Ch.1616 – First Friend

# First Friend

Max and Jessie were quite pleased and intrigued by the appearance of a pretty child their age.

“Hey, why were you hiding in the ball pit?”

“Did you not want to play with the other kids?”

“Idiot, girls are shy! She was probably embarrassed.”

“Huh, shy? She looks more like a troublemaker.”

“What? I told you I’d teach you a lesson if you talk like that!”

“Ow! You hit my bone!”

The children started bickering among themselves.

I’m envious.

I thought absentmindedly as I watched them.

“Are you two friends?”

“We’re forced to meet because of our parents. Our families are neighboring baronies.”

“You’re the one who says meaner things…”

The pair seemed to get along well—Max pouting with his lips jutting out after getting upset, and Jessie teasing him with “What, do you like me or something?”

“Sorry for startling you earlier. When I go to unfamiliar places, I prefer to hide…”

“Oh, I get that feeling. You want to run away when strangers bother you, right?”

“Are you also on your way to take the entrance exam?”

The two little ones tilted their heads in unison.

“Us?”

“We’re only ten years old?”

“Aren’t you?”

“How could a ten-year-old take the entrance exam?”

“It’s difficult even for twenty-year-olds.”

A look of disbelief appeared in the children’s eyes.

“Are you on your way to take the entrance exam?”

“For real?”

I feel like I’ve made some kind of mistake.

When I carefully nodded, exclamations of “Woooow” and “That’s awesome” followed.

This is a familiar gaze I’ve seen a long time ago.

It’s exactly like the admiring looks I got when I collected rare Remastered Pokémon stickers in my notebook.

“What’s your name?”

“Oknodie.”

“That’s a weird name.”

“How can a person be named Oknodie?”

Tell me about it.

“My brother is going to take the entrance exam when he’s fifteen. I hope Oknodie passes instead of him.”

“Why?”

“So I can make fun of him for losing to a ten-year-old.”

I don’t want encouragement for that reason.

Despite their questionable motives, I found myself enjoying the conversation with the two children.

Before I knew it, the sun had set and night had fallen, time passing without me noticing.

“Oh, we should get going now.”

“Hey Max. Hurry and get your little brother.”

Max picked up a child who looked barely over a year old, who had been nodding off sleepily, as a device rang like a café vibration bell.

“Abubu”

“Hey, put that down. You can’t take the ball with you.”

“Abububaba!!”

“Ah, don’t push with your hands!”

“Pfft. You’re terrible at taking care of kids.”

Max’s face turned red at Jessie’s mockery as he tried to take the ball from the baby’s hands, but the baby desperately pushed Max away while hugging the ball tightly.

“It’s like an attachment object.”

Jessie explained from the side.

“My mom said that children over 12 months old have attachment objects they pour their attention and love into instead of their parents. Since there aren’t any dolls or objects like that here, it seems the ball has become his attachment object.”

“Jessie, you’re smart.”

“Tch, compliments won’t get you anything.”

If she had a tail, it would be wagging furiously.

But that ball… something felt strange about it.

I felt oddly drawn to it and wanted to check it out.

“Should I hold onto it?”

“The ball? Why?”

“I still need to stay here longer.”

“Are you here to babysit too?”

“Leaf said she’d come if I waited.”

“Leaf?”

“That’s the maid’s name.”

“Must be cute. But the baby is really possessive, will it work?”

“We’ll see.”

I made eye contact with the baby.

“Hello, baby?”

“Uwuma? Kyakya!”

With sparkling eyes, the baby reached for my golden hair.

As he grabbed my hair, the ball naturally fell to the ground.

I easily got the ball, but I think I lost a few strands of hair before Max managed to pull the baby away.

“Sorry. Our youngest is quite rough, isn’t he?”

“It’s fine. It doesn’t really hurt.”

“You’re very mature. Is that why you’re taking the entrance exam? We’re the same height, but you seem like a complete adult. If it were me, I’d be too annoyed to even smile.”

Well, I am an adult.

Anyway, after seeing off Max, the baby, and Jessie, I picked up the ball the baby had been holding.

The ball, slick with saliva, felt strangely different from the other balls in weight.

To be precise, it felt weightless.

It seemed like something else in the form of a ball.

This feels familiar.

I know what this kind of object is.

‘Isn’t this a stat stone?’

It’s possible.

The kids’ zone was a place I never entered during my muscular male character days.

It wouldn’t be surprising if there were stat stones I didn’t know about.

‘I’ll know if I eat it.’

I wiped the saliva off the ball with my sleeve, opened my mouth wide, and swallowed it whole.

Gulp.

It went down smoothly.

My guess was right.

This feeling, it was definitely a stat stone.

‘I wonder which stat increased?’

Once I enter the Academy, I’ll be able to see my status window through Academy magic even without the player status window function.

I want to enroll soon.

As I was thinking this and turned my head, I met eyes with Jessie, who was covering her mouth with both hands.

