Haruto stood on tiptoe and lifted down the rice steamer, finally saving the rice from disaster.
When he turned around, the girl named Kagaya had already entered the house and was standing by the table, looking at the swordsmanship Handbook he had spread out on it.
"You learned swordsmanship from these?"
Kagaya asked curiously, "Did no one teach you?"
"For a kid in the Swordsmith Village, having these swordsmanship Handbooks is already pretty good."
Haruto answered with an air of indifference.
"I see..."
Kagaya still looked thoughtful. He seemed to be constantly pondering something, nothing like a child his age.
"Are you Oyakata-sama's daughter?"
"No."
"A maid?"
"Not that, either."
Asking any more would have been rude, so Haruto stopped himself in time and changed the subject. "Have you had lunch? Master Goto makes really good hand-pressed sushi."
"If that's all right with you..."
This little girl certainly didn't stand on ceremony.
Grumbling inwardly, Haruto scooped out the steamed rice and left it to cool. He would have to sprinkle sushi vinegar evenly over it afterward, too. Master Goto had told him to do that.
He hadn't noticed anything amiss, even though the "girl" had looked distinctly odd when he mentioned "daughter" and "maid."
...He wasn't a lolicon, after all... What kind of person kept staring at someone else's little girl?
"You want to leave the village?"
The conversation circled back, and Haruto scratched his head. "Of course, of course. I wasn't born a bird in a cage or a fish in a pond. How could I not want to see what's out there?"
A bird in a cage, a fish in a pond.
Kagaya repeated those words silently, a pang of sadness rising in his heart.
To him, keeping the craftsmen in the village and preventing contact with the