothing happened last night!”

“You said something, my lord?” Nilsei brushed her hands on her apron to get rid of the dust and approached him. “How do you feel? Did you sleep well?”

“Huh. Yes, thanks to that potion you gave me.”

“Let me prepare your morning meal. We already ate.” Nilsei headed inside the house.

Enji walked to where the two girls were hanging clothes and greeted them.

“Oh, hello, Enji Lord,” Popa chirped, enthusiastically.

“Morning,” was all that Silma said, and she continued what she was doing.

“I had told all of you. I’m not a lord!”

“Yes, Enji Lord,” Popa replied.

What the hell is this, Enji Lord? Isn’t it supposed to be Lord Enji? “Where is Sol?” Enji asked.

“Getting rid of the [gleths’] corpses,” Silma replied without looking at him.

“He’s downstream behind that hill.” Popa pointed.

“Thanks, I’ll go check on him.”

It took Enji about fifteen minutes, according to his calculation, to reach where Sol was working. As he drew nearer, he could see the monsters’ bodies inside a pit that was deep enough for him to stand on the bottom and not see the top edge. “How did he dig that hole? And did he move all the corpses by himself?” he muttered.

Enji leaned on the edge to see better what the monstrosities of the night before looked like. They were unlike anything he had ever seen or read in any fantasy—no wonder the translator couldn’t find a word in his language to attach to it. The head was large in proportion to the body, like the head of a horse in a goat’s body. But it didn’t look at all like those animals. It had three legs in its short, hairy body; two long ones in the front and one short one in the rear, like a tripod. He wondered how it would walk. A mouth full of teeth occupied most of the lower part of the face, and on the upper half, three crimson, round eyes were distributed two to the sides and one on the front.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Enji turned to Sol, and instead of replying to the sarcastic question, he asked, “Are they common?”

“They rarely venture out of the depths of the labyrinth, so something must have spooked them.”

“A stampede?”

“Stampede? No. Not in this case. How do you know about stampedes?”

“I-I read about it in a book.” He was not going to tell Sol that it was a common trope in dungeon and labyrinth fantasy novels and anime back in Japan.

“Very few have heard of them. I would say it hasn’t happened for thousands of years.”

“And you know of it...?” Sol had told him that he was twelve, so he was not a long-lived elf or something similar.

“Folk tales from my people. We, the Seers, preserve traditions and stories that date back thousands of years.”

“I know next to nothing about this part of the world. Are your people related to elves?”

Sol finished dumping the last body into the pit and recited a few words. His whole body glowed, and all the dirt and blood on him disappeared. “Step back over there.” He pointed to a nearby tree.

Enji did as told. Sol, then, sat on the ground cross-legged in front of the pit and began an incantation that lasted about two or three minutes. Enji understood most of the words but couldn’t make sense of what they meant. Sol finished, and the ground began to rumble.

Enji panicked; he knew what to do in case of an earthquake back home, but here in another world, those rules might not apply. Then, as quickly as the ground shook, it abruptly stopped, and the pit was now covered with dirt.

Elemental magic? Earthbending? He approached the spot where, a few instants ago, a hole in the ground had been, and now it was a slightly raised bed.

“Very few races can claim to be related to elves.” Sol stood beside Enji. “They are the proudest and most pure race in the world. And a bunch of cretins.”

Enji just stared at him.

***

After finishing breakfast, he climbed up the stairs to his room. He wanted to wash himself and change into his gym clothes; the weather was hot enough for light garments.

The door was open, and voices could be heard from within. Enji cautiously peered inside. Popa and Silma were cleaning his bed. The way they were doing it was a strange sight to behold. Popa would pull and shake the bedding, and it would float above the bed.

Meanwhile, Silma would cast a spell that engulfed it with a glow. Apparently, that was enough to clean the bedding. He reasoned that that must have been the most efficient way. If they washed the thick bedding, which was similar to a futon, it would take many hours to dry.

“Oh, Enji Lord came back.” Popa wagged her tail.

“Drop the lord thing,” Enji pleaded.

“If you say so. Then I’ll call you Enji Lo.”

“The hell is that! That makes it even worse.”

“Enji Lo, you fought marvelously last night.” Popa swung her arms in the air, as if she were fighting with swords.

