14-4 Closing Ceremony

The seventh event was the centipede race.

There are all sorts of ways to do this lately too, but this time I chose the old-fashioned wooden-clog style, since it looked the most fun.

We had practiced this one plenty.

Everyone had gone thump-thump and crash-crash together, shrieking the whole time.

This was an event with an extremely high accident rate, so we paid very careful attention to injuries.

It was a dangerous event where hundreds of elementary schoolers suffered serious injuries like broken bones every year.

Normally, maybe it was not something you would do at a kindergarten, but daring to do it anyway was what Beast-Ear Garden was all about.

We had plenty of wonderful healing magic too.

And beastfolk children with sturdy bodies would not take that much intense damage just from tumbling around a little.

The little cat beastfolk girl who had been rolling around with the big ball earlier had even said, “That was fun.”

If anything, the ones who took damage were the soft human caretakers?

The children were bursting with energy, after all.

“Whoa, old man Ruba can’t keep up. Dig in, former captain of the Kingdom’s Knight Order!”

Erin seemed to be enjoying the commentary too.

She had been with us since the first time I met him, so she also ended up calling the viscount, the former knight captain, old man Ruba, but the fact that it caused no friction at all was just like her.

Aoi-chan must have been having fun too.

It probably felt just like she had returned to Japan.

A thump-thump, crash-crash centipede race by cute little beast-eared kids.

Aoi-chan was constantly uploading images and videos to Earth’s internet.

The eighth event was the obstacle race.

For the obstacles, we had set up burlap sacks, net crawling, ladders, dizzy-bat spinning, tricycles, cardboard crawlers, and the like.

Especially just to hold this cardboard crawler race, I had developed various cardboard boxes, that great invention of the century.

I had brought some luggage packed in cardboard boxes too.

Though even Aoi-chan was exasperated by that.

I removed the balance beam because the little beast kids seemed likely to get too excited and fall off over and over.

And then came the much-awaited candy-eating race.

It was that one where you searched for candy while getting your face covered in flour.

In this world, people might get mad at me for wasting food, but this was one thing that absolutely could not be left out of a sports festival.

The flour and candy were copied goods anyway.

I definitely wanted the noble guests to give it a try as well.

The princes and princesses were delighted by this and took part with their faces covered in flour.

I had lent them sweatshirt-type clothes so it would be fine even if their outfits got covered in powder.

The one who was saying “foamy, foamy,” that was not foam, it was powder.

Baldos and his granddaughter Jenny-chan also challenged it bravely.

It was not a sight you often got to see, an Ancient Dragon old man in human form with his whole face covered in powder, laughing with that face all scrunched up.

Seeing that delighted expression made even me start wanting grandchildren.

Would the day come when, someday, a child who graduated from here would come show me their own child in their arms?

You did hear stories like that at child welfare facilities in Japan and the like.

I should keep doing my best to stay alive until then.

This world never let you lower your guard, after all.

I had really wanted His Highness the Crown Prince and His Majesty the King to try things like the candy-eating race too, but they were busy dealing with the aftermath of the recent incident with the duke.

Maybe His Majesty’s heart would have borne less burden if I had personally dealt with Bighton, but I thought doing it that way was better for the kingdom.

On that point, most people, including those in the royal family, agreed with me.

The final event was the much-awaited three-legged race.

They had practiced quite a lot, but everyone still could not run very well.

Children kept falling one after another.

The bracelets loaned to our staff members had various powerful healing spells built into them.

We had also invited the general public to participate, but thanks to the participants not being used to this sort of thing, it turned into quite the chaotic journey.

Amid all that, His Highness Emilio asked the director to enter too, and yet, somehow, this turned out surprisingly well.

They advanced to the finals far more smoothly than expected, and unbelievably, the director and prince pair won.

I wondered why that happened, but His Highness was happy, so whatever.

And finally, the closing ceremony arrived.

Preparation had taken a ridiculous amount of time, but we somehow made it in time.

It would have been much easier if those imperial fools had not caused so much trouble.

Well, as for that, I would pay them back later with a trillionfold return, or maybe a ten-quadrillionfold return.

Before long, the award ceremony began.

In the end, it had been a close battle between red and white, but the white team won by a narrow margin.

Representing the team, Touya received the flag.

The first championship flag.

It had a white background with a bright red apple design, so it worked whether the red team or white team won.

It was a splendid red-and-white design.

When Camila said, “Next year, we’ll win,” Touya said one thing to her.

“Oh, we’re going to elementary school next year. Camila, you do your best in the kindergarten division, okay?”

“Gaaah.”

Camila appeared to be intensely shocked.

She was shouting, “Then I’ll get revenge in elementary school after that.”

The bazaar continued even after it ended, and it was snack time for the children too.

The townspeople also enjoyed themselves a lot.

The street children who had gathered after being lured in by the smell of the bazaar had somehow ended up joining the sports festival too, and the number of kindergarteners finally exceeded sixty.

As always, the group was beast-ear only.

Except for Fal.

That child also had incredibly cute ears on her true body, though.

About fifteen children would advance to elementary school next year, so the numbers should work out nicely.

Before that, I needed to hurry and establish the elementary school, or else there would be fifteen children with nowhere to attend school.

There really was not much time left.

The local governor had also happened to come today, so I told him, “We’re going to expand with a new school again.”

Strictly speaking, since we would be using kingdom land, our side had to formally submit the relevant documents to the kingdom, but for matters related to us, the governor’s subordinates handled them specially.

The kingdom officials accepted them that way too.

Gradually, the number of people dwindled, and the cleanup after the sports festival also progressed.

For the final cleanup, rather than doing something tactless like storing everything in an item box, it was more fun for everyone to clean up together.

When we held events like this, it made me happy because it felt like this place had been accepted by the town.

Originally, it had only been a story about making udon in a small workshop on the edge of town, but now it had become a fine kindergarten and orphanage.

Since the number of children had increased, I had also increased the staff to forty, but we might become short-handed again.

I also needed to recruit teachers for the elementary school.

We needed a preparation period for opening that one too.