Owen

“What do you mean, there’s no orphanage in town?!” I was furious. The governor had just told me that orphans didn’t have anywhere to go in town. Alice and I had been prepared to take care of Roy since Yroka gave us the egg, but we always knew it would be better to give the baby to an orphanage, where they knew how to take care of children.

Alice and I had spent the last three days in a haze. We’d barely slept for more than an hour at a time, we’d had to run around the house chasing Roy in his dragon form, and we’d had to listen to the incredibly loud cries of Roy in his human form. I hadn’t gotten any work done on new inventions and it had gotten so bad that Sara came by to check on me, thinking something bad had happened. When she found me, I was passed out on the couch in the living room. She’d come by to check on me, to give me my cut of the sales of washing machines, and to see if I needed to order any more food. In the end, however, she also agreed to watch Roy for a few hours so Alice could sleep.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t sleep yet. I needed to go into town to see if I could find an orphanage for Roy. I decided that the cathedral would probably have one nearby, or if they didn’t, they’d at least know where one was. I passed out from exhaustion in the middle of the street, not even halfway through the town. Sir Garret was the one who found me while he was on rounds through the town. He helped me find a spot to sit, then told me to ask the governor. The governor’s office was much closer and he’d know where an orphanage was, so it was perfect. Until it wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, Simon, but there isn’t one. The last one shut down a few years ago. This has been a constant problem for the city. Orphans have nowhere to go, they turn to petty theft to survive, they get beaten up by anyone who looks at them like an easy target, and they fall even further toward a life of crime. Criminal organizations often have done more to help orphans than most towns. We’ve tried to keep orphanages open for as long as we could, even providing funding to them, but the children kept running away. No matter who ran the orphanage, no matter how much funding, no matter what, the children kept running away.”

This was devastating news. Alice and I had thought that taking care of a baby dragon would be difficult, but manageable. This was beyond difficult. This was two children trying to raise a baby. More than that, it wasn’t just any baby, it was the baby of one of the most powerful and dangerous creatures in the world: a dragon. Roy had so much energy. It seemed like he could fly everywhere in the house with his tiny dragon wings, then he’d transform into his human form and he’d cry for hours. He was eating through the supply of fresh food we’d bought when I built our refrigerator and we didn’t have the time or energy to make food. He was also starting to get into a phase where his dragon teeth were starting to grow in, so he was starting to bite everything. His teeth were still small, but he’d still leave marks when he tried to bite me or Alice. Finally, we never had time to do any of the household chores while we were taking care of him. Dishes were piling up, Alice and I had run out of clean clothes from the many accidents that Roy had in both forms, and the house had a smell to it. If we were going to keep taking care of Roy, we needed help. Thus, I hatched a plan.

“What if I turn my house into an orphanage? Would we get funding from the city?”

“Simon, I don’t think you should do that. I can see how exhausted you are on your face. Sir Garret told me about how you passed out in the street.”

“Our main problem right now is that Alice and I don’t have enough time to do our work and chores because Roy has too much energy. If there are other kids, Roy can play with them while we work and clean and make food.”

“That may be true, but then you would also be taking care of all of the other children. I don’t think you can do that along with your work with your business, your work as the count, and maintaining your health.”

“If the city provides funding to orphanages, I can hire someone to take care of the household chores. As long as Alice and I can get some sleep occasionally, we’ll be fine.”

The governor looked suspicious at that claim. “Simon, I care about you. Your father and I were like brothers. I’m glad that you’re trying to do all this, but you can’t do everything. You’re trying to be an inventor, the Count of Westwind, and run an orphanage. I need you to give up on one of those things.”

I knew he was right. I couldn’t do all three. I didn’t want to be Count Westwind, like my father, but I had promised the governor that I wouldn’t give up the title. On the other hand, I didn’t want to stop making inventions. I enjoyed combining the knowledge of Japan’s technology and Katka’s magic. Seeing my ideas come to life was fun. Unfortunately, I couldn’t work on those inventions if all my time was spent raising and caring for children. I was trying to juggle too many things at once.

But what if I wasn’t alone? I couldn’t juggle three things at once, but I had Alice with me. I’m sure once we got some more experience, taking care of Roy wouldn’t be so hard. I was also supposed to have an assistant come take care of some of my paperwork for my countly duties. Then, if Alice and I were in a tough spot, we had people in the city we could rely on.