What is she doing? I had a spear, not swords. “I was terrified of that thing.” He looked at Silma as if pleading for help from the wolf-eared girl, but she just kept doing what she was doing and ignored them.

It was magnificent that you used your battle cry,” Popa said as she stared him with starry eyes.

“What battle cry?! That was me about to crap my pants! I’m not a hero or—

“You fought well,” Silma interrupted. “That scream of yours and the thrust of your spear were enough to make the [gleth] hesitate, giving Popa a chance to behead it. If not, it would have jumped inside, making it difficult to slay, and probably you would have been killed or maimed.”

Huh? What happened to the tsundere? To Enji’s surprise, Silma seemed to have warmed to him. She was eloquent when calm, and her voice had a sweet tone. She looked beautiful this morning. He shook his head; he didn’t want to fall for her. His priority was returning to Japan, and falling in love with someone here would make it difficult when the time came to say goodbye. Besides, she might never entertain similar feelings for him.

“Still... Never mind. I’m glad we all came out unscathed.” Enji grabbed his school backpack, which hung from the chair, and sat on the bed to pull out its contents. First, he laid the books and notebooks on the bed, then the gym t-shirt, shorts, track pants, and socks—finally, a tablet, a calculator, and the rest of the writing utensils and miscellaneous items. He was happy that Eithea had returned all of his stuff. Even the soccer ball belonging to those kids from the park lay on the floor next to the bed.

He noticed that the girls had been gawking at his belongings with wide-open eyes. Enji motioned them to get closer. He checked the calculator. It worked, and he didn’t have to worry about the battery; it was solar powered. He left the tablet alone; without the internet, there wasn’t much he could use it for.

“You have grimoires.” Silma’s eyes were glued to the textbooks on the bed.

“These? They are my school textbooks.”

“Skul?” Popa asked.

“Don’t you have schools here?” He glanced from one girl to the other. They were slowly shaking their head, bewildered.

“What is a skul?” Silma, finally, asked.

“It’s a place where you go to learn with many others. The teachers there teach different subjects, like science, history, and languages, among many more.”

“You mean like an apprentice guild,” Silma said. “They have one in the capital, but you have to be wealthy to attend.”

Silma kept glancing between Enji and the books; her ears twitched nervously. “Then... you do know how to read.” Silma leaned forward, placing her face close to his.

Enji, nervous about having the girl so close, shifted his eyes to the books on the bed. He grabbed one and opened it for the girl to see.

“This is a textbook to learn a different language from my native tongue. English is a subject almost universally required in every high school in Japan.”

“It’s beautiful! Are those scribbles, words?”

“They are letters of the alphabet, and a combination of them makes a word.”

“Alfbet?” Popa asked.

“Alphabet comes from Alpha and Beta, the first two letters of one of the languages where I come from. In my native tongue, Nihongo, we use kanji that represent ideograms and kana for phonetic sounds.” He showed the girls a Japanese literature book. They both stared at the book with their mouths agape.

“It has drawings!” Silma held her hand in front of the book as if she wanted to touch the pictures but abstained, afraid she would damage the colorful images.

“They have pictures to make it easier to understand.”

“Then it’s true that you are a scholar! These...these grimoires, what type of magic spells do they teach?” Silma, looking at him with her pupils dilated, asked.

“They are not about magic. They teach general knowledge.” Silma’s expression didn’t change much. Maybe she didn’t believe him. Enji then realized something: his physics book contained many things that, in a primitive world, would be considered magic. Maybe he could use some of it for his survival.

He watched Popa leafing carefully through one of the books. “If you teach me to write and read in your language, I’ll teach you mine,” Enji said to her.

Popa closed the book and carefully laid it with the others, then she rose from the bed and headed for the door.

“Wait! I didn’t mean anything offensive. Please stay.”

Popa stopped by the door but didn’t turn around.

“She doesn’t know how to read,” Silma clarified.

“Oh! But you do. You have a grimoire from which you learned magic.” Engi stood and bowed to the cat girl. “Please, teach Popa and me how to read and write!”

“Ack!” Her tail shot straight up. “If you insist, then I have no way to say no,” Silma said, with her chin high and eyes closed. Her cheeks colored in a deep red.

Tsundere. Enji shifted his sight from Silma to Popa, whose tail was wagging so rapidly that it might have fallen off.