The Reason I Keep Avoiding My Childhood Friend

Helena had originally come to the capital to make money. My father was not stingy with my young caregiver, so she had saved enough to live in the countryside.

It was me who held Helana back, who was anxious and hesitated because she was worried I would be left alone once she left.

She often talked about returning to her hometown once she’d saved enough money. She missed her family dearly. But, I was more worried about a woman traveling such a long distance alone.

If she was going to return someday anyway, it was better to go with my father when he went. So, when I heard that the knights’ families were being accepted into the mansion while they were on the expedition, I let her go without further hesitation.

And thus, I met the devil named Kirsec. Hehe, but there’s no reason for us to meet anymore. I erased the bad memories.

“Shall we clean up first?”

“Yes!”

For the time being, I ended up living alone with my father. But it was enjoyable in its own way. Somehow, it felt like I was playing house with my father.

Maybe because he had only lived a knight’s life, everything my father did was clumsy.

“No. Mopping is done like this, like this!”

I demonstrated to my father, who displayed a mysterious technique of mopping where the mop passed over a dusty area, and the dust remained exactly where it was before the mop had passed. My father tried hard to imitate my actions, but he couldn’t hide his clumsiness. Even so, the point was to reduce what was a lump of dust at first into dust traces.

However, when doing the laundry, he rubbed with a lot of force and the wash water came out quite well. I clapped and praised my father.

“Ooh, so strong! You’re really good at laundry!”

My father, who was still rubbing, became embarrassed and started rubbing more enthusiastically as if excited by my response.

Doesn’t he look a bit smug? ‘My father is cute,’ was what I was thinking when suddenly, I heard a strange sound.

I felt an ominous foreboding. My father must’ve sensed it too.

My father lifted his hands out of the water—along with my clothes, torn in half.

My mouth fell open at the super-strength and I stared on with a blank face. Once again, my father could not hide his shame. I couldn’t blame my father, so I said it was okay, and he promised to buy me new clothes.

“Shake it like this, and then spread it out. This is how you handle laundry.”

After doing the rest of the laundry carefully, I taught him how to hang it outside to dry. Thump thump! From the sound of him shaking it out, the clothes might not need to be dried after all. And I, who was standing just beside him, got soapy mist sprayed right into my face.

“That’s not how you cut it, okay? You have to cut it smaller!”

“Oh, okay. I’m usually quite confident with a knife, you know. This is weird”

“Smaller. Careful, careful!”

We cleaned together, did laundry, and made food clumsily. Though the work was unfamiliar, it was fun to do it with my father.

The time we spent together for the past few days brought us much closer than the seven years we lived together.

My father treated me with the utmost affection, and I also acted forgetting about my embarrassment of looking like a child.

Now, I feel like we’re becoming a real family. My heart tingled, feeling a father’s love which I’d never received before.

My father must’ve felt the same way. He immediately found someone to help with the housework but asked them to start working the day before he went back to work so that we’d have more time alone.

Of course, not all of that week was filled with happy times of just the two of us. To resume my studies, which I was forced to abandon due to my efforts to avoid Kirsec, I brought back Mr. Haftery.

To tell the truth, while I was in the mansion, in my haste to escape Kirsec, I couldn’t even notify Mr. Haftery that I would be unable to take classes.

The extremely persistent Kirsec often picked out places I absolutely couldn’t avoid searching for me.

He found out and came all the way to the places I eat and sleep, it wasn’t surprising that he would’ve found out the time and place of my classes too.

In time for Mr. Haftery’s arrival, Kirsec would linger around in front of my room, and upon seeing him from afar, I would have no choice but to skip the classes.

I never meant to make Mr. Haftery suffer in vain.

And I think Mr. Haftery might’ve noticed that I had some sort of discord to deal with in the Duke’s mansion.

My father didn’t know about my troubles with Kirsica. So I was very nervous that Mr. Hafter might comment on that.

I didn’t want my parents to know how I was bullied by Kirsec and had to hideaway.

I knew it would be my father too.

“Welcome.”

But fortunately, Mr. Haftery simply came and stared at me without mentioning anything at all.

“Shall we start the class?”

As if nothing had happened. As if we had met just yesterday for the last class. His attitude was no different from usual.

“Yes! I am in your care.”

So I didn’t bring it up either. Though I didn’t know why I think that Mr. Haftery was being considerate, so I accepted it without further hesitation. Mr. Haftery opened his book, and I followed suit.

I’m finally back to my normal routine.

*****