The Gift
"Luke, I said I'm sorry!"
"Have I not already forgiven you? Now get off me."
Sorbi found the hands pushing her away so terribly sad.
Just a few days ago she could scoop him up whenever she pleased and he never shoved her off like this!
"Unni, Luke's gotten so cold toward me……."
"Pfft. You reaped what you sowed."
Yerna watched that little figure and thought to herself.
Sorbi really has been a nuisance. Hugging him at every possible moment……. And on top of that…….
It was Sorbi who taught him that finger V-sign, so of course his favorability would take a hit.
"But……! Unni enjoyed it too! Why am I the only one getting hated……!"
Sorbi felt deeply wronged.
They had all (supposedly) enjoyed the photos taken with that adorable pose, so why did she alone have to take the blame?
Luke's reasoning, however, had nothing to do with simple revenge.
What revenge was there even to take?
Revenge meant doing something the other person disliked.
In that case, refusing to let himself be picked up could hardly count as revenge.
That logic required the premise that holding his body was somehow a "benefit" to the other party.
And deep down, Luke refused to accept that being held by Sorbi was any sort of benefit to her at all.
Lately her attempts to scoop him up had simply grown so frequent and so relentless that it had become a genuine bother; keeping a firm distance was merely his recent practical judgment.
Besides, almost no one else ever tried to pick him up in the first place.
At his age, being cradled in the arms of a young woman was still an embarrassing affair.
If someone called him shameless, he would have little room to argue.
"Look at that face—he's freezing me out completely!"
"Lu looks the same as always……."
"No way, he's totally ice-cold!"
A filter of pure persecution complex had already settled over Sorbi's eyes.
Objectively, Luke's expression was simply blank—the same face he usually wore while reading.
Having been refused approach, Sorbi could only watch him from afar.
Sipping her coffee and stealing glances, she still saw him in exactly the same posture, nestled inside a cardboard box with a book open before him.
I get that it's the cat side of his instincts…….
But how could he fit into that narrow box and stay perfectly still for hours just reading?
It wasn't as if he hated exercise, either.
Sorbi, on the other hand, loathed books.
She found it genuinely amazing that Luke could sit for hours with a volume that was nothing but bare text—no pictures at all.
"If I give him a book as a present, do you think he'd forgive me?"
"Maybe? But Lu's taste in books is ridiculously picky. If you just grab something on your own, you'll only end up disappointing him."
Yerna remembered the extreme look of disappointment on Luke's face when she had once presented him with a children's fairy tale simply because it had the words "magic book" on the cover.
She had been quite flustered at the time.
Well, the sparkling eyes he showed later when she took him to an actual bookstore had quickly restored her good mood.
"R-really?"
But there was no chance Sorbi would ever go to a bookstore with Luke. Bookstores triggered a physiological aversion in her.
Something about memories of studying for the forest-keeper exams, she claimed.
And whether Luke would even agree to go with her was another question entirely.
"Unni, recommend something Luke would like."
"Even if you ask me that……."
In truth, Luke accepted almost anything Yerna gave him with a grateful smile.
She was his benefactor and guardian; for her he always showed a natural, unforced smile free of any dislike.
That special treatment left Yerna feeling rather pleased, and a small smile touched her lips as she spoke.
"Ah. He likes magical devices. Phones and things like that."
"Oh, right! A phone!"
Sorbi shot to her feet as if the idea had struck her fully formed.
"Yerna-unni, Luke still doesn't have a phone, right?"
"……Sorbi, you're not seriously thinking of buying him one?"
Sorbi buying Luke a phone!
That was no small sum of money.
True, now that he had been promoted to official status, opening a line was possible, but still…….
"Aren't you overdoing it a little?"
"Heh heh. Unni, my one and only hobby is shopping."
Yerna stiffened as Sorbi covered half her face with one hand and laughed like a villain.
"You're really going to buy him one……?"
If she actually did, it would be an enormous help.
"……."
Sorbi held the pose for a moment, mentally checking her bank balance.
If I buy everything I want, it's going to be tight…….
She would have loved to give him a brand-new one, but it simply wasn't feasible.
She softened the villainous smile into something gentler and sat back down.
"……Buying a new one is out, but I've got an old handset at home."
"Wow, really?"
"In exchange, you cover the plan with your money."
"Sure! I was already worried about Luke not having a phone. This is perfect!"
"Luke, will you let Unni hug you just once?"
"That again? How many times must I tell you not to disturb me while I am reading?"
Luke sighed and began considering how best to soothe this childish young woman when—
Sorbi wore a triumphant look and brought forward the hand she had been hiding behind her back.
"Luke, can you still say that after seeing this?"
The tone was nothing like her usual self.
For Sorbi to sound that excited made Luke feel a faint prickle of unease as he lifted his head.
"Sorbi, what on earth have you—"
He froze.
The half-hearted movement of his eyes stopped dead.
In Sorbi's hand was a rectangular object—a fusion of modern magical technology, its core tuned nearly to perfection and thousands of magic circles woven together.
Yes. A smartphone.
Yet Luke deliberately tore his gaze away from the thing he had only glanced at and continued speaking.
