Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Chapter 21 Home Sweet Home (1)

After driving diligently, the place we arrived at was a supermarket—more precisely, the toy section of the supermarket. The display shelves were piled high with all kinds of toy houses.

“This is a house?”

“Yes, aren’t there plenty of them?”

Officially, Lia’s house was currently being built in the backyard. I heard that the framework was already complete, and even the interior would be finished in another couple of months.

In truth, it was a bit much to even call it a newly built house. It would be more accurate to say it was a ten-pyeong room connected to the kitchen on the first floor of the coffee shop.

If I asked for a palace-like house, the Director would certainly pull some strings, but as the one receiving the favor, I couldn’t shamelessly demand specific options outright.

And most importantly, Lia didn’t need that house.

Since she could freely shrink and enlarge her body, even the dressing room where Lia currently stayed was, proportionally speaking, a penthouse of nearly several hundred pyeong.

If there was one regrettable thing, it was simply that the place was far too bare for a little girl.

Even the piece of furniture I had made for her as a bed was nothing more than an overturned ramen box with several thick layers of blankets laid over it.

So after thinking it over, I decided to prepare a separate house for Lia.

A cheap but fairly nice luxury home.

“When you look at it this way, you are not much different from that raccoon fellow.”

“Elder, that’s an insult.”

“Ha! At least you know it’s an insult! What sort of madman buys a child a toy for a house...”

“Wow! It looks like a little village!”

“Want to get down and look around?”

“Yes!”

“Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, Elder. Everything you said is right.”

“Tsk, once again I have recited scripture to a cow.”

After letting Lia down from the cart, where she had been enjoying her ride,

“Pick whichever house here you want to live in, Lia. I’ll buy it for you as a present.”

“A present?”

“Yeah. Once you choose one, it’ll become Lia’s house.”

“A present...”

Lia savored the word present, then soon nodded and, like any other little girl, became completely absorbed in the toy houses.

“Looking at her like this, isn’t she just a girl her age?”

“You still haven’t given up?”

“No.”

“She may possess a sense of self, but she is not a human child. No matter how closely I examine her, she is merely one of the wandering thoughts that absorbed benevolent energy.”

“You already told me before, so I know.”

I knew.

It was only a few days ago that I realized what the sense of incongruity I had felt ever since Lia first entered the coffee shop really was.

When a person is born, they begin by learning words like Mom and Dad, then only after dozens or hundreds of attempts do they painstakingly learn speech and writing.

But Lia was different.

From the very day she was born, Lia understood exactly what objects were for and what words meant.

But as time passed, something increasingly felt strange.

It was because when she ate spicy food and cried from the pain, or smiled brightly, there was no emotion behind it. Like some awkward doll.

She merely copied those actions because children her age often acted that way when placed in those situations.

Because that was what seemed natural.

The Elder Nine-Tailed Fox said that was simply the nature of a divine tree.

The way a special tree destined to reach the celestial realm protected itself was by taking on an ordinary appearance. Like an oak tree whose acorns could be found everywhere on any mountain.

Lia’s current behavior was also merely an imitation of what the kindest children among the many who came to the supermarket toy section were most likely to do.

That also seemed to be why, from some point onward, the Elder Nine-Tailed Fox stopped speaking much with Lia.

But I didn’t like that fact.

“I took her in as family, so I intend to do everything I can.”

“There is a reason people distinguish between the soul and the spirit. Do you know how many fools meet terrible ends clinging to bodies without souls? Being bewitched by a monster would seem like child’s play by comparison. Especially that child—she is so convincing that even I was nearly fooled.”

“I’ll worry about things like that later. I’ve decided not to do anything that will leave me with regrets anymore.”

“Tsk. If only you were stupid, I could at least teach you, but somehow you never lose an argument.”

“Mister! Fox Grandpa! Over here!”

While our somewhat heavy conversation continued, Lia, who had been choosing a house some distance away, waved at us.

It seemed she had finally made her decision after careful consideration.

“Fox Grandpa? Did you teach her to call me that?”

“She can’t exactly call you Elder like I do.”

“Hurry!”

“Ahem.”

Though her call was urgent, I first rubbed my palm up and down over my face a few times as a signal to the Elder Nine-Tailed Fox to wipe that displeased expression off his face, and only then were we able to approach Lia.

“I want this one!”

“You did a good job picking a big one.”

“Hehe.”

It wasn’t empty praise. The house Lia chose really was large and expensive. It almost felt cruel that a toy in such a brutal price range was displayed in a supermarket where entire families came to shop.

The price was high enough that Lia might have been the only child who had ever succeeded after lying down here and attempting negotiations through tears.

Oblivious to that fact, Lia’s eyes sparkled as she busily explained the toy house to us.

“The bedroom here has lights too! And there’s a chair in the room downstairs! It’s one of those chairs that rocks like this! Right?”

“Yeah. Then should we buy this one?”

“Wait.”

-Tap, tap.

Lia tugged at the hem of the Elder Nine-Tailed Fox’s clothes, who had been standing a little distance away.

“Hm? Me?”

“Do you like it, Fox Grandpa?”

“It is your house. Why are you asking me?”

“Fox Grandpa doesn’t have anywhere to sleep either. Sleep here with Raccoon. There are three whole rooms!”

“Huh.”

“So that’s why you picked a big house? Because the three of you have to sleep in it?”

Lia nodded vigorously.

I hadn’t expected that. I had simply assumed she had chosen the biggest one since she was picking a toy anyway.

“Look. Isn’t she admirable? Are you still going to keep treating her coldly?”

“Ah, when did I ever treat her coldly! I was merely stating the facts. Ahem, this one will do, then?”