“Uncle Owen, let’s make a deal.” I could tell that the governor wanted to stop me from trying to take on too much, but it all melted away when I called him Uncle. “If Alice and I can get things under control and take care of Roy, I stay up to date with my paperwork, we keep the house clean, and I get my next invention done in a week, will you give us funding to run an orphanage?”

The governor was trying to find a reason to stop me. It made sense why he was. Trying to do all of this was too much. But seeing the determination on my face must have made him lose his will. “I’ll come by your house in a week. If you don’t meet my standards, then I need you to stop working on your inventions and focus on your countly duties.”

I felt reinvigorated as I walked home. I had a plan and nothing would stand in my way. First, I stopped by The Hungry Bear. I needed to get some actual food, instead of the stale bread and dried fish we’d been eating the past three days. I picked up some meat and vegetable skewers and finally made my way back to the house.

The minute I stepped in the door, all hell broke loose. Roy tried to crawl past me in his dragon form. I quickly grabbed him with one hand while carrying the skewers in a paper bag in the other. As soon as I held him, he was surrounded by a puff of clouds and turned back into his human form. He started crying as loud as he could. He didn’t smell, so I figured that he was hungry. Roy, as a dragon, could eat almost anything, but his human form couldn’t handle anything but milk right now. I held out one of the skewers, trying to convince him to transform back into his dragon form. After a few failed attempts to grab the skewer with his baby hands, he transformed into the scaly dragon form that could eat solid food.

After grabbing a couple of chunks of meat, I could see that Roy’s teeth were nearly fully grown. Dragon teeth seemed to grow much faster than human teeth. As I finished feeding him one of the skewers, Roy yawned and fell asleep in my arms. After a few days of trying to find ways to make Roy sleep, Alice and I learned that dragons had unique hunting habits. Fully-grown dragons typically hunt for a week every month, then sleep for the rest of the month. Aside from mating season, dragons sleep for the majority of the year. However, they can change their habits if they spend a significant amount of time in a human form. Until Alice and I could get Roy to stay in a human form, we’d need him to keep sleeping as much as we could. Unfortunately, we found that out yesterday, when we didn’t have much in terms of food, so we could only hope to get Roy to waste all his energy and fall asleep that way.

I went upstairs to lay Roy down in my bed, only to find Sara sitting on the bed, next to Alice, who was awake now. Alice had been crying and Sara was comforting her. Sara saw me and walked over. “Simon, you need to reconsider your priorities.” As I was left trying to figure out what she meant, Sara walked downstairs. I could hear the front door to the house close as I went over to the bed to sit down beside Alice.

“Alice, what’s wrong?”

Alice looked over at me, saw Roy, and quickly wiped away her tears. “You caught Roy and got him to fall asleep. That’s good.” She saw the bag of skewers and asked, “Can I have some of those?”

“Sure, but why were you crying?”

“It doesn’t matter. I was just going through a lot and it got to me. If Roy’s asleep, then I’m going to try and get a bit more sleep, okay?”

“I hope you know that I’m here if you need anything.”

“I know, Simon. It’s not anything you can help me with.”

“Why not? I want to help you.”

“I know you do, but this is all just in my head. When you left, I was asleep, but when I woke up, Sara was here, trying to catch Roy.” I could see tears forming in the corners of Alice’s eyes. She tilted her head back to try and stop the tears from coming, but the more she tried to stop them, the harder they flowed. “I know you care so much about so many things. I know you care about your work, I know you care about trying to be the count, I know you care about trying to raise Roy, and I know you care about me. But for a moment, I felt like I was last on that list of things you cared about.”

This was what Sara meant when she said I needed to think about my priorities. I held Alice’s head to my shoulder so she could cry without worrying. The thing about feelings is that they don’t always make sense. The way we experience the world is with our senses, but we process the world through our feelings and logic. Everyone thinks that logic is so important that we tend to forget about feelings. If we don’t have all the facts, our feelings can get warped, but that doesn’t mean those feelings are based on lies. If Alice was worried about me not prioritizing her, that meant that she genuinely felt that, even if it was for a small moment. That feeling of fear that I somehow didn’t care about her as much as everything else I did, it was real.

“Alice, I want you to know that, no matter what, I will always love you. I care about you. If you feel like I’m doing something wrong, or if you feel like I’m not prioritizing you, I want you to tell me. I’m going to do better.”

