Child Rearing Journal of the Strongest Wiseman～About My Daughter Being the Cutest in the World( Saikyou Kenja no Kosodate Nikki ～Uchi no Musume ga Sekaiichi Kawaii Ken ni Tsuite～) - Chapter 21

(Harmonia POV)

Afterwards, the third period was another ” Spirit Magic Lecture” by Ellen-sensei, the assistant homeroom teacher.

The fourth period was an “Overview of Spirit Magic.”

The only reason why the fifth period was not “History of Spirit Magic” was because the class schedule was shortened that day and there was no class after fifth period.

Harmonia thought about it.

‘Oh god, what a terrible homeroom teacher we’ve got here.’

Harmonia sighed unconsciously.

Her main purpose for entering the school was to discover the truth behind magic.

She wanted to become a sorceress to master the art of magic and use her power to aid the weak.

She wanted to become a great sorceress like her grandfather and use her power to further society.

Therefore, she chose to enter the best school for sorcerers.

She studied hard from an early age, and put in painstaking efforts, but when she managed to get into a school, she found herself in this situation.

Although spirit magic is one of the forms of magic, it is meaningless if you don’t have the spiritual power in your body, as explained by Ellen-sensei.

Harmonia did not enter this school in order to master spirit magic.

Nor did she come to this school to become an alchemist.

“Aah, I wonder if God has given up on me….”.

She exhaled.

This means she will have to follow that irresponsible and unmotivated sorcerer, Kite, as her teacher for the next three years.

Thinking about it gave her a headache.

Self-study is certainly easy for students, and it’s good that the teacher respects our freedom, but if we take it easy now, there will be a large gap between us and other classes four years from now, when we become fourth-year students and start the credit system.

However, Kite’s abandonment of the class was not limited to the first day, but continued for the rest of the week.

He either left the class to his assistant teacher, Ellen-sensei, or did self-study when Ellen-sensei was not available.

There were days when he gave classes on a whim, but even then, he gave us alchemy-related texts.

“Alchemy is wonderful!”

And, she was educated to become an alchemist, not a magician.

It was well received by those who wanted to take it easy, but it was tremendously unpopular with students like Harmonia who had entered the school to improve her own magic.

Harmonia had once gathered a group of students who were dissatisfied with Kite and appealed directly to the head of the school, but the old man was too lenient.

“Well, regardless of how bad your performance is, you won’t be expelled until your third year, so it’s not a bad idea to follow that young man’s guidance for three years. He may seem lethargic, but he is not an irresponsible man. If you’re in trouble, he’ll give you a helping hand.”

“At the moment, we are having trouble getting that teacher to teach the class.”

She complained, but to no avail.

“In the world, there is such a thing as an antithetical teacher. If a teacher is incompetent, his students will grow up by watching him. I expect you all to do your best.”

That was the only response she got.

With those words, the children gave up, accepted their fate, and began to concentrate on their studies.

To begin with, it seems that this class is made up of students who have good grades in written exams but low magical ability, and many of them have no problems with their studies.

Or perhaps the headmaster had anticipated this and placed the students in such a way.

she could only assume so.

To be honest, her life at the school started off in the worst way, but it was not without its redeeming features.

For the first time since coming to this school, she made friends.

Harmonia was born into a very ordinary family of magicians.

Her great-grandfather was a member of a prestigious noble family in the empire, but in this world, sorcerers cannot become nobles. Therefore, if her father was a sorcerer, he would inevitably be a commoner.

However, the fact that a family has been sorcerers for many generations means that the family has talent, and talent means that the family can hold a certain position, so Harmonia’s family was relatively wealthy.

However, this magic school is also home to many daughters of wealthier families.

This is because the third or fourth sons of nobles who cannot inherit their titles or lands, for the sake of their daughter’s future marriages, wish for them to enter the school of magic in order to become the wife of a prominent sorcerer. There’s a lot of wealthy people like that.

This is why Harmonia, who has a very ordinary income for a sorcerer’s family, has a hard time making friends with these people because she doesn’t have anything to talk about with them.

Just as she was thinking this, that girl appeared.

As usual, Harmonia was eating a sandwich and milk from the school cafeteria in the courtyard of the school.

After a few weeks of living in the school, a group of close friends naturally formed and it became uncomfortable to eat in the courtyard, but Harmonia didn’t care and quietly carried the sandwich to her mouth and sipped the milk.

