Chapter Text
Sometime after I recovered, my head was turning from the real life info dump that I just suffered. First some mystical story about a legendary creature, then super powers, then special families, then finding out that I’m actually blood related to most of the important people who possess leadership roles on the ship. Wait, doesn’t this mean that I’ll actually have responsibilities and expectations to live up to?! Ugh, my head hurts just thinking about it.
The brothers, seeing me in some kind of funk, had been talking about what Zach and I were doing when the food fight happened while waiting for me to snap out of it. They turned to me in concern when they heard me groan.
“I’m fine.” Giving them a tentative smile, I said sheepishly. “It’s just that I learned a lot of new things today and all this family stuff is making my head hurt.”
A lightbulb lit above Jeffery’s head.
“I think I have something that might help, I’m more of a visual and hands-on learner myself. Follow me.”
Turning around, Jeffery ran out the door and after a second of confusion, Zach and I hurried to catch up with him. Bursting into the hallway, I spotted a corner of Jeffery’s clothes disappearing around a corner and ran after him with all my might with Zach on my heels. Being older and with longer legs, after many twists and turns, soon, the only way to tell which way Jeffery went was by the sound of his footsteps carrying through the hallways.
When I finally caught up with Jeffery, I was surprised that I was only slightly out of breath. Considering that I’m a three year old child that practically sprinted down the length of the ship, which was several hundred meters long, and that I didn’t do any physical activity aside from running around the room to avoid getting glomped, I should at least be panting.
Actually, now that I think about it, how did I even know where Jeffery was solely relying on the sound of his footsteps? Thinking of my last life, I remember a time when I had to chase down this kid because he took something from me. I had a ridiculously hard time trying to find him when I lost sight of him and had to find him without seeing him when he started running down some corridors. Jeffery got pretty far from us too, I shouldn’t have even heard his footsteps.
Since this is the case, then are the walls here actually thin or is it just my newfound super hearing? How quiet did everyone have to be for it to be eerily silent when I just arrived at the party considering I could hear a child’s footsteps from halfway across the ship?
Glancing at Zach and seeing that his expression didn’t change, I shrugged. Guess it’s just something normal here. Why am I even surprised? I mean, if I can start crawling at three and be part of a super family with super powers, why can’t there be super hearing too? Or I guess normal hearing since it’s the norm here?
Turning my attention back to Jeffery, I belatedly realise with mounting excitement that the place we have arrived at would probably be my new haunt and paradise for years to come. I looked at the rows upon rows of shelves filled with all manner of books, comfy sofas, and quiet environment, my life blood that I had sorely missed for three whole years, and I could just feel my inner bookworm jump for joy. One word pushed all other thoughts in my brain aside.
Library
I fist pumped. Fuck Yesssss!
“Ahem.”
Snapping out of it, I cleared my throat and wiped the drool off my face. Zach gave me a weirded out look while Jeffery just sighed in a mixture of the ‘you’re-weird-but-nothing-I-haven’t-seen-before’ and ‘not-another-one’ sighes. I have no idea how I could tell which one was which.
Jeffery huffed. “Well, if you’re quite done, let’s move on. I’d like to get back to the party and introduce you to the other kids.”
Rapidly maneuvering through the room, for someone like me who has never been here, it was essentially a gigantic maze, but Jeffery seemed to know exactly where he was going.
Soon, we stopped in front of a book shelf. All the books on the shelf looked ancient and I was scared that one touch would accidentally destroy them. However, Jeffery seemed to have no such qualms as he, to my amazement, casually jumped higher than his own height and not so gently removed an extremely old looking tome.
Dropping it on the ground, I winced and glared reproachingly at Jeffery as the tome made a loud sound from slamming onto the floor, dust rising in clouds.
Jeffery shrugged. “Oops?”
I sighed.
Zach and I settled down around Jeffery as he flipped through the tome looking for something; I was too busy seeing if the tome was fine to pay complete attention.
“Aha! Here it is, check it out.”
Finally dragging my eyes from the tome to the letters themselves, a sense of doom crashed into me like a tsunami.
I did not understand a single thing.
Fuckkkkkkkkk.
Inwardly, I despaired. I did not look forward to learning a new language. Not at all.
Since I already resigned myself to learning all the new things that came with being born in a new world, I just added reading to my growing list as number one, with learning common sense at two, and didn’t dwell on it too much. Still looking at the mysterious, completely unknown characters, I glanced at Jeffery.