“I know you will, that’s what makes this hurt so much. I feel like my head is lying to me, trying to convince me that you hate me.”

“If you want me to just let you rest, I’ll do that. If you want me to hold you, I’ll do that. If you don’t know what you want, I’ll be here when you do.”

“The part that hurts the most is when you show me how much you care. It shows me that these feelings and worries in my head aren’t real. I know these feelings will stop after a week, but it still hurts when I see you care about me.”

After a week? That was the moment I had a flash of a memory from my other life. My mom was giving me “The Talk” and explained shortly about hormones. “Hormones can make you feel funny things. Those emotions are real, but they’re temporary. The thing that’s permanent is the consequences of how you deal with those emotions. If you ever tell a girl that she’s just being hormonal, that won’t make the emotions go away. Trust me, girls know that they’re being hormonal, being emotional, and that those feelings are temporary. What you need to do is show her that you’re there to support her. Boys always try to deal with everything on their own. Girls try to get support from everyone they can. If you try to deal with everything on your own, people aren’t going to see you struggling to carry that burden alone until it’s too late. If you try and make a girl deal with her problems on her own, she’ll end up hating you. But, if you try and solve her problems for her, that’ll make her hate you, too. All you need to do is be there for her.”

I stood up from the bed, lifting Alice up with me, and held her hand. I started walking, hand-in-hand with her, and headed downstairs. Alice seemed too confused to stop me, so I eventually made it down to the kitchen. Still holding Alice’s hand, I grabbed a big pot with my free hand. I used a water crystal to fill it with water and grabbed a green onion and kombu from our new refrigerator. I dropped the kombu into the pot of water and put it on the stovetop to start making dashi. I wish I had bonito flakes, but this would still be good.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m making us some soup. It’ll be easy to eat, we can eat it warm or cold, and we can even make plenty for multiple days at once.”

“No, I mean why are you holding my hand?”

“I want to hold your hand. It’ll be hard to cut the green onion like this, but I’ll make do.” I paused, waiting for Alice to say something, but she was quiet. “I’m going to be a bit selfish right now, so I hope you forgive me.”

As I finished cutting the green onion with one hand, I set it aside and grabbed a bunch of eggs. I whisked them in a bowl until they were mixed, then I turned back around to the kombu stock. It wasn’t boiling yet, so I waited, still holding Alice’s hand.

“Can I be selfish, too?”

“Always. It’s okay to be selfish sometimes.”

Alice let go of my hand, kissed me on the cheek, and left the room. I wasn’t sure where she went. After she kissed me, my mind went fuzzy. I eventually finished making the egg drop soup, which I put into the refrigerator. We’d have food for the next few days, at least. I couldn’t remember what happened after that, but I vaguely remembered falling asleep on one of the couches in the living room, touching the spot where Alice kissed me.

The next day, I was in my father’s office, reviewing paperwork. I’d explained to Alice about the deal I made with the governor. Alice understood where I was coming from when I explained that I wanted to make this house into an orphanage. If we had the funding from the city, we wouldn’t need to worry about the cost of raising Roy. I also explained how I didn’t need to make as many inventions if the city was giving us funding. I still wanted to make a number of things from my other world, but it wouldn’t be something that I let get in the way of us raising these children. The worry that Alice had was about me trying to do too much. It was the same worry that the governor had. I promised Alice that, after this week, I’d be sure to spread out my work so that I wouldn’t burn myself out.

I was looking through the paperwork and noticed a resume. The name on the resume read “Garret Cooper”. It was Sir Garret. I knew that Sir Garret often delivered the mail and my paperwork, so I assumed it got mixed into my paperwork by accident. It was only a ten minute walk from here to the city gate and back, so I went to ask someone to have Sir Garret come by the house.

“Please sir, let me work as your assistant!” About an hour later, Garret Cooper was in my office, bowing his head and asking to work for me. To understand how this happened, we needed to go back to when Garret walked into my office.

“Oh, Sir Garret, I saw you left a resume of yours in my paperwork. Do you need this back?”

“No sir, I want to work for you.”

That had confused me more than it shocked me. I understood trying to move up in the world, but shouldn’t he be trying to advance within the ranks of the city guards? “Don’t you want to be a city guard?”

“No. All they have me do is run their errands. I can read and write in every major language across the continent, I know how to manage money, and I know how to fight, but all I ever do is run across town all day.”