Occasionally, she would look through her textbook. She repeated it alternately.

She never stopped studying, even during lunch. She had no doubt that this rigidity was a factor that kept her away from her friends, but she was fine with it.

Until she met her, that is.

As she brought the second sandwich to her mouth, the girl spoke to Harmonia.

“Harmonia-san, can I eat with you?”

She was the first person to call out to Harmonia, who was alone and occupying one of the benches in the courtyard.

The girl said this to her with a refreshing smile, devoid of any biases or prejudices.

Her carefree smile, combined with her golden hair shining in the sun, made Harmonia think at first an angel was speaking to her.

However, she knew immediately that the girl was not an angel.

There was no angel’s ring on her head, nor wings on her back.

All she had was a friendly smile.

Her name was Fiona, or so she said.

She was the daughter of that irresponsible teacher.

She knew her name from her greeting on the first day of school, but that was the extent of their relationship.

She is not the type of student who keeps her friends away like Harmonia, but a student who does not put up barriers between people and has already made friends within the class on her first day of school.

From Harmonia’s point of view, her innocence made her look as young as a student in preschool. However, her honest and cute personality is something that Harmonia lacks, and there is a side of her that she envies.

In a way, it was probably inevitable that she would talk to her.

She seemed to be the type of person who wouldn’t overlook a kid who was isolated in class.

Harmonia silently opens the bench next to her. After putting away her writing utensils and the sandwich wrapper, she moves to the corner of the bench to make room for one more person to sit.

She must have seen it and took it as approval. She sat next to Harmonia.

The skirt of her school uniform fluttered softly.

From her hair, it seemed as though there was a sweet fragrance in the air.

As she was getting distracted by her, she took out something from the package she was holding under her arm.

She seemed to be eating a sandwich too.

However, even though it was the same sandwich, it was not the cheap kind from the school cafeteria that Harmonia was eating, but something that was clearly homemade, elaborate, and delicious.

She was curious about the way Harmonia looked at her, so she explained.

“Chloe made this for me. It’s called a club sandwich.”

“Chloe?”

“She’s my maid.”

Fiona added.

“You have a maid? Are you a noble or something?”

“Uun, Otou-san is just a regular sorcerer. Ah no, Actually, he’s a great sorcerer, but he’s not particularly rich. Rather, he spends all his money on research, and Chloe gets mad at him a lot.”

“Still, your lunch is very generous. There’s a club sandwich, soup and side dishes.”

It was not only the sandwiches that were gorgeous.

The soup was served in a thermos to keep it cold, and the side dishes were homemade and looked very tasty. Not all of them were served with high quality ingredients, but one could immediately tell that a lot of love had been put into each dish.

The soup was a stew, and the side dishes were also cooked in a way that required time and effort.

In order to make this kind of meal, I would have to get up at about five in the morning to prepare it.

I don’t know what kind of person this maid Chloe is, but if she was just a hired maid for money, she wouldn’t do such a time-consuming job.

To be honest, I envied her.

Harmonia doesn’t have a father or mother.

Of course, since Harmonia was neither a homunculus nor a child brought by a stork, she had a biological father and mother, but they were not known to each other.

They died soon after Harmonia was born.

After that, she was taken in by her grandfather and raised by a maid he had hired, but she was the type of woman who would never work for more than she was paid.

It wasn’t a particularly unusual type of maid, nor was it a shady maid, it was a very normal maid. It was rare to find a maid who treated you with love and sincerity like her maid, Chloe.

As she looked at the blonde girl’s lunch box and speculated about her situation, she suddenly opened her mouth.

“Harmonia-san, if it’s alright with you, would you like some?”

And she offers one of her club sandwiches towards her.

“It’s very tasty.”

Along with those words.

Harmonia blushed lightly. Could she have been looking at her covetously?

In that case, it was an embarrassing thing to do.

The sandwich that girl was eating looked far tastier than the one in the school cafeteria, but what made Harmonia envious was her situation of being raised in an environment full of love.

Of course, Harmonia’s grandfather raised her with great affection, but Harmonia had no maid nor parents who treated her as lovingly as she did.

At least, Fiona has a happy family. She was jealous of that, but of course, she couldn’t say it out loud.

In order to hide it, Harmonia decided to accept Fiona’s sandwich as a companion.

