171 – On the Importance of Money -4-
Today is also a peaceful day in the young lady’s room.
In the languid afternoon with a warm spring breeze blowing in, I visited the young lady’s room with snacks and saw her sitting at her desk, focused on something.
“Fold it once to the left.”
Muttering to herself, the young lady was fumbling with a large piece of paper and nodded, moving her hand once more.
“To the left again…”
The young lady puckered her lips and focused. Seeing her engrossed in something incredibly profound, I killed the sound of my footsteps and approached her slowly.
Was it the delivery the other day?
– Don’t open it no matter what if the Ricardo delivery comes.
– Why not?
– Just because. It’s my underwear.
I recalled the delivery where she told me not to open it because it was her underwear. It felt like just the day before she learned how to order a delivery by letter, so I was impressed that she had sent a delivery herself.
The young lady was focused, pressing down hard on the cardboard with her small, delicate fingers.
“Young Lady.” I asked, watching her concentrate on the origami.
“Hm?”
The young lady replied without looking at me.
I waved my hand beside her and made funny faces, but I failed to draw the attention of the young lady who was focused on one thing.
Is this what it means to be a workaholic?
I was impressed by the young lady’s focus on one thing, but I was a little disappointed that she didn’t even notice the world’s most handsome butler.
I asked the young lady with a sullen expression, wondering why she was suddenly doing origami.
“What are you doing?”
“Folding a box.”
“Why are you suddenly folding a box?”
“Well…”
-Thud.
The young lady folded it in half once and pressed down hard again to fold it in half, her mouth shut tight.
The young lady’s talkativeness decreased rapidly as the cardboard took shape.
The young lady, who felt her concentration slipping, nodded, puffing out her cheeks, and I sighed, watching her not finish her answer.
“Young Lady!”
“Hmph…!”
The young lady’s shoulders jumped in surprise at my loud voice, and she looked at me. Her eyes were filled with tears because she was so surprised, and I smiled.
“Why are you folding a box?”
“Ah. Where was I…?”
“You can start again from ‘Well…’.”
“Right. Well…”
The young lady moved her hands again and folded the box.
It seemed that she was trying to use the advanced technique called multitasking. At this rate, it seemed like I wouldn’t hear the reason for the young lady’s origami today, so I took the paper box from her hands and carried it on my back.
“Oh…!?
The young lady’s eyes widened as the cardboard suddenly disappeared. She stared blankly at me carrying the box on my back and tilted her head.
“Ricardo, do you want to fold paper too?”
“No.”
“Let’s do it together. It’s fun.”
The young lady said, handing me the cardboard paper piled up on the desk.
“It doesn’t seem fun.”
“…”
The young lady, who had been hit in her weak spot, said with an awkward smile.
“No, it’s really fun! Look!”
The young lady picked up new cardboard paper from the desk and started folding it again. I could tell by the young lady’s cheerful expression as she folded the box that she was confident.
“Sigh…”
The young lady isn’t talking about folding the box right now, but about wanting to lie down. I smiled a little and sat down in front of the young lady, resting my chin on my hands, and said.
“So why are you folding this?”
The young lady replied with a faint smile.
“I was working a part-time job.”
“A part-time job?”
“Yeah. A part-time job folding pizza boxes.”
“Oh…”
I looked at the box the young lady was folding and thought.
‘Box…?’
Should I really call the masterpiece that contains such a profound philosophical and artistic sense a ‘pizza box’? Looking at the young lady’s work, which seemed to express a bizarre Medusa, I gave an honest answer.
“This is going to get cut too.”
The young lady nodded with a serious expression and replied.
“I think so too.”
As expected, the young lady was quick to objectify herself. The young lady handed me the cardboard paper piled up like a mountain on the desk once again and said.
“Do you want to do it together?”
“No.”
“Why not!”
“It doesn’t seem fun.”
“Let’s do it together!”
“No.”
“Siiiiigh!”
From that day on, the young lady began to take a great interest in side jobs. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the young lady would send letters to part-time job advertisements in the newspaper.
At first, I opposed it because I didn’t want the young lady to suffer, but I was eventually defeated by the young lady’s stubbornness to earn money.
