CH 16

When Diana blurted out, “I love you, big brother!”, Cain restrained himself from leaking various fluids from the holes in his face, and Ilvalino warned him, “If you keep making that face, your etiquette teacher, Professor Cyrus is going to scold you for it.” Cain hugged Diana and took deep breaths as he buried his nose in her hair and calmed himself down. Cain stood back up, apologized for his impoliteness as he bowed, and asked his tutor to continue the lesson.

In his lessons with Professor Yannis, Cain dug into the ground around tree roots to unearth larvae, and once he finished observing them, he buried them back up again. He learned about flowers while counting their petals, and conducted investigations on the difference in the number of petals between flowers of different plants. Professor Yannis explained to him all about stamens and pistils, male flowers and female flowers, pollination conducted by insects, and the difference between deciduous trees and evergreen trees.

Of course, he had the mind of a salaryman in his thirties, so he already knew about much of this information, but since he was supposed to be an eight-year-old boy, he listened quietly, saying, “Ah, okay. I see.”

In his previous life, Cain learned about these things through rote memorization. Even though he already knew about these things, Cain could now find interest in learning about the theories and logic behind the science.

On top of that, there were many things to be learned that were unique to this world. During his lessons on how pollination worked with honeybees and butterflies, he learned about how, in this world, people sometimes pollinated plants using wind magic. 

“Cain-sama, Diana-sama, Ilu-kun. Please take a look over there,” said Professor Yannis. When the three of them looked to where he was pointing, they saw a bird’s nest at the top of a tree. Perhaps the bird that lived in it was out looking for food, as the nest was empty.

“It’s a birdie’s house,” said Diana.

“Look’s like no one’s home,” said Cain. 

“No, that’s actually a vacant house,” said Yannis.

So, there was no bird at all. 

Professor Yannis lifted Diana up and held her high up in his arms so that she could see the nest better. He then lifted Cain up and told him to look inside the nest. Ilvalino didn’t want to be lifted up at all and declined the offer.

The nest did appear a little too disorderly for it to have any current residents that were simply away from home at the moment.

“The birds that live around here usually spend their nights on the branches of trees. They only live in nests during the time that they lay their eggs and warm them to hatch them,” said Yannis.

“Oh, I see,” said Cain.

Cain recalled that swallows’ nests were like that, too. He remembered how every year, he helped out at the nursery schools he visited for work by clearing out swallows’ nests after they were vacated by the birds.

Every time he was clearing out nests, he had a faint hope that he would find something rare and valuable in one of them, but he never did find anything. Well, of course I didn’t find anything, he would think, in disappointment. [Read this novel and other amazing translated novels from the original source at the “Novel Multiverse dot com” website @ novelmultiverse.com]

“Also, the birds have something called a molting period, in which they shed the feathers on their wings and grow new ones. Right now, the birds are not in a molting period,” said Yannis. 

Cain realized what his tutor was hinting at.

“Do birds ever lose feathers even when it’s not a molting period?” asked Cain.

“It wouldn’t be strange for a bird to lose one or two feathers at some point. However, since they don’t have a designated place they come back to often, it would be quite rare to find a feather that a bird has lost by chance.”

Just as Cain had thought.

It would be almost impossible to find a bird’s feather in the yard by searching around at random.

“No feathers?” asked Diana, pulling at the hem of Professor Yannis’s shirt.

“They will be much easier to find around autumn,” said Yannis, gently, but Diana was already on the verge of tears.

Cain was thinking that Diana was very cute even when she was crying, but he would like to keep her from crying, if possible. He pondered about what he could do. 

To put it simply, we just need a bunch of birds gathered in one place, right?

“Professor. If we installed a bird feeder in the yard, would birds gather, here?” asked Cain.

“Cain-sama. To find out if something is possible, it’s essential to actually attempt it. Please keep an observation journal on the matter,” said Yannis.

Professor Yannis had a habit of withholding an outright answer. It was frustrating at times, but it was true that knowledge attained by one’s own hands was much harder to forget.

Professor Yannis’s class was during the morning, only. In the afternoon, Cain had arts classes, but today, he had a day off from them. Apparently, there was an evening party in a manor somewhere, and the performance artists were all invited. They all had rehearsals to attend in the afternoon.

Cain saw Professor Yannis off, and after having lunch, Cain went to the grounds keeping shed, had some wood divvied out to him, and got to building a birdfeeder.

It was a simple setup – Cain simply used a hammer to nail a flat board onto some wooden support beams. It was a struggle to build it with a seven-year-old’s hands, though. Ilvalino didn’t attempt to help until Cain asked him to. 

“If you just direct me on what to do, I will be happy to build it,” said the old groundskeeper. He was in a fluster, wanting to help so badly, but Cain wanted to build it himself since he was making it for Diana.

Cain was advised to put a rim around the board so that the birds could perch on it easily. He somehow finished the thing, although it looked a little misshapen.

When Cain was in sales for a company that made mind-training toys in his past life, he sometimes went to his client nursery schools and kindergartens and made things like birdhouses and birdfeeders. Those ones he had built as the kindergarteners watched him were actually pretty good, he thought. Cain smiled bitterly, as he compared his current creation to them.

With these small hands he had now, he knew there wasn’t much he could do about the fact that he couldn’t built things easily, but he still felt like he had lost to his past self. It was frustrating.

He was only seven years old. He had to stay diligent and aim to become a cool older brother who could protect Diana. 

He looked at that birdfeeder and swore that he would keep trying harder and harder.