Chapter 36
Children’s Social Gathering (6)
Before long, the sound of crying broke out.
“Waaah, I-I’m not stupid…! A-Allen, you—hic—stepped on my drawing first…!”
“I did it on purpose?! I already said sorry! You keep bothering me, so what do you expect?!”
Bonita, who had been lost in thought amidst the commotion, was startled and turned around.
There stood Allen, red-faced and huffing in anger, and a girl with tears streaming down her face facing off against each other.
Derrick, standing nearby, was frantically trying to calm his younger brother.
“Wait, Allen. It’s true you stepped on Maya’s drawing. Just apologize properly—”
“I already said sorry! She’s the one being stubborn!”
“Waaah…!”
The girl couldn’t even speak anymore and began sobbing bitterly. In her hands was a drawing, crushed under a shoe and torn in half.
“Hmph, whatever. This is why I hated coming to these social clubs in the first place. The gingerbread house was a gift from my parents, so why do I have to share it with these kids?”
“Ugh.”
Derrick looked exasperated.
Among the three siblings of the Hyacinth Marquis family, Allen was the most hot-tempered and emotionally volatile.
When things went his way, he was lively and cheerful, but at the slightest disruption, he would sulk and dig in his heels. Sensitive if you were kind, but a tantrum-thrower if you weren’t.
Meanwhile, the girl called Maya showed no signs of stopping her crying. Allen, on the other hand, clenched his jaw and stubbornly turned his head away.
The standoff dragged on longer than expected, and the other children, who had been playing happily, began to glance around uneasily.
“Whimper… why are they fighting?”
Seeing three-year-old Lennon’s eyes fill with tears, Derrick felt utterly defeated.
Kids are naturally quick to mirror each other’s emotions. The younger they are, the more it’s true.
If Maya kept crying like this, the gingerbread house would soon become a house of wailing. And when their mother arrived later, she would definitely call Derrick over with a stern look.
‘Ugh, kids are the worst!’
Ten-year-old Derrick scratched his soft brown hair furiously. He had no idea what to do.
But then, someone completely unexpected stepped in to save him.
“What’s going on?”
“Hic, w-wahhh…”
“Hi there.”
Bonita approached the sobbing girl sitting on the floor, wiping her tears with trembling hands.
Maya, who had been crying her heart out, hiccupped and froze as a pink-haired girl appeared in front of her.
The frustration of having a picture she had worked on for an hour ripped apart was momentarily replaced by curiosity about the pretty girl she’d never seen before.
With teary eyes, Maya looked up at Bonita.
Bonita asked, “What’s your name?”
“I, I’m…”
Bonita waited patiently until the girl opened her mouth to speak.
Patience was something Bonita excelled at. After all, Aria was always late without saying a word.
“M-Maya Lavinia.”
Thanks to Bonita’s persistence, the trembling girl timidly revealed her name. Her voice was raspy, likely from all the crying.
Maya stared at Bonita with her red-rimmed eyes. She hesitated before cautiously asking, “…And you?”
“I’m Bonita.”
At that moment, Allen, who had his arms crossed, glanced over at them.
Ever since Bonita had stepped in, Allen had been curious about what the tiny Lisianthus girl was going to do.
Still, his pride wouldn’t let him admit he was interested, so he stubbornly turned his head away, pretending not to care.
“Maya. Why were you crying?”
“T-The thing is…”
Maya’s eyes filled with tears again at Bonita’s calm question. The memory of her ripped picture, which she had momentarily forgotten due to curiosity, resurfaced.
Before Maya could start crying again, Bonita quickly asked, “Was it because your drawing got torn?”
Maya, holding the torn picture, nodded her head. Bonita examined the damaged drawing.
It was of a tall castle, the kind a princess might live in.
Though clearly the work of a young child, probably no older than six or seven, it was evident she had poured effort into it. It was fully colored, likely taking at least an hour to complete.
As Bonita looked at the picture, an idea popped into her head.
“Maya, do you like drawing other things besides castles?”
“…Other things? Like what?”
“I mean, like mountains, streets, or people. Stuff like that.”
After a moment of thought, Maya nodded again. Compared to earlier, when she had been crying nonstop, she now looked calm and angelically adorable.
Bonita picked up one of the blank sheets of paper that had been left nearby. The children had been given crayons, paints, and pencils to draw with.
Bonita grabbed a pencil and lay down on her stomach.