His complaints made sense, but why was he so overqualified for the job? “Where did you learn to read and write every language?”

“I obviously know Arkanic because it’s the language here, and it's easy to learn Taric because of all the travelers from Tarion. My parents taught me Sakurago and Zanko because they were traveling merchants for years. They’ve been to every country on the continent, even Zankara.”

This continent we lived on was made up of four main countries: the Kingdom of Arkana, where we lived, the Tarion Empire, which we shared a border with, the Zankara Monarchy, which was ruled by the Lich Queen, and the Sakura Archipelago Federation. The continent was shaped almost like a three-leaf clover. In the center was the Tarion Empire. They spoke Taric in Tarion, but most cathedrals held services while speaking in Taric. This was the largest country and had previously expanded through the other countries’ territories, but had stopped when the Lich Queen rose to power and the empire made an alliance with the other two countries to stop her advances. To the south of Tarion was the Kingdom of Arkana, where we lived. We spoke Arkanic, but I also knew Japanese and a bit of English. The kingdom was the smallest country, but we were at peace because the Lich Queen couldn’t reach us without crossing through Tarion. To the west of Tarion was Zankara. In the past, it had mostly been a demon and beastfolk nation, but when the Lich Queen rose to power, she expelled all of the living people and rose undead armies. This meant that there were a large number of demon and beastfolk refugees. Most were in Tarion, but some made their way to Arkana. Undead couldn’t speak much more than moans and grunts, so Zanko was slowly dying out as a language. To the east of Tarion was the Sakura Archipelago Federation. It was a number of small island countries that all banded together to form a large alliance. They spoke Sakurago in Sakura, which, along with the name, made me think that the country was similar to Japan. If I knew Japanese, I might be able to speak Sakurago.

“I assume that you also learned how to manage money from your parents?”

“That’s right. My parents wanted me to be a merchant, but I wanted to be a knight. Now, I’d settle for a job that didn’t leave my feet so sore.”

“Well, Sir Garret, I’d say you more than qualify for the job here.”

“Thank you so much sir, I won’t disappoint you!”

“I wasn’t finished. You’re overqualified. You should go to the capital. If I give you a letter of recommendation, you could get a job anywhere you wanted. You could even get a job in Tarion as a translator. I can’t pay you much here. If I made you stay here, you’d be wasting your talents.”

There was a long pause before Sir Garret bowed deeply and said, “Please sir, let me work as your assistant!”

“But I just told you that you could do much better somewhere else!”

“I want to stay in Katka. I’ve lived here my whole life. I want to stay here. I want to grow old here.”

I wanted to refuse. If he worked in the capital, he could get promoted to a major advisor to the royal family, simply because he knew languages and how to manage money. If he worked in Tarion, he could start as a translator and even become a major diplomat. But I also knew that the same was true for me. If I wanted to just focus on inventing things, it would be best to go to the capital, where the headquarters of the Magicians’ Guild was. I could get any crystals I wanted, make all kinds of inventions, and all I’d have to do was uproot my life. I’d lose this house, lose all of the memories of living here with my mother and father, and force Alice and Roy to move across the entire country. I couldn’t do that to them.

I sighed. If this was what Sir Garret wanted, then I only had one question for him. “Who is it that made you want to stay in Katka your whole life?”

Sir Garret was blushing. He awkwardly scratched his cheek, looking away. “You met her the other day. She works as an appraiser. Her name is Rosella. We grew up together. I want to marry her someday.”

Ah, childhood friends. I’d seen enough anime in my other life to know how that would turn out if you didn’t take the initiative soon. One of them would fall in love with someone else, while the other would have their feelings go unrequited. As someone who was already engaged, I felt like it was my duty to make sure that his love was a success. Okay, sure I’d only been engaged for six days now, but that still meant I was more experienced than he was.

“I have a test of your strength of will. You will go to Rosella and confess your feelings. Don’t ask to marry her yet. If she turns you down, I want you to go out into the world. If she accepts your feelings, come back here and you’ll have a job waiting for you. If you chicken out, you’ll never be able to work for me. But, if you confess and she accepts, I want you to ask to marry her in two months. If you’ve known each other for this long, either she’s liked you this entire time or it would never work out in a million years.”

