Myne

Main (マイン Main)(Myne in Eng ver.) is the protagonist of Ascendance of a Bookworm.

Appearance
Main is a cute little girl that looks out-of-place with her commoner background. Her skin is sickly pale and clean. Her eyes are deep gold, like the moon, and very expressive. Main has long dark-blue hair resembling the night sky reaching to her back, which she tied to half updo bun with a wooden hairpin. Due to her suffering from the Devouring, she looks several years younger than her actual age.

As Urano Motosu
Urano Motosu was a young woman in her early 20s, a recent college graduate who had just found her dream job as a librarian. She lived with her widowed mother; her father died in an accident when she was young.

Urano died by being buried by an avalanche of books during an earthquake. Her last memory is praying desperately that she can still read books even in the next life.

Reincarnation as Main
Before the start of the story, Main was a very sick girl that rarely ever left her house. Main had barely ever participated in neighborhood social events, so the local children considered her a rare monster with a low encounter rate. Due to the Devouring, her personality and most of her memories were eventually completely eroded and replaced with that of her previous life as Urano Motosu; the series follows the new Main from Urano's full emergence onward.

Personality
Eva describes Main before her "death" as being jealous of Tuuli and only happy when she was "dreaming of another world". After her memories were subsumed by Urano's, her mind became a hybrid of Urano and her original self, retaining her love for her family but developing an energetic and book-obsessed side to her personality, bemusing the other villagers for both her odd obsession with literacy (for a peasant) and inventiveness. Each time she sees blood or death-related situations, she faints.

Story
In the first chapter, Main nearly dies to fever and is overcome by memories of her past life. Learning she has been reborn to a body of a frail five-year-old girl living in a medieval era, Main who become depressed decides that as long as she has a book she can overcome anything. She tries to find something to read, only to become frustrated by the lack of books at her disposal.

Upon learning that books are expensive, owned mostly by nobles, Main declares 'I'll make them myself!' beginning her journey into bookmaking. The first hurdle she finds is her frail and sickly body, often left bedridden with a fever after mild exertion. The second hurdle is the language barrier, with Main's limited vocabulary and only knowing how to write in Japanese.

One day she is visiting the gate where her father works and is introduced to Otto, a colleague of her father and former traveling merchant. Otto gives Main a slate and shows her how to write her own name, and slowly progresses through the alphabet. She begins frequenting the south gate, learning new words to help Otto with his math paperwork by using the math skills she developed in her Urano days, in exchange for more slate pens

As her health and literacy increases, she trains her body so she can walk to the forest. Her progress is slow but thanks to her friend in Lutz, she is able to manage it.

Translation
マイン is directly translated as Main, pronounced as Mine. The Light Novel translator uses Myne to avoid confusion among the English readers. The official anime translation has used both Main and Myne in different episodes.

Trivia

 * Before dying, It had been Urano's dream to go to a foreign library with a long history.
 * Urano's mother was very into crafts, and would drag her along. As a result, she became very good at a lot of different handcrafts.
 * Due to her stunted growth, people sometimes mistake her to be around 3, and her sister Tuuli to be around 7 or 8, but their age difference is only by one year (5 & 6 at the beginning of the story).
 * Main's final memories before being subsumed by Urano were "...It's so hot. It hurts. I hate thiiis..."
 * Main had dreams of Urano's world, where she could run and play and eat all she wanted. She wanted to sleep forever so she could stay in the other world.
 * Urano has remarked that Main has exceptional, close to pitch perfect, hearing.
 * Main's favorite fruit is Raffles.