Sieglinde’s lesson is actually surprisingly easy to listen to. Ririi is also taking in the contents of her textbook pretty smoothly, almost like a completely different person is explaining things in a simple way.
“And what happens to magic circles then?”
“Hum… They get big?”
“Correct. You’re not going to stumble during lessons for a while at least.”
Sieglinde takes a deep breath, and closes the textbook… And then something happens. Ririi, who is sitting next to Sieglinde, hugs her.
She never showed any signs of taking to her, but I guess after the entrance ceremony and today, Sieglinde has been classified as ‘someone that can be leaned on’.
“Miss Sieglinde, thanks for helping Ririh study.”
“A-ah…!”
Sieglinde looks at Ririi on her lap, and seems overwhelmed. Her hands have left the textbook, but she’s just letting them hang in the air, like she doesn’t know what to do with them. She’ll be happy if you pat her, you know?
“Hoa… Studying is… Tiring…”
“Kyu!”
Ririi curls up on Sieglinde’s lap, and Beary comes running from the corner of the room, like it noticed something’s happening. It tries to go up the sofa, so I pick it up and place it there, and it slips in between Ririi and Sieglinde. You’re pretty popular, Sieglinde.
“W-what is the meaning of this…?”
“Good for you Sieglinde. You’re popular.”
“No, that’s not what I…”
Her eyes are going all over the place, like this is troubling for her. She eventually looks at me like she’s asking for help, so I point with my chin, and she slowly lowers her hands onto Ririi and Beary.
Looking at them like this, it looks like it could make a nice painting.
The title would be… ‘Mother and child’. Although the strange bear cub kind of feels out of place.
◆
I take Ririi and Beary to bed when they start to doze off, and we relax.
“I just thought back to the lessons I received.”
She says after I asked her how come she was suddenly able to teach on an underclassmen level. That’s pretty shocking to me.
“Thought back… To your underclassman classes? That was twenty years ago.”
“Obviously, I don’t remember everything perfectly, but I do remember it to a certain extent.”
“No no, no way… I barely even remember classes from when I was an upperclassman.”
“That’s just because you weren’t listening.”
She says like it’s obvious, but it’s clear that she’s the weird one here. Actually, looking at how composed she is makes me lose confidence in that. Is it really that I just have a really weak memory…?
“You even forgot about your debt to me, right? And how you were banned from Gatlin.”
“Uu…”
As always, she pokes right where it hurts. I’m starting to think there are even more blunders of mine that I don’t remember, but are safely stored in her head.
“…By the way, how was Ririi? Did you feel the greatness of a high elf in her?”
I say that to change the subject, but I’m actually curious too. According to that high level magic book, high elves possess great intelligence. Ririi learned speech in less than a year, and it feels like she’ll remember the contents of a textbook for underclassmen by just looking at it for a bit.
Sieglinde thinks about it a little before responding.
“…I don’t know. I didn’t really feel anything worth noting.”
“Really? I think it went pretty well.”
“It was a pretty light course to begin with. At least it didn’t feel to me like she was incredibly perceptive, in a way I’d expect.”
“I see… Well, Ririi doesn’t really like studying.”
Progress is always going to be slower when you don’t care about the thing in question. From what I can tell, Ririi is interested in magic itself, but doesn’t like learning the theoretical side of it.
She’s just like me…
…But then…
“Why did she want to talk…?”
That would mean that Ririi learned so much about language in a year because she wanted to talk. At the very least, she never seemed bothered when I was teaching her words, and she read picture books voluntarily.
“What do you mean?”
Asks Sieglinde, confused about what I mumbled.
“Ririi went from not knowing how to speak at all to talking like that in a year. And unlike studying, she didn’t seem at all bothered by it. I was just wondering why.”
“…Ha.”
Sieglinde lets out a dry laugh. She looks exasperated, but I don’t see where she’s getting at.
“What’s so funny?”
“You really are you. Still as dense as ever.”
“Me? Dense? I don’t think I’m dense.”
“That just shows how dense you are. There’s only one reason why she would want to learn how to talk.”
“What? To survive…?”
Back then, she was a slave, and treated very badly. I’m sure she was struggling to survive.
But what Sieglinde says is completely different from what I’m thinking.
“Ririi… Just wanted to talk to you, right? Because you saved her.”
“…Ha.”
This time I’m the one letting out a dry laugh. It’s not like I’m making fun of her for what she said, but I can’t help but look at her with a cynical expression.
My face naturally loosens without me realizing it, like someone slipped me some sweet chocolate while I was sleeping.
“…I hope that’s the case.”
I try my hardest to tighten up my face and speak like it’s no big deal. I don’t want her grinning at me. Then again, I don’t want to think of myself as someone who’d smile because of something like that.
I’m not some stupid doting parent.
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Thanks for the chapter Hidamarisou! Oh no, he’s too far gone as a stupid doting parent to notice haha.