This Has Always Been the Medicine

The Meyrud main house.

Iris's room.

"...Leon. He should be back from the Tower by now."

A man like that — practically a messenger of the gods — couldn't possibly have died inside the Tower. He would have made it back to the White Magic Tower in one piece.

"I wonder if he's studying hard..."

The books she'd left in his room before she went away drifted through her mind. Everything from basic magical notation to the fundamental structures of Elemental Formulas and Magic Formulas. If you were being honest about it, they were all beginner textbooks, more or less.

"Maybe I should have slipped in a few harder ones."

Leon would have torn through them in no time. He was the kind of person who grasped basic ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠theory in a single day, then looked at spells that had been used as common sense for hundreds of years and asked why they had to be done that way.

...He's probably doing just fine on his own.

"And the cookies... they came out really well that day. Hehe."

After ruining batch after batch, she'd finally gotten the shapes right, and they'd tasted so much better than the last ones. She hoped he'd eaten them.

Iris lowered her eyes back to her book.

It was fine. She'd left the textbooks. She'd left a letter. She'd even promised to show him the original spell she'd made someday. The next time they met, they could have all the conversations they hadn't gotten to have.

...Next time.

"..."

The truth is, I wanted to talk a little longer.

She'd wanted to show him Glacial Orb the moment he got back from the Tower. She'd wanted to ask him what she should fix. He would have said something ridiculous, she was sure of it — make it bigger, spin it, or, out of nowhere, turn it into a dragon.

She'd wanted a little more of that pointless talk.

She'd even let herself wonder whether, given enough time, she might be able to go back to the White Magic Tower. But on the very first day she returned to the main house, Zenith had told her they would climb the Tower together for the next three years.

"...Three whole years."

In the span of a life, it might not even be that long. She was only twenty, after all. And yet, for some reason she couldn't shake, it kept catching on something in her chest.

Honestly, her sister terrified her.

For as long as she could remember, if Zenith told her to do something, she did it. If Zenith told her not to, she didn't. Defiance only ever earned her a lecture on how wrong she was — or, failing that, she simply got crushed by a stronger force. That was the way she had lived. And catching up to that sister had been her goal for a very long time.

If she climbed the Tower under the direct tutelage of Zenith, a Grand Magus, she would become far stronger than ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠she was now.

But.

"...I wanted to apologize. In person."

She'd written it in the letter. That she was sorry for slapping him. That she'd wanted to say it to his face, and that she wouldn't be able to.

"...I can still send letters, though."

There was no reason the House of Meyrud and the White Magic Tower couldn't exchange correspondence. She could write about the magic she was making. She could send him new textbooks. And if Leon wrote back, she could read that too.

That would be enough. That should be enough.

"...Still. Not being able to see him is lonely."

In three years, they might both be completely different people. He might even be properly married to Celia by then.

"..."

The thought made her chest go tight and heavy. The rims of her eyes burned, and the sighs kept slipping out no matter how she tried to hold them.

She'd seen Celia and Leon together more than once. There had been times the sight of them had made her angry, because she'd assumed that was the kind of relationship they had. And when Leon had said that strange thing, the slap had come from the same place.

Looking back, the answer wasn't difficult at all.

Jealousy.

"...I guess I liked you too."

Saying it out loud made her face go a little hot.

"Without even realizing it."

She felt like such an idiot. She hadn't been able to get a single word out when they were actually together, and now here she was, alone in her room, doing this.

"...Forget it."

She gave both cheeks a light pat and pulled the open book back toward her.

Thinking about it wouldn't change a thing. Get stronger first. She'd promised to show him someday.

"...Let's meet again. For sure."

WHOOOOOM—!

The world beyond the window went dark.

"...?"

Sunlight had been pouring in just a moment ago. Now a vast shadow had settled over the entire room.

"...It's only two in the afternoon."

Wondering if a storm was rolling in, she stood and crossed to the window.

And stopped dead.

"...What is that."

The sky was black. At first she thought it was stormcloud. It wasn't.