The next day, I saw an ecstatic Sir Garret standing outside my house with his new girlfriend in tow. Apparently he’d told her about my demands and she wanted to thank me for forcing him to confess. She’d liked him for this entire time, but he was clueless. She’d known he liked her, but she didn’t want to be with someone who was too scared to take a risk on asking someone out. Because of this, I had a new assistant to help with all of my paperwork. More importantly, Sir Garret was finally going on a shopping date with his childhood friend.

That same day, Alice and I were working on getting the house fully cleaned. It was day two of the bet with the governor, so we decided to work on housework and chores today. Roy was still sleeping after having eaten a whole beef roast the day before, so we had plenty of time to get work done without worrying about being interrupted. Our first job was getting all of the dirty clothes washed. I gathered all of my clothes, put them into the washing machine, and added some soap. The soap wasn’t very advanced in this world, but I didn’t know how to make anything better, so I had to deal with it. Once I’d started the washing machine, I gathered all of the blankets and sheets for the next load. All of the blankets I’d used for the nest were still there, so they all needed to be cleaned before they could be used again. The last thing I needed to wash was Alice’s clothes, but before I could gather them, Alice blocked my entry to her room. I told her that I was going to wash her clothes, but she slammed the door in my face. Later that day, Alice took care of her own laundry.

My next task for the day was cleaning all of the empty rooms. The top floor had three and the bottom floor had four. If we planned on turning this house into an orphanage, those rooms would be turned into bedrooms for all of those children. If each room had two bunk beds, that would be enough for 28 children, but that would be a bit too cramped for some of the older children and wouldn’t give enough room for Alice and I to help take care of some of the youngest ones. Instead, I thought it would be best to keep the rooms limited to a single bunk bed. It would mean we could only take in 14 orphaned children, but that would be enough for us for now. In addition to Roy, that made an even 15. Until we got the rooms cleaned, though, we couldn’t take in anyone.

The rooms on the bottom floor were previously used for the staff when my family previously had the money to hire cleaners and other staff, so they were designed to be bedrooms. The rooms on the top floor weren’t, though, so we needed to make space in them. One had been a library at one point, so I had Sir Garret help me remove the bookshelves. We decided to put one of the bookshelves in my office, where there was some space. The other bookshelf went into the living room, by the stairs. One of the other rooms was previously a recreation room. Most of the various game tables had been removed already, but there was an empty wine rack in the corner of the room. Apparently it had been a wedding gift from my grandfather on my mother’s side. When it was gifted, it was filled with various wines, but they’d been sold to try and pay off my family’s debts. My parents couldn’t bring themselves to sell this, though. I decided to move it into the dining room. The last room was being used as storage. There wasn’t much left in here, but there was some extra bedding, a few sets of curtains, and a small chest that I wasn’t familiar with.

“Simon, what’s in that chest over there?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t remember this one.” I went over to the chest to open it. Inside were wooden blocks, stuffed toys, and other various children’s toys. The memories started flowing back to me. When I was really young, I’d spend days just playing with these toys, my toys. There were some beanbags from a time when I’d tried to learn to juggle like a street performer I’d seen one time. There was a leather ball that I’d used to play catch with my father. There were so many memories in here, just left in the corner of a storage room.

“What’s this one?” said Alice, pulling a small stuffed animal from the cluttered chest.

“It’s a little brown dog. His name is Scamp. He always seemed so much bigger than he is now.” I could see the stitching on its belly from the time I’d ripped it on the tree in the backyard. I pointed to it and explained, “I remembered going to my mother, crying when this happened. I’d been playing in the yard and accidentally tossed him into the tree. I’d climbed up the tree to shake him down from the branches, but he ripped on the way down. She sat me down on her lap, brought out her sewing kit, and fixed the tear, all while comforting me.” I could feel tears forming in my eyes. Alice felt this and gently held me, her arms wrapped around my neck. It had already been over a month since my parents’ deaths, but this was the first time it truly felt like it sank in. My parents were gone. The only things I had left of them were my memories. I had been moving so fast, all to try and stop myself from grieving them. Between Alice, Roy, and my deal with the governor, I’d done so many things to keep myself distracted. I’d never have another moment of playing catch with my father, I’d never have another moment of being comforted by my mother, and this stuffed animal was one of the only ties to them I had left.

“I think we should give him to Roy. Him and the rest of the toys.” I’d wiped away my tears as Alice let go, slightly confused.

“But doesn’t this stuffed animal mean a lot to you?”

