Genius Wizard Conceals His Origins

Money is frightening.

Lena thought so in the void.

When abundant, it’s not much of a problem. But when lacking, it becomes a big issue.

In fact, there are many things in this world that become troublesome when lacking. But the reason money is especially frightening is that all sorts of precious things shatter before it. Family, trust, love…

‘I’m sorry. I can’t bear it anymore.’

A voice is heard.

She shook her head vigorously.

It was because the voice of her birth mother, which she had barely erased from her memory, had returned.

It’s an event that happened so long ago that even the memory has become blurred.

As evidence, the figure of the person repeating those words while floating in the air was hazy above the neck like smoke. With that, she was certain. This is a dream.

In the dream, she closed her eyes and thought about herself.

Money. Now, there’s quite a lot of it. The Eastern Telegraph Bureau has successfully settled into its orbit, and the investment business continues to thrive.

Everything was going smoothly.

‘But the future is still uncertain, isn’t it?’

At the following voice, Lena opened her eyes wide.

She saw a human figure.

Now, there was something above the neck. The human figure was borrowing the image of her lovely family, rapidly changing faces.

And the figure opens its mouth again.

No.

“Huck—”

With the feeling of her heart dropping, Lena spasmodically rose from the bed.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Her whole body was damp with cold sweat.

Only after clutching her chest and taking deep breaths for a while could she think like this.

“What a nasty nightmare…”

Judging by her body clock, it was still early morning. She usually wakes up early, but this was even earlier, at dawn.

She didn’t feel like trying to sleep again.

Lena dragged her clammy body to the desk.

Traces of the work she had been engrossed in until the night before remained intact on the desk.

In fact, there wasn’t much to call work.

Opening a blank notebook and writing down a lot of worries on it. That’s all she was calling work.

As graduation approached, there was one proposition that was severely tormenting Lena.

What to do for a living after graduation.

“…”

Lena heaved an internal sigh.

She thought she had a clear purpose as a businesswoman and consultant for the Eastern Telegraph Bureau, but in the end, she couldn’t avoid the wall that students without interest in magic studies inevitably face in Frauzen.

This was a concern unrelated to talent.

For instance, if she wanted to attend a business school, she might have to leave Frauzen, but what meaning does talent have in a situation where she has to live apart from her family?

On the other hand, staying in Frauzen feels like she might stagnate.

She knows it’s not an easy question to answer.

Tap.

Lena closed the notebook she had opened.

Today is December 31st. The end of the year.

Heavy snow is falling outside the window.

It was too precious a day to spend covered in worries.

With the season entering deep winter and snow falling, the weather was quite chilly. Lena wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.

“…”

And after a moment’s hesitation, she grabbed one more blanket before leaving the room.

In this early morning when no one else would be up yet…

Lena went down the stairs, feeling the cool wooden floor against her bare feet in the quiet darkness.

She goes downstairs early every morning to check the mailbox.

But on a day like today, when she had a nightmare, warming up a glass of milk wouldn’t be bad.

With such thoughts, Lena came downstairs and froze just two steps away from the stairs.

Someone was standing by the living room window.

No. It wasn’t just someone. Who else in the family could be that tall?

Lena creakily turned her head to see Eugene’s back.

The sight of him holding a mug in one hand and blankly staring at the snowy scenery outside.

Although he should have heard her coming down the stairs, Eugene didn’t turn around but just kept staring out the window.

Is he not fully awake, or is he concentrating?

Either way, it was bad news for Lena.

Look at her state now. She was in her pajamas, and her hair was a mess from sweating profusely.

It would be quite embarrassing if she was caught in this appearance.

She was thinking about going back to her room.

“Lena?”

“Eep…!”

Their eyes met.

Her body stiffened. As she was expressing her flustered state by trembling her eyeballs, the only part she could move, Eugene smiled slightly and lightly shook the mug in his right hand.

“I warmed up some milk. Have a cup before you go.”

That was quite an attractive temptation.

In the end, instead of returning to her room with the few letters she had taken from the mailbox, Lena poured the warmed milk into a cup.

Not wanting to stand next to Eugene, she sat on the edge of the sofa.

Slurp.

Sipping the warm milk, she looked at Eugene’s profile.

He was silently watching the falling snow.

He might have spoken up around this time, but today, his expression was unusually melancholic.

Does he have worries?

Like herself?

She didn’t have the courage to ask that question directly.

After emptying her cup, Lena roughly draped the blanket over Eugene’s shoulders before hurriedly returning to her room.

The twins woke up.

