Chapter 104
"Grrr, I'm gonna eeeat you!"
I opened and closed my fingers in a wiggling motion, wiggled my ears too, and stomped toward them as I said it.
Then the children—Soha, a four-year-old girl, and Toki, a two-year-old boy—ran away from me, squealing.
Of course, no matter how far they ran, there was no way a four-year-old and a two-year-old could actually escape me.
I pretended to miss them with exaggerated movements, but when Toki's footing grew unsteady from running around and he looked ready to fall, I swiftly caught him and tucked him under one arm.
Seeing how excited Toki was to be carried up high, Soha must have grown envious too.
She deliberately came over to let me catch her, so I caught her with my other hand and carried her the same way.
"I'm sorry, Eisa-san, for making you play with the two of them."
The woman who bowed to me and said that while I was playing with the children was... Shizuki's wife, a woman named Krone.
Yes, Soha and Toki were Shizuki and Krone's children.
I shook my head, swung the two children around for a while, then set them down.
I liked children, and I liked playing with them too, so there was no problem at all.
Besides, even though they were the head's children, I never treated them with any special deference.
Yet when I set them down, I expected the two children to run away, but instead they grabbed my legs and tugged at them as if they still hadn't had enough of being carried.
I see.
Given that they were Shizuki's children and Kaeha's grandchildren, it was no wonder these two were so lively.
I picked them up securely once more, tapped my feet against the ground, called to the earth spirit, and had it raise the ground and make a slide.
At this sudden turn of events, not only Soha and Toki but also their mother, Krone, stared blankly with their mouths hanging open.
Still holding the children, I climbed to the top of the slide, then swiftly slid down to the bottom.
Ah, it would be safer to make the landing area a sandbox filled with soft sand.
Having seen me slide down once, they must have understood what it was.
When I set Soha and Toki down, they climbed onto the slide together, cheering as they slid down.
It was heartwarming to see Soha, the older sister, help Toki, her younger brother, up the slide.
The soft sand in the sandbox I had just prepared cushioned their landings, and the two became absorbed in playing.
"Um, I'd heard about you from my husband, but you really are an amazing person."
With the two children now playing on the slide and my hands free, Krone, who had finally recovered from the shock, hesitantly spoke to me.
Hmm, well, I suppose that's how I seem to her.
But it was the spirit, not me, that was amazing.
My position was somewhat unusual, but even so, I was just one of this dojo's disciples.
"It's nothing special. Besides, Shizuki is much more amazing for teaching swordsmanship to dozens of people at once."
I said that while keeping an eye on the children playing on the slide so they wouldn't accidentally get hurt.
If I remembered correctly, Krone's maiden name had been Airspeller.
I didn't know whether she still used that surname, but it was the same as the knight captain who had bought my sword.
I hadn't confirmed it, but she was probably that knight captain's granddaughter.
In other words, she was the granddaughter of a leading figure in Roodria Kingdom-style swordsmanship.
I didn't know whether Shizuki and Krone had married for love or as a political arrangement.
It would be far too tactless to ask, anyway.
But now, it was undeniable that the Yosogi style and Roodria Kingdom-style swordsmanship were closely connected.
That relationship had also greatly contributed to the Yosogi style's expansion.
Still, none of that mattered much to me. Shizuki treated Krone with affection, and she treated him the same way.
It was clear that the children, too, were being showered with love, so everything was fine.
Being Shizuki's children and Kaeha's grandchildren, they were something like family to me, even if I couldn't exactly call them my own children or grandchildren.
Mizuha, who now lived in Vistcourt, apparently had married and had a child as well, and I wanted to go check on her sometime.
I wondered whether she was living happily.
Mizuha had been a strong girl, so I thought she'd be fine, but precisely because of that, I worried that she might be pushing herself or doing something reckless.
Well, Vistcourt was in the same country.
Traveling back and forth wasn't particularly difficult.
Someday, I would go see her.
Shizuki was currently teaching Win swordsmanship.
Just as Kaeha was teaching me.
But in reality, Shizuki and Kaeha had different amounts of time available to them.
As the dojo's head, Shizuki had to oversee not just Win but the entire dojo—all its disciples.
The time he could spend teaching Win individually was inevitably limited.
Of course, the other disciples would help train Win to make up for that.
The match in three years would be a contest between Win and me, but at the same time, it would be a battle between Kaeha and the entire Yosogi dojo.
It was a truly enjoyable situation.
Everyone had high expectations for Win.
Even if he didn't feel the weight of them much now, as the time drew near, those expectations would gradually grow.
And those expectations could, at the same time, become tremendous pressure.
Three years from now, after taking all those expectations and that pressure in stride, just how much would Win have grown?
Not just his swordsmanship; his spirit, too, would surely have grown tremendously.
I could hardly wait for the day I crossed swords with the Win he would become.
As both his guardian and a swordsman.
Perhaps this, too, was what it meant to have a fighting spirit, I thought.