“But I can’t eat that much, so let’s trade my sandwich for yours.”

“Sure! I’ve always wanted to try the cafeteria sandwiches. But Otou-san won’t let me buy them because he said they taste bad and they’re not nutritious. He’s a cheapskate, isn’t he?”

“It is more extravagant to have such a delicious sandwich made for you every morning, though.”

Harmonia assured her and took a bite of the sandwich that Chloe had made.

As expected, it tasted as good as it looked.

The layers of ham, the shrimp, and the high-quality mayonnaise made for a much tastier sandwich than the bland ones in the school cafeteria.

The side dishes offered were also delicious and well-balanced in terms of nutrition.

“It’s so delicious. It’s such a luxury to be able to eat something like this every day.”

Even though my words were slightly sarcastic, Fiona still answered me honestly.

“……U, un, on second thought, I agree. The sandwiches in the school cafeteria are not very good. When I get home, I’ll tell Otou-san he was right. And also, I’ll make sure to thank Chloe every morning!”

“’……Such an honest girl. To say that the food we exchanged was bad.”

“Compared to Chloe’s food, I mean.”

Fiona hurried to deny it.

“But I ate this every day, remember?”

“Then I will trade my sandwich for half of yours every day, so that Harmonia-san can eat half as many delicious sandwiches.”

When Fiona said this, it sent a jolt through Harmonia’s heart.

(If we exchange every day, does that mean we’re going to be friends?)

she had to interpret it that way, but in fact, the girl does want to be friends with Harmonia.

“I want to be friends with you, Harmonia-san.”

Fiona made her intentions clear.

Harmonia asked “Why?”

She asked if there was any merit in making a friend out of a girl like her, who was so strong-minded that she spoke her mind about everything.

Fiona answered this question clearly and confidently.

“You don’t need a reason to make friends, you know.”

She affirmed this and held out her hand to me.

I guess she was trying to show that she wanted to be my friend.

I had the option of not grabbing her hand back.

The fact was that Harmonia and Fiona were polar opposites in both environment and personality.

They might not be a good match at all.

Besides, Fiona’s hand had a little mayonnaise on it. If she squeezed it back, it would probably stick to her own hand as well.

However, Harmonia still grabbed her hand back.

If she didn’t grab her hand back, she would regret it for the rest of her life. That’s what she thought.

In later years, she would learn that she had made the right choice, but now was not the right time to talk about it.

In addition, later on, Harmonia finds her friend, Fiona’s father to be attractive, which has a great impact on Harmonia’s life plan, but she is not aware of that either.

Anyway, Harmonia meets her lifelong friend and her father at this school.

It was a very happy occasion.

†

“A-Achoo!”

I was reading a book while lying down in my living room at home, when I suddenly sneezed.

Upon witnessing this, Chloe asked me with concern.

“Aruji-sama, did you catch a cold?

I may have achieved eternal life, but I have yet to be eradicated from the common cold.

It could be possible, but fortunately, I was in perfect physical condition.

“Then someone must be talking about Aruji-sama.”

“You’re superstitious for a mechanical doll.”

But Chloe ignored him and began to fidget and panic.

“I’m sure some woman is talking about Aruji-sama, longing for him. How frustrating. If it weren’t for the three principles of mechanical dolls, I’d settle this matter by force…”

This maid says some pretty disturbing things. Later, I’ll have to check if one of the three principles of mechanical dolls, “Do not harm humans,” is working properly.

“You overestimate your owner. How can an old man like me be popular?”

“That’s not true. Aruji-sama is very popular. If you walk down the street, you will see one out of every five women of a peculiar age looking back at you. Don’t you notice that?”

“I’ve never really cared.”

I replied disinterestedly, and instructed Chloe to make a feast out of this evening’s dinner.

” I will follow whatever you tell me to do, but what’s the good news?”

“I have a feeling it’s not for me, but for my daughter.”

“For Fiona-sama? Did you hear something from her?”

“Nope.”

“Then how did you find out?”

“Parental intuition, I guess…”

I mumbled to myself and realized that this was the very definition of unscientific or superstitious, but I didn’t say anything about it and watched Chloe go to the kitchen.

A few hours later, Fiona comes home with a face full of happiness.

I’m even happier than she is when she tells me she’s made a friend.

My daughter’s joy is my joy, too.