The fact that the biggest sleepyhead in the Oslo family had woken up meant that practically all members of the Oslo family were awake, signaling breakfast time.

“Sno, sno, sno…”

However, the older of the twins didn’t seem to think so.

Ellie, with her ponytail tightly tied, raised both arms and shouted loudly.

“It’s snooooowing!”

Pitter-patter.

After announcing today’s weather conditions to the whole world while running around the house, Ellie immediately decided on her next action.

Instead of sitting at the dining table, she came back, pulling the arm of her twin sister, who was still droopy from sleep.

Her emerald eyes flashed fiercely.

“Snowman! Do you want to build a snowman?!”

“I want to sleep more…”

“Snow! Man!”

“Uuunghhh…”

Last night. Despite Susan’s stern scolding, Sally, who had fallen asleep after reading a novel late into the night, felt this was nothing short of a bolt from the blue.

She was dying to sleep.

What nonsense is making a snowman in this cold weather?

And in pajamas at that! [Only on Galaxy Translations! / Axiomatic]

Even if fully dressed with a hat, scarf, and gloves, sitting in front of the fireplace reading a book would be much more enjoyable than making a snowman. What kind of outrageous act is this?!

She quickly constructed such perfect logic, but unfortunately, Sally didn’t have the eloquence to express that logic.

“I, I don’t want to…”

“Let’s go quickly!”

Ellie ended up dragging Sally along as she flung open the front door.

Right after, a bone-chilling, snowy gust hit the twins.

Whoosh!

Along with the strong gust of wind, snow powder instantly piled up on the twins’ bright blonde hair.

Sally groaned at the attack of the tremendous cold.

“Kyaaa…!”

“Wow! It’s heavy snow! It clumps together really well!”

Although their faces were the same, their reactions were completely different.

While Sally immediately crouched down and started shivering, Ellie roughly put on her shoes and walked out of the house with great spirit.

That was soon stopped by Susan.

Bang! 

The door closed.

Susan, holding a spatula with some red liquid on it in one hand and a frying pan in the other, smiled affectionately.

Her eyes weren’t smiling at all.

“Shouldn’t we eat breakfast first?”

“…Yes.”

And so, after the harmonious breakfast time passed…

Around eleven in the morning, Susan called everyone to the living room, saying it was time for tea.

Susan parted her lips while pouring brewed black tea into each teacup.

“Do you know what day it is tomorrow?”

Lena answered.

“January 1st, is it?”

“That’s right. It’s New Year’s Day.”

Susan smiled brightly.

“Let’s prepare for a New Year’s party.”

New Year’s party.

A representative family event in the Federation, where typically all family members gather to exchange gifts with each other every time the year changes.

“Last year, we all were busy and let it slip by, didn’t we? It’s been over a year since Eugene came, so I thought we should do it properly this year.”

After saying that, Susan took out four pieces of paper.

Ellie tilted her head and asked.

“What’s this?”

“I’ve written your names on these. Lena, Eugene, Ellie, and Sally. Louise said she’s too busy to come…”

Indeed, that was the case.

Was it a few days ago? Louise had crawled into the house, making crying noises, immediately threw off her outer clothes, and started blowing kisses at everyone she saw.

She had made a surprise visit under the pretext of giving gifts in advance, saying she might not be able to come on New Year’s party day due to being busy with research. [Only on Galaxy Translations! / Axiomatic]

Everyone from Susan to Sally was attacked. Eugene tried desperately to escape but eventually had to give up his forehead. Louise’s tall height was his downfall.

Anyway.

“You draw lots and prepare a gift for the person whose name you draw by tomorrow. Think about what that person would be happy to receive and how you can make them smile. Let’s choose gifts after thinking carefully.”

“Gifts! Yay!”

Everyone nodded except Ellie, who boldly revealed that she only had thoughts of receiving gifts in her mind.

“I’ll give my gift to everyone, so look forward to it. Ah, if you draw your own name, say so and draw again.”

Susan said that, but fortunately, it seemed to be decided properly with just one attempt.

Everyone checked the name written on their piece of paper and nodded.

Ellie and Sally started preparing to go shopping with Susan, and Eugene also smiled slightly as he headed to his room. Probably to get properly dressed.

Only Lena remained sitting on the sofa, still holding her teacup.

She opened the paper again.

[ Eugene ]

No matter how many times she rubbed her eyes, the letters didn’t change.

On the small piece of paper was written, in large letters, the name of the gray-haired young man who was still awkward to her even after living under the same roof for a year.