Chapter 17: The Daycare Visit
The room was warmly lit, soft lights on the ceiling blending with sunlight that shone through very faintly colored stained glass depicting some sort of a fairy tale I could not recognize. It seemed to tell a story of an ancient hero.
There was a clean and playful scent in the air, heartwarming sounds of children’s laughter and giggles floated and filled the space.
The daycare center was located in a separate wing of the Roen Tower, reserved for employees with young children. There were many places in Roen Tower I hadn’t set foot in and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to explore them all, but this one was somewhere I didn’t mind visiting.
I was nervous before the visit. I liked children. I liked watching them play. I liked their sound. Interacting them was a different story though.
"What if they cry?" I had asked earlier in the morning, half-joking, half-terrified.
Luc had only tilted her head slightly. "Then they will have something in common with you."
Now, standing in the center of a playroom with foam mats and plush toys scattered across the floor like artifacts of joy, I felt even more nervous than I had been at the Ceremony Hall.
At first, a tiny girl with pigtails ran up to me and handed me a block painted to look like a slice of watermelon. "This is for you," she declared, then turned and ran away, giggling. Then a boy no older than five came around and stood in front of me, very close. He looked up at me, his eyes studying my face carefully. I met his eyes and tried to smile, but it only came out awkwardly. He didn’t say anything and just kept the eye contact, and then suddenly broke into smile and ran back to his friends.
A group of children approached me after that. Two boys and two girls. One of them suddenly shouted, "Catch me!" The children then scattered, each of them running in a different direction. I wanted to play together but I didn’t know who to run after, until three more children joined and started to circle me, all of them asking me to catch them too.
’I suppose I could catch one of them at least," I finally built up the courage and started to run toward a girl that was closest to me. I almost caught her - multiple times. But these kids were like cats. They would just stand and wait for me to get closer, only to spring away to an unexpected direction and start running again.
It was fun. I hadn’t really played with other kids like this when I was their age. I spent most of my time sitting in the sandbox. I was always concerned about someone coming and destroying what I was building, to the extent that very often, I didn’t want to build something too nice because I knew I would be devastated if it was stomped into oblivion on the naughty whim of another child, who’d laugh, turn, and run off. It had happened more than once, leading me to only build things that I can rebuild again easily.