"Err Eris why did you post this picture," I asked her while looking at the candid picture of me painting the winter scenery from my room's balcony.
I planned to give these paintings to Grand as her collection since she seem interested in collecting paintings. I have painted spring, summer and autumn scenery before thus this winter painting is the last one.
The painting canvas was actually a single big canvas that I have cut into four parts representing each season. When the four painting is combined, they will form the complete scenery of the mansion's scenery during the four seasons.
"Why not? It looks great" she answered not sensing anything wrong.
"You should've crop Karin's glutton face before posting it" Kara commented.
"Hey what do you mean by that? He got so many likes and comments thanks to me" Karin said proudly.
"You ruined the aesthetic of the picture" Kara muttered seemingly disappointed.
"I let you know what I will post later," Eris said to me maybe thinking I didn't like it if she did it without my knowledge.
"Then it's fine" I replied since it's not that I really care.
"So what are our presents? You gave this kind of special gift for Grand" Karin tried to probe me into telling me what her present is.
I already wrapped all of their presents before and told Ron to take care of them before the celebration. I give Karin a shoe with wheels underneath it where the wheels can be taken off when not needed.
I made 3D printed chess pieces for Eris along with a manual on how to play it while I gave incomplete mana cards to Kara where I only managed to inscribe half of the magic circle on each of them where I also put detailed reports about it.
I gave Adrian all the simplified maths formulas that I know and their detailed explanation since he said that he's bad at maths. I also gave him a sample of detailed answers from my tasks given by Ron before for him to use as a reference.
I gave grandpa, this world globe map where I used the 3D printer in my lab to create it. Currently, it's only a normal world globe map without any additional features but I planned on making an improved one in the future. I just put a function of displaying our family pictures when grandpa touches on the Hargan Empire on the map.
I gave Amma a cylinder-shaped night sky projector where I put the night sky scenery that I recorded before into a cylinder-shaped bed lamp and modify its function a bit making a moving projector where the cylinder will be rotating making it as if the stars also moving slowly. Due to the harsh survival condition in this world, many entertainments and relaxing things like this don't exist since they don't have time or needs to create them.
I don't know what to give to the rest of them which are Uncle Zoroas, Uncle Zenin, Uncle Jinu and Aunt Mara. Thus I just bought a 1000-year-old ginseng drink for uncle Zoroas, I gave a set of Go games to Uncle Jinu, a set of matching cufflinks and bracelets for both Uncle Zenin and Aunt Mara.
It took me months to prepare those presents but I felt that it was worth it since this was also my first time having a real family. The Zanuki was really like a real family when compared to mine in my last life.
I was poisoned to death when my siblings were competing for the inheritance and head of the family position. As a family that relies on illegal businesses and black markets or in other words a mafia family, their way of competing was far from civilized or law-abiding since bloodshed would occur every time they fought.
Since I knew nothing good would happen to me if I were involved in their fights, I quietly retreated away from the family and tried living normally like other people by continuing my study at a university before working as a game designer in a well-known game company.
However, my peaceful life came to an end when my siblings, who have reached a truce with each other, bribed my neighbour to poison me to death. Knowing that I would die no matter what I chose, I immediately contact my lawyer and liquified all my assets into cash. I also sold the 5% shares that I have to a few shareholders.
To avoid my brothers from stealing my inheritance, I managed to write a fake will and send the original will to a public lawyer where I donated all of my assets to a charity organization managed by the government.
I'm not sure whether my siblings managed to find that lawyer and took my will away since I died a few days before the will managed to reach the lawyer. I didn't even feel sad or angry since I already expected that kind of thing to happen sooner or later.
After growing up in a brutal environment and strict upbringing where weak children will die, surviving was my biggest expertise and I never dream of climbing up to the top since I prefer a more comfortable, leisure way of living even if I have to live in a slum.
'Why bother being at risk of dying every day when there's a more peaceful life?' This is the sentence that I kept on repeating almost hundreds of times.
"Fine, I will also not tell you what I have prepared?" Karin's voice ended my thoughts.
"Why need to bother telling when you will know eventually what it is later" Kara complained seeing Karin act childish.
Knock Knock.
"Ian!" Karin shouted when we saw a tall red-haired man with a pair of dimples on his face smiling widely at us.
"Long time no see folks?" Adrian said playfully before hugging me.
"Oho my brother has become more like a man huh," he said after pinching my arm muscle.
"Damn, why are you talking like a single old man," Karin said seemingly cringed with Adrian.
"Now now let me look at your face," he said while making a pleading look.
"....." I didn't say anything and just opened my mask.
"Ok ok now put on your mask back. Now, this is better for the world" he said after seeing my face.
"What the fuck Ian. You supposed to persuade him to not wear the mask" Karin commented.
"My lady, if this cousin of mine doesn't wear a mask, a regular man like me can't stand beside him lest we will get struck by lightning or we look like a potato" he replied after sitting beside me and pouring himself a hot milk tea into an empty cup.
"Just admit you're ugly" Karin retorted.
"Your standard is ridiculously high if you think I'm ugly" Adrian fought back.
"So what?" she asked seemingly didn't want to back down.
"You will be single for the rest of your life if you don't adjust that impossibly high standard of yours. You wanted a strong man that is stronger than you and also good looking. Do you know it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack"
"I don't care," Karin said determined and Adrian decided to just ignore her and focus on chatting with me instead.
With Adrian's arrival, Karin started her winter break plan. We took tons of pictures of us testing the hot air balloon, releasing the lanterns at night and making snowmen.
