Bella appeared next. Her swimsuit was a one-piece with an attached ruffled skirt and ruffled detailing across the chest — maximum coverage, minimum exposure. Thirteen years old and royally modest. Her silver hair was tied up. Her heterochromatic eyes were fixed firmly on the ground as she walked to the water's edge.
Then she saw Yuki and the ground-staring stopped.
He was standing waist-deep in the pool, shirtless. He'd noticed recently that his body had been changing — the mana absorption, the constant physical reinforcement, months of combat training. He was no longer the lean teenager who'd fallen out of the sky. His shoulders were broader. His arms were defined. His torso had the kind of chiseled definition that came from supernatural enhancement rather than gym membership.
He'd gotten taller too. Not dramatically — a few centimetres — but enough that his proportions had shifted. He looked older. Stronger. The silver-blue hair and blue eyes added something otherworldly to the picture.
Bella went pink. She looked at the water. At him. At the water again.
Lira emerged behind her in a similar modest one-piece. She took one look at shirtless Yuki and her cheeks flared.
Both girls stood at the water's edge, blushing, not making eye contact.
Yuki looked down at himself. When did I get this built? Have I finally reached my popular phase?!
Even Elena, floating in the shallows, glanced over and quickly looked away with a flush that she buried by dunking her face in the water.
I'm just standing here. Why is everyone being weird?
He shrugged it off, wove mana into the water's surface, and created a fleet of floating loungers — ring-shaped, padded with compressed air, stable enough to lie on. He scattered them across the pool along with a few floating mats.
Everyone claimed one. The awkwardness dissolved into warm water and afternoon sun.
While the household lounged, Yuki worked.
He pulled out the gloves and headband he'd been crafting in the basement laboratory. Matte black. Sleek. The gloves had mana-conductive threading woven through the fingers and palms. The headband was silver — polished metal embedded with three blue mana stones that pulsed faintly.
"Hana."
She looked up from the shallow end where she'd been floating on her back, black ears barely above the surface.
"Got a new present for you."
She was out of the water in two seconds.
He explained the system. The gloves paired with her recall daggers — same principle, but enhanced. Faster return speed, stronger magnetic link, wider range. But the headband was the real upgrade. It contained a telekinesis enchantment and enhanced mental processing — together, they'd let her control up to ten daggers simultaneously through thought alone.
"It might give you a headache at first," he said. "The mental processing is intense. If it's too much, tell me and I'll dial it back."
Hana took the headband. Held it in both hands close to her chest. She was clearly very pleased with her gift. The silver metal against her black hair — it was pretty. Really pretty. The mana stones caught the light.
She put it on. The silver band sat across her forehead, nestled between her black ears. It looked like it had been designed for her, which it had.
Bella watched from her lounger. "Those mana stones are high-grade conductors. The telekinesis enchantment alone would be worth—"
"A lot. Yes. Everything I make is worth a lot. It's becoming a theme."
Hana pulled daggers from her magic bag. Not two. Not four. A pile — she'd been collecting them, apparently, stockpiling blades of various sizes and weights had become something of a hobby for her.
Bella's brow twitched at the arsenal a six-year-old was casually producing from a spatial storage device.
Hana selected four daggers to start. Double her normal capacity. She held them in her hands, closed her eyes, and pushed.
The daggers shot straight up. Fast. Really fast. They punched skyward like tiny rockets and vanished into the blue.
Yuki cast a barrier over the pool in case of stray returns. "I made them very sensitive. Try a lighter touch. The harder you push, the faster they go."
Hana adjusted. The daggers returned — slower, controlled, orbiting her in a loose formation. She moved one left. Right. Up. Down. Her dark eyes were focused, brow slightly creased. The headband pulsed.
"Good. You're getting it. Now—" Yuki waved his hand and conjured a course. Rings of compressed mana, floating in the air above the pool in a winding path. A slalom. An obstacle course for flying daggers. And also produced wooden daggers with dull tips so she doesn't accidentally injure anyone.
"Start with these before moving onto real daggers please. Guide them through the rings. Start slow."
Hana looked at the course. Looked at her practice daggers. Looked at Yuki — dark eyes asking.
Show me first.
He understood her without a word. He always did.
"You want me to demonstrate? All right."
He took control of the daggers. Ten of them, forming a constellation around his body. He sent them into the course — threading through the rings at high speed, banking left and right, each blade navigating independently while maintaining formation. They completed the circuit in seconds and returned to orbit.
"Like that. But start slow."
Hana nodded. She sent her four daggers into the course.
The first attempt was rough — daggers wobbling, missing rings, one of them spinning out and crashing into a tree trunk. But the second attempt was better. The third was clean. By the fifth, she was guiding all four through the rings without missing one.
Yuki watched the little fox girl in her swimsuit and silver headband, standing at the pool's edge with intense concentration, mentally piloting four floating daggers through an aerial obstacle course.
She's a prodigy. An actual prodigy.
Kana had been watching the entire time with the patient intensity of a volcano about to erupt.
Yuki felt her eyes staring daggers into him. He already knew what she wanted.
Yuki turned to her. "Yes, Kana, I also have something for you."
She exploded out of the water and was standing in front of him dripping wet, ears straight up, tail going nuclear.
