A Secretly Capable Child Is Seeking For Her Dad (Novel) - Chapter 116

Chapter 116

The next day.

Tie woke up alone at five in the morning.

Then, because he was worried the members might wake up, he came down the stairs on tiptoe.

Next, after finding a fresh apple in the kitchen, he took crunchy bites of it and asked,

“Kkamang. How is your room?”

Lucarion, who was sitting in front of the fireplace on the first floor, answered indifferently.

“It’s good.”

“I see!”

Yesterday Tie had asked Marshall to give Lucarion just one room to use.

Of course, although it was known that Lucarion was Tie’s familiar,

‘Right now we’re experimenting with the battery necklace Factory Manager Velugon gave us!’

When he was not using mana, Lucarion could not return to being a dragon or a black stone.

Marshall readily showed Lucarion a room where he could stay.

‘Oh my, you should have said so sooner. There are plenty of rooms. Is there perhaps anything you need? Even toys or something?’

Naturally, Lucarion refused the toys.

Instead, he hugged an armful of old books he had found in the basement and went into his room.

They were difficult books that only adults would probably look at, so Lucarion really was amazing, just as expected.

Tie, still eating the apple, looked at Lucarion and smiled bashfully.

“You know, Kkamang, Veil hyung said to you, ‘For a mere familiar, you sure live in luxury!’ like this, but.”

And he lowered his voice and whispered.

“Tie thinks you should have the most power! Because Tie’s very first companion is Kkamangi.”

At those words Lucarion put down the book and looked at Tie.

At the same time, Ppuppu, who had been sitting on the floor, also sprang to his feet.

With a peevish expression, Ppuppu smacked his nose against the floor, thump, thump.

But Tie gently stroked Ppuppu’s head and spoke to Lucarion again.

“You know, Lucariong, at first Tie was dirt poor, but now Tie has a house and money too.”

“……”

“So Lucariong is staying with Tie forever? Because Tie likes Lucariong the best in the whole world!”

Lucarion opened his lips.

“Uh, well……”

And, somewhat bewildered, he fidgeted with his ears.

Was it because he had been sitting too long in front of the fireplace.

His ears were hot.

It was when Lucarion was cooling his ears by operating mana at his fingertips.

“Huh?”

Tie beside her suddenly sprang to her feet.

And then,

“It’s a kitty!”

he opened the large door and darted right out of the mansion.

* * *

“Hey, monster. Watch him well.”

[You watch yourself, lizard.]

Lucarion and Ppuppu sat in front of the great mansion’s front entrance.

And they looked at Tie, who had been running excitedly around the garden since a little while ago.

Tie had already been running around the garden for ten minutes.

“This is grass, this is grass too, this is…… a flower, this is grass……”

Was it fun to go around the garden telling every plant, ‘This is grass’?

And if he found something like a peculiar stone, was it really that fun to put it in his pocket?

Astie really did sometimes do actions that were impossible to understand.

Meanwhile, Tie was newly marveling at the exterior of the mansion, which was several times wider than the inside.

“The yard is super big!”

He did know one friend in Quail Class who lived in a house with a yard. It was Hyunwoo.

But even without a yard, friends who lived in apartments all had small things like gardens inside the complex.

‘Come to think of it, only Tie didn’t have a yard either……?’

Gold Villa was pressed right up against a very narrow alley.

So there was neither anything that could be called a yard nor anything that could be called a garden.

But now Tie was the owner of this huge yard.

‘This is exactly body-swap laundry……!’

It was the moment when Tie, with moved eyes, swept her gaze around the area.

Far away, he saw the solid fence built encircling the enormous mansion all the way around.

Suddenly the words Veil had urged on him last night came to mind.

‘Kid, I’m telling you just in case. From now on, if you’re going anywhere, you absolutely have to go only in front of here, got it? You have to stay only inside the fenced garden. Got it?’

‘Okay!’

Tie had answered briskly.

Tie was turning five soon too, so would she not know that?

He had learned, no less than when he was a two-year-old baby, that he must not wander outside the house carelessly.

‘And when you go out beyond the fence, go around with us. Actually, a city full of people like this is more dangerous. Got it?’

But hearing the words that followed, even Tie could only snort.

A lot of people? No matter how many there were, there was no way there would be more than in Jongno District.

Tie had even often gone on errands to the neighborhood supermarket in that Jongno District.

