A Promise of Stars
"Nngh..."
"You sleepyhead! You finally woke up — what do you think you're doing falling asleep again? I was bored!"
I clutched my aching head and sat up.
"Rhea... what happened?"
"I don't really know either. Midway through the surgery the mana started acting strangely, and when I opened my eyes... we were like this."
"Does this have something to do with your necromancy?"
"Beats me. But we came back to life, so isn't that what matters? Hehe."
Leave it to her to be optimistic at a time like this. First things first — I needed to figure out what I even looked like.
I got up and opened a door that seemed to lead to a bathroom. The face in the mirror had long, flowing white hair, and beneath it a pair of enormous eyes just as purely white. Compared to the height I used to have, this body was so short it would barely have reached my old chest. In a word, I looked like a mysterious little girl. A living doll.
"Kyaa~! You're so cute! You look just like a doll! I want to nibble you!"
"Rhea..."
For the first time in my life, I felt genuinely annoyed with her.
"That's so mean!!"
"Anyway — where are we?"
I twisted a stiff water valve. The pressure was so low the water barely trickled out. Dust lay thick across every piece of furniture, and what passed for a bed was little more than a pathetic straw mat.
"Ugh... just looking at this place makes me want to cough. Want to head outside?"
At Rhea's suggestion I pulled the door open, and it groaned with a grotesque wooden creak.
"This is...?"
"Oh. It's Tower City. You've never been here, have you, Kairen?"
"Why am I here...?"
Tower Abyss. A mysterious spire that had appeared in the Empire long ago. Inside, they said, a dense pall of demonic energy hung in the air, and demonic beasts and demons swarmed in droves.
"Did we get warped here or something?"
The estate where Rhea and I had lived sat a long, long way from Tower City. For the body I'd had there to physically travel this far was impossible. Assuming this even was my body.
"Let's take a look around."
I stepped outside. Tower City was bustling, packed with every kind of person imaginable — some carrying swords and spears, others wearing armor polished to a gleam. Climbers, most likely. The ones who ascended the Tower.
Walking a street this size in a little girl's body was miserably inconvenient. My old stride was gone without a trace, and my shortened legs forced me down to a naturally slower pace. With my eyeline dropped so low, I kept bumping into people if I didn't watch every step.
"Oh my. Look at the baby toddling along so well."
"Rhea!!"
"Pfft... sorry. I won't tease you anymore. For real. But you're just too cute — what am I supposed to do?"
Bantering with her like that, I sat down on a bench and tried to get my thoughts in order.
What now? I didn't have the luxury of leisurely hunting down the cause of this bizarre phenomenon. I'd already given up on life once — what did it matter that I'd ended up in a girl's body? Rhea was right here beside me. That was enough.
What I needed most right now was money. I couldn't keep eating cheap junk food in this little girl's body, and I sure as hell couldn't keep living in that ramshackle house I'd woken up in.
"But how am I supposed to make money looking like this..."
"What about climbing the Tower?"
"What? Climb the Tower?"
"Yeah. It's one of the best ways to make money there is. The first floor is where beginners go, so we can take it easy starting there."
She wasn't wrong. The mana stones and assorted loot that came out of Tower Abyss sold for staggering prices. But how was I supposed to do any of that in this body?
"You might be able to use magic now, you know?"
"...Me?"
"Yeah! Your whole body changed — why wouldn't you?"
Now that she mentioned it, I could feel something circulating through me — something between a gas and a liquid, flowing through my veins in place of blood. I focused, drawing that energy into my hand.
A white flare burst across my palm.
"Oh!"
White ripples shimmered there, sheathed in a border of black.
I... I can actually use mana?
"That's a weird color for mana."
"I can't believe this..."
Something I had never been able to do no matter how hard I tried — and now it had just... happened?
"This is the best... this is the best! A petite little girl's body is the best! Ahahaha!"
"So cool! So brave! Baby Kairen is the best!"
I was still shouting in awe at the mana flowing through me when I felt a pair of middle-aged men staring from the side.
"...Tsk, tsk. What happened to that young girl..."
"..."
I flushed crimson and hurriedly left.
A few dozen paces away, behind the corner of a building, a woman stood watching.
At first it had only been the unusual hair color that caught her eye. But the moment she saw the white mana blooming from the girl's hand, she couldn't look away.
"What in the world is that..."
White mana. She had never seen it, never even heard of it. The color of a person's mana typically reflected their innate magic or their ability. A caster who leaned on fire would have red mana; one who leaned on earth, yellow. That was how it worked. So what on earth was white?
"...That child. Just who is she?"
The woman swept her purple hair back and began to follow the girl.
"Okay, so I can handle mana... but can I actually use magic?"
"Let's see... want to try an incantation?"
"An incantation?"
"Yeah. Something like Fireball from the common magic list. Anything, really. Incantations usually get a reaction pretty easily."