Without even needing me to speak, Jeffery started explaining. “This book has our entire ancestry on it, basically, everyone that was ever born on the ship or married someone on the ship has their name on this book. Well, this book is only for the special families, the other family trees are in the other books. See, our names’ are all here.” Seeing my name for the first time in written form I stared at it mesmerized for a second, memorized every contour of the characters that made it. Noticing that my name led up to two others, I deduced that they were my parents. One name was connected with three others horizontally, probably mom’s.
Actually, now that I think of it, something doesn’t really make sense. Since my mom, aunt, and uncle are all siblings, aren’t they supposed to be from the same special house? How come Yuna-basan’s the head of the Tobu house while Rick-jisan’s the head of the Yuyo house?
“That’s ‘cause grandma and grandpa were the house heads of the Tobu and Yuyo houses, so when they married their children will inherit the Tobu and Yuyo houses based on which power they manifest and order of age.”
Realising that I said all that out loud, I coughed to cover up my slight embarrassment.
Flipping all the way to the front of the book, Jeffery pointed to a name that all the other names connected to. “This guy’s Mudom D. Alex.”
I looked at the name curiously. It all started from this guy, huh.
Flipping through the tome and looking closer, I quickly realised the three words that were constantly repeated were the special family names. Looking even closer I also realised that a disturbing amount of people with one of those three names married into each other and connected to my name. In fact, after scouring the pages back and forth a few times, I would say that a good 80% of my ancestry came from one of the special families. On one particular page, I think I even saw a chain of first cousin marriages.
I blinked.
I’m a pretty open minded person, so I don’t really condemn any particular type of love as long as they’re happy, but from what I can see from the ship (nobody uses wooden ships with sails anymore!), the technology of this word was kind of wonky. Perhaps they don’t know the consequences of inbreeding? I sincerely hope that I did not have some kind of genetic disorder just waiting to manifest.
I turned to Jeffery. “Hey, I noticed that a lot of our direct ancestors married only within the special families, is there any particular reason for this?”
Jeffery made a face. “Of course they did. Even though everyone on the ship can choose who they love, it is more encouraged for our bloodline to marry within the special families to maintain blood purity and consequently the power of our abilities. Actually, I would say that on the entire ship, you have the purest bloodline in terms of special families because mom had us with normies, Rick-ojisan doesn’t have any children, and you technically have blood from each special family mainline.”
Fuck, there’s even a mainline!
Double fuck, I’m part of the mainline!
Triple fuck, I have all the mainlines!
And I have the most inbreeding on the entireship!
I rubbed my face. At least the ship is laid back, if I had been born into some Uchiha clan shit and accidentally became an Itachi because I didn’t want to pretend to be a child, I’m sure I wouldn’t have made it into my thirties.
Cry, I can practically feel the weight of future responsibilities and expectations already. Noooo, I don’t want to be born with status! Give me back my normal, average Joe life!
Some people may have been ecstatic about being born into high status because they may think that they could do whatever they want and live a luxurious, fabulous life. However, high status people have high status people troubles and there is no such thing as a life where reality doesn’t somehow screw you over.
I sighed. I’m compartmentalizing this for later, I’ve learned too much bullshit today for me to handle all at once.
Remembering something, I looked at Zach. Usually, by now he would be jumping off the walls with barely contained energy, but right now he was being unnaturally quiet.
I was slightly, only slightly concerned.
Alarmingly, Zach’s entire face was red as he twitched and fidgeted. Shuffling in his spot and clearly on the edge of exploding.
Looking across from me, Jeffery glanced at Zach and snorted. “Hah, the first time he came here, he was loud as all hell and the librarian showed up to get him a piece of her mind.” He shuddered. “The librarian is extremely scary when she wants to be, I do not want to get on her bad side. Last time she got pissed, she lectured him for a good three hours. Three hours! How does someone find something to talk about for three hours just to scold someone-”
He coughed. “Anyways, like I was saying, don’t get on her bad side. You know it’s bad when she can get Zach to actually listen to her for three hours, miss dinner, and be quiet.”
Silently, I added another point to spending my free time at the library. I think this librarian is my hero.
Getting up, Jeffery shot Zach another glance before taking the tome and putting it back the same way he got it. “Let go before Zach can combust, we have other things to do today.”
Leaving the library with Zach nearly shaking with suppressed excitement. He gave a loud “Woop!” the second we stepped outside and raced down the hall. Jeffery ran after him and after a last glance at my paradise, I turned to follow.