“Hmph... Hah...”
“Mm... Very nice.”
Before I knew it, I went from only glancing to observing her with all my attention. It was an inescapable impulse for an instructor. She swung down, came to a stop, swung upward, twisted her wrists, then slashed diagonally before ending with a thrust. The movements of her legs and waist also flowed into her form—she wasn’t just swinging with brute force. My impression of her remained the same as during our sparring session, but this time, I got to see things from a different angle.
To be honest, I’d seen this level of practice swings at the dojo and the order plenty of times—enough to spot the minute idiosyncrasies between individuals. However, I’d never been so happy to see Mewi’s growth. It was well worth inviting her out for this. She was sure to polish her technique more by the time she graduated from the institute, and I wondered how I would evaluate her when that time came. The thought of that near future felt exciting and somewhat lonely.
“This part... I can’t figure it out...” Mewi said. It sounded like both a question and idle mumbling.
“Hmm, let’s see.”
She repeated the motion. It seemed she’d hadn’t just been talking to herself.
“Your foot is moving ahead on its own,” I explained. “Try moving your leg from the hips...or rather, using your butt muscles.”
“My...butt?”
It sounded stupid, but the muscles there were very important. The large muscles along the entire back of the body put in a lot of work to propel a person forward. This applied to back muscles, the hamstrings, and the butt. Developing the muscles on your front side did improve your power output, but they did surprisingly little for your mobility.
So, when Mewi’s foot pushed ahead of her body, it was proof she wasn’t using her hips and butt, and it showed that some parts of the lower body weren’t working with others. This was pretty common during the growth process, and having your muscles move in perfect harmony was hard to pull off properly unless you focused entirely on the movements. Bone and muscle were connected through the entire human body—only by using those connections properly could the body be fully manipulated.
“Mrgh...”
“Ha ha, focusing on muscles you haven’t used before makes the body stiff. There’s no helping that at first.”
Almost nobody could learn a physical skill after only being told how it was done. Only a true genius could do that, but unfortunately, Mewi wasn’t one—at least not in swordsmanship. There was nothing to be pessimistic about, though. It’d been impossible for me to pull it off perfectly in one try too. Had I been able to, I would’ve won against my dad far sooner. This kind of skill was developed through an accumulation of training and time. Fortunately, Mewi had plenty of time. If she kept at it diligently, she would surely become a splendid swordswoman. I couldn’t know whether she had it in her to be a splendid wizard, though.
“Haaah... That’s tough...” she muttered.
“If it was easy, I’d be out of a job.” You didn’t need an instructor for anything that was simple to figure out, after all. It would practically erase the meaning of my existence.
“Hmph. But...I kinda get what comes next. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Sword magic class had set hours, and it was impossible to have one-on-one coaching with each individual student. That was why it was hard to give them all guidance. We couldn’t show Mewi partiality during class, after all.
So, this was a rare opportunity for both me and Mewi. A part of me had wondered whether she would be against having a one-on-one session with me, but considering how things were going today, maybe it would be best to create more such opportunities in the future.
We soon reached a good stopping point, and Mewi muttered, “Um... Old guy?”
“Hm?”
“Are...you and Ms...Surena getting married?”
“Hmmm...?”
I had absolutely no idea how we’d ended up on that topic. I froze on the spot. We’d skipped too many steps.
“Uhhh... Why do you think that?” I asked.
“I just kinda...thought so...”
“I-I see.”
It seemed she had nothing to base this on. Maybe it was because Surena had visited us recently and we’d talked about the future. Mewi had ended up interpreting that conversation a little differently than I had.
Surena Lysandra was certainly a charming woman. There was no mistaking that. However, I was incapable of seeing her like that. I feel like I just went through this with Allucia... Anyway, I didn’t believe Surena saw me that way either. I’d looked after her for a period of her childhood, but even if that had been a major influence on her life, her affection for me didn’t feel romantic in nature.
There was no telling unless I asked Surena directly, though—not that I ever saw myself inquiring about whether she’d fallen for me. Surena wasn’t a pupil to me. She was more like a far younger sister. From that perspective, my feelings for her were pretty similar to what I felt for Mewi.
“I’m not gonna ask how you came to that conclusion...” I said. “But I doubt it.”
“Hmph...”
Mewi seemed to give up on the topic. I wasn’t sure how she felt about it or how I should interpret her reaction.
“Even if I did, wouldn’t Surena become your mom?” I followed up.
“Ummm...”
I’d figured she’d thought of that already, but it didn’t seem to be the case. Seriously, how did she come to that conclusion? I really don’t understand.
“What’s...a mom like?” Mewi asked.
“Oh yeah... That makes sense coming from you. Hmm...”
Her words suddenly elevated the conversation to a new level. This was a difficult topic. Mewi had only ever had a big sister and didn’t remember living with her parents. I was doing my best to fulfill the role of her father—even if I assumed that was going fine, she had no substitute for a mother. The closest examples of mothers that Mewi knew about would be my mom and Randrid’s wife, but it was still extremely hard to explain what exactly a mother was to her.
“To sum it up simply, I guess you can say it’s the person who supports a family,” I answered. “That would include both you and me.”
“I don’t get it...”
“Well, I don’t really get it either...”
If my mom hadn’t been there, I could easily imagine my life turning out completely different. It was hard to put that into words, though. Familial connections were just special like that. I wanted Mewi to cherish such connections, but this wasn’t something I could explain to her—she had to experience them for herself.
“Whatever... I’m hungry,” Mewi said.
“Y-You sure change gears quickly... Well, working out gets the appetite going.”
I’d figured this would linger on her mind for a while, but she immediately set it aside. Maybe she’d realized that she wasn’t going to understand it right now, so there was no point thinking about it. Mewi had always been fast to shift gears. She’d personally experienced that letting such things drag on would be an impediment to her survival. That wasn’t the case anymore, but she couldn’t change the way her brain worked overnight. I, myself, was living proof of that—it was very difficult to change my mindset even when I knew I needed to.
“It’s my turn today, so I’ll get started,” Mewi said.
“Yeah, yeah, as you wish.”
Mewi was off school today, so it was her turn to cook dinner. Food didn’t pop up on the table automatically just because she was hungry. At first, her knife handling had been quite clumsy, but now she was very smooth at it. Her household skills as a whole had improved—she could cook an entire meal on her own now. She still tended to leave a mess around the house, though.
Mewi was a young girl right now, but with the passing of days and months, she would grow. In the not-too-distant future, maybe she would become a mother herself. I wasn’t thinking of setting her up or anything, though I hoped that she could one day be blessed with such an opportunity.
In this age, it was good to be able to fight, but the battlefield wasn’t the only place a person could flourish. Adults, children, men, and women all had their own battlefields. These intermingled and swapped places all the time, though. Mewi was still a child, but she would one day become an adult. When that happened, what battlefield would she stand on? Imagining such a future was my privilege as her foster father.
“You might make a good mom one day.”
“Hah?”
“Sorry, never mind...”
My impulsive comment was met with an absolutely chilling gaze.