After the dinner, we went back to our room, where Anortha handed me a box that she pulled out from under the bed as she said, “I meant to give you this a bit earlier, but I wasn’t in the best condition to do so. Feel free to open it up.”

Inside the box was a light green dress. I took it out and it looked like it would actually fit me.

“I wasn’t sure what you would want, but I did know that all your clothes were old and drab, so I gave you something new to wear.”

I walked over to the chalkboard to write, “Thanks. It’s nice. How did you get your hands on this, since I know that you can’t sew and there aren’t any children’s clothes here?”

“Secret.”

I decided to change into the new clothes. It was slightly too large for me, but in consideration that I’ll grow up in the future, it was fine. Although I do wonder if Anortha actually thought that way or messed up my size.

“You definitely look better in that,” remarked the elf.

Given that what I was wearing before were actually second handed goods, I wasn’t surprised in the least.

After admiring the new dress for a while, life resumed as usual. Well until bedtime rolled around. The reason was that Anortha kept tossing and turning next to me, which in turn prevented me from sleeping. I probably should not have let her sleep all afternoon.

Not surprisingly, the next day, we ended up getting out of bed rather late. It was almost time for lunch, so I headed toward the kitchen, only to find out that it was already occupied by Anortha’s mother. 

I wrote, “No work today? And do you need any assistance?”

She gave me a funny look and said, “It’s new year’s eve. Of course I don’t have any work. Agriculture might be demanding, but unless there is some natural disaster, one day of break won’t kill the plants. Also, precisely because of the date, I’m also not expecting you to work, so no need for assistance.”

I actually have a holiday? With the way her mother had been treating me, that was a surprise. Although, thinking about it, besides meal preparation, what I normally do is for myself anyways, so in the end, not much changed.

I still ended up pumping mana into the heater stone and reading various educational materials while Anortha was studying, and afterwards, played various games.

The new years eve dinner was fancier than usual. At least they took out the wine bottles which I haven’t ever seen them do, and the food was made of ingredients I haven’t really seen. Anortha visibly shrunk away from the wine, so it looked like she was learning.

When dinner was soon to be over, Anortha leaned over and whispered to me, “So usually, we sing the song, ‘old long since,’ on new years eve. However, please don’t judge my mom’s singing, since it’s pretty bad.”

Unfortunately, Anortha’s mother heard her and rebutted, “Don’t listen to her. Rather, my daughter’s singing is the one that’s bad, so I advise you not to laugh at her. She hadn’t ever sung in front of you, right? That’s because she’s terrible at it.”

I dug into my pockets for a piece of scrap paper to reply on, and then wrote, “It’s not like I can sing either, so I won’t judge either way. What about your father?”

“Dad’s actually really good at singing, so that’s why as the child of mom and dad, my singing is at least passable.”

“My husband is great at singing, which makes it unfortunate that my daughter didn’t inherit it.”

Since it was clear that both Anortha and her mother thought little of each other’s singing, I wrote to the father, “So what’s your opinion of their singing?”

Her father briefly looked at the two women and said, “Of course they aren’t as good as professional singers, but they have their own charm. Really, just decide for yourself.”

That was the cue for her father to begin singing. He definitely sang well. After the first stanza was the chorus of the song, in which all of them sang. I almost choked on my drink when I heard the first few lines and had to suppress my laughter.

It wasn’t that Anortha or her mother sang that badly, but rather, the melody of the chorus just happened to mean “my butthole smells” if the pitch was interpreted as the lupo language. Pretty childish, I know, but it was so out of the blue I couldn’t help it.

However, both Anortha and her mother interpreted my actions as judging their singing and they gave me sharp glares. 

As for their actual singing, they definitely were off pitch, but the tone of their voice wasn’t bad.

For the subsequent chorus iterations, I managed to maintain a neutral expression, while trying hard not to automatically convert the music’s tune into words.

Immediately after the song ended, Anortha’s mother said, “I could see that you were trying to hold in your laughter in the beginning. I told you my daughter’s singing is bad.”

Anortha retorted, “She was clearly laughing at yours, right? Tell my mom, Pochi.”

I quickly wrote, “While your singing wasn’t completely on tune, it was still passable. Really. I was just put off guard because the song’s melody means something in another language.”

