The Girl Who Dreamed of a Different World Page 5

  ‘That’s… good,’ Kana replied. ‘I was thinking that I might be sent out to gather information for the Master.’

  ‘Not yet. The Master believes you will be more effective if you know more.’

  ‘Very enlightened of him.’

  That comment got a couple of seconds of staring, as though Sharassa was trying to judge whether Kana was insulting the old wizard. ‘Do you still believe that this world is a dream?’

  ‘That depends. Most days, I don’t think about it at all. If you ask me, then yes, I do. However, I believe I won’t ever wake up unless I can find a way home. So, I have to work with what I’ve got. I have to get on with my life. I’m not sure I’ll find my way out here, either. I may have to leave the castle to get home.’

  ‘There is no way back,’ Sharassa replied, seemingly on automatic.

  ‘What about a Greater Wish?’

  ‘That–’ Sharassa stopped herself and frowned in thought. ‘That might work, but even the Master cannot create such artefacts.

  Finding one could take years.’

  ‘Which is why I’d like to start, but… But I’m not ready. What am I going to be learning next?’

  ‘More fire magic,’ Sharassa replied, accepting the topic diversion. Kana’s primary weapon was fire magic. Specifically, she was fairly adept at throwing fireballs at targets. Well, she was not that accurate yet and wanted to get a lot better at targeting her attacks, but she could throw single-target and explosive fireballs. Learning more fire magic seemed reasonable.

  ‘Are you still diversifying your portfolio in your own time?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been learning food magic from the kitchen staff. I’m aiming to work my way up to creating food from nothing. I thought that would be useful if I’m travelling.’

  Sharassa nodded. ‘And the spells you’ll learn along the way are also useful. You’ve learned to test food for poisons?’

  ‘That’s what I’m working on. I’ve almost got it. I mean, I can cast it, but I haven’t got the spell in my head yet. It’s not as easy as it should be.’

  ‘Casting from first principles usually isn’t. You’re doing well, Kana. Keep up the good work.’

  ‘Thank you. I will.’ Now, if only the Master were to say something like that to her, Kana figured she might actually start to respect the old man.

  ~~~

  In her darker moments, when believing she was dreaming had been especially difficult, Kana had considered what kind of isekai story she was in. Wandering around the castle in spring, it was easier to view such contemplations in a more favourable light. It was a joke she could find funny.

  Clearly, her coma had not resulted in her being connected to an experimental game system which plugged directly to her brain.

  There was no game interface she could use to view her stats and such. There was always a game interface. Countering that argument a little was the spell skill tree. That seemed rather like it had been designed for a game. You learned a spell and that would provide the basis for one or more spells which branched to others. Kana was heavily into the fire tree, but she was also learning food and protection magic which had their own trees.

  Then again, the progression made sense in too many ways: you learned basic principles first and then worked your way to more complex spells based on those principles. She had been taught enough of the underlying principles behind magic, the ‘physics’

  of it, to see how it all connected and there did not seem to be a skill tree for other things like weapons. All in all, not a computer game.

  So that left a physical transport to an alternate world because she obviously had not been reincarnated. Those could be based on things like tabletop game worlds, and the spell tree might have suggested that option. Kana was not, however, into tabletop games and the protagonists in that kind of isekai usually were. She did read fantasy fiction, but Soken did not seem to even vaguely resemble any world she had read about. It did seem to fit with some of the books she had read in that the technology was a little… strange. As best she could tell, it was because of the relative ubiquity of magic. Magic let people make things which should not be possible with the Middle Ages technological base.

  The local smith, for example, used magic to heat metal to far higher temperatures than a normal forge could manage. There were fabrics that looked like they could be the result of modern chemistry, but the closest Soken had to chemistry was alchemy.

  But then, magic would likely make a difference to a real fantasy world, so that was not a help.

  Kana had not really come to a conclusion regarding Soken’s isekai nature, but she had decided – with some disquiet – that she fitted the protagonist model too well. She had arrived in the place as a fifteen-year-old virgin. She had not been a shut-in, but she had been quite keen on light novels, manga, and anime, and she had played video games. Not passionately. She suspected she might be light on the gaming passion isekai protagonists demonstrated. She was also female. The protagonist of an isekai tended to be male and lacking in any discernible personality. It helped the – mostly male – readers to put themselves into the character’s place. A principal component of Kana’s life in Soken which did not fit with the idea of an isekai was that she did not have a harem of adoring young men fawning all over her. Maybe that was a gender thing: the harems of isekai heroes were usually girls since the hero was a boy. None of Kana’s female friends seemed inclined to join her in bed either, so the harem aspect of her story was definitely lacking. Kana remained a virgin and that was currently fine by her.