"……What is this, some sort of brag?"
"Why would I brag? This is yours."
Luke briefly wondered whether becoming this body had somehow damaged his hearing.
He scratched the ears atop his head a few times, confirmed his hearing was fine, then nodded and said,
"……Wait. I must have misheard just now. Would you say that again?"
At that reaction Sorbi grinned and held the phone out as if offering it.
"Nope. You heard me just fine. This is my present to you."
"……S-Sorbi. Truly? This is…… your gift?"
Luke slipped a bookmark into the volume he had been reading and sprang to his feet.
What a mouth-watering proposal!
Mouth-watering was no mere figure of speech.
Luke quickly swallowed the saliva that had begun to well up and slowly approached her.
"Th-then, may I truly accept it?!"
With that alone he could leap several stages ahead of the magic-circle knowledge he currently possessed.
No—after only a few minutes of examination he had already improved and rewritten sixty percent of the old formulae.
If he were to actually own that concentrated mass of modern magic, what then?
His magical knowledge would skip entire generations.
Just as Luke reached out as if entranced—
"But!"
Sorbi lifted the phone teasingly, a sly smile on her face.
"Say 'Thank you, Sorbi-unni,' and I'll give it to you."
"……What?"
"You heard me. 'Thank you, Sorbi-unni!'"
"……."
Luke's breath caught in his throat.
Unni. Thank you.
No choice of words could more thoroughly deny the self that was Luke Irushi.
It was a term used by a woman addressing an older woman!
Nothing could suit him less.
Outwardly he might look like this, but he was older than Sorbi, and he had lived more than a century as a man.
His pride as that person…….
"If you don't want it, fine. I'll just sell the thing—"
"……Sorbi-unni…… th-thank you……."
The smartphone was simply too great a reward to let slip away.
"Hm? What was that?"
She had heard perfectly well, yet she pretended otherwise, grinning as she tilted an ear toward him.
Luke felt heat rising inside and forced the emotion down.
I have not felt this embarrassed in a very long time……!
With the will of an archmage he swallowed the feeling again and again.
His hands and feet wanted to twist themselves into knots from sheer mortification, yet he forced his vocal cords to vibrate and moved his mouth and tongue—to meet the condition Sorbi had set.
"Sorbi-unni, thank you……!"
"That just now—perfect!"
Click.
The moment the words left Luke's mouth, an artificial sound rang out from behind Sorbi's back.
"Ah……?"
Only then, distracted by the phone, did Luke realize Sorbi had kept one hand hidden behind her the entire time.
He accepted the phone she held out, then, seized by a vague anxiety, cast Mana Sight on the device still in her other hand.
This magic array is…….
The instant he understood what it was, Luke cried out in horror.
"S-Sorbi! That is a sound-recording spell, is it not?!"
He set his new phone down on the floor with extreme care, then exploded out of the box.
Bang!
Of course he had used Enhance Body and Wind for that speed.
"Whoa! He really is crazy fast!"
But Sorbi was a forest keeper of Luke Forest as well. She was more than capable of dodging Luke's sudden physical assault.
She had also anticipated that his movements would be quick, so she was able to bolt straight out of the lodging.
Luke considered greasing the soles of her shoes, yet unlike Daiton she did not look particularly sturdy; the thought that she might get badly hurt held him back.
Giving him a phone was something to be grateful for, so he had no desire to overdo the suppression.
If he could cast Shield on another person he would have done so without hesitation, but granting Shield to someone else required at least fourth-circle authority.
Light? Far too conspicuous.
A flash bright enough to steal someone's vision outdoors would announce to everyone that he had used magic. Yerna might even see it.
Luke did not want to be caught using unauthorized magic by Yerna.
"Give me that phone!"
"Hahaha! Not a chance! This Sorbi will never hand it over!"
Laughing brightly as she cut through the forest, Sorbi fled; behind her, still in pajamas, Luke Irushi chased with desperate determination.
Kirke, who had just finished a light jog around the lodging and was drinking water with a towel around her neck, watched a child and an adult locked in a high-speed pursuit and thought to herself,
Making him exercise like that every once in a while doesn't look half bad.
How long had it been since Sorbi last laughed that freely while working up a sweat?
Luke, on the other hand, looked ready to cry from pure misery.
Come to think of it, earlier Sorbi had been making a huge fuss about giving Luke a present today and about how he had finally called her "unni."
"Looks like she's going to get hated again."
Whatever she had done wrong this time.
A short while later both Luke and Sorbi were nearly exhausted before the chase finally ended, and Luke deleted the recorded voice from Sorbi's phone.
He never noticed that the recording had already been uploaded to the forest keepers' group chat.
While everyone in the chat burst into laughter at her prank, there was one person who could not simply laugh along.
"……Sorbi. You've crossed a line."
"W-why? Yerna-unni?"
"Lu still hasn't even called me unni yet……. And you go and cut in line by blackmailing him with a present."
"Huk. I-is that really true……?"
"Sorbi. Get down. We'll start from one."
"U-unni! Spare me, please spare me!"
"Sorbi, your hips are dropping."
"Euuuueeeek—!"
That day, Sorbi became just a little healthier.