-Sigh! I’m going to earn money!
-Can’t I earn it?
-No. I’m going to earn money too.
-Can’t I just earn double?
-Because Ricardo becomes a bad guy when he pushes himself too hard. No.
-Why are you acting like this all of a sudden? I’m a bad guy to begin with. I even ripped someone off today.
-…Now that I think about it, that’s true.
-Yes.
I allowed the young lady to have a side job because it is good to earn money on your own and I wanted to help her develop her social skills.
If she starts earning her own money now, she will come to understand the value of money.
I nodded when the young lady pointed to a side job article in the newspaper and said, “This one!” and she was finally able to escape being a freeloader.
And she made a lot of mistakes.
She tried making a teddy bear and ended up making a female bear, so it got cut.
She tried folding a cardboard box and ended up needlessly burning her artistic soul, which cost her even more money.
She tried embroidering a handkerchief and ended up throwing it away in frustration, but I nodded and thought she was amazing for continuing to try to do something.
If Darbavar had seen this, he would have been in tears. I wanted to take a picture and send it to Darbavar, but I didn’t have a camera, so I held back.
And now, the young lady was sitting on the bed working on a new side job.
The young lady was making a stuffed animal with clumsy stitches and said to me with her lips pursed.
“Ricardo.”
“Yes.”
“Ricardo, don’t let your hair grow long.”
“My hair?”
I looked in the mirror and asked the young lady.
“Why not?”
“It’s ugly.”
“I have such handsome features that any hairstyle would look good on me.”
“No. You look best right now, Ricardo.”
I made a stuffed animal just like the young lady and smiled as I teased her.
“So, young lady. Do you think I’m handsome now?”
The young lady paused briefly at the question that came as naturally as flower petals fluttering in the spring breeze, and then she said with a sly smile.
“Yes. You’re handsome.”
My face suddenly turned red.
The young lady sensed something was wrong and stopped holding the needle and doll.
“Huh?”
The young lady realized belatedly that she had been tricked.
The question mark floating above her head grew long and became an exclamation mark, and the young lady quickly shook her head and corrected what she had said.
“No!”
“What do you mean no?”
“I misspoke. You’re ugly, Ricardo.”
“It’s too late. You’re already under my spell….”
“Eek!”
“Ha!”
“eeek…”
The young lady pouted and huffed, then let out a long sigh.
“You’re not handsome, but you’re tolerable.”
I nodded with a small laugh at the young lady’s sharp-tongued grumbling.
“Even that is enough.”
Even this was fine with me.
A brief silence flowed by, and just as the young lady’s stuffed doll was about to take its first step into the world.
-Thud.
“eeek!!!!”
The young lady, who had been pricked by a needle, bid farewell to the stuffed doll with a loud scream.
“Don’t do that!”
As expected, I like this kind of daily life.
*
An oppressive atmosphere flowed through Histania.
Rowan, who was sitting in his dark office, let out a sigh as he looked at the letter on his desk.
[Invitation to be a Short-Term Professor at the Academy]
Rowan muttered as he stroked the letter with a dark expression.
“A professor at the Academy…”
The Academy.
It was a place of memories that were over 20 years old.
It was the place where he had met and fought with his rival, and where he had first met the woman he loved.
And through the connections he had made there, he had gained two daughters and a son.
For Rowan, the Academy was like the beginning of his life. It was the only place where he could breathe, away from his father’s insistence on swordsmanship and his suffocating family.
“…”
Rowan let out a bitter smile as memories flashed through his mind for the first time in a long time.
‘Was that the same for Hannah?’
He didn’t think he was a good parent to his children. The family was more important than his children, and he had a duty to continue the Histania family line.
He had to raise a talented successor for a better future, and in order to do that, he had to pick out the good seedlings and the withered stalks, so he admitted that he was a harsh father to his children.
Even so, there was one stubborn thought that remained in Rowan’s mind: ‘I had it worse.’ It was a cowardly excuse.
That kind of excuse is what got his daughter killed.
Rowan sat in his chair for a long time, lost in thought.
Should he go to the Academy?
Or should he ignore it, like he always did?
One thing was for sure. Right now, Rowan…
Missed his youngest daughter.