  ~~~

  ‘I’m not talking to you,’ Aneshti stated as Kana sat down beside her for the evening meal.

  Kana decided to ignore the obvious disparity between words and deeds. Instead, she turned to Myshta. ‘What am I in the doghouse for this time?’

  ‘Getting rank before her,’ Myshta replied. ‘She was clapping just as hard as everyone else this morning though.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘I was… trying to catch a bug,’ Aneshti said.

  ‘You said you weren’t talking to me.’

  ‘I’m not. Myshta, tell Kana I’m not talking to her.’

  Myshta rolled her eyes. ‘Aneshti’s not talking to you, Kana. Even when she is.’

  Kana grinned and started on her stew. ‘Of course.’

  Aneshti had, eventually, discovered that Kana had a lot more raw talent with magic than she did. It had been a rough couple of days during which Aneshti had really not talked to Kana at all.

  Orin had sort of kept quiet, but Myshta had done her best to persuade Aneshti that Kana was too good a friend to dump over jealousy. That had been the reason the Master had suggested keeping Kana’s ability a secret from Aneshti: Aneshti was quick to decide that she hated someone who could be described as better than her. She could, in fact, get truly venomous about it; Kana had seen Aneshti’s bad side at play with a couple of the other female students. However, in those cases, Aneshti thought they looked cuter than she did, and her judgement had been swift. With Kana, Aneshti had made the mistake of making a friend before discovering a rival. So, the friendship had become a form of friendly rivalry, though it was more a case that Aneshti wanted to be better than Kana despite Kana’s advantage. If it spurred Aneshti to study harder and did not really interfere with their friendship, Kana did not see it as a bad thing.

  ‘What did Sharassa have to say?’ Myshta asked since Aneshti was not talking.

  ‘I’m continuing my studies,’ Kana replied. ‘More fire magic. But not until Antora. I got to spend the day relaxing and tomorrow is Menora, so I get to lie in. To be honest, I’d have happily done the same today and skipped the ceremony if they’d told me I was getting today off.’

  ‘Getting rank is important,’ Aneshti said. ‘I mean, Myshta, tell Kana that rank is important.’

  ‘Rank is important, Kana,’ Myshta said, suppressing a grin.

  Kana shrugged. ‘Don’t have to tell me, I’m Japanese. Hierarchy is what we do
best.’

  ‘I thought rice cakes was what you did best,’ Orin said.

  ‘And politeness,’ Myshta added.

  ‘And–’ Aneshti cut herself off. ‘Myshta, tell Kana that I thought it was public baths that her people did best.’

  ‘Okay,’ Kana said before Myshta could repeat the sentence.

  ‘Hierarchy and politeness are kind of part of the same thing, so I think I should get a pass on that one. Politeness in Japan is all about knowing where you are in the social hierarchy. Really, people would get into fights about how important they aren’t if we weren’t so polite about it.’

  ‘I’m not sure that made sense,’ Aneshti said, frowning. ‘How important they aren’t ?’

  ‘It’s usually a fight over who sees themselves as subservient.

  Important people usually know they’re important.’ Kana frowned.

  ‘Or maybe I’m saying that because I was never that important.’

  ‘Well, now you have rank here, so that makes you more important than me. But I’m not too far behind you.’

  ‘And the requirements for mage are more stringent than battle mage. Don’t forget that.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ Aneshti said, smirking.

  ‘I thought you weren’t talking to me.’

  Aneshti let out a squeak while Myshta and Orin burst into laughter. ‘Myshta! Tell Kana–’ Aneshti shrieked.

