The Enlightenment of the Muggles
"Fortunately, it doesn't appear to be anything serious."
The family physician said this as he wound a bandage snugly around Felix's forearm.
At the sudden crash, the entire family had come barreling into Felix's room — only to freeze in shock at the sight of a chamber that looked as though a typhoon had torn through it, and Felix himself clutching his lower back and groaning in pain.
"Considering he was caught in a mana explosion, one could call this extraordinarily lucky. A mana explosion itself is little more than a shockwave scattering outward, but it tends to affect nearby mana stones and magical tools, often triggering chain detonations. The absence of any magical implements nearby was a stroke of fortune."
"So you're saying there's no real problem?"
"Yes… Nothing is broken. It's nothing more than some simple bruising."
Freya pressed for a definitive answer, and the physician nodded, eager to put her at ease.
"M-my back, though… It really hurts…?"
"That's just the muscles in shock. A few days of proper rest and you'll be fine."
"Ah. Right."
Felix, who had been clutching his waist and moaning, lowered his hand the moment he heard it was mere muscle strain, looking as though a great mystery had been solved.
"…Understood. Thank you for your trouble."
"All I did was offer a simple diagnosis. Hardly anything worth calling trouble."
"…."
"Ah. W-well done. Sorry for calling you out so suddenly."
"As the Evergarden family's physician, I have merely done what is expected of me. Please think nothing of it, my lord. I shall take my leave."
"Right, go on."
Freya offered the physician her thanks, then lightly tapped the arm of Darian — who looked ready to explode at any second — signaling him to act. He stammered slightly as he dismissed the doctor from the room.
As long as Darian, head of the household and a count in his own right, remained present, a physician of far lower station could not simply leave without his permission.
"Haa…. You absolute idiot!!!"
Thwack—!
"Aaaagh!! Ah, damn it…! Are you insane…! Ah… my head, my head's gonna split open!!"
The moment the physician left the Evergarden family alone in the room, Darian unleashed all the fury he had been holding back, driving a knuckle packed with love and devotion straight into the crown of Felix's head.
The impact hit like a lightning bolt from above — a flash of white behind the eyes, followed by a wave of pure agony. Felix clutched his skull and rolled across the bed in a thrashing heap.
"Have you lost your mind? Have you? Setting off a bomb in the house? When you set off fireworks at home as a middle schooler, did I or did I not tell you that was dangerous?"
Thwack—! Thwack—! Thwack—!
"Ack! Aaaagh!! Mom!! Wait!! I'm sorry!! Aaaagh!! Mom, your daughter's head is gonna explode and die!!!"
Even that wasn't enough. A relentless barrage of knuckles rained down on Felix's head like a string of dynamite going off. He tried throwing his hands up to protect his scalp, but Darian simply dodged the covered spots and struck everywhere else, raising a whole constellation of lumps.
Truth be told, today was hardly the first time Felix had caused an accident.
Having inherited a thicker dose of both parents' personalities than Rosaria, the eldest, Felix had taken his father's sharp mind and his mother's reckless streak in equal measure. The problem was that he put that excellent brain to use only on whatever he personally wanted to do.
Back in middle school, after being deeply moved by Harry Potter, young Felix had decided to recreate a magic spell. He'd carved a groove into a homemade wand — a wand in appearance only — packed it with gunpowder scavenged from disassembled fireworks, and tried to have a little fun. That childish stunt only ended after an unexpectedly powerful blast left the entire balcony wall scorched black.
And Darian — Felix's mother in that life, and an active-duty firefighter — had taken one look at the wreckage, retrieved a wooden paddle she had been keeping in storage without ever needing it, and that day proceeded to give her middle-school daughter the thrashing of a lifetime.
"Mom! Just kill her already! This bitch has completely lost it!"
"Oppa! Just you wai—ack! Aaaagh!"
And the one and only older brother, watching from the sidelines, had been waving his hands and fanning the flames for all he was worth.
Siblings, it was said, came into the world with a program already installed in their brains that read: Hate each other. That was how notoriously bad their relationship had always been.
Sure, on rare occasions there existed siblings who got along wonderfully — but that story had never applied to them.
When they lived far apart, even that irritating face could become something you missed now and then. But living under the same roof again had reactivated the old programming in full. Rosaria clutched her stomach laughing as she watched her little sister — now her older brother, Felix — get thoroughly beaten, wearing a smile so wicked it belonged on a villainess.
"Honey, let's calm down for a moment. This child has loved magic and fantasy since forever. Coming to a place like this must have gotten the excitement going. Son — you, too. That's enough."
"Huu…"
"Yes, ma'am."
"See? Dad's the only one who gets me!"
"And daughter?"
"…Huh?"
"Dad is currently extremely busy, with a mountain of problems that need solving immediately. For instance, how to deal with a certain individual who has been brazenly forging documents and exploiting this family for personal gain. As such, Dad is particularly vulnerable to unexpected situations, and the means available for handling them are, frankly, absurdly limited."
