Chapter 35
“Watch your words in front of the kid.”
“Yes….”
Gidan immediately shrank back, bowing his head like a guilty criminal.
Gru, who had been staring blankly, mentally noted the words that should never be spoken.
“And Gru.”
Hic!
“For one week, no TV for you.”
“Guild Master… nooooo….”
Gru turned pale and shook his head. Anything but that…
However, Jurim cut him off mercilessly.
“Fine.”
Gru rolled his eyes relentlessly and, like Gidan earlier, rested his chin on his hands.
“Eeehh—”
As Gru’s mouth drooped and he wiggled his body, Jurim flinched slightly.
“…Still not allowed.”
Just as Jurim tried to look away, he suddenly reached toward Gidan.
Thud!
Gidan lost his balance, and Jurim caught him in his arms.
Gasp! Gru inhaled sharply.
“Da-Dan oppa saved me…!”
Gru looked at Jurim with wide eyes, as if to say, “It was you.”
Jurim frowned as he checked Gidan’s condition.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because I didn’t want Dan oppa to go to the promotion team….”
“The publicity team, you mean.”
After checking Gidan’s condition, Jurim called an ambulance, which soon took him away.
Gidan was said to be resting temporarily due to fatigue and potion overdose. Jurim told Gru not to worry, then put on an eye mask.
‘Dan oppa is all fancy and riding high.’
Gru pressed against the window and watched the ambulance carrying Gidan with envy.
“Ah, tomorrow after kindergarten, we’ll go buy a bed for your room. I’ll change all the furniture too.”
Gru hurried over to Jurim.
“Huh? You have a bed in your room already?”
“That one’s mine. I’ll get you a small baby bed that fits your height.”
“Baby….” Gru pouted, and Jurim, lowering his eye mask, smiled and tugged at his lips.
“It’s your room. Pick whatever you like.”
My room…. Excited, Gru fidgeted with both hands.
“But kids grow fast. At five, the bed might become too small.”
Children need clothes whose sleeves reach their fingertips. They grow quickly, so the clothes soon become small. The same goes for beds. A tiny child’s bed will soon be too small.
Jurim replied nonchalantly.
“Then we’ll get a bigger one. About the size of a baseball.”
From a pea to a baseball, Gru laughed.
“What if it’s as big as a soccer ball?”
“Hmm… I don’t think it’ll get that big.”
Ding!
Gru, a baseball forever?
“Then I’ll get you one as big as a soccer field.”
“…Really?”
“Of course.”
Jurim held Gru on his lap, leaning back in his chair, and lowered his eye mask again.
As darkness filled his vision, he remembered the conversation with the orphanage director.
“I normally wouldn’t mention this…
It’s not that I’m hiding it, but if people know a child was returned after adoption, some think there’s something wrong with the child. That’s not true. What did the child do wrong? Did kids have a choice? Adults took them and returned them as they pleased. It was all the adults’ fault…
Gru was adopted by a family for about three months.
When her foster mother took her from the orphanage, she said in a voice dripping with love that she would love Gru. Gru followed her so well, calling her ‘Mom’. At that time, we thought the child was going to a good home.
But she returned after three months.
The middle-aged couple who brought her back said it was heartbreaking and they were sorry. They said now they might have another child, and thought Gru might have difficulty adjusting, so they returned her. They wanted her to find a family where she could be loved more.
When asked what happened, Gru said one day her mom called her ‘Aunt’ because there was going to be a baby in her tummy.
They weren’t bad people. It wasn’t that they wanted to hurt her… but they had to return her. The child was a rare bloodline, and maybe they felt it was too precious to wait too long.
I understand their feelings, but… I wonder if it was really necessary to treat the child that way.
Please be patient with Gru, even if she can’t accept you as family right away, Guild Master. She just needs time. She’s really smart and kind… she’s beautiful, good, and lovable, and has already awakened… just give her time—“
“Understood, Director.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll handle the child’s situation, so don’t worry.”
People can be frighteningly cruel. Sometimes, Jurim felt that human malice could be sharper than the disasters in the Tower. Sleep had fled, and his mind was in disarray. He took a deep breath to calm his anger.
Then, the sudden smell of the baby relaxed him. He gently patted Gru’s back like singing a lullaby and spoke slowly:
“When you grow, your room will grow too.”
He would fill it piece by piece so Gru could feel it was her own space, that she was a part of the house.
Gru rested on his lap, eyes closed. Fluffy clouds became a pea-sized bed, then a baseball-sized one, and eventually grew as big as a soccer field.
I wonder if a bed as big as a soccer field exists?
A huge bed that doesn’t fall even if you roll three times would be fun.
As she slept in Jurim’s arms, Gru dreamed of playing soccer on her bed.
The next day, after Gidan was hospitalized:
Gru placed star-shaped candies into syrup bottles lined up like dominoes.
Pop, pop, pop…
Each bottle received a single candy. Normally, she would have spent all her energy combining the syrups one by one, but now…
[Skill Activated: Skilled Manipulation]
With the skill activated, all candies in the bottles melted together and turned red.
“Huh. Huh. Huh!”
Skill leveling for Manipulation worked like this:
Manipulation < Basic Manipulation < Intermediate Manipulation < Skilled Manipulation!
Gru no longer had to struggle activating the skill one by one. Thanks to skipping two levels at once, she could combine them all at once.
Gru can now produce in bulk!
“Yay!”
Closing the syrup bottles, Gru admired her growth repeatedly.
Also:
[Strawberry Syrup (B)]
Recovers wounds and stamina.
Note: Ensure children do not get addicted to sweetness!
B-grade recovery potion!
Advanced hunters usually buy B-grade potions because higher grades are less cost-effective or rare. Lower-grade potions would require frequent consumption, increasing the risk of potion overdose.
Like Dan oppa…
Thinking of Gidan in the hospital, Gru packed B-grade syrups in her quokka crossbody bag to take for a hospital visit.
C-grade can be sold.
Like other skills, potion making doesn’t always succeed, so there were still plenty of C-grade syrups.
[Excellent Strawberry Syrup (C)]
Recovers wounds and stamina.
Seeing the word “Excellent,” Gru narrowed her eyes.
It has a weird word in front, but… it’s excellent, so it’s fine.
Probably.