“I, I just came back because I left something…”

Jessie was holding a small pouch in her hand.

In short, the timing was bad.

“Oknodie…? Why did you swallow the ball?!”

“Ah, ahh, this, this is…”

“We need to go to the healer, the healing teacher right away!”

Jessie grabbed my hand and pulled me along, struggling.

My body with an estimated strength of 29 wouldn’t be dragged by that, but I relaxed my strength and let myself be pulled along, worried she might hurt herself. We ended up in the emergency room.

What if Leaf comes back?

Well, I can just go back quickly.

It should be fine, right?

* * *

Leaf, who had found a way to infiltrate the gambling den, returned to the kids’ zone and realized upon seeing the empty ball pit.

The young lady’s chronic hide-and-seek habit had started again.

This time she seemed to have hidden quite cleverly, but Leaf was also an assassination instructor dispatched to find hidden people.

“Hehe. I can hear the young lady’s breathing. Are you perhaps hiding behind the curtain?”

Swish

“I see you’re not… You wouldn’t make the trite choice of hiding in the wardrobe, would you?”

Creak

“Considering this is the kids’ zone sleeping area, if you’ve hidden under the bed, I might even praise you.”

Rustle

“Today, the young lady’s hiding skills are quite impressive… This will be a good match. Hehe.”

The solo game of hide-and-seek in the empty kids’ zone continued for a while.

* * *

The emergency room set up for emergency patients was equipped with various facilities and specialized healers.

There were experts in every field, from priests using healing magic to doctors performing surgical procedures and healers treating various disease symptoms.

‘In the game, if you went to the emergency room with an injury, you’d be assigned a random doctor who might give you strange or completely wrong treatment.’

A skilled priest would realign bones, but a lower-level priest wouldn’t. Knowing the risks, from my perspective, the emergency room was a shortcut to ruining your character, and the lower-level priest Ezio, who manned the night shift, was a tormentor of broken bones and an approaching horror.

“You said your friend swallowed a ball, right?”

“Yes! Please do something quickly!”

“Hmm. You seem to be at least 5 years old. Have you registered? Please place your palm on this mana board.”

What’s this? A new feature not in the game?

When I placed my palm on the stone slab that looked like plaster, my hand sank in and left an impression.

Intricate magic circles appeared above the board, with familiar symbols like “communication,” “recording,” “analysis,” and so on appearing in sequence, forming geometric patterns.

What kind of magic is this?

“This can’t be!”

“What’s wrong, doctor?”

Is this some kind of power level measuring magic?

Perhaps my combat power is actually 530,000?

“To think there’s a stateless person not registered with the International Identity Registration Magic Repository at this age!”

It wasn’t power measurement, but identity verification magic.

“Whaaaat?! Could there be some mistake, doctor? Oknodie came on an airship with a butler and secretary, and is even preparing for the Academy entrance exam!”

Hearing Jessie’s explanation, the doctor stood up with a chuckle.

“Yes, it’s more likely that the relay device malfunctioned and the search didn’t work properly. Surely there can’t be parents who haven’t registered a child nearly 10 years old.”

The doctor left the room laughing, and shortly after, doctors with serious expressions could be seen talking in the corridor through the transparent glass.

Several nurses also came out, looking at me nervously and giving awkward waves when our eyes met.

“Hey, Oknodie. Did you really not register?”

“I don’t know!”

“Huh? You’ve never used the identity registration magic circle that gives you a free talent test just by registering?”

“I don’t know means I don’t know. No one ever taught me about this magic.”

“Not even the butler or maid who came with you?”

“No.”

Jessie’s expression became as serious as the doctors outside.

[A-hem. Attention please. This is an announcement.]

[A guardian is looking for a child. A blonde girl about 133cm tall with a thin build, wearing an adventurer’s outfit with a ribbon headband, approximately 10 years old.]

[If you find this child, please hand her over to the nearest staff member.]

Oh no.

“Leaf must be looking for me. I need to go back.”

“Don’t go.”

“Jessie?”

“My parents told me that families who don’t register their children’s identities aren’t normal families. Your family isn’t normal, Oknodie.”

“Hmm.”

I think so too.

But does it really matter?

They give me support and train me.

It’s not easy to find a papa who helps this much in a random papa event.

Personally, I’d rate him as one of the best papas I’ve experienced so far.

“Papa isn’t bad. I’m grateful to Papa. I’m always thankful to Jona and Leaf, who Papa sent, for helping me with training.”

“Training? What kind of training do you do without even having basic identity registration?”

“Like sword dueling? Sprint intervals where you alternate between running at full speed and walking? Shooting arrows at squirrels tied to targets or rabbits trapped in cages?”

Jessie’s face turned pale.

Her focus wavered as if she were looking at an abused child from an inhumane household.

“Let’s run away.”

“What?”

“If they catch you, you’ll be in big trouble again.”

A sense of mission blazed in Jessie’s eyes.