“He does. But the things that mattered the most about him were the memories of my parents. Same thing with all of these toys. I want Roy to have those same kinds of memories with us. You can’t hold on to the past forever. I’ll still have those memories. I just want to make sure Roy has them, too.”

We brought the toy chest into my bedroom, where Roy had been sleeping. I’d been sleeping on the couch in the living room for the most part. I knew that my bed was a bit too big for just Roy, but he had a tendency to bite in his sleep, so no one could really share the bed with him. As we opened the door, Alice and I saw the sleeping Roy. Whenever he slept, he stayed in his dragon form. When he first hatched from his egg, he was about a meter long. Now, he was still about the same length, but instead of looking closer to a lizard with wings, he looked more like an actual dragon. He was still small, but his wings seemed to finally match his size. When he hatched, his wings were barely big enough to let him fly for a few seconds at a time. Now, his wings gently tucked back behind him as he slept. His tail still made up nearly half his length, but his arms and legs were starting to grow. When he first hatched, his arms and legs were so short that you could completely miss them if you didn’t know what to look for. For a brief moment, I’d thought he didn’t have any, they were that short. Now, they were starting to look more like actual limbs. They’d never be as big as his wings, if his mother Yroka was any indication, but he’d eventually be able to walk without dragging his belly on the ground.

Roy’s eyes slowly began to open. He seemed to notice us because he transformed into his human form. His human form still looked like a newborn baby, but his eyes looked like they had clear signs of intelligence behind them. As he laid there, looking up at us, he didn’t cry. He seemed to be almost waiting for something. I brought out Scamp. I walked over beside Roy and knelt down.

“Roy, I wanted to give you something.” I set down the stuffed dog beside him. He didn’t seem to fully understand what I was doing, but he also didn’t turn back into a dragon and start biting the gift. “This was something my parents gave to me. I may not be your parent by blood, but I wanted to give you this same gift.”

Roy turned to look at the stuffed dog. He tried reaching out with his tiny baby hands. As his fingers gently grazed against the soft fur of the stuffed animal, he turned back into his dragon form. For a second, I was worried that he’d start trying to chew on the dog, but he simply curled his form around the gift as he returned to his slumber. The way he moved and reacted seemed like he was much smarter than his age would imply, but I didn’t know if that was normal for a dragon or not. As Alice and I let him sleep, we finished up the remaining cleaning for the day.

It was now the fifth day of the deal. With two days left, I was doing much better than I expected. The house was mostly cleaned, the paperwork was getting dealt with on time, and Alice and I had actually gotten a full night’s sleep the night prior. We’d been eating full meals, Roy’d been running around the house for a few hours every day, then he ate a large plate of meat, and did his business before he fell asleep for the rest of the day. Roy, thankfully, always looked the same in his human form as he did the last time he was in that form. This meant, if he needed to do his business, he typically transformed into human form, did his thing, and started crying until Alice or I changed his diaper. Roy was so smart, but he still couldn’t figure out how to sleep in human form. I’d heard from one of the researchers at the magic tower that dragons could sleep in human form if they concentrated on staying in human form with the smallest part of their magic. Dragons have the highest aptitude for magic compared to any other people. Between transformation magic, elemental magic, and flight, dragons could do a lot. Most impressively, though, they could do all of these things from the moment they hatched. Sure they couldn’t control their magic very well at that age, but even being able to do that while that young was impressive. My only concern was that Roy was having trouble flying still. His wings seemed to be fine, but he’d have trouble whenever he tried to fly upwards. He could glide and fly downwards without much issue, but there was a time he tried to fly up the stairs, only to smack his head into one of the stairs midway up.

Despite my concerns about Roy, though, everything was doing much better than I thought. My only problem was my invention. Part of the deal was that I needed to make a new invention before the week was up. My previous inventions were the oven, the refrigerator, and the washing machine. I’d also told Sara and Elias about minor adjustments that could be made to those three to make a dehydrator, a freezer, and a dishwasher, respectively. My problem now was that I couldn’t think of something I could do in two days. I had a couple ideas, but they required fire crystals or ice crystals. I needed something that used wind crystals, earth crystals, or water crystals, but nothing came to mind. I’d already bought a large number of each, but with nothing to make, they simply sat in a corner of my office. I was left wandering the halls of the house day after day, night after night, trying to come up with an idea, but nothing came to me.