Near the front gates of the Meyrud estate, a black aura was surging upward without pause. Crimson-dark flames twisted together, stretching into a long neck; a colossal body and a pair of wings slowly took shape behind it.

WHOOOOOOM—!

"...!"

A gigantic dragon made of fire and darkness. She had never seen a spell like it in her life.

And somehow, she already knew exactly what it was.

— I think I'll try making a Black Flame Dragon next. A super strong, super dark magic dragon.

"L-Leon...?"

That couldn't be right. Why would Leon be here? Had he only just gotten back from the Tower? The White Magic Tower was a four-hour carriage ride from here. At this hour there wouldn't even be carriages running this way.

Had he... walked?

A dozen thoughts crashed through her head at once. In the end, only one of them mattered.

"...Leon came."

As if spellbound, she pushed the window open. A hard wind rushed in, and the black dragon filled her vision completely.

Fifty meters. No — it might have been even bigger than that. Even the great spires of the Meyrud manor looked small beside it. The knights in the garden had already scattered in every direction, screaming.

"W-what the hell is that?! A m-monster!!!!"

"R-run!!! Everyone drop your weapons and fall back!!!!"

"AAAAAH! No, stay away! Please, don't kill me!!!"

Watching them, she couldn't help it. The laugh just broke out of her.

"Pffft...! You never said it was going to be that big...!"

And then—

The voice rolled through the entire manor, loud enough to shake the walls.

"..."

Her?

He'd come all this way to find her?

......

The textbooks. The magic. Her sister. The three years ahead.

None of it mattered right now. Iris wiped away the tears she hadn't even noticed were falling.

"Okay...! I'm coming! Right now!"

And then she slammed her door open and ran.

She didn't know why Leon had come, or what on earth had possessed him to hang that thing in the sky. She could ask him later.

He had come anyway.

Leon had come.

Something had gone severely, catastrophically wrong.

"W-what the hell is that?! A m-monster!!!!"

"AAAAAH! No, stay away! Please, don't kill me!!!"

The knights at the front gate had thrown down their spears and everything else they were holding and were fleeing in every direction. I stared at them blankly, then slowly lifted my head.

"...Isn't that a little big?"

Overhead, a single black dragon had spread its wings wide enough to throw the entire Meyrud estate into shadow.

The Black Flame Dragon.

I distinctly remembered that when I'd used it inside the Tower, it had been a meter long at most. The perfect size to coil around your arm and throw a punch with.

Right now it was the size of a whole apartment building.

What the hell.

"AI. Why is it like this?"

"And that's how a one-meter thing turned into this?"

I looked up again.

...No matter how I turned it over, something was off.

"Didn't people say my mana vessel was on the small side?"

I'd never measured it properly, but the first time they tested me at the White Magic Tower, the classmates watching my fireball and my Ki-Blast had asked if the output was weak because I didn't have much mana. I'd just gone, yeah, probably, and moved on.

"Tsk... Looking at that thing, there's no way someone with 'not much mana' made it."

"...From the atmosphere?"

"Oh. And what's that supposed to mean?"

First I'd ever heard of it.

"You talk like a damn textbook. Give it to me in plain language."

"...For real?"

God. Buddha. Allah. And whatever nameless deity runs this other world.

Thank you so goddamn much.

"THIS is what a broken character looks like, FUCK YEAH!!!!"

"...Ah, dammit. There goes the fun."

"I knew I could count on you!"

"...Yep. The gods really are ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fair."

"THE HELL ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!!!"

It was quiet for a long beat. Then—

"This bastard's glitching out again."

It did this sometimes, whenever it ran out of things to say.

Anyway. Up ahead, the knights were still trembling and running for their lives. No real reason to keep the Black Flame Dragon hanging in the sky.

"Alright, pack it in."

The enormous head and wings dissolved into crimson-dark flame, and the black dragon's body slowly came apart. Before long even the fire broke into countless motes and scattered, and sunlight began to push back into a sky that had been pitch-black only moments ago.

