143. Freya’s Birthday Present

143. Freya’s Birthday Present

A year has passed.

The restoration schedule, which has been inexplicably delayed, is also delaying our return to the academy.

I hear that strange tree trunks are constantly destroying the academy buildings under restoration, and I can only hope that no major incidents occur.

Anyway.

My life in the north has changed quite a bit. My life, which used to end with training, training, and more training from morning till night, has now become lively and bustling thanks to the friends who followed me from the academy.

And the servants, whom I strangely rarely encountered, now visit me quite often. It’s truly a world of difference. Before, it felt like there was no one else in the mansion besides my sister and me.

Freya seemed to dislike her noisy hometown, but since I am nominally the next head of the family, she didn’t say much. In fact, no matter what Freya said, the friends who had settled in the mansion didn’t seem like they were going to leave.

Instead, Freya stopped eating properly and stayed in her room all day, researching something. I was quite taken aback because it was the first time I’d seen Freya like that, when she usually tried so hard to approach me.

… Well, that’s all for now.

I walked down the long corridor and stood in front of a door. The moment I moved my fingers to knock, a loud sound came from inside before I could.

“-Ah!! Pipi!! Not my panties!! Kyaa!”

“….”

I turned around and knocked on the door of the next room. As my hand touched the sturdy wooden door, a clear knocking sound echoed, and the door was smashed. Through the hole, I caught a glimpse of a small blonde girl.

I stood still for a moment, and then the door opened with a creaking sound.

“You broke it again?”

“Yeah. I think it’s about time you got used to it….”

Claire looked at the broken door with a fed-up expression and said. It’s understandable; I’m surprised myself thinking about how many doors I’ve broken.

“Isn’t it intentional at this point?”

“What do you take me for?”

It’s not common sense to break down the house door all the time. I know that fact.

Even so, sacrificing doors like this was an aftereffect of a major fight with my father a few months ago.

The moment I told him I was going to marry Priscilla and Claire, my father looked at me with a disgusted expression. The opportunity I gained by using my mother’s favor to avoid being beaten to death on the spot was to prove my strength by sparring with my father.

As a result, a major incident occurred, creating a canyon in the northern snowfield, and I still couldn’t control my strength like this because I had overused it then.

… Still, I’ve adapted a lot and improved. When I first came home, I used to blow away the entire door. I was quite embarrassed when I blew up the mansion’s front door in front of my father.

“Anyway, it’s time for breakfast, so I came to wake you up… though you seemed to be awake already.”

“Yes.”

Claire was wearing a comfortable nightgown instead of her usual school uniform. It was a white, loose-fitting one-piece nightgown with quite a few frills, though not exactly flowing.

Combined with Claire’s small and soft appearance, it looked quite… childish. It seems that softness was significantly suppressed when she wore her school uniform.

Claire rubbed her eyes and yawned. Then, she asked me, who was staring intently at her.

“Why?”

“It’s nothing.”

I shook my head and headed to Priscilla’s room, which I had turned away from earlier when I was about to knock. Claire, unable to control her strength, opened the door for me, and as soon as it opened, I saw a room that was quite messy.

“Priscilla, how is Pipi?”

“Ah, Skadi! Yes, Pipi is fine. Although it’s a bit troublesome because she keeps trying to take off her clothes!”

She was wearing a comfortable nightgown, just like Claire. However, it seemed the panties that should have covered her precious parts under the dress had been taken by the baby dragon earlier.

Next to the surprisingly plump, red drill-haired Priscilla, sat a naked young girl with similarly red hair, looking quite sulky.

The small horns on her head and the tail extending from her backside indicated her identity.

A few days ago, Pipi, who for some reason suddenly took on a girl’s form, was causing Priscilla a lot of trouble.

“She hates wearing clothes. She tries to stay in human form to follow me, but she finds clothes uncomfortable… And she keeps taking off other people’s clothes. I wonder who she learned that from.”

“Indeed, who could she have learned it from?”

Pipi was young. If we ignore the difference between dragons and humans and consider only her birth year, she was only one year old. It’s a time when the world is full of things she doesn’t know and things she’s curious about. Of course, Pipi’s growth and learning speed were incredibly fast compared to humans, but the problem was that she also learned many wrong things.

“Let’s have sex!”

“Pipi, you only have sex when you’re an adult.”