Embarrassed for no reason, the Elder Nine-Tailed Fox personally loaded the toy into the cart and practically ran toward the checkout.

Despite his hurried steps, in one hand he pushed a cart he would never normally touch, while his other hand tightly held Lia’s.

If not for his excessively youthful appearance, they would have looked exactly like a granddaughter and her grandfather.

But that warm scene didn’t last very long.

“I think this room would be good for Fox Grandpa. It’s close to the fireplace and the window is big too! And Raccoon can stay here! It’s a room without stairs, so it’ll be easy for him to come and go. Right?”

“That raccoon fellow probably won’t be able to get inside here.”

“What? Why?”

Lia’s eyes widened at the unexpected answer.

“His transformation arts are hopeless. He cannot even transform into a human, so look at how he goes around like that, heh heh.”

“Then I don’t want this house.”

“Huh? You liked it so much just now, so why the sudden change?”

“Raccoon would be the only one without a place to sleep...”

“He already has a house where he lives. It is a palace with more than a hundred rooms, so there is no need to worry. Come now, let us go pay.”

Even with the Elder Nine-Tailed Fox urging her on, Lia’s feet stubbornly refused to move. On top of that, tears even began welling in her large eyes.

“That’s a lie. Lia knows everything. Raccoon is poor. He doesn’t have any money in his pockets, only things like pebbles. There’s no way he has a house.”

“Well, that is true, but... he lives that way because he likes it, not because he lacks money.”

It was a ruthless analysis. If he had heard it himself, even the endlessly solemn Director might have let a small smile slip.

“What are you grinning about back there? Hurry up and help comfort her!”

The sparks flew toward me while I had quietly stepped aside to enjoy the spectacle.

“Then should we buy Sani a house too?”

“Raccoon can’t get into any of the houses here.”

“There’s a house he can get into.”

“Really?”

“Even if this marketplace has everything under the sun, there cannot possibly be a house that large, can there?”

“There is.”

There was. Though I wasn’t sure Sani would like it.

____________

“We’re back!”

“We’re back.”

After finally finishing our shopping after all sorts of twists and turns, we returned home at nine in the evening.

Waiting to greet us as we came in with both hands full of shopping bags was, heartbreakingly enough, Sani, who had been guarding the coffee shop all alone.

“I thought my neck would fall off from waiting!”

“Look at this! It’s a house!”

“Ooooooh! Hurry and take it out!”

Because Lia had stubbornly insisted on carrying it herself, the dollhouse she had been wearing on her back like a pack was placed on the table.

It was a two-story mansion large enough to fill the spacious coffee shop table. It looked almost exactly like the image printed on the box.

“It looks even bigger like this.”

“I thought it would only have the house, but it has all sorts of household furnishings inside too, heh heh.”

“There’s even a refrigerator in here!”

The other parts didn’t matter much. The most important thing was the quality of the bed.

No matter how magnificent the house was, if the bed was shoddy, it would ultimately be worse than simply giving her a room.

And just as expected, the bed placed in Lia’s bedroom didn’t rise much above the level of a toy.

“Are you truly going to let her sleep here?”

The Elder Nine-Tailed Fox asked after noticing why I had been fiddling with the bed for so long.

“It’s okay because I can cover it with leaves.”

There was no way that was okay. Even fairy tales rarely featured a stepfather who slept comfortably in his own bed while making a child sleep on a crude toy like this.

I took out a wooden box slightly larger than my palm that I had hidden beneath the counter and handed it to Lia.

“This is the real present.”

-Click.

Lia carefully opened the box, which was engraved with an elegant gold-leaf emblem. Inside was an ornate wooden bed that looked as though it belonged in the bedroom of some European noble.

There were two of them, no less.

“Wow! It’s incredibly fancy!”

“Oho, now this looks quite like a proper bed. Where did you get it?”

“I found a workshop that makes dollhouses, so I had them custom-make it.”

“What a strange world this is, that such peculiar things can be obtained so easily, heh heh.”

“Even so, it took a fair amount of courage. It’s a little embarrassing for a man to order something like this.”

The excuse that it was a gift for my niece had already become meaningless by the point when I started explaining even the details of the mattress.

Fortunately, the result obtained by sacrificing a man’s dignity was satisfactory.

Because they said making just one was difficult, the owner of the extra bed I had unintentionally ordered was decided immediately.

“Fox Grandpa, hurry and lie down too! It’s so soft!”

“Oh dear, all right, all right. I shall try lying down.”

The two, who had shrunk before I knew it, entered their respective rooms, lay down on their beds, and pulled the blankets over themselves.

And there was someone watching them enviously...

“Sniff, I want to go inside too.”

“That’s right! We bought a house for Raccoon too!”

Lia sprang up from the bed, returned to her original size, and shouted.

“Really?”

“That’s true, but...”

“Why didn’t you take it out? I want to see it quickly!”

“That’s right! Let’s go get our Raccoon’s house too!”

Seeing Sani so excited now made guilt surge in one corner of my heart.

Right. I’m not the bad one. The divine beast who has lived that long without properly learning even a single transformation art is the one at fault.

Repeating that to myself, I took another house out of the car trunk.

A doghouse labeled for large dogs.

“Is this my house?”

“Lia picked it! What do you think? Pretty, right? Isn’t it?”

“Ooooooh... it’s nice...”

“Hurry and go inside!”

“I-I’m going in.”

Was there anything crueler than the innocent consideration of children?

Even while suffering the humiliation of entering a doghouse, Sani had to force a smile for Lia, who was full of anticipation.

And so, the photo I hurriedly took with my phone perfectly captured Sani forcing a smile inside the doghouse, Lia with a happy expression, and the Elder Nine-Tailed Fox looking at the two of them with an oddly complicated expression.