Chapter 102: The Final Day of Organising the Reference Room
In the afternoon, the members of the Young Branch Squad had gathered in the reference room.
Facing them was a party of three wearing thoroughly uncomfortable expressions — the Black Wolf Band.
The members of the Young Branch Squad looked a little bewildered themselves.
Larc, the leader of the Black Wolf Band, stood with his arms crossed, glaring at the door of the reference room.
“Are we really doing this…?”
Gado, standing beside him, grumbled.
“Not much choice, is there.”
Jean shrugged.
“Mikaila-san told us to.”
Then a low voice came from behind them.
“I can hear you.”
All three of them flinched at the same time.
Standing at the entrance of the reference room was the deputy guild master, Mikaila.
“This is your penalty for making a scene in the dining hall.”
She smiled brightly. Even though it was a smile, there was something frightening about it.
“Half a day’s work helping out. Your pay is halved.”
“Yes…”
“Run off, and you get nothing.”
“Yes…”
The three of them hung their heads weakly. Mikaila nodded, satisfied.
“Good.”
Then she looked at Ren.
“Right then, Ren-kun, explain it to them, would you.”
“““Eh?”””
The members of the Black Wolf Band cried out in surprise. They looked at Ren with puzzled faces. Ren shrugged, a little uncomfortable.
“…All right, I’ll explain.”
“He was explaining things at the training ground too.”
“Who’s he?”
“A new member of Young Branch?”
Ren could hear the Black Wolf Band whispering among themselves, so he began with a greeting.
“I’m Ren. I’m not a member of the Young Branch Squad. Nice to meet you.”
He gave a small bow. There wasn’t much of a reaction from the Black Wolf Band, but he started his explanation anyway.
“Organising the reference room was planned to take three days, and today is the last one. We’re sorting the reference material by type — magical beasts, medicinal herbs and so on — so that things are easier to find.”
In the corner of the reference room, wooden board reference material still waiting to be sorted was piled high.
It was far tidier than before, but there was still a great deal of it.
“First is the broad classification. We’re dividing the reference material in the room into ‘magical beasts’, ‘medicinal herbs’ and ‘other’. We sort them by embedding coloured feathers into the top of each board.”
Ren pointed at the shelves.
Coloured feathers had been set into the ends of the shelves.
“Red is magical beasts, green is medicinal herbs, yellow is other. And anything with both magical beasts and medicinal herbs mixed together is ‘set aside’ for now, and marked in blue.”
“Huh…”
“If it’s a magical beast, we sort it further by type — ‘dog-wolf type’, ‘bird type’ — and then again by where it appears.”
“Oh…”
The Black Wolf Band gave dull reactions, as though it still hadn’t quite sunk in.
“…It might be easier if you tried it yourselves…”
Ren looked towards Victor.
“Hey. How about one of you to each of them, working together? We don’t have enough letter boards, either. I’ll make more later.”
“Ah, true. It would be rough going without a bundle of letter boards.”
Victor nodded, then turned to Fred and Loren.
“Loren, you’re with Gado — show him how it’s done and teach him. Fred, you take Jean. And you’re with Larc.”
“Right.”
Larc nodded. Loren and Fred looked uncertain.
“I’m teaching Gado?”
“You were up against him earlier, weren’t you?”
“We had a match, yeah, but… that’s not teaching him anything.”
“Just show him how you do it when you’re working.”
At Victor’s words, Loren pulled a complicated face, but gave a small nod.
At first Loren and the others were stiff with one another, but as they showed off the letter boards bound with cord, they seemed to be explaining things well enough.
After about an hour, things began to change.
“I’ve got it!”
Gado pointed at an instruction board.
“This one’s medicinal herbs, right!”
“Oh?”
Loren peered over.
“That’s right. How did you know?”
“I did it a few times and remembered it!”
“Ohh! Nice one.”
“Heh heh.”
Gado grinned happily. The air in the reference room seemed to shift a little.
The Black Wolf Band, so uneasy at the start, now looked as though they were rather enjoying themselves.
The afternoon was drawing to a close.
As Larc carried reference material over to the shelves, he muttered,
“This is unexpected.”
“What is?”
Victor asked.
“So this is what the reference room is like.”
“You’d never been in?”
“Never.”
Larc laughed.
“Can’t read, can I.”
“…”
“…I always figured it was hopeless anyway.”
Larc said it and looked along the shelves.
“But… I can manage numbers now, at least, and I’ve learned a few letters too.”
Victor turned up the corner of his mouth.
“Not bad at all.”
“Still can’t read the reference material, though. Got a lot more to learn.”
Larc laughed.
The last board went onto its shelf. The ones marked “set aside” still remained.
But the reference material had been arranged by category. The look of the room had clearly changed.
“Hmm.”
A familiar voice came from the direction of the door. It was Mikaila.
Everyone turned round.
Mikaila slowly looked over the reference room. Then a smile crossed her face.
“Not bad at all.”
“…”
Everyone was tense.
Mikaila made a full circuit in front of the shelves, then nodded deeply.
“It looks like a different room.”
Ren let out a breath of relief.