The first word Pipi uttered, who had been sticking close to us, was not “Mom” or “Priscilla,” but the word… sex.

It was natural, really. Priscilla always referred to herself with a different epithet, like “Fiery…,” whatever it was, whenever she mentioned herself to Pipi. It’s natural for a child to find it difficult to learn.

In the end, Pipi’s first word naturally became another word she heard most often in her life, instead of a word referring to Priscilla. And that word… was the word that overlapped the most among the words we used.

Unfortunately, that word was the one mentioned.

“… Anyway, let’s go eat now. We need to hurry a bit today.”

After dressing Pipi, who wanted to remain naked, in clothes somehow, we headed to the dining hall.

——

The spacious dining hall, now occupied only by us. Only the sounds of eating echo.

Priscilla ate gracefully with her cutlery, Claire ate normally, and Pipi placed her bowl on the floor and ate like a dog.

… Although she looks like a child, it feels a bit guilty to let her eat like that.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t control my strength enough to use cutlery, so I was just eating food with my hands. As I shoveled mountains of meat into my mouth, I suddenly asked Priscilla.

“So Priscilla, about that law… what happened with it?”

“Ah, the marriage law? About that, actually….”

When I first came to the north, Priscilla mentioned her intention to legalize same-sex marriage, but progress seemed slow. Because of that, we had been living together for over a year without getting married, just wasting time.

“It didn’t pass this time either!”

“Again? Why?!”

“Everything else is fine, but the biggest problem seems to be that they can’t have children between women. They say the Empire’s lineage will die out if same-sex marriage is allowed as it is. Sister tried hard to persuade them, but it didn’t work out in the end.”

Claire’s reaction was intense. Since she was the first to propose marriage to me, her eagerness must have been that much greater. I thought for a moment and asked.

“Women can’t have children?”

“Yes! Of course, we can’t! Don’t you think it’s obvious, considering we have sex every day and still don’t have children?”

“I see….”

This was a rather serious issue. If we can’t get married, what was all the suffering I went through fighting my father for? How many times did I get hit trying to persuade him? It was a sparring match in name, but in reality, it was my father’s unilateral beating.

“… Let’s talk about that later. More importantly, do you know it’s Freya’s birthday today?”

“I didn’t know?”

“I don’t know either!”

Actually, today was a monumental day for Freya, marking her coming of age. The person herself seemed unaware of it and was still holed up in her room, only doing research, but as her older sister, I should step forward and celebrate my sister’s birthday.

However, my friends seemed unaware of Freya’s birthday. I swallowed the steak I was chewing and continued.

“After you finish eating, go congratulate her. It’s her birthday today.”

“… Alright.”

“Alright.”

Claire and Priscilla nodded reluctantly. I smiled and finished all the remaining meat, then waved to the two who were heading to Freya’s room first, and headed to a different room myself.

It’s not that I don’t want to celebrate my sister’s birthday, but I have something to take care of.

At the end of the corridor, I gently opened the door labeled ‘Storage,’ and as usual, a loud moaning sound echoed from inside. I shouted towards the back.

“Ur, you’re in here, right?”

“Yes, Master!”

Then, from among all sorts of junk, a small wolf-girl peeked out. As if she had been diligently doing something until just now, Ur’s face was covered in sweat. There’s no need to mention what she was doing.

“Don’t torment her too much.”

“Understood! I’ll be moderate!”

Underneath Ur, moaning, was the necromancer from that day a year ago… or rather, the girl who was the necromancer. Now, she was just an ordinary girl with no power, but she was often dragged by Ur and violated in the empty storage room.

Ur said that she was the only weakling among weaklings that she could defeat….

Well, even so, she’s Ur’s former master, so it’s not bad if they get along well.

“Ah, here it is.”

Leaving the moans behind, I searched the storage room, and after a long time, I found what I was looking for.

A small cone-shaped object with a string attached to the end… it’s a birthday firecracker. It’s a custom-made product specifically for Freya, who is becoming an adult starting today.

… Although there isn’t a custom in the Empire to make the coming-of-age day special, I prepared it myself with the thought that it would be nice to do so.

… I kept it stored for quite a while after receiving it, but I hope it doesn’t fail to ignite?

Holding the firecracker, I headed to Freya’s room with a beaming smile.