  Myshta raised a hand, wagging her index finger from side to side.

  ‘No, you don’t get to start again until the next time you’re not talking to her.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Aneshti,’ Kana said, grinning, ‘I’m sure you’ll find a reason to be affronted soon enough.’

  ‘You make it sound like I’m always finding fault with you.’

  ‘Well, if the shoe fits…’

  ‘Myshta, tell Kana that I’m not talking to her!’

  ‘That has to be a new record,’ Orin said.

  ‘I’ll call Guinness,’ Kana said.

  ‘Great. Who’s Guinness?’

  24 th Pakarte.

  Clothing was something that Kana had had to adjust to in Soken.

  Well, they had met in the middle to some extent. She had arrived in the world with two T-shirts, two skirts, and one dress to her name. Plus one pair of panties and one pair of shoes. It was not really a workable wardrobe, especially when winter came around.

  Luckily enough, the castle had a couple of seamstresses who had provided Kana with suitable garments. They had also looked upon what she had brought with her from home with interest. Short, pleated skirts were not a thing in Soken, until Kana arrived anyway. Shorter skirts used less cloth, which could occasionally be important, and showed off the legs, which was apparently a novel concept. However, it also meant that the established forms of underwear needed to be reconsidered. Loincloths and what amounted to bloomers did not work with a short skirt. To her embarrassment, Kana’s panties became a subject of much debate.

  They had ended up forming the pattern for a new range of underwear the seamstresses were producing – the idea of a cotton gusset was exceptionally novel – and she had been wearing a thong when she had been summoned. Thankfully, Kana’s suggestion that something with more coverage would be just as good, if not better, had been accepted.

  So, Kana had a supply of skirts she was comfortable with and T-shirts were not a major issue because something like a T-shirt was the traditional garment worn by female elves. In fact, Kana thought the outfits Sharassa and Aneshti usually wore looked kind of like Indian saris. There was an ankle-length skirt, frequently embroidered, and a matching, cap-sleeved blouse. The blouse was cut to show off the woman’s midriff, and a draped scarf was worn over both garments in spring and autumn as well as on more formal occasions. Kana had started wearing the elven blouses with an Earth skirt and Aneshti had copied her. Soon enough, many of the younger elf girls had gone the same way. At that point, Kana had discovered a leather, button-up vest which she rather liked, especially in summer, and frequently wore that rather than a blouse. She felt the look was more battle mage than the blouse was.

  Which was all great, Kana thought as she stood there in just her skirt, but she really wished that she had been wearing a bra when she had been kidnapped. She was holding her current ‘bra’ in preparation for putting it on. It was basically a strip of cloth which Aneshti had taught her how to put on. All it really did was hold things in place, and it was not especially good at doing that.

  At fifteen, Kana had been a double-A cup and had not bothered with any form of bra ninety percent of the time. She was now sliding rapidly toward seventeen and there had been some growing

  in the past year or so. She was a good ten or twelve centimetres taller for one thing. Her tied-up hair now fell to her behind.

  Her features had narrowed a little, making her look less childish; she thought she looked like a woman now, rather than a girl. More to the point, she had no way of figuring out what size her chest was, but she was guessing at a C-cup, and the breast band she was about to put on did nothing for her.

