Volume 4 - CH 5.10

「No, I mean, look at it this way. You are in charge of supplying us the information about the monsters that we can encounter in the Labyrinths, but even you cannot know every little piece of information in the world. And what do you so if you do not know something? You go and search so that you can fill the blanks and holes in your knowledge. That is exactly what the libraries were made for.」

The agreement that Sherry and I have both agreed on is that whenever I am going to have some questions about monsters, Labyrinths, or anything related to the life here in the empire, she is going to be my go-to in search of answers, so knowing as many things as possible is going to greatly benefit her, and it is going to be an even better development for me, since I will not have to learn how to use the letters and ten writing of this world myself. At the beginning of my life together with Roxanne I tried to learn how to write the letters of this world’s written language, but that attempt did not end up too well, mostly because Roxanne is. . . . . . . . .  not exactly a good teacher, to say it mildly.

At the very least I will not have to worry about being the only one in this world who cannot read and write, because as I already learned and confirmed it with Sherry and Roxanne, very few people can actually read and write, most likely because the literacy percentage in this medieval setting has been set to be quite low, most likely because people probably think that knowing how to write and read will not be of that big of a benefit to them. Either way, in my case, whenever there will be something that I will have to read or write, I can always ask Roxanne to do it for me.

Back when I was still going to school in my old world, the only language I was good at was Japanese, my mother tongue. As for English, I was not all that good at it and I could never bother myself to learn it better in middle school and throughout what little of high school that I attended, which left my understanding of it at a pretty basic level, maybe even less than that. And now, the story pretty much repeats itself, but this time with Brahim. Oh man, how I envy Schliemann (TL Note: Heinrich Schliemann, a German archeologist who came up with the Schliemann Language Learning Method) and how fast and easy it was for him to learn any language he wanted.

「Th-Thank you very much.」

「You are welcome. By the way, can you read Brahim, Sherry?」

「Yes, I can. I learned how to speak Brahim during my stay at the Slave Shop, and the letters used in Brahim writing are the same as the words of the Brahim language, so I know both how to speak and write in it.」

「I see.」

I guess the old saying that you can use French, English and German languages, both spoken and written as long as you know the letters of the Latin alphabet can also be applied to the Brahim language here as well. The only problem that leaves now is the pronounciation. I wonder how is it with Brahim? Is it also similar, or maybe slightly different after all?

「You learned Brahim at the Slave Shop? That is surprising. I thought that since you said that you had books at home, you learned Brahim by reading those and speaking the words you found in them.」

「I probably would have done that if these books were written in Brahim, but that was not the case. Sine I was living in a Dwarven household and the books were all about smithing and smithing-related subjects, they were all written in Dwarven language as well.」

「You are amazing, Sherry! When I was learning how to read and write, I had to do it letter by letter.」

「While we are still relatively on the subject, is there anywhere you would like to go, Roxanne?」

I asked her while we were walking side by side.

「No, not especially.」

「I see. Okay then.」

「Oh, uhm….. if I said that I wanted to go somewhere in particular, would master take me there?」

Roxanne looked into my eyes.

「That is right. Wherever you want to go, I will take you there.」

「Uhm. . . . .  . . . . The place where I want to go is wherever master wants to go. So please, wherever we end up going, just take me there with you, and I will need nothing else to be happy.」

What is this? How can she be so cute all the time?! Unable to resist the urge, I stroked Roxanne’s doggy ears. She is absolutely the best after all. No one else can even begin to compare to her when it comes to her sheer cuteness factor!

「I understand. Thank you.」

「Yes, of course.」

「I-I also want to go with master wherever he goes!」

Sherry also called out to me like that, which made me feel somewhat bad for her, because that way it probably looks like I forced her to say it thanks to my interaction with Roxanne just now, which caused her to not want to be inferior to her in that regard.

After that, we made our way to the clothing store where we did that Rabbit Meat commission for the Male Clerk, and also where I bought the negligees that are now being used by Roxanne and Sherry.

「Okay, now I want you to go and pick two pieces of clothing each for yourselves.」

「Of course, master. Thank you.」

Once I gave Roxanne my instructions and left her together with Sherry so that they could pick their clothes in peace, I went towards the counter in order to sell the Rabbit Fur first. I was hoping that by the time I will finish selling them and return to the girl’s side with the payment for the furs in hand, but once again I have been thoroughly disappointed. When I walked back to Roxanne, not only was she not done with making her choice, but it looked like she has not even started for good, taking a long and thorough look at each and every one of the camisoles and negligees that were placed on the tables before her. She then picked them all up, spread the on the tables and gave them another long and intense look when they were all spread out like that, until her eyes stopped on a light-red negligee, the very same one that she already has back home.

「Master, is that one going to be all right with you?」

「Yes, as long as it is the one that you have chosen, I do not see why would I have anything against it.」

When Roxanne asked me if it was fine if she took the red negligee and I have her a go-ahead, she smiled at me happily. And by the way, if memory serves me correctly it was Roxanne herself who stated that the negligee of this color was the one that she liked out of all of the ones available here when we were shopping for them the last time. In that sense, it was Roxanne herself, not I, who picked that negligee for her, but if she wants to believe that I was the one who did that for her, then who am I to correct her? I will just keep quiet and allow her to believe whatever she wants to believe.

「Yes, thank you. Sherry, you are going to be fine with the white one as well, right?」

「Yes. As long as we keep them separated by their colors, we will not mistake them with the others, so it is fine by me.」

Oh, that. . . . . . . . honestly, they dealt with it faster than I was expecting them to this time. Which does not change the fact that they still ended up taking their sweet time in the end. In the end, Roxanne decided to take the light-red negligee and Sherry went along with the white one. Unfortunately, it does not look like there were any negligees that were children-sized, so sherry had to compromise by taking the smallest adult-sized negligee possible that the store had to sell. But even when we took that into consideration, it still looked a little loose when she tried it on, and the lower half of it made it look like she was wearing a normal skirt.