“...Left town, huh?” Wood whispered with an expression that was difficult to put into words. He then looked down at the mob of children encircling Ristia’s legs and kneeled down to meet them at eye-level.
“You little guys like this young lady?”
“Yeah, we love her! And she doesn’t do bad things like the last director!”
“She’s really nice!”
The children answered in unison, bringing a smile to Ristia’s face, “Ehehe.” That reaction was all Wood needed.
“I see. Seems you’re a stand-up gal, Little Lady,” he said, nodding. “Alright, we’ll take the job.”
“Thank you so much. I look forward to working with you and your men,” Ristia replied, smiling toward the carpenters. The carpenter men, who had been watching everything unfold, formed goofy grins on their face as soon as they saw Ristia’s beaming smile.
“Well then, hate to be so up-front, but did you have any specific way you wanted things built? It seems that you already have some groundwork started here...”
“Oh, that? I was just getting things ready. As for specifics... If you could, I would like it built to the specifications on these blueprints, but is that doable?” Ristia presented the blueprints to Wood, who then looked at her with a troubled expression.
“Uh, right. Little Lady? I should warn you in advance, but houses have these things called ‘load factors,’ or the max threshold for the materials we use, so it’s not like you can arrange things all willy-nilly like... Hey, wait, these blueprints have a ton of detail.” Wood’s gaze fell upon the blueprints, and he started to check what was written down, enthralled. The other carpenters started to peek at the blueprints as well, making a bevy of different faces as a result. Before long, Wood’s attention went back to Ristia after he finished scanning through the plans. “You sure are skilled. I can’t find a single slip-up on here anywhere.”
“In that case, will you be able to build it to specifications?”
“No, that’s impossible.”
“...Um, I don’t follow.” Despite there not being a single slip-up, he couldn’t build it according to the plans. Ristia stared back at him blankly, unable to understand what he meant.
“If we followed what was written down on these plans, there’d be no issue. But the materials written down are odd. If we went by the values here, we’d end up making an orphanage that could withstand a siege engine.”
“Yes, I designed it with that in mind.” Ristia’s frank response to Wood’s concerns left him at a loss for words.
“...Little Lady, I’m going to be frank: there is no material in this world capable of doing what’s on this blueprint.”
“Ah, don’t worry; I’ll have that ready for you. I’ll prepare some columns for you in the meantime.” As soon as Ristia pulled out some orichalcum from her Item Box, she manufactured it into the shape of columns and stacked them up in a corner of the orphanage grounds.
“...Huh?” Wood and the other carpenters went wide-eyed.
“W-Wait, did you guys see hunks of metal just come out of literally nowhere?”
“Yeah, I saw the same thing. I feel like I saw the metal turn into columns, too.”
“But... that’s not physically possible, right?”
“Yeah, no way in the world. That’s probably just the exhaustion kicking in for us.”
The carpenters rubbed their eyes and took another look at the corner of the grounds. There, they saw Ristia right in the middle of stacking a new set of columns in the same spot.
“Is this real life...?”
“What the hell’s going on?!”
“Hey, Little Lady! What are those?!”
The carpenters all belted out in unison, crowding around Ristia. However, Ristia was a True Blood princess, and she was determined to not keep repeating the same blunder forever, which is why she turned to the carpenters and gave them a docile smile.
“Gentlemen, this isn’t magic, so there’s no need to be startled.”
“I mean, you say it’s not magic, but I don’t even think you can do that with magic...”
“That’s correct. I am a normal girl, so I wouldn’t be capable of performing magic.”
“Uh, right. I mean, is that right? I’m not sure what’s going on here, but if you’re not using magic, then how did you manage to bring out those materials?” Wood asked her, trying to gain a grasp over the situation in spite of his confusion.
Ristia then gave the same docile smile as before in response, explaining, “This is just sleight of hand.”
“...Excuse me?”
“Just as I said, sleight of hand. A trick.”
“Aah, that makes sense. Sleight of hand. All just a trick, eh? Nothing strange about that, then—Yeah, right!” he replied, the other carpenters joining in to quip at the same time. They didn’t pursue the topic any more than that for some reason, though. That led Ristia to believe that they had bought her story about it all being sleight of hand, but that wasn’t the case by a long shot.
There was no way that Ristia would know this, but since Nanami had predicted that Ristia would mess something up, she gave Gratt some advice, which he used to prime the men. Wood and the other carpenters were not to talk about what they observed to anyone else and not to pursue any various oddities that may occur. That also kept them from calling Ristia abnormal. The self-proclaimed normal girl who was often called an angel was being protected by a couple of actual angels. However...
“I’m back... Wait, the orphanage moved?!”
“Yeah, the Director moved it~”
“What the heck does that even mean?!”
Maria conversed with the children upon her return as the carpenters all formed a unanimous opinion amongst one another. That girl is absolutely not normal.
──7──
The reconstruction of the orphanage started promptly. Although, because the work didn’t finish instantaneously as it would have if Ristia had used magic, she and her children continued to live in the old orphanage until the reconstruction work was complete. That continued until one day—a day where Maria came to Ristia with some news.
“A suspicious man has been wandering around here?”
“Yes. He’s been scouting out the orphanage and going around asking about stuff. It’s making me worried about the kids...”