  ‘I am going to see Mistress Natishma today,’ she said to the band of cloth. ‘It’s time you became a footnote in history. All I have to do is reinvent the underwired bra. How hard can that be?’

  ~~~

  ‘Okay, so, um…’

  Mistress Natishma smiled indulgently and sipped her not-tea while Kana collected her thoughts. Natishma was probably in her fifties, in Kana’s estimation, and she was the senior seamstress at the castle. There were strands of grey in her black hair –

  always worn pinned into a bun whenever Kana saw her – and a few wrinkles on her face, but she was an attractive woman who was married to one of the senior research mages. She was smart and ready to entertain the whims of a slip of a girl intent on bringing proper lingerie to Soken. Her husband had been unceremoniously kicked out of the room when it had become clear that Kana wished to discuss underwear.

  So far, Kana felt she had successfully managed to describe the basic shape of the garment she was after. She wanted something functional but reasonably sexy, so she had laboured over coverage and shape. In truth, she was expecting Mistress Natishma to say that the fabrics available could not do what she wanted as well as she wanted, but if she did not aim high, she would end up with the worst possible option instead. Now came the difficult bits.

  ‘Well, it has to fit tightly around the ribs,’ Kana said.

  Elasticity was likely to be an issue, but it was a describable issue. ‘At home, we use something called elastic along with some stretchy fabric. Elastic, uh, stretches and then springs back when you let go. So it would hold the bra tight around the ribs which means it… Well, it holds your breasts up. I mean, there are the straps too, but– Uh, except for strapless bras. They don’t have straps. I’m not sure why they don’t slip, but that’s not the point. We need a stretchy material that–’

  ‘Kadokian silk,’ Mistress Natishma said, more to put Kana out of her misery than anything.

  ‘Huh? Silk doesn’t stretch.’

  ‘Kadokian silk does. It’s an alchemical product. Invented by a man named Kadok about two hundred years ago.’

  Kana grinned. ‘I didn’t even know you had silk, to be honest. I didn’t know you had silkworms.’

  ‘Worms? Silk is made from moonspinner threads treated with alcohol.’

  Spinners were spiders; Kana had learned that fairly early on. She was not sure what kind of spider a moonspinner was, but she figured they produced a lot of silk and you could somehow make the fabric out of the webbing using an alcohol treatment. It did make sense, now she thought about it, because some of the tops she had seen Sharassa wearing looked like they were made of silk.

  ‘So, you think this special silk would do the job?’ Kana asked.

  ‘I’m quite sure. It’s often used to make tightly fitting bodices already.’

  ‘Great. Okay, so that leaves us with the underwire and the closures. Um, the underwire is…’

&nb
sp; ‘A wire?’ Natishma’s half smile was maybe a third smirk.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which goes under something?’

  ‘Aha! Yes and no. It goes, um…’ Kana draw a finger around the underside of her right breast in a half-hearted attempt to show the general scheme of the thing. ‘It goes around the underside of your breast and it’s sewn in. So, I guess it holds the shape of the cup and provides more support?’

  ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’

  ‘I’m telling you, but I get the feeling that this might take a little trial and error, so I’m kind of asking too. The wire has to be reasonably stiff to hold the shape, but it needs to have a bit of flexibility too. Otherwise it would probably be uncomfortable to wear.’

  Natishma nodded, her face going a little more serious. ‘We’re straying out of my profession and into Master Smith Stoknar’s.

  I’ll accompany you over to his forge when we have the basics beaten out. We can discuss the requirements of this all-important wire with him then. You mentioned closures. Could we not simply tie or pin it closed?’

  ‘Well, the idea is that your bra doesn’t show under your clothes.

  Or not much. So… Do you know what a hook and eye is? I haven’t seen them anywhere, but…’ Kana trailed off at the mildly perplexed look on Natishma’s face. ‘Okay. How am I going to explain this one?’

  ~~~

  ‘That’s a pretty good design,’ Master Smith Stoknar said. ‘Bit of stiff wire and I can form these hooks and eyes you want, easy as pie. I’ve something suitable in stock.’

  ‘Great,’ Kana said. Having spent time in the castle’s kitchens, she was aware that pie was not as easy to make as people seemed to think, but she was not going to quibble. ‘We think we need six for the first try.’

  Stoknar waved the requirement away. ‘An hour’s work at most.’

  Master Stoknar was the senior blacksmith at the castle and he was a dwarf. Scaled up, he would have been a really formidable man.

  Well, he was anyway, but his short stature tended to take away from his physique. He was a good fifteen centimetres shorter than Kana, but his shoulders were broad and the muscles on his arms dwarfed Kana’s thighs. His brown hair was often unruly and fell to his shoulders. On a rest day, he had taken the time to trim the burns out of his beard and it was far more carefully maintained than his hair. His face heavily featured a bulbous nose, though if you noticed the bright spark of intelligence in his brown eyes, you tended to overlook the roughness of the rest of his features.