The fact that she could run errands meant that Tie was an extremely smart and grown-up child.

“Kkamang! Tie is going to go look at that fence!”

When Tie spoke more maturely than usual, Lucarion got up from her seat.

But Tie had already run to the far right end of the front yard of the mansion.

“Waaah.”

Reaching the fence, Tie opened her mouth.

Beyond the fence, there was another mansion similar in size to Tie’s mansion.

“Tie’s next-door house……?”

As soon as he thought of the next-door house, Grandma in Unit 107 immediately came to mind.

The grandmother who, if she had something delicious, always called Tie and let her eat together with her.

The grandmother who watched Tie whenever Daddy was absent, and let her watch all the TV she wanted!

In Tie’s mind, close neighbors were beings no different from family.

The child’s face, gripping the fence tightly, brightened.

If things went well, it felt as if he might even be able to pass between the fence bars and go into the next-door yard.

‘Wouldn’t it be okay if I bowed from the waist after going in?’

After that, he would say that he had newly moved in and ask to be taken care of from now on.

He did not have rice cakes, but there were apples in the kitchen……

“Astie. You must not go over.”

But then.

As if he had read Tie’s heart, Lucarion’s voice was heard.

When Tie turned her head, Lucarion was standing there before he knew it, with Ppuppu perched on her shoulder.

Tie fidgeted and said,

“But isn’t greeting the next-door house etiquette……?”

“Who greets the next-door house by going over the wall?”

“Then, if I go outside and go to the front gate?”

“Don’t you remember what your members said?”

Tie lowered her eyes sadly.

“They said I can’t go outside the fence……”

“Right.”

Lucarion took Tie’s hand.

“Let’s go back. I think your members have woken up.”

Tie had no choice but to start walking toward the mansion.

But his eyes kept turning toward the next-door house, and sighs leaked out.

Lucarion, looking back at Tie, said,

“That house is empty anyway.”

“Huh?”

Lucarion pointed at the next-door house with his other hand.

“Look, the second-floor window is open.”

“Huh? It really is?”

Sure enough, the second-floor window of the next-door house was half-open.

Whenever the wind blew, the old window frame made a tack, tack sound as it closed and opened.

“It has been like that since yesterday. If it were a house with people in it, they wouldn’t leave it like that.”

Tie’s mouth fell open.

Come to think of it. The garden of the next-door house really was different from the garden of Tie’s house.

The grass grown thick. The weeds grown even thicker on top of it.

Even the stone path with moss on it, as if it had not been used for a long time……

“Let’s go.”

Lucarion gently tugged Tie’s hand.

Tie had no choice but to follow Lucarion and walk.

‘Who lives there?’

Why had they left such a good house empty?

Curious, his head naturally tilted.

* * *

After finishing a simple breakfast.

“Tie, are you ready?”

Basto, who had called Tie from the first floor, soon opened his eyes wide.

Tie, tightly holding Marshall’s hand, came bouncing down the stairs.

“Crazy……”

Veil, who had been sprawled on the sofa, sprang to his feet when he saw Tie’s hair.

It was because the child’s twin braids had been braided so delicately that they looked almost like a work of art.

“I-I thought Basto had really just been very good at braiding all this time.”

Whatever else, it was certain that Marshall’s skill concerning hair braiding was no ordinary thing.

And the surprising part did not end there.

“K-kid. Your clothes are really…… really something too?”

This morning.

Tie was, in the literal sense of the words, dressed in a bizarre getup.

He had put on a sleeveless top over a red long-sleeved shirt, and then another child’s dress over that.

It was obvious he had excitedly put it on by himself last night, then gone to sleep in it and woken up that way.

But right now,

“Auntie Marshall did it for me!”

a charming one-piece dress made of beige fabric with abundant light green frills.

Even white hose made of a material that clung to the legs.

The shoes were separately a vivid pink, so they did clash, but……

“Our little commander said it absolutely had to be this one.”

At Marshall’s troubled-sounding voice, Veil let it pass.

At that moment Tie, smiling to herself, pointed somewhere.

“Then Auntie, now Tie is putting on the uniform!”

Veil became bewildered and looked at Tie.

“You get dressed up this hard and then cover it all with the uniform?”

Tie tilted her head.

“Hng? Because Tanipang is on the uniform, of course.”