Chapter 322: Whats next?

"Well, leaving that nonsensical thought aside, we better start fixing the vending machine without dragging it out any longer...All this talking and thinking has wringed my mind out dry, and I need a drink to refresh me up." Nina bounced back towards the machine and sat straight on my lap, like she was ready to get her hands dirty.

She also didn’t seem so troubled about all the thoughts that were going through her head and seemed to have taken my advice and pushed them aside for now, which was relieving to see.

But what wasn’t relieving was the sight of Nina suddenly trying to pull open the metal panel door with just her bare hands.

She didn’t try to use any tools whatsoever to loosen the screws and decided to rawdog it and use brute force to pry open the thing, which made me sweat.

"What are you doing, Nina?!" I pulled Nina’s hands away in a hurry so that she didn’t hurt herself. "You know that we have a toolbox here for the exact reason of not using our own hands as instruments, right?...Here, you could’ve used this screwdriver, and opening this door would’ve been so much more easier."

I opened the toolbox and pulled out a driver, which Nina stared at with an uninterested look in her eyes, like she preferred her way better. Discover more content at m,v l’e|m-p| y r

"But Kafka, screwdrivers are such fiddly little things!" Nina picked up the screwdriver and complained. "They require you to push them into such tiny holes and pray that they stay lodged in instead of coming out...Wouldn’t it just be so much more easier to pull open the door? It’s already halfway open."

The metal door really was half way open, or more like it was bent open, which made me wonder just where she got all the strength from to even be able to bend metal when she had such frail-looking arms.

"No, Nina...Today we’re going to do it just like your father did it in the past and fix this machine in a systematic manner, like it’s meant to be done."

Nina seemed to want to protest that her method was so much faster, but when she heard me mention her father, she immediately quieted down like an obedient child and followed what I said.

She grabbed the screwdriver, slowly pushed the tip into the primary pilot hole with all her focus, and managed to fix the driver into place, which actually surprised her as she was not expecting to get it in on the first try.

But her enthusiasm for her unfounded success quickly died down for some reason, as she turned to look at me with an embarrassed look on her face.

"Umm...You better not laugh at me for asking this, Kafka...But what side should I turn the screwdriver around?...The left or the right?" Nina blushed as she asked me a simple question, while looking like she was ready to poke me with the driver if I made fun of her.

"The left, Nina...It’s always the left, like how it’s ’Leftie loosey, Rightly tighty’." I said as I helped her turn the screwdriver and slowly loosen the door while holding her hands. "And don’t worry about me laughing at any silly doubt you may have, as only an imbecile will laugh at someone who’s trying their best."

Nina was trying to fix the machine with a rather carefree and nonchalant attitude since she really didn’t think that she would be able to restore it on her own, nor did she think that I would have the patience to teach her everything carefully, just like how her teachers abandoned her, thinking that she was a hopeless case.

Instead, she was treating it like a game that both of us were playing to pass time and was waiting for the moment where I got fed up with her like everyone else did because of how bad she was when it came to these sorts of things.

But when she saw me carefully guiding her hands on how to hold a screwdriver properly and heard the small bits of advice I was giving from the side with a serious look on my face, when I was simply teaching her how to work a driver, she realised that I wasn’t like the rest of the people that tried to teach her something in her life, who only did so for the sake of it, but I was actually genuinely trying to help her out and teach her something for her own good.

Only her father had such an attitude towards her when he tried to teach his skills to her when she was young, and she felt ashamed that she was taking my efforts as a joke.

Nina then quickly shook her head to focus on what was happening, and she tried her best to follow what I was saying.

"’Leftie loosie, Righty tighty’, right?...I got it." Nina said with confidence, like she was telling me that she could do it on her own now, which made me let go of her hands.

Nina was first a little nervous when she felt my hands off her, as she was scared that she would mess up even this simple task and embarrass herself in front of me like she always did when it came to these sorts of matters. But she still persisted with laser focus and carefully loosened the screw while making sure that she didn’t make any mistakes out of recklessness.

Pop~

And just in a matter of seconds, the screw that was lodged inside popped out, and the door was left open to Nina’s surprise.

"Let’s go, Nina! You did it! You opened the vending machine!" Immediately, a round of applause was heard from behind Nina as I started clapping enthusiastically and singing praises of her achievement with a proud smile on my face. "I knew you could do it! There’s nothing in the world that my Nina can’t do!"

"O-Oh, S-Shut up, Kafka! Stop making a big deal out of nothing!"

Nina cried out in embarrassment, thinking that I was teasing her, but she still felt gleeful that I was praising her actions that she was actually proud of.

"It’s not nothing, Nina...Before you weren’t able to open a screw because you found it to be quite tedious. But now you’ve overcome that and accomplished something that you couldn’t do before, no matter how simple it may be." I said as I shook Nina around in my lap like a proud father who had just witnessed her daughter shoot her first goal.

"You may not get a trophy for that, but a little celebration is a must for your achievement."

"Fine, Kafka! Do whatever you want!...Just don’t start clapping again, or else everyone will know that I’m getting praised for turning a screwdriver, and I won’t be able to show my face ever again!" Nina gave in and let me do whatever I wanted while having a flushed look on her face for being treated like a child.

She then looked at the inside of the machine that was now open and asked,

"Now, what do I have to do next?"

There was a little twinkle in her eyes as if she was looking forward to the next step after seeing that she finished the first step without any complications, unlike in the past, where she always screwed up from the start.