"Doesn't common magic need complicated formulas and all that?"
"Yep."
"?"
"You've got me, don't you?"
"...!"
Right. The Rhea currently living in my head was a prodigy so gifted that the Magic Tower had fought over the chance to recruit her. She would have the formulas for a low-tier common spell like Fireball memorized down to the last detail.
I raised my hand and focused my mana.
"Then... Fireball!!!"
Nothing happened.
"Guess knowing it myself isn't enough..."
"..."
That was when a woman approached.
"Hey, kid. You want to use magic?"
She appeared with long purple hair cascading down her back and a kindly light in her eyes. Her half-lidded, faintly vacant gaze was striking.
"...Pardon?"
"That's an unusual color of mana you've got. What do your parents do?"
"I haven't got any."
The woman's pupils wavered for a moment.
"Ahem... I see. Want this big sister to teach you a little magic?"
"You'll teach me magic?"
A complete stranger walking up out of nowhere and offering to teach magic. Suspicious didn't even begin to cover it.
"That's right. Magic, you see, can only be used in a form that matches your own mental imagery. Like this."
A vine tendril unfurled from her raised finger, then withered away just as quickly.
"The common magic you were trying to use requires knowing all those complicated formulas. But innate magic can manifest from mental imagery alone."
She smiled as she went on.
"I wonder what kind of mental imagery our little lady has?"
Little lady. Being called that with the mind of a grown man was deeply uncomfortable.
Mental imagery... mental imagery...
"Nothing's coming to mind, though."
"Hmm... is that so? Now I'm curious what kind of magic our little lady will use."
As she spoke, she habitually bloomed a vine across her palm and let it wither again.
The moment I stared at it, my vision changed. The pathways of mana flowing through the vine rose into view, transparent as capillaries. Where the mana began, which mental imagery it answered to, how it shaped itself into form — the entire structure poured into my mind at once. It felt like someone had jammed a magic blueprint straight into my brain.
"Nngh...!"
I clutched my head against the headache, and felt the mana inside me surge.
"......Huh?"
I forced my eyes open to find the woman staring at me in utter bewilderment.
"Is something wro— wait?"
White vine tendrils had erupted from my body, wrapping everything within three meters. Passersby on the street had stopped in their tracks, staring in fascination.
"K-kid? How in the world...?"
"I don't really..."
"This is probably... your innate ability."
"My innate ability?"
"Yeah. You had that ability, Magic Analysis, remember?"
So that was it. My innate ability had carried over even into this transformed body. If I had analyzed the magic the woman in front of me had used and then cast it myself, that would explain everything.
"Kid...? Who are you talking to?"
"...Ah! Thank you for your help! I'll be going now."
And with that, I bolted.
"Kid..!!"
I took a roundabout route through the streets and made it back to the house. Showing this unidentified body off to people was dangerous.
"Hah... hah..."
Sprinting that far on these stubby little legs had left me gasping and soaked in sweat. ...Anyway, who even was that woman? I should wash this clammy, sweat-soaked body first and think later.
I started to take off my clothes, and then—
"Why do I feel guilty about this..."
"Kairen?"
...No. No. This body is mine. Nobody in the world blushes at the sight of their own naked body.
I squeezed my eyes shut, stripped, and opened the valve to wash myself off.
"Hoo..."
I roughly toweled off and pulled my clothes back on.
"So the magic problem's solved, then?"
"Yeah. I think I can use that spell I saw again."
As I said it, I bloomed a vine tendril over my hand the same way the purple-haired woman had.
"What now?"
"We need money. So like you said, we'll climb the Tower."
As I fastened my collar, something rustled against my chest. My fingertips found something that had no business being in this body at all.
A crumpled scrap of paper.
"Thank god... it's still here."
To Kairen.
If I win, let's go see the stars together. Promise! ★
— Rhea
I unfolded it. Crooked handwriting. A little star doodled next to the word stars. I had no idea how it had ended up here. But that handwriting belonged to only one person in the world.
"That's..."
"The stars. We're going to see them together."
At night, the magi spilling from the Tower's peak swallowed the sky whole, and you couldn't see the stars from the ground. But according to Rhea, from the tenth floor you could see them in a dazzling, overflowing brilliance — a sight no ordinary person would ever witness.
"...Kairen."
Her voice was trembling.
"That note... you had it on you...?"
"I had it in my pocket when I died, so I guess that's why."
I said it casually, but the fingertips holding the note trembled, just a little.
"......Idiot."
Those two syllables were soaked in unshed tears.
"I'm really glad, Rhea."
"...About what."
"You won."
"......"
For a long time, there was no answer.
Then, from somewhere inside my head, came a tiny sob. It was the same sound she used to make in the hospital room — the one she swallowed under the covers so no one would hear.
And then.
"...Tch. Who said I was crying."
"Liar. I can hear your nose turning red."
"How can you hear a red nose, you idiot!!!"