Pictures related to the hot air balloon and lanterns were not allowed to be posted on the Star account since It's considered an Eris business project and no leak of information was allowed.
We play around the territory until the day of the winter celebration arrived when people take a few days of break from work and mainly stay home, gathering with family members.
*************************************
"Warghhh where Ares?" I suddenly heard Karin's voice shouting in the hallway.
The present giving sessions have just finished after the family dinner where there's a bucket for each person. Thus the gifts for that person will be put inside the basket that has their name on it.
After receiving the presents everyone will personally open their gifts in their bedrooms but out of nowhere, Eris wanted to open her gifts with me and currently, we were sitting in the lounge area on the second floor not far from my bedroom.
"Ares!!!!!!" Karin shouted while running towards me.
"Ah that is the thing I told you before," I said to Eris while pointing towards the shoes Karin was holding.
"How, how to use this?" Karin asked me excitedly.
"First wear the shoes and I will help you move until you managed to balance yourself," I said to her.
Later I help to hold her moving all over the second floor until she slowly managed to balance herself. Eris observe Karin tentatively while typing something on her tablet and recording Karin at the same time.
"Eris make sure you sell this since it's fun," Karin said excitedly while she's moving more smoothly after some time.
"So you want to play this game with me now?" I asked.
"Yeah sure," she said and we started playing chess. She seems awkward for the first few rounds and when it was past midnight, she has already had a basic grasp of chess.
To be honest, I'm not good at chess myself since I only learn to play it from my elementary school teacher and rarely play it after going to high school and university. Given Eris's sharp way of thinking, she would defeat me after practising a few more times.
"So how is it?" I asked.
"I like this kind of game more. Maybe we can create a game app based on this game. We can create a computer simulation to generate more possible strategies and movements for each piece" Eris said calmly but her gaze seems excited even though her face didn't change much.
'Did Ares and Eris have hereditary facial paralysis or something? Why did her face rarely change and this face of mine, I don't even care since I also rarely get emotional in my past life.'
"Huh, I still don't understand how this game work" Karin complained after seeing us play for three rounds after she felt tired rolling around.
"You can take off the wheels from the shoes," I said after seeing Karin start to take off the shoes.
"Ohh why didn't you say so earlier?"
"Is that also one of the weird toys from before?" Eris asked while looking at Karin detaching the wheels from the shoes.
"Yeah but the wheels are rusty and undetachable so I just change to new wheels and make it detachable so the shoes can be worn normally" I explained to her.
"I think we have to create a new separate subsidiary business under Zanuki Business Group since this is kind of like a new field for us" Eris commented.
"The shoes can be made through collaboration with an existing shoe company and the wheels can easily be mass-produced since I bought the wheels from a weapon store where I asked them to make me a small metal wheel that can maintain human weight" I explained.
"The game can be made into pieces like this and also into an app game. I think I should discuss this with Uncle Jin first-" Eris's communicator suddenly rang up and Uncle Jin's name popped out on the screen.
"Speak of the devil" Karin commented.
Eris quickly connected the video call, and Uncle Jin can be seen seating behind the study table facing dozens of black and white flat marbles on a grid-patterned board.
"Hah Ares and Eris, since both of you're together then it's better for me. Ares make an in-game system for this game" he directly said to me.
As Ares already expected based on his knowledge of the behaviour of every Zanuki family member, he wasn't surprised to hear Uncle Jin's order.
"I'm still learning how to do basic programming. Later I will give it to you after I finished it but it might take a few months" I said honestly since programming is not my forte.
"Take your time since me and your sister will have to focus more on the hot air balloon project"
"Uncle Jin, I suggested to Ares to open a toy store," Eris said while explaining Karin's and her gifts.
"Do you still have a lot of those weird toys?"
"Around a dozen more," I said hesitantly since I never counted them.
"Then let's postpone the toy store until Ares finished the game system. We will discuss the details tomorrow" he said before ending the call.
"Fuh what a busy life you have" Karin commented.
Beep beep
Suddenly my communicator rang and Kara's name is on the screen. Seeing her sister calling me, Karin quickly grabbed my communicator and answered the voice call.
"Hey, why are you giving me this?" Kara's voice came through the communicator speaker.
"How can I sleep tonight after you give me this? You have to take responsibility. Don't think I will let you be until this thing is solved" Kara continue mumbling through the phone call.
"Have you gone insane?" Karin blurted out when Kara sounded more and more incoherent.
"Huh, why the hell you're the one taking this phone call. I did call the right line"
"I'm here," I said when she sounded mad.
"Hey how dare you give me an unfinished product"
"At first it was just a normal card with weird strokes like a magic circle so I just randomly try inscribing a real magic circle with my mana but it seems there're still something needed to be added on top of the mana card. After trying a few times, zink seems to be better acting as the main ingredient of the card compared to tin, lead or aluminium. Since I don't know much about magic-related ingredients, that is the extent I can do" I explained clearly since I don't want Kara to think that I'm giving her trash.
"I see," she said before abruptly ending the call.
"What the fuck. How the hell I have a sister like this?" Karin said seemingly annoyed but not shocked.
"It's already 2 a.m., you should sleep" Eris suddenly said.
"Then goodnight" Karin quickly replied before she dragged Eris away.
I don't realize it's already this late since Ron is usually the one reminding me but since he was on break, there's no one reminding me what time it is. After taking a warm shower, I went to sleep after setting the heater in my room to a comfortable temperature.