Oof. Bright.

I rolled my stiff neck once and shouted toward the inside of the gates.

"IRIS!!! GET OUT HERE!!!!"

The manor itself seemed to be sliding into chaos. A few of the knights who'd run were starting to regroup, but none of them looked interested in coming any closer. The way they were pointing spears at me from way over there, the Black Flame Dragon must have made quite an impression.

Honestly, it had made an impression on me too. That was a Godzilla. In what universe was that a dragon.

Then I saw two people walking out from the big building in the center.

"...Huh?"

They both looked a little like Iris. One was a woman, her hair a shade lighter than Iris's, and beside her walked a man who looked old enough to be somebody's father.

And that guy.

...Whoa.

He had an incredibly nasty face. The kind of face that belonged to a legendary back-alley thug from thirty years ago who'd aged out and gone a little soft.

The woman reached me first.

"So. Care to explain why you came all the way to someone else's house to pull a stunt like that?"

Who was this.

Up close, she really did look a lot like Iris.

"You must be that Zenith person, then."

The way she'd walked out more confidently than anyone else tracked, and so did the description I'd gotten from Celia.

"That's right. I am Zenith Meyrud, Grand Magus of House Meyrud."

Zenith seemed more interested in the black mana still hanging in the sky than she was in me. She tipped her head back, studied it for a moment, then lifted one corner of her mouth like it was nothing.

"You stacked a pile of shape formulas and inflated the size, and that was enough to scare people that badly."

A little snort of laughter came with it.

"I suppose it would work on people who don't know magic."

? The hell is this magic-illiterate bastard talking about.

Ahhh. So this was what a Grand Magus looked like in this world.

I wanted to die of boredom.

Not that I had any right to talk, considering I was mainlining every spell raw from the AI.

That was when it happened.

"Leon...!!!"

A familiar voice carried from the manor at the center of the grounds.

"Leon!!"

I turned, and Iris was sprinting toward me. I closed the distance a few steps without thinking.

"Iris."

"Leon...!"

She didn't stop until she was right in front of me, then stood there dragging in ragged breaths.

"Hah... hah..."

I never would have pictured her running like that.

"Hoo... what are you doing all the way out here...?"

"Yeah. Nothing big. I just came to apologize."

"...Apologize?"

"Last time I said that stuff way too bluntly. I wanted to say I was sorry for it."

The way she blinked at me, she clearly hadn't seen that coming at all.

"I'm sorry. Forgive me."

Iris stared at me for a second, then covered her mouth with her hand and burst out laughing.

"Pffft...!"

"...What's so funny."

"No, I just... you came all the way here for that...?"

"What do you mean, 'that'! It was a pretty big deal to me!"

"Puhuhu... idiot."

Once she laughed, she finally looked like the Iris I knew. When she'd first come running, her face had been in such bad shape it had worried me a little, but it seemed like nothing was actually wrong.

Good.

"Iris."

"Hm?"

Originally, I'd planned to ask her a bunch of things. Why she'd hated coming back here so much. Whether she actually wanted to keep living here. What she wanted to do from now on. I'd figured we'd talk it through quietly, and then I'd decide something reasonable.

"Beating around the bush is annoying."

"...?"

"Iris. You be my wife too."

Iris locked up on the spot. Behind us, everything went quiet at once.

"...What?"

"I was going to say a lot of other things, you know?"

I really had been. But I'd walked all night to get here and my legs were killing me, the knights at the gate had shoved spears in my face first thing, and most of all, once I was actually looking at Iris, every last one of those steps suddenly felt like too much work.

"And this ending's a little disappointing for you too, right?"

If we'd had even one more week, Iris would probably have been my good wife by now, right alongside Celia. The rice had been almost done, and then some sister had shown up out of nowhere and dumped ashes all over it.

Still, it didn't feel completely ruined. Looked salvageable enough, if I handled it right.

The conclusion I landed on was simple.

"Let's go. Wife No. 2."

"...Wife No. 2...?"

"I need you to have my kids."