That night, I saw Alice leaving the bath. She’d already changed into her nightgown, but her hair was still slightly wet. “Alice, you know you need to dry your hair or you’ll catch a cold.”

As she turned to look at me, she sighed. “I know, but the towels were washed today. They never finished drying, so I just tried to squeeze the water out of my hair.”

That gave me an idea. I could make a hairdryer! No, that wouldn’t work. Without any fire crystals, there’d be no heat. Maybe I could make a dryer! No, there’d be the same problem. Or wait a minute. Do I need heat to dry something? If I just find a way to remove moisture from something, that would also dry something. If I use a wind crystal to blow air in the opposite direction of the object, that could suck the moisture from an object. I finally had an idea. Things were finally turning around.

Governor Owen Crayford, Elias from the general store, and Sir Garret’s new girlfriend, Rosella were all at the house today. Rosella was just here because she had the day off from work and would be spending the afternoon with Sir Garret, but the governor and Elias were here to check on our progress. It was the final day of our bet. I invited the three inside. Alice had made everyone some tea, which we enjoyed in the living room.

“Well, I must say that I’m more impressed than I thought I’d be. There’s no obvious messes, Roy isn’t running around like you said he was a week ago, and you and young miss Alice look like you’ve been sleeping and eating well.”

I didn’t feel the need to mention my aching shoulders. I’d been sleeping on the same couch I was sitting on right now since Roy hatched, so my back, neck, and shoulders all had a constant, dull ache to them. I stood up and directed the governor to follow Alice and I. Elias stayed in the living room while Rosella went up to my office where Garret was working. Our first stop was the kitchen.

“We’ve been eating a variety of things. We have soup for days when we don’t have time to make a full meal, we have plenty of meat for Roy, and we have various vegetables for us to make sandwiches and salads with.”

The governor pulled a brown paper bag out of the refrigerator. “What’s this?”

“That’s meat and vegetable skewers from The Hungry Bear. We aren’t perfect. Sometimes we’ll get food from there and bring it home to eat.”

“I see…”

Next up were the empty rooms. These would be turned into bedrooms if we became an orphanage, so the governor had wanted to see them.

“As you can see, the rooms are perfectly cleaned, the bedding has been washed, and the curtains have been put up in all of the rooms.”

“I can see that, but where are the beds?”

“We don’t have the money to be spending on beds just yet. I planned to buy the beds with the funding from the city combined with the money from my next invention.”

“I see…”

“Here’s the office. Sir Garret can tell you all about how the paperwork situation has been going.”

Sir Garret stood up as we entered the room. He’d clearly been slacking off from work, making heart eyes at his girlfriend until we walked in. “Yes sir. I’ve been taking care of the majority of the paperwork. Anything that requires the count’s signature and seal will always be handled by the count, himself. Most of the paperwork simply requires being reviewed and stamped for approval, so that all gets handled by me.”

“And I’m sure that Count Westwind is paying you adequately?” It stung a bit to be called by my title and not my name.

“Absolutely, sir. 3 gold per month is more than enough for such simple work.”

The governor narrowed his eyes at that statement before saying, “I see…”

I opened the door to Roy’s room slowly, trying not to wake him. The lights were off and the curtains were drawn, so the room was dark, but enough light filtered through the curtains for us to see where we were. The governor walked over beside the bed. As he walked through the room, he looked around. The room was still mostly empty. There was the bed, the toy chest, my chest of things, my dresser, and the now-unused desk. The governor stopped by a corner of the room where a dent could be found next to the window.

“Roy will typically wake up in the morning shortly after I do. He’ll spend a few hours running around the house before he eats. After that, he’ll sleep for most of the day.”

As I said this, the governor turned around with a confused look. “Where do you sleep, then? Are you already sharing a bed with young miss Alice?!”

“What?! No! Not yet. I sleep on the couch in the living room.”

“Unacceptable. This deal is off.” And with that, the governor left the room. As he stomped downstairs, I was left shocked by the sudden turn. Did he want me to be sharing a bed with Alice? It felt a bit too soon for us, but I’m sure we could make it work if it meant we got funding to run the orphanage. No, I’m sure that wasn’t it. I quickly followed after him, trying to reach him before he left the house.

“Uncle Owen, wait!” I scrambled down the stairs, trying to stop him from leaving. He was in the living room, about to open the door when he turned around.

