Burden

Waking me up from my eternal sleep was Anya, though she didn't directly wake me up. When I heard the sounds of her footsteps, the sound of the door opening, and detected her presence, I woke up on my own.

So by the time she entered the room I was already up, sitting on the bed and rubbing my sleepy eyes.

"You came back early?" I said and tried to start a conversation since I can't stand that awkward silence.

"I was out for three hours," she replied.

"….Oh, I see."

I was asleep for three hours, huh. But wait for a second, if she was out for three hours and if I assume that she was doing shopping then why did she come back with only one purse she went out with?

There should be some shopping bags and stuff with her, right?

"Did you not buy anything?"

I didn't get the answer to this immediately, first, she put her purse on a nearby desk and she replied.

"I didn't go out to particularly buy something, I did say before that I'm going to explore this city, now didn't I? The only things I buy are some daily use stuff."

To put it simply, she just wandered around. Kinda unexpected for me, since the Anya I know is the one who's always training, trying to improve her sword arts, and has an air of seriousness around her.

But now she was acting like, uh, how to say it…..right now she seems more carefree, she is showing all sorts of emotions I haven't seen on her before. Basically, she was acting more like how a normal girl of her age should.

This was something different from that, maybe a different side of her. Did this side surface because of the newly acquired freedom she has now since our parents aren't here?

Or was she always like this and I was the one who didn't notice?

I should wait and observe a bit more, I think.

***

Nothing much happened after that, Anya changed into her indoor wear clothes, I was worried a little since we had only this room but she changed in the bathroom that was attached to our room.

Since we didn't have anything to do, we played cards to pass time. Anya was the one who suggested it because a deck of cards was one of the things she bought.

We were playing Rummy, by the way, surprisingly these games existed in this world also.

Roughly an hour later, a member of the hotel's staff came to inform us about dinner, actually, it wasn't an invitation but what he said was that they are going to serve dinner now and we can come to the first floor(which worked as a restaurant) and eat if we want.

It was not an exclusive offer but a buffet meal serving system for everyone who was staying in this hotel.

We didn't have to pay for the dinner because it was included in the booking Ron made.

Now I wonder just how much did she spend here? This hotel was definitely of high-class plus all our meals were included. Was he overspending because of the huge sum of money I arranged?

Weirdly, I can already imagine him saying "If it's for my children then I don't care about silly things like money!"

Sigh! Well, whatever.

We finished the round we were playing and then went and ate dinner.

***

It was time to sleep and now comes the hard part. Actually no, I already slept comfortably as I wanted so, for now, I decided to sleep on the sofa.

This wasn't my original plan though, at first I thought of creating a bed with elemental magic using the earth element to create a rock-solid bed. Then I will borrow some extra bedding from the staff and I'll have a magic-made custom bed.

But sadly, that wasn't the case. When I tried creating the bed frame, it didn't work. After many attempts, I concluded that right now I am not able to make complex things with elemental magic.

For example, I can create a shard of rock or ice easily but if you tell me to make a cup, vase, or something that required more detailing, I won't be able to make that.

This reminded me to continue the magic training that I was not doing for a while now. Hence, I decided to do some experiments tomorrow.

And for the moment, I will be sleeping on the sofa.

"Are you sure?" asked Anya, when she noticed that I was planning to sleep on the sofa.

"Yes, I already sleep well before so it's fine. And I don't think it will be fine for me to sleep on the same bed since you know I'm not your brother now," I said as I picked up a pillow from the bed and threw it on the sofa.

Then I saw an expression of uneasiness on Anya's face. Maybe she was thinking that I'll have to sleep on the sofa because of her.

"That is a part of it, but the main reason I'm sleeping on the sofa is that this bed is not comfortable for two people. I can assure either me or you would be rolling on the floor in the middle of the night."

"...Oh, then I think it's okay. I also don't want to hurt my head because of something like that," said Anya.

After that, I turned the lights off and sneaked into the sofa, and my blanket.

A few minutes later when I was almost about to fall asleep, I was asked a question.

"The spike you made that time, it was magic isn't it?" asked Anya.

Huh? I thought she already know since I revealed it pretty openly.

"Yes, that was magic. What about it?"

"Ah, so it was. That means you can use magic?"

How am I supposed to reply to this now?

"Yeah, I guess I can," I said, everything was quiet so even though we were talking in a low voice, our exchange of words could be heard clearly.

"...."

"...."

There was a brief silence from both sides for a while, then again, Anya was the one who broke it.

"It's amazing! How you can use magic all by yourself. I mean, most of the people learn magic for the first time in the magic academy," she said.

"Hmmm, but this is a limit on how much I can do alone. That's the reason I'm joining the academy after all is so that I can learn more advanced magic."

"Actually, I wanted to ask you something for a while now," I said.

There was no response from her side so guess I can take that as a yes.

"Are you fine with joining the magic academy? I mean, I kind of forced you to do this and you also had an interest in sword arts instead of magic, so-"

"It's not like that, I am perfectly fine. And don't you know that they also teach sword arts in the academy? I actually wanted to go there because of this reason so you don't need to feel burdened by any of it," said Anya.

I see. That's a weight off my chest.

"Thank you."

"Huh?"

"Nothing."

Soon after, I fell asleep.