Chapter 232
Chapter 232
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 12
Chapter Title: Letters to the Wind Mage (25)
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A quiet corridor. The young mage standing there was listening intently to the bustling noises from outside.
"By now... they've probably finished preparing to depart? The luggage seems all loaded up. They're busy people... no time to hesitate."
Step. Step. Step. Step.
Creeeak—
Click.
"...It's so quiet."
Dawn, six o'clock.
Astrad sat alone in a dim side room, thinking of Professor and his group, who must have set off by now.
He had mountains of things he wanted to say, but in the end, he couldn't bring himself to go out and see them off.
A man as free as the wind, though not a wind mage himself. For some reason, Astrad admired him—the vigorous wind-like presence of a man who carried the thick scent of dust and sand, proud of his own actions and will.
So he stayed in the Home. If he watched him leave, he might beg to go along. Fearing that 'impulse,' Astrad remained alone in the silent Home after everyone else had gone.
"...What unbelievable people. From our first meeting, I thought they weren't human, but I never imagined they'd be such monsters. With bodies like that, saving the saint of the Church of Light, the hero, and now even the saintess and our Home's family. That dawn... he really did seem like a saint."
‘Live as your wind takes you, Astrad...’
Amid his monologue dripping with regret, his master's voice briefly flashed through his mind.
"Master. I'm... still just a novice mage who hasn't even found my own wind yet."
Perhaps this very regret was that 'wind.' But in one corner of Astrad's heart, the crumbling Felix Home still loomed large.
If there were two impulses, which one should a wind mage follow?
"Live as the wind takes you..."
Still unable to understand those words, the frustrated Astrad sat in his master's room and summoned his quill and ink.
The morning mail would arrive soon, so he planned to work from his master's room today.
"A little time... left."
About thirty minutes until the morning mail. A blank white sheet before his frustrated, confused heart. The quill he picked up without thinking.
For the first time in ages—not editing someone else's letter, but writing his own—Astrad began to write.
The recipient was his master, now long gone.
Scratch, scratch—Click.
"...Heh. Me too. I haven't changed a bit since I was a kid."
Like the letters he'd sent to his dead mother. Like the hundreds he'd sent to his father, never receiving a reply.
Astrad finished another letter that would go unanswered, chuckling self-mockingly as he folded it. So what if no magic was cast on it? He himself was the one who inspected every letter in the Empire.
Astrad planned to place this final letter for his master in his mailbox himself.
In a way, even a wind mage like him was just a breeze. So, absentmindedly, he said it.
[Carried on the wind.]
...Flutter.
His letter rose cautiously.
"M-Master?"
Impossible. It couldn't be. Hadn't he seen with his own eyes last night how his master's corpse had turned to smoke and ascended to the sky? But, but... why?
Flutter... Flutter...
Astrad's letter flapped weakly yet unmistakably toward the outside. Riding the wind, it slipped through the door he opened in a daze and floated silently away.
Through the long white corridor.
Past the once-lively dining hall, now silent.
Past the corridors of countless bookshelves waiting for today's letters.
Flutter—Flutter—
"Huff, huff!"
Chasing the letter as it toured every corridor and hallway of the Home like a sightseer, the young mage ran until he was gasping for breath.
It passed the central bookshelves where the mages' mailboxes gathered—its presumed destination—and kept flapping endlessly toward...
Coincidentally, the very side room where he had written the letter, shared with his master.
Creeeak—
As he opened the slightly tilted swinging door, the letter darted inside as if waiting.
Further in. Under the bed where his master had slept.
'Oh come on, Master! Just let me clean up a bit!'
'No! This is my bed, my spot!!! I won't let you move it. No way!'
'Sigh. That's why I said we should move to a bigger, wider room. Huh? We've not been here just a year or two, and there are plenty of empty rooms—why insist on this one...'
'No! I... I'm one with this bed! Absolutely not!'
His master, who strangely never let anyone near the bed. Back then, Astrad had dismissed it as the stubbornness of an old man losing his mind and left it alone, thinking he'd honor his wishes.
"..."
When his mind was sound, he cleaned the room himself. When it wasn't, he'd throw tantrums like that.
So, in the eight years Astrad had memorized every nook and cranny of this room, he'd never once looked under the bed.
Click.
Clatter... Click click!
"This is..."
Something was there. An old letterbox, crudely torn open in haste, in shabby shape.
Clunk, clunk clunk!
Like the overflowing letter shelves in the missing letters section, this letterbox—stuffed to bursting—rattled to close its mouth, while Astrad's letter struggled to get inside.
[Gauwan //// Delharst]
Unmistakably his master's name, with forcibly scratched-out traces.
But the Home's mailboxes for mages were engraved with grand magic. No matter how much you erased, you couldn't remove that deep magical residue.
To Astrad's 4th-circle eyes, the erased middle name was clearly visible.
[Gauwan Dylan Delharst]
[Dylan, Delharst]
[Dylan]
No. It couldn't be. Why that name? The name buried in old memories, now just part of his time with his master—why here?
Alongside his master's name.
Thud.
The letterbox slipped from the boy's hands as he faced the truth.
