Chapter 571: Youth 3
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
"Listen, Garen." His mother Trish bent down and said to her child, "I’ve decided to send you the Kindergarten, otherwise you’ll be idling around in the house everyday bullying your older brother. At this point, he starts trembling just at the sight of you. What do you think of this decision?"
Garen nodded his head.
"Kindergarten? You mean the one in town?"
"Yes, although you may be a bit too young, but your father and I agree that you should already have met the entry requirements." Trish answered seriously.
"Jason’s going to primary school, right?" Garen suddenly changed the topic.
"Yes, the primary school in town."
"Then I also want to go to primary school." Garen definitely didn’t want to spend his days in kindergarten playing house with the other brats, that would definitely be a waste of time.
"Primary school requires pre-school education, do you know what is pre-school education? Also, you should call him ‘Brother’, not Jason."
"Is that so? Well that’s regretful, but I still want to go for Primary School." Garen said affirmatively. "Regarding pre-school education, haven’t I already went through all that?"
"A 2-year-old is not allowed to go to primary school, you’re still too young, dear," Trish started to feel that talking to her son is getting a bit tiring.
"Do the laws and legislations of this country state that 2-year-olds are not allowed to go to primary school?" Garen countered.
"Where did you even learn the phrase ‘laws and legislations’?" Trish started to get a headache. "Anyways, even though you can now speak fluently, the basics of Art, Music, Math and Languages all require a strong foundation."
"Like Jason?"
"Like Jason."
"But he always gets beaten by me to the verge of crying, he’s far too weak."
"..." Trish took a deep breath, "Dear, sometimes issues cannot be resolved purely through using your fists."
"But those things have nothing to do with me beating him up."
Garen said calmly.
"Holy..." Trish felt as if she was gonna go mad. As a psychologist, she completely could not understand what her child was thinking.
"Mama, what do you think about my suggestion? As a parent, you should have more confidence in your own child!"
The result of this conversation was that Trish had fled from the room.
She didn’t know how she could persuade her own son, or maybe she needed to hatch a plan against his overly mature son, let him understand that not everything can be solved with physical strength.
"He’s completely unlike a 2 year old, in fact he seems to be more mature than even 5 or 6 year olds! Emmer, I’ve run out of ideas on how to teach our son…..."
Trish’s voice could be heard from outside the room.
"Don’t worry, I told you, our son is a prodigy!" Emmer said proudly.
Garen helplessly shook his head and walked over to the bookshelf, picking up a random book.
"Hey Garen!" Jason came out of nowhere, cockily waving around a plastic bat.
"This time I’m gonna make you cry uncle!" Jason boldly exclaimed.
Garen just glared at him and walked straight up to him, putting his book back on the shelf.
With a left hook to the jaw, following it up with an uppercut to the gut, his opponent fell.
"Bang!!"
"Mama!!!" Jason threw away the plastic bat and crawled out of the room.
Garren then proceeded the walk back to the bookshelf to continue reading.
After this incident, Garren was once again dragged off by his father for some ideological education. The 30-minute long nonstop ideological speech was said to be his father Emmer’s special move, and it was also his pacifist way of teaching that he was so proud about.
However, when it came to Garren, the effects of this education method seemed to be less than obvious.
Garen was definitely listening to it seriously, he confirmed that as Garen continuously nodded in agreement to his words. However, what was worrying was that there weren’t any visible effects from it. After listening to the talk, he’d just go back the way he was immediately after.
This kind of peaceful lifestyle continues on.
Garen was still forced into Kindergarten in the end, along with their neighbors’ Lil’ Serin. They were both enrolled together in the town’s Kindergarten. The reason was that as a human, a social creature, too much interaction with people of a different age than you can cause problems. Garen had no choice but to agree, though clearly Serin was very obviously not ready for Kindergarten.
******
The kindergarten was located on the west side of the town near the suburbs, it was about 300 meters away from Garen’s house. It was the only rainbow colored building in a sea of gray blocks.
The white outer wall was covered with drawings of strawberries, apples, bananas, and pineapples. The building was also surrounded by a walled fence, and within the fence were slides, tire swings, seesaws and other children’s playground items.
Inside was a wide classroom, it had white walls and a black blackboard. On the left of the classroom were 3 wide window panes.
There were 3 big, long tables in the middle of the classroom, with reddish-brown surfaces covered with varnish, while the sharp corners were covered with a rubber protector.
A woman wearing red sporting attire was raising both her hands, imitating a cat while singing. Although she was already 30 years old, her actions made her look like she was a lot younger.
"Everyday is the kitty’s birthday, she can eat fish every day ~"
"Kitty likes to catch mice, yarn she also likes~"
"She can jump and can climb, she can even swim and dive~"
"Cute meowing in the end, kitty is our best friend~"
Every line sang by the teacher, was then followed up by a chorus of tens of cheery kids. It combined to form an unintelligible song of gibberish, but since a child’s voice was crisp and youthful, it didn’t sound that bad.