"D-Dad…? Your eyes are really scary…"
"So I would like you to understand that when our beloved youngest — the child I could put in my eye and it wouldn't hurt — engages in sudden reckless behavior, rather than responding with flexibility, Dad may need to resort to rather forceful and oppressive measures. Can you accept that?"
"…I won't cause any more accidents."
"Good. Dad will always love his daughter."
"…You know, sometimes when you get like that, you genuinely give me the creeps."
"Honestly, there are times when just taking a few hits from Mom and being done with it is better."
Gently easing Darian and Rosaria back, Freya rested a hand of pure maternal tenderness on Felix's shoulder. She smiled with the utmost benevolence while, in the most elegant and lyrical of terms, conveying that if anything like this happened again, she would tie him up and lock him in his room. Felix's pupils trembled without restraint as he nodded vigorously.
Watching this spectacle, Darian and Rosaria whispered to each other, exchanging impressions of the deeply unsettling scene.
There were times when Rosaria found Freya — the father who always smiled while delivering bone-chilling remarks — far more terrifying than their foul-tempered, combative mother.
"Haa… Anyway. What exactly were you trying to do, causing that whole mess? Let's hear it."
Stepping forward toward Felix — who was still trembling and nodding from a safe distance — Darian scratched his head and asked for the truth behind the sudden chaos.
"W-well now… This is going to blow all of your minds, I swear… Ready…? Ready…?"
Color flooded back into Felix's face at once. He squeezed his eyes shut and spread both hands open before them.
"…..?"
"…Did I hit his head too hard?"
"Hmm… Daughter? Have things been difficult for you lately?"
"No! Stop talking and just watch quietly so I can concentrate!"
The family muttered among themselves, completely failing to understand what Felix was doing, until he snapped at them and forced their mouths shut.
"Ah, it's coming… It's coming… It's here… It's here!!"
Flash—
"Huh?"
"W-what is th… Huh?"
"…No way."
Then, with a string of urgent sounds spilling from Felix's lips, a small, perfectly round orb of intense light bloomed without warning above his open palm. The family watching could only stare, struck speechless by sheer bewilderment.
"Kim Hanhee. Age twenty. Finally becomes a mage."
What they were looking at was magic.
More precisely, Light — the most elementary of elementary elemental spells. A technique that simply gathered a tiny amount of mana and projected it as light.
But to modern people who had always regarded magic as pure fiction, the existence of magic itself landed like a thunderbolt.
"Wait. Don't tell me you caused that whole disaster just to do this?"
"Disaster?! Could you please rephrase that as the great first step of Kim Hanhee, future archmage?"
"Insane… But wait, is this real? Is this actually real? This is magic?"
"Behold! The great discovery and invention that has continued since the dawn of the primitive age! The apes cannot comprehend the greatness of the pioneer who first saw fire, made fire, and spread fire — ah, how lamentable!"
"Oh, spare us the sermon."
Despite having just caused a reckless accident and sporting a fresh crop of lumps across his scalp, Felix had already forgotten all of it. He held the brilliant light on his palm high toward the ceiling and delivered a grand oration like a poet overflowing with feeling. Rosaria watched him with pure pity and pursed her lips.
"Huh… So this really isn't the world we used to live in. I already felt it when I saw two moons in the night sky, but now it's starting to sink in."
"Until now I've been wondering whether we might still be deep in some dream — whether all of this might just be a flash before dying eyes. But seeing something like this firsthand… the sense of reality is finally settling in."
One way or another, Felix's magic had delivered a considerable shock to everyone else present.
Possession. Fantasy. Magic.
All of these things had been proven fictitious by centuries of history and the tireless research of brilliant scientists. And so this family, who had experienced the surreal, unbelievable event of being possessed into a world of fiction — something that should never have been possible — had been plagued by the persistent thought that every moment of this might still be a dream.
A count's household. Two moons. And magic.
Having gradually felt fiction become reality with their own senses, they could finally make a definitive judgment.
Ah. This isn't a dream.
"A lot happened before I could cast even this tiny, basic spell. First of all, since Felix held the purely honorary title of professor in name only, I figured he might still have some magic-related materials lying around for formality's sake. So the first thing I did was tear my room apart searching. Oh, and they were just sitting out in the open on the desk. The first thing I found was a book called The Fundamentals of Magic — looked like a major textbook from the Academy. So I opened to the first page and started relearning about mana, the thing you need to use magic. The setting was pretty much the same as what I'd seen in modern media, though there were some more detailed expressions, like—"
"…I still haven't finished unpacking, so I should probably get going. Honey, what about you?"
"Hm? Well, we've confirmed our daughter's all right. There's not much point hanging around here, so I'll come with you. Son? What about you?"
"…I'll just head to my room. See you at dinner."
"Mana is something that anyone who walks upon this planet's soil— Wait! I'm not done explaining yet!"
Faced with that reaction, Felix — whose reins had well and truly snapped — launched into a flood of knowledge only he possessed, delivering a long, tedious, and thoroughly impenetrable lecture. His family, with the most natural ease in the world, simply left him there and walked out.