"...???????"

Iris's face went scarlet. Fortunately, she didn't look like she was going to slap me this time. She just stood there with her head down, fidgeting with her fingers.

Behind her, someone else's face had gone red for an entirely different reason.

"How dare you spout that kind of garbage at my daughter—!"

Daughter?

So that guy was the Patriarch of House Meyrud, then.

"Just a moment, Father."

Before the Patriarch could get another word out, someone stepped in front of him.

Zenith.

"...So you're that Leon. I've heard a great deal about you from an acquaintance."

"You know my name?"

"Mm. I heard there was a young mage with a genius gift for formula interpretation. I wanted to meet you once."

This time I could feel her eyes traveling from the top of my head to the soles of my feet.

"Your skill seems better than I expected. Your conduct, on the other hand, seems rather lacking."

Conduct?

Conduuuuct?

The woman who'd slapped someone else's wife was standing here talking about whose conduct, exactly.

Ah. Come to think of it, there was one more thing.

"Hey. Sis-in-law. Got a question for you."

"...Sis-in-law...?"

"You ran your mouth about Celia's father, didn't you?"

"...Ah. That."

She paused just long enough that I thought she might not even remember, but she caught on fast enough.

"Senior just looked like she'd lost all her drive, so I gave her a little nudge."

"I see."

I started walking toward Zenith, one step at a time, without changing a thing about my expression. Even with the distance closing like that, she showed no interest in getting out of the way.

"Me, I put up with a lot when something pisses me off. I'll even let it slide if somebody stiffs me on money, depending on how bad it is. And the assholes who talk shit about me? I let most of that go too."

But.

"I draw the line at people insulting my father-in-law."

"...Father-in—"

SMACK—!

It landed clean enough to leave my palm stinging. Zenith's head snapped to the side. She didn't move for a long moment, then slowly turned back to look at me.

"...You... you...?!"

"What, you mad?"

"How dare you... how dare you...!"

She had one hand pressed to the cheek I'd hit, and even her lips were trembling. Looked like nobody had ever laid a hand on her in her life.

Well. She could learn today!

"You know what? I'm hitting the other side too."

"...What?"

SMAAACK—!

Zenith's head snapped the other way, and her whole body staggered a step with it. Pale hair slid down across her face.

Ah. That felt incredible.

I shook out my stinging palm.

"The first one was for my father-in-law. That last one was for Iris."

"...You."

"What. Getting smacked around finally giving you a clue what you did wrong?"

WHOOOOOM—!

Instead of an answer, a blast of hot wind shoved into my face. Crimson mana erupted in every direction, and the air around us shimmered the way it does over midsummer asphalt. A few stones at our feet lifted clean off the ground and began to drift.

Alright. The title of Grand Magus wasn't just for show.

"...You really have no fear, do you."

"Fear?"

"I was going to give a promising young mage a talking-to and send him on his way. I'm not so sure I can promise that anymore."

"What? Send me on my way?"

A little laugh slipped out of me.

"Who's sending who?"

"...?"

AI.

KUUUUUUUNG—!

Mana from every direction came screaming in toward me. I'd used something like this when I built the Black Flame Dragon, but pulling it straight into my own body as the center ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was a completely different feeling. Crimson-dark energy whipped through the air until it filled my vision.

I heard someone in front of me suck in a breath.

"Th-this is..."

Zenith's eyes, so full of themselves a second ago, had gone enormous.

"Oh... good heavens."

That was the Patriarch, low and stunned, from behind her.

"Leon... what in the world..."

And that was Iris.

Could they all stop looking at me like that? I hadn't known I could do this either.

Still. The opening salvo, at least, had landed clean. I took another step closer, the crimson-dark mana still wrapped around me.

"Hey."

"...!"

I crooked a finger at her.

"I beat people just fine. Man or woman."

Then I bent down and picked up a scrap of wood lying on the ground. Ah. That cold, heavy weight in the hand. This was going to make an excellent manners-injection device.

Time for you to get your ass beat today.