"That’s right, this is Music class." Garen was sitting at the very end of one of the long tables, he was cringing slightly as he looked out at the swaying trees.
Under the bright morning sun, the dried yellow leaves of the parasol tree were falling one after the other, creating a thick layer of autumn leaves on the ground. The janitor lady swept up the falling leaves, preventing it from being infested by caterpillars.
This was 2 months after he had enrolled in the kindergarten, he was already bored out of his mind.
He was pondering if he should actually display his actual maturity and intellectual level, so he can escape this torture that is being surrounded by numerous snot-nosed brats.
"Eileen! Eileen Kurt!" the teacher shouted again.
This was an everyday occurrence, this little girl called Eileen Kurt would always get into trouble for sleeping in class.
Garen glanced over at the little girl in twintails, who was now standing up. She had big, watery black eyes, yellow skin with a tender complexion, and a face that still had baby fat, but still weirdly cute. However, at the moment, she had a troubled face, looking like she was on the verge of tears.
"T-Teacher… I’m s-sorry… It was an accident..."
Eileen said softly.
The teacher helplessly reprimanded her just for a bit, after all, children this age were very prone to crying, except for a few exceptions of course.
"Garen! Garen!" The child next to him asked in a shouting whisper, "Do you know why birds can fly?"
"Of course, it’s because they have feathers."
"What are feathers?"
"They are hairs that grow all over the bird’s body."
"Really? You can fly if you have enough hair? But my dad has a lot of hair, why can’t he fly?"
"Because his hair is growing in the wrong places."
"Is that so?"
"Yes it’s true, you can go back and ask your father about it, Serin," Garen said to his small friend.
"Ok..."
The 1st period was finally over, now they had Maths class.
"Garen, come to the board. What is 2 + 5 =?" The Maths teacher was a bespectacled young lady who looked like she was in her early twenties, wearing a white T-shirt and a gray knee-length skirt. She was sporting a long ponytail.
Garen immediately became the center of attention of all the kids in the class. He wearily dropped his pen he used for doodling to pass time, and walked up to the board.
It was already autumn. He was wearing a gray turtleneck shirt, looking as if he was completely snugged in the shirt; he looked adorable.
He took a long chalk and mindlessly wrote a big 7 on the board, then promptly walked back to his seat.
"Did everyone see that? The answer was 7 ! 2 + 5 = 7 ! Great work Garen! Let’s give Garen a round of applause!" The teacher enthusiastically clapped loudly.
At that moment, the students in the class also started applauding for him.
Sigh...
Garen let out a long sigh, how many more days do I have to spend like this...
He felt the chill in his chest getting colder and colder, but his body felt no discomfort at all. On the contrary, it felt quite comfortable, that icy chill wasn’t just comfortable, it felt as pleasurable eating a cold and juicy watermelon on a hot summer day.
However, even though his Heart of Frost training was completed, this type of modification made Garen’s body temperature much lower than the average child, it also seemed to have affected Garen’s body growth and facial features.
His build was becoming more and more unisexual, if you looked at him from a distance, you wouldn’t even be able to tell if he’s a boy or a girl.
Yet, Garen didn’t mind that, he was still a kid after all, and kids generally don’t look overly masculine or feminine anyway.
The subjects taught in the kindergarten include Nature studies, Social studies, Maths, Language, Arts, and Music. 1 period was only 20 minutes long, so class ends very quickly, after that, they have lots of different playtimes. They have group play, outdoor play, playing house, and sometimes, even the teachers joined in.
At these times, Garen would usually just sit at a corner and quietly draw, his loyal admirer and friend Serin would also sit right beside him, attempting to mimic his actions.
No matter if it were crayon, watercolor or a pen, Garen was able to use it in a strangely mesmerizing manner.
He was actually not very good at art, and even then he was purposely doing badly to prevent from blowing his cover. Hence, although his drawings look complete, they were nothing more than childish scribbles.
Houses, sunsets, birds, watchdogs, etc. Garen would just draw anything that came to mind. However, in actuality, though no one managed to see it, Garen was secretly testing out the extent of the modification from the Heart of Frost.
With the Heart of Frost modification in place, just by visualizing it, Garen could manipulate the movement of the chilliness, gathering it at his fingertips. This level of chilliness could only lower his finger temperature by about 10°C, it would only make the skin feel slightly colder at most, hence it had no extra functionality. However, Garen just took this as a form of training to control the balanced unleashing of power, and whilst unleashing this power, silently assess the origins of it.
Life in Kindergarten was boring, other than training his secret techniques, everything else was boring. Especially since he had to interact with the other brats and the teachers, all whilst trying to hide his actual intellectual level.