Still, I was 14 years old, but I had already taken all the academy levels. Does that mean that Mr. Hafterry had been racking my brains all this time? This was brain abuse! My innocent brain cells had been harassed! He was doing me such a cruel thing with that benevolent face!

Feeling a strange sense of betrayal, I glared at Mr. Hafterry with blank eyes. Even so, Mr. Hafterry looked at me with proud eyes. Eventually I got embarrassed and had to force myself to turn my head.

“If you leave it to me, I will do my best to take care of Aren.”

After listening to the calm explanation, Father looked at me with complicated eyes. He seemed to be asking what I wanted to do.

In fact, even before I left, I had decided to stay, and seize this great opportunity. I knew it was never ordinary and bothersome.

This opportunity doesn’t come to everyone. And there was no guarantee that such luck would come again. When I thought it was a really rare opportunity, the fear that had been coming to me disappeared.

“I will work hard. I want to do well.”

So I only answered briefly like that. Father let out a lonely sigh and asked them to take good care of me. In response, Miss Katie and Mr. Hafterry replied with trustworthy smiles, asking to leave it to them.

That’s how my life in the capital city began to be bigger than I thought.

10. The reason why the lady can’t help but hate it

“Aren! Where are you going?”

As I was walking, I turned my head upon hearing a voice calling me. A middle-aged man with a virtuous appearance was waving his hand gladly at me. I was busy, but it’s not that bad, so I stopped and said hello.

“Uncle Popo, I am going to do the assignment Miss Katie gave me. It’s difficult, so I’m going to look for some reference books.”

“Hey! Why am I the only ‘Uncle’. You shouldn’t discriminate against people like that?”

I laughed at Uncle Popo’s deliberately sad voice.

“But, Uncle suits you?”

In fact, Uncle Popo had a cute name, and a cute appearance. So he felt strongly like the uncle next door. That incredibly round belly gave me a cute feeling rather than a burden. And I also knew that Uncle Popo didn’t really hate being called ‘Uncle’.

Hearing my clear voice, the man expressed his sadness, but he took something out of his pocket and waved his clenched fist. I calmly held out my palm and several small candy canes fell on it.

“Do it while eating.”

“Isn’t this Uncle’s snack?”

Uncle Popo liked snacks that were pretty sweet enough to make that round belly fat. Concerned that I might be stealing Uncle’s snacks for today, I asked him back. But he took a candy out of his pocket and shook the purple one.

“Of course I had mine separately!”

Uncle peeled the wrapper right away and put the candy in his mouth. He must did it on purpose so that I don’t feel burdened. It was not good to refuse a given favor.

“Thank you.”

Uncle Popo’s hand stroked my hair.

“Yes. Good job today.”

And as if he had finished his business, he quickly went on his way.

Even though he looks like a neighborhood uncle, Uncle Popo was one of the pretty outstanding physicists here. He was always busy. For information, the developer of the Sage’s Study’s specialty, the ‘Flying Stairs’, was Uncle Popo.

He developed other inventions too, but each one of them had strange names. Uncle Popo, like his own name, had a bad sense in naming.

The problem was that Uncle Popo was proud of the name he had given his invention. To some extent, he even allowed the invention to be used only under the premise that the name should never be changed. The product was amazing, but because of the name, some were reluctant to use it.

Leaving behind Uncle who was also leaving, I also moved on. There was no time to chat more. It had already been over a year since I started studying at the Sage’s Study. Time really flew by. I was firmly established as the youngest of this place, setting aside the expectation that it would be difficult at first, everyone actually loved me.