At that point, Maya realized what the pink-haired girl was about to do. She was going to draw something.
Maya pouted slightly and mumbled with a disappointed look, “I don’t want to draw again…”
The drawing that Allen had stepped on and torn was one Maya had really loved.
She had been looking forward to taking it home after the social club and getting praised by her mother.
But as Bonita began to sketch lines across the paper, the disappointment that had clouded Maya’s face was soon replaced by awe and admiration.
“Wow…”
The world unfolding from Bonita’s small hands was nothing short of marvelous.
A few simple lines transformed into an old, shabby road filled with traces of life.
With each stroke, buildings emerged. First came the columns, then delicate doors and windows, followed by pointed roofs perched on top.
Maya watched, captivated, as Bonita added smudges to the roof, her hands moving with effortless precision.
The children, who had been on the verge of tears due to the earlier commotion, began gathering around slowly.
One by one, they gasped in amazement. But Bonita, lost in the act of drawing, didn’t hear a single sound.
The empty spaces between the buildings were filled with life.
A woman holding hands with a child, walking home with a warm smile.
A middle-aged man, hunched over from exhaustion after a hard day’s work, trudging along the path.
A cat perched on a wall, staring down from above, while beneath it, a large, dark-colored dog stood guard. Nearby, a few older boys gestured eagerly, trying to coax the dog to come closer.
But the character that captured everyone’s attention the most was the one Bonita added last.
It was a striking woman with wavy hair and bright eyes. Despite wearing plain and worn-out clothes, she radiated beauty.
She carried a loosely woven basket and wore a wide-brimmed white hat as she walked toward the viewer of the scene.
At that moment, the children realized this was a view from a window, looking out onto the street below.
The woman’s eyes seemed to face forward.
It felt as if she was looking straight at them.
One child, who had been holding their breath while watching Bonita draw, murmured in awe, “Wow, that’s amazing…”
Soon, the children, amazed by the breathtaking drawing, began chattering excitedly, pulling Bonita out of her focused state much faster than when she was drawing alone.
“How did you do that?!”
“That’s incredible!”
“Can you teach me too?”
“Can I have it?”
The children, who had initially ignored each other and done their own thing, now swarmed Bonita. The small girl, much tinier than her peers, was quickly buried in a sea of excited kids, barely visible.
Allen, still stubbornly facing away, flinched. He was stuck between curiosity and pride, unable to decide what to do.
That’s when a nonchalant voice reached his ears.
“If you’re so curious, why don’t you go take a look?”
It was Cassis.
Thanks to Bonita, he had been freed from endlessly stacking blocks, and now he spoke with an annoyingly casual tone.
“And while you’re at it, apologize properly. Let’s be honest, you were just trying to brush it off at first.”
“Well, I told her it was an accident, but she kept snapping at me, so I got annoyed…”
“And does that make it okay?”
Cassis’s sharp question made Allen shut his mouth like a clam.
It was obvious from his face that his mind was racing. Cassis, observing his simple-minded older brother, sighed inwardly.
‘Well, he’ll apologize eventually.’
Allen might have been hotheaded, selfish, prone to tantrums, and the type to lie down and throw a fit whenever things didn’t go his way.
Sure, he would steal other kids’ snacks, sneak out of the mansion through the dog door, and insist on redoing rock-paper-scissors when he lost.
But still…
…Still…
‘…Wait.’
Cassis blinked.
Now that he thought about it, Allen didn’t really have any redeeming qualities, did he?
His older brother was just a stubborn fool.
Cassis decided he would have to prepare himself for yet another argument when Allen inevitably found out what he was thinking. Luckily, Allen couldn’t read minds.
Meanwhile, Allen clenched and unclenched his fists repeatedly, scratching the back of his head—a habit shared by the Hyacinth siblings whenever they felt awkward or embarrassed.
“Fine!”
Suddenly, Allen spun around like a horse starting a race. He barged into the cluster of children, shouting, “I want to see too!”
“Hey, don’t push!”
“Ow!”
“What’s your problem?”
Being a head taller than the other kids his age, Allen easily pushed his way through, causing complaints to erupt all around him.
One kid would get shoved, bumping into the next, and so on until the entire group was rippling with chaos. Their bickering grew louder and louder.
Ignoring all the commotion, Allen finally poked his head into the circle where Bonita was sitting.
And at that moment, Allen’s eyes fell on the picture Bonita had drawn.
That’s when it happened.