“You don’t have to lie. I won’t get mad at you,” her mother said.

I was pretty sure that statement was a lie, but I was telling the truth regardless. Writing, “That was really how I felt. I wasn’t lying,” didn’t convince them, but they did drop the subject. Instead, they wanted me to join them in the chorus.

I wrote, “I can’t even speak and you want me to sing?”

“You don’t have to sing the lyrics. You could just howl along,” Anortha replied.

The chorus came up often enough that I more or less memorized it, so I suppose I could give it a shot.

Anortha’s father began the song again, and this time I joined in the chorus with the other two. It sounded kinda weird, with them saying actual words while I was just howling but if thought of as just a music accompaniment, it works.

At the end, Anortha remarked, “You sang surprisingly well,” to which I replied, “Thanks.”

Anortha’s mother commented, “I was expecting you to be worse than my daughter but it turns out you actually know how to sing a tune.”

I felt that there was an insult buried in there somewhere, but just in case, I wrote, “Thanks?”

After the bout of singing, Anortha’s mother said, “We still have plenty of hours before the light magic show starts. What do you want to do?”

Anortha said, “Since we have four players now, why don’t we play mahongo?”

Her mother looked at me and asked, “Do you know how to play mahongo?”

I shook my head.

“Oh, it’s quite simple. The goal is to end up with a hand that has six groupings of three, whether they are straights or triplets. You can exchange a card every turn from the deck or from the player previous to you, with the sole exception that if you can get a winning hand, then you can exchange the card from anyone and win. You can get more points for certain combinations, but that’s the basics. Got it?”

I wrote, “Probably? Can we play a few practice games first?”

Anortha interjected, “It’s a bit less simple than how my mom described it.” She showed me the different cards. There were dots from one to twelve, sticks from one to twelve, and the number itself written from one to twelve. There were also detailed pictures of what probably were famous elves too. “The straights can only be made from all dots, all lines, or all numbers. Also, the Founder can be used as a wild card to substitute anything. The rest of the portraits have to be in triples, but having them gives bonus points.”

“Which of them is the Founder?”

Anortha’s mother looked disgusted when she read what I wrote, but Anortha kindly showed me which one was the founder. I probably should have guessed which one because he was dressed the most fancily and regally.

Needless to say, when we started playing, I lost badly. After an hour or so, my win rate became close to the expected average which was enough for me.

Eventually, it was about an hour before midnight, so we all got dressed and walked out of the house. Come to think of it, this was the first time I actually went out with her parents.

We eventually ended up in a small clearing in the center of the village. It seemed everyone from the village was gathering here, which made me wonder who was guarding the gate. Luckily, it was crowded enough that no one really noticed me. It also helped that I was really short compared to the adult elves.

Soon after, an old looking elf announced, “Greetings, all. Today marks the end of the year and soon it will be the new year. As usual, we will be celebrating the year with our annual magic light show. I would like to thank all the volunteers who helped put this event together, as well as you all for showing up. I’m sure you have heard this same speech for at least a hundred times, so I’ll cut it short and say, let us begin the show!”

It reminded me quite a bit of the firework shows back at home, except with a lot more details and a lot more patterns and images that I doubt would be easy to replicate with traditional fireworks. Also, I’m pretty sure normal fireworks can’t change color like this. The magic light show would probably be more entertaining if I wasn’t so short that I could only see a fraction of it, but luckily, Anortha let me sit on her shoulders.

Somewhere in the middle, there was a reenactment of the history of the Founder, or what I assumed was the Founder, as the elf looked a lot like the mahongo card earlier. Somehow, I wondered if the Founder really did go to impoverished elven villages and literally erect fruit trees out of thin air, but with magic, I can’t guarantee that it isn’t possible.

Watching this made me really want to learn magic so I could pull off something like this. Especially since the final magic lights actually wrote out “Happy New Years!,” which gave me the idea that if I mastered magic enough, I could write with lights instead of needing to always keep a pen and paper on me at all times.

I don’t know if this world has new year's resolutions or anything, but I decided to make mine to learn magic enough so I could write in the air.

binarysoap

Well, this chapter is 22 days too late for the actual new years, but hey, it's 2022. Definitely did this on purpose, and I definitely didn't plan to release this chapters on new years and got delayed for 22 days.