“Don’t try that now. I know you don’t think of me like an uncle, but I still care about you and your family. Do you remember what my conditions for this deal were? You needed to meet my standards.”

“Tell me where I went wrong. I can fix it!”

“Do you remember the time a few years ago when you went and hit your head on the corner of your window? I was here at the time. I was handling some paperwork with your father when we suddenly heard a large bump come from your room. We went over to check on the commotion, only to see you looking like nothing happened. Your father asked you what happened, but you didn’t tell him. I saw the bloody rag you were hiding behind your back, as well as the wound on your forehead. As soon as your injury potentially inconvenienced someone else, you tried to hide it. You’re always trying to help others at your own cost. I was going to give you the funding, no matter what. My only real condition was that I saw you taking care of yourself. But to hear that you don’t prioritize your health in your diet and only think about what’s convenient? To hear that you are paying your assistant such a generous wage at the same time that you can’t afford the bare necessities of caring for the children you wish to take in? I could almost overlook these things as the maintained financial struggle of your family’s debts having some effect on your daily life, but when you said that you sleep on the couch, I realized that you don’t actually care about your own health, your own wellbeing. If you simply slept in the same bed as young miss Alice, I would think that you simply had loose morals. Sleeping on a couch leads to poor sleep, which leads to poor health, which leads to unhappiness. I refuse to let you enter into a situation where you continue to not think about your own happiness. I was never asking you to be selfish or to put yourself above everyone else, but you just needed to show me that you wouldn’t simply ignore yourself.”

Of course I remembered that story. I had been trying to play catch by myself in my room. I knew how stressed my father was. I couldn’t make him take time out of his day to spend it with me when he had so much work to do. I threw the ball up, ran to catch it, tripped, and hit my head on the corner of the window. I heard my father stand up in the room next to me and quickly went to wipe away the small amount of blood. Sure, I was trying to be considerate of my father’s work. Any dutiful son would. It was never a matter of trying to put other people’s happiness before myself. In this world and in Japan, I always felt happiest when I was around happy people. I lived a happy life, despite the stress of financial troubles, all because my family was happy. In Japan, I lived a happy life, despite being average in all regards, all because my family was happy. If I could make other people happy, that would make me happy.

“Governor. I have one last thing to show you and Elias. Trust me.” The governor didn’t turn around to leave, so I went to grab the invention from my office. It was a small tube with a bag attached. As I came back downstairs, the governor and Elias were still there, waiting. “I have a story of my own. I was trying to come up with an invention I could make in two days. I didn’t have the necessary crystals to make any of my best ideas, so I was having trouble. Then I saw how Alice’s hair was still wet after taking a bath. I didn’t want her to catch a cold, so I wanted to make something to help her dry her hair. It seemed perfect. I had plenty of wind crystals, so even without fire crystals to make heat, I could make something that could suck the moisture off of her hair. Then, it went wrong. The hair dryer was too strong. If Alice tried to use it, it would rip out her hair. No matter what I did, I couldn’t make something that would dry her hair, but not rip it out. In the end, I couldn’t make a hair dryer without heat. But, I accidentally made something even better. This is a vacuum cleaner. It sucks all of the dirt and dust in your house into the bag on the other end. I made this because I was trying to do something for Alice. I wanted to make sure she was staying healthy, just like you were trying to do for me. You were right when you said I don’t always prioritize myself. But you were wrong when you said I don’t care about my own happiness. I’m happiest when the people I care about are happy. If you want me to sleep in an actual bed, then I just need enough funding to buy myself a new bed. Roy bites too much when he sleeps.”

There was a long pause before the governor finally spoke. His eyes were solemn, but not sad. Wistful, I guess would be the word for it. “I guess you have grown up. Your father always said the same thing. That he was always happiest when his family was happy. He often worried about whether or not you were happy.”

“I was always happy. Even when we had days where no one spoke to each other, all because we’d needed to sell more and more things to pay for food, I was always happy. I had my family. The first time I was sad was when I saw my parents die. She’s different from my parents, but Alice is part of my family now, too. Same with Roy. I want to make them happy so we can be a happy family together.”

“You always were your father’s son. Fine. I’ll sign the paperwork and bring you the initial deposit from the city tomorrow. What will you call this orphanage, then?”

I didn’t need to think about it for a moment. From the moment I came up with this idea, I knew what I’d call the orphanage. “This will be the Dandelion House.”