Cedric stretched his hand here and there, as if the white object wrapped around his hand was awkward. Then he wrinkled his expression as if he had thought of something.

“Hey, wait a second.  If you bandage it like this now, I can’t play gonggi.  We’re going to have a competition today, so I skipped sword practice yesterday and practiced gonggi.”

Oh my god, did that happen?

I was a little bit sorry for Cedric. No, what is with the gonggi competition?

That’s why Cedric became so obsessed.

Anyway, Cedric was sullen and he looked gloomy, so I soothed Cedric.

“That game, it’s not just today that you have a chance. Tomorrow, the day after, a week in the future, when Cedric wants to play, ask me for a competition. I’ll be happy to accept it.”

“……okay.”

Cedric picked up all the stones on the floor, brought it back into his pocket, and went to the desk with a slow pace and slumped on his chin.

After a while, are you pretending to sleep?  If not, I don’t know if he’s really sleeping, but the bandages covered his face with his hand wrapped around him, so I couldn’t figure out what Cedric was thinking.

“Mir! I’m here!”

“Uh, Jake!”

But when I tried to approach Cedric, the door opened and Jake appeared late, so I had to forget Cedric’s existence for a moment.

While Jake was talking to me, I felt a stinging glance behind my back without knowing why, but I couldn’t care anymore because I was distracted by the stuff that Jake took out of his bag.

“Look, Mir, what did you say?”

“Wow. It looks pretty solid! How on earth did you make such a pretty stone?”

What Jake took out of his bag was nothing but a gonggi stone.

Unlike Ninaina’s princess jewels and Cedric’s rolling gravel stones, all of them are smoother and better in shape than the ones I made. Even the weight felt heavy enough to play gonggi.

“I went to my father and asked him to make it. When he did it with magic, the shape became so pretty!”

“Oh, Duke Theion?”

Duke Theion was so close to my house, and we’re very friendly because I see his face often.

So I immediately reacted to the name Jake said.

It turns out that Jake’s family produced wizards from generation to generation. Jake’s father, the Duke, is also one of the best in the empire.

Yes, making a stone with such a pretty shape easily by hand is hard, without magic.

As I had a conversation with Jake at the door, I quickly looked at the wall clock and came to my senses. It was already time for class to begin.

“Jake, let’s sit down now.”

“Yes. Mir.”

And when I sat down, I remembered the existence of a child that I had just forgotten.

Ring, ring, and Cedric, who is firmly lying on his face even when the bells of the wall clock rang to announce the time.

Somehow, I could feel the fist held tightly under the bandage, so I kept getting nervous.

* * *

The next day, I stepped into kindergarten with a little excitement.

In my bag, there was a healing potion that I bought for a ton of money.

‘The nanny who got me this yesterday condemned me, saying that I was buying useless things.’

Can you hear the sound of my grumbling cracking piggy bank?

No, actually, to be precise, my gold box is a porcelain vase with pretty flowers.

Anyway, it was true that half of my piggy bank was suddenly empty.

‘I can’t do it because I keep worrying about that guy.’

After returning home yesterday, the afterimage of the bandage wrapped around Cedric’s hand suddenly came to mind, and I finally took my pocket money and bought a healing potion at a famous magic store in the capital.

Unless it was a serious wound or disease that could endanger his life, it would be possible to heal to some extent immediately by eating or applying it, and if it was a scratch that was on Cedric’s hand, it would probably disappear without a trace.

‘Of course, I’m not thinking about buying it with my money, but I’m still a little worried about how Cedric will react.’

I sat in the chair and thought, waiting for Cedric, who had not yet come.