Clunk! Scatter scatter scatter!
The impact burst open the letters crammed inside to their limit, spilling across the room.
From the ceiling of the dusty side room, the letters began to flutter down.
Familiar traces of his master's mana mingled with them.
Young, confused, immature. The wind of his childhood days.
Each letter, worn with handling and stained with tears, was one Astrad himself had written to his father.
Flutter.
Astrad caught one falling without thinking. He didn't need to unfold it; the faint words showing through brought the contents back instantly.
It was written in childhood, but packed with deep emotion.
[Master did flight magic for the first time. Much happier than when living in the back alley.]
'Astrad. Do you like the sky?'
'...It's refreshing.'
[Today is Mom's birthday. You probably don't think of stuff like this.]
'Master? Where'd you get this pie?'
'Uh... I just wanted some. Wanna share?'
[I reached 1st circle. Now I'm a real mage. Can live alone without a father.]
'Home! Astrad! This is our home now!'
'Wind mages only have a home here anyway.'
'Yeah, you're back. Finally... home. Our home.'
"Ahh, ahhhh..."
Letters written day after day, stuffed with longing and resentment. Whenever he was depressed like that, his master always came to his side, soothing and embracing him.
"Ahhh... Why, why...!"
Amid the scattering letters like memories, Astrad saw his master. Even after memories faded, reading the letters. The wrinkled face always beaming innocently, as if just being by his side was enough. And... even on the brink of death, the first words he spoke...
'Back... You're back. We've... come back...'
The meaning of that desperate 'return.'
Astrad understood it all.
Why he'd taken in that scrawny little thief boy as a disciple.
Why he'd taught him so devotedly. And...
[I hate Father back then. Back then son, Astrad.]
'...Astrad. Do you... resent your father... a lot?'
'...Yes. For abandoning Mother, abandoning me. That irresponsible father who left— I hate him enough to kill.'
'...I see. I understand...'
Why his master's face had been so pale when ghostwriting his first letter.
Imagining his master unfolding those hundreds of resentment-filled letters countless times until they were worn, secretly wiping away tears, hiding the letterbox under the bed lest Astrad learn the truth—Astrad's heart tore apart.
"You should... have told me! Bottling it up alone, letting it fester! That's why... you got buried in those memories, Master..."
"If you'd just said something, if it was that painful, painful enough to vanish from my memories!"
Bang!
"Why didn't you... just open up..."
Master.
My master.
My... father.
Beneath the snow-like flurry of memories, another bundle of letters without magic lay there.
[From Gauwan Dylan Delharst. To disciple, Astrad.]
A bundle of letters, corner worn from hesitation, never sent.
Amid the circling letters of his youth, Astrad read each one flown from his deceased master.
Gauwan's life as a mage.
Love that came to him, wandering like the wind, and his fate that couldn't stay in one place.
Returning after years, learning she and his son were both dead—how he'd wept.
The impulse to take in the grubby disciple he couldn't understand himself.
And three months later. Learning his name was Astrad.
That name—from the wife he'd spent just four weeks with, whispering love. The name from her lips. If a girl, Selin. If a boy, Astrad.
For a man vanishing like the wind, the child planted like a star—Astrad.
The westerlies of that day brought him my son.
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...I... finally realized that the wind of that day granted my wish. Astrad. Star of the night sky. At some point, my heart followed where the wind went. Astrad. I know no amount of apologies till my life's end can cover your pain, but still... I want you to be happy.
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Drip. Drip...
Tears from the father who lived to the end as a master fell onto the letter, joined by tears from the son who had been a disciple.
‘Because... that is my wind.’
"...Master. You sure make it... hard to understand."
Drip. Drip.
Astrad gathered a handful of wind, embracing the scattered letters—his master's and his own.
Step. Step.
With each step down the quiet corridor, memories of running and playing here with his master brushed his heart, his eyes.
His footsteps stopped at the corridor exposed to the outside by a broken pillar. Overlooking the rocky valley, where the wind blew freely.
Astrad sat at its end and sent both their letters on the blowing wind.
Flutter flutter flutter!
The letters that were never sent finally rode the wind. Toward the young mage's mailbox, unopened for eight years since.
Letters thought sent but undelivered now flew toward the man no longer in this world. Toward the master Gauwan who taught him everything, the father Dylan who gave him everything. On the wind, up into the sky. Farther. Even farther.
Watching the letters scatter into the sky, Astrad infused wind into the staff his master had carved for him.
A low, gentle melody filled with father and son's memories. And between them.
Flutter flutter!
Letters announcing a new morning had arrived nonetheless.
"...Time to get up. If the others don't come soon, today's mail will pile up... Maybe I should send them out alone first."
At last, the mage who had cast off the knotted past of long years rose. Morning had dawned, a new day's wind was blowing, and it was time for the tasks given to him that day.
He never learned how his final letter had flown to his master's mailbox. He simply thought the grand mage's remains, infused with longing, had worked one last miracle to connect the grief they'd missed for eight years.
It was a miracle-like event.
At last. The wind mage's letters to the wind mage had reached each other.
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