He pulled out boots. Knee-high, dark leather, mana-woven. They looked normal except for the enchantment circles inscribed on the soles — blue-glowing rings of compressed spatial magic.
Kana looked at them. Her ears drooped slightly. Boots were not daggers, swords, or anything that went stab.
"Put them on," Yuki said. "Then watch."
He demonstrated. Running start — three steps on the ground, then a jump. At the apex, the soles of his feet flared blue and he found a foothold on nothing. A platform of compressed air, created by the enchantment, solid enough to push off from. He jumped again — another platform, higher. And again. Walking on air, climbing an invisible staircase.
Kana's drooping ears reversed trajectory at maximum speed.
"Air walking," Yuki said, dropping back to the ground. "The enchantment creates temporary platforms under your feet when you channel mana to the soles. You can jump higher, change direction mid-air, or retreat vertically when you're fighting something on the ground."
Kana had the boots on before he finished the sentence.
She ran. Hit the end of the beach. Jumped. Her feet flared — and she kept going up. One step. Two. Three. She was running on air, climbing above the tree line, silver hair streaming behind her.
"Don't go too—"
She was already fifty metres up, laughing and sprinting across the sky.
"—high."
Yuki watched her run invisible laps above the homestead and accepted that the boots' intended tactical purpose had been immediately repurposed as a playground.
She came back down after ten minutes, panting, grinning so hard her face might split. Within the hour she wasn't just jumping — she was walking on air. Casual steps, confident strides, treating the atmosphere like a solid surface. Not how the boots were designed to work, but somehow more impressive.
"I didn't program sustained air-walking into those," Yuki said, watching her stroll through the sky.
"She figured it out herself," Lira said from her lounger.
"They are both prodigies. I'm so proud of them."
"Accept it."
Last gifts.
Yuki sat on the sand beside Bella and Lira. The afternoon was winding down. Elena was in the shallows with Miri on her back, telling stories. Kana was still in the sky. Hana was running her daggers through the course for the thirtieth time.
He pulled out a ring.
"Bella. Here — the ring you requested."
She took it. Silver band, blue mana stone inset. Small, elegant, precisely her size.
"Enhancement suite," he said. "Passive healing, defence boost, mana recovery, speed and agility enhancement, mental processing augmentation, and strength reinforcement. The stone recharges from atmospheric mana."
Bella held the ring with both hands. Her cheeks were pink. A smile was forming — not her political smile, not her sharp smile. The goofy one. The one she couldn't control.
She began sliding it onto her ring finger.
A hand caught her wrist. Lira's hand. The grip was firm.
Bella looked at Lira. Lira looked at Bella. A moment of absolute silence.
Bella — despite the fear visible in her heterochromatic eyes — acted. In a motion somewhere between defiance and determination, she slid the ring onto her ring finger and held her hand up for the world to see.
The blue stone caught the sunlight. On the ring finger. Of a thirteen-year-old princess. Who was engaged — however theoretically — to the man sitting next to her.
Lira's eyes glistened. She turned to Yuki.
"I want a ring too."
He looked at her. "What for? I can enhance your necklace with additional enchantments if the current ones aren't—"
"A ring, Yuki."
"But logically, stacking two accessories with the same enhancement types would cause interference. One would nullify the—"
"A. Ring."
He blinked. Looked at Bella, who was giving him a very pointed look he couldn't interpret. Looked back at Lira, whose eyes were bright and whose lip was trembling in a way that made his chest hurt for reasons he couldn't identify.
Bella leaned close to his ear. "Give her a ring."
"But the enchantment overlap—"
"It would serve as a backup. If something happened to her necklace, the ring would provide additional protection."
That was — actually a good point. Redundancy was smart design.
"Okay. That makes sense."
He reached into storage and pulled out a second ring. He'd crafted it alongside Bella's — same design, same enchantment suite, tuned to Lira's mana signature.
"I configured it to avoid double-stacking effects with the necklace. If both are active, the ring defaults to secondary properties that don't overlap. That way you still build natural strength without too much amplification."
He smiled — charming, genuine, completely clueless — and placed the ring in Lira's palm.
Both girls stared at his smile. Then at each other. Then they both blushed — hard, simultaneously, identically — turned, and ran toward the pool, giggling like teenage girls together in a way that suggested a temporary ceasefire had been declared in favour of shared emotional crisis.
Yuki watched them go. "What was that about?"
No answer. They were already at the water's edge, holding their ring hands up to the light, comparing stones, laughing about something he couldn't hear.
Women are confusing. In every world.
He looked at the pool. Elena was floating with Miri, both of them glowing with a quiet contentment that hadn't been there a month ago. The brunette maid in her dark swimsuit, her daughter wrapped around her — they looked peaceful. Healed. Safe.
Kana was still air-walking above the homestead, occasionally shouting down updates about what she could see from up there.
Hana had graduated to six daggers and was running the course without missing a single ring.
Lira and Bella were standing in the shallows, rings glinting on their fingers, their earlier rivalry softened into something that looked — if you squinted — like friendship.
Yuki sat on the sand, ate another one of Elena's sandwiches, and thought about how he'd ended up here.
Cute girls surround me. Is mana making everyone more attractive? Or did I just get lucky?
He didn't have an answer. He didn't need one.
He leaned back on the sand, watched the sky, and let the afternoon be exactly what it was — warm, bright, and full of people he loved.