Reunion (7)
"…"
Kallen couldn't bring himself to speak.
The old memories he had buried in one corner of his heart had finally surfaced, once again throwing his composure into disarray.
They were nothing more than the words of a wretched loser who had never earned the right in the end.
And yet the girl before him acted as if nothing had happened at all, genuinely rejoicing in their reunion.
"You… you don't resent me, then?"
Kallen stammered the words out, unable to even meet her eyes.
"I never did keep my promise to take you on as my servant. And then I threw you a single gem and ran off like a coward, all alone…"
"I don't resent you."
Something warm settled over Kallen's hands as he fumbled on, head bowed in a flustered ramble.
"How could I possibly resent the person who saved me when I was nothing—not only that, but gave me a future to dream of?"
Silvie's slender fingers were gently caressing his tightly clenched fist, as if to soothe it.
"And besides… it wasn't just a gem."
She continued in a soft, murmuring voice.
"It's proof of the warmth you showed me."
"…"
Kallen found himself even more at a loss for words.
In silence, he simply turned the ruby over in his hand for a long while. Then, with a hint of bitterness, the corner of his mouth twisted.
"I told you to just sell it and put it toward living expenses. Why on earth would you keep something like this all this time…"
"Ab-ab-absolutely not!"
Silvie startled and snatched the gem off his palm in a flash. In an instant she had tucked it back into her clothes, shaking her head with stubborn insistence.
"I'm going to keep it until the day I die. I will never sell it. Never…!"
Silvie showed a strange, almost obsessive attachment to the gem.
For Kallen, this was territory he simply couldn't begin to understand.
"…Honestly speaking, I was a little hurt."
She went on, putting on a needlessly petulant face as if pouting.
"Do you know how worried I was when you disappeared like that? I thought something terrible had happened… I kept calling for you and you never answered… I searched everywhere without sleeping, and in the end the guards caught me and threw me out…"
On the surface it sounded like a light scolding, but her voice was steeped through with all the anxiety and desperate worry of the time.
At the sight of roles so thoroughly reversed—student lecturing professor—Kallen couldn't help but wear a wry smile.
"I'm sorry. Even if I had ten mouths, I wouldn't know what to say."
"…Well, as long as you know."
Silvie, who had been sticking out her lips in a show of sulking, broke into a bright smile as if nothing had happened.
"I'm forgiving you because you came back like this. You'd better treat me well from now on, alright?"
"Yes, yes."
Kallen waved his hand lightly, as if there was no use arguing.
"Honestly… even now, I'm so happy. Me, a student of yours… it really feels like I'm just dreaming…"
As she murmured to herself, brimming with shyness, a look of regret suddenly surfaced clearly on her face.
"…But I'm sorry. Now that my body has become like this… I can't really feel you properly anymore…"
"…"
Beneath Silvie's disheveled bangs, unfocused eyes and a gruesome burn scar were plainly visible.
Kallen reached back into his old memories.
It was the first time he'd seen her face directly, but back then Silvie had possessed sight so clear she would marvel at the constellations of the night sky. He also remembered how she'd once boastfully mentioned, in a passing, embarrassed voice, how remarkably soft and clean her skin was for an orphan.
More likely than not, she had endured hardships every bit as grueling as his own.
"…"
Kallen's face twisted with renewed anguish.
It felt as though the suffering Silvie had endured was entirely his own fault—for abandoning her and running away alone.
"…What does any of that matter?"
Struggling to dispel the gloom, Kallen spoke as if it were nothing, as if to comfort the downcast girl.
"You've grown up so beautifully."
"…!"
Heat surged at once into Silvie's cheeks. She opened and closed her lips wordlessly, then ducked her head sharply away from his gaze.
"Be-beautiful… uuuh."
"Anyway, let's leave the old stories for later."
Kallen chuckled at the sight of her and changed the subject.
"Your professor is waiting for me upstairs right now. So—what kind of magic did you use to attack Pas? I need to know if I'm going to help you."
"Chiie…"
Silvie pouted in disappointment for a moment, but soon composed herself and steadied her voice.
"…I'll tell you. You're the one person who has the right to know everything about me, Professor."
She looked at him as if making some grand declaration.
"You won't be startled, right?"
"Hm?"
Silvie rose to her feet, closed her eyes, and began whispering something under her breath, as though reciting an incantation. It looked almost as if she were holding some kind of conversation with something invisible, and Kallen found himself tilting his head in curiosity.
The empty air rippled for an instant like the surface of water, and then something beyond it began to take shape, casting a shadow into the room.
And Kallen's eyes flew wide open.
"Wh… what?"
Floating in the air there were grotesque creatures of a bizarre, alien appearance. Multiple hideous eyeballs bulging out of their sockets, jagged teeth sprouting between their maws, and razor-sharp fins lining their flanks.
They looked as though deep-sea fish had been forcibly twisted out of shape.
And Kallen recognized exactly what they were.
"Mana beasts?!"
"Kyaah…!"
Alarmed, Kallen grabbed Silvie's arm and yanked her toward himself.
"Get behind me!"
Drawing his sword, he was about to cut the creatures down in a single stroke—
"How the hell did those things even get in here—!"
"Wa-wait, it's fine!"
"?"
Far from retreating, Silvie pressed herself against him to hold him back, and Kallen was left utterly bewildered.
She trotted slowly toward the monstrous deep-sea creatures that had appeared, then cautiously opened her mouth as she patted their bulbous foreheads, soothing them.
"These children… are my friends."
"…What?"
Astonishment dawned across Kallen's face at her words.
"That's absolutely impossible—huh?"
And then his jaw dropped.
Mana beasts was the blanket term for spiritual lifeforms of unknown origin that dwelled in the Illusion Realm. As their nightmarish appearance suggested, they were by nature ferociously violent creatures.
They were said to be beings that not even demons or Evil Gods could tame.
A handful of black mages had used coercive magic rituals to command one or two of them at a time for purposes of destruction and slaughter, but for the most part, those handlers met a miserable end—devoured alive by the enraged mana beasts.
So in a way, it was only natural that Kallen was stunned. Those ferocious monsters were now docilely submitting to Silvie's touch as if they were nothing more than dogs or cats.
"What in the world…"
"Really, right? They're my friends."
At Kallen's softened demeanor, Silvie finally let out a huge sigh of relief.
And so Kallen heard the whole story from her.
The reason Silvie, having lost all sensation in her body, could live at Elysion without any more difficulty than any other student was that she could share the senses of the mana beasts that followed her.
"Well, it's only enough to vaguely make out shapes, mind you…"
The tools used in Elysion's lectures always carried a slight charge of mana. Silvie could trace the shape of that mana and thereby piece together the content of the lectures.
"Then the attack on Pas—don't tell me that was…"
"…Yes."
At Kallen's muttered guess, Silvie nodded, her face darkening a little.
The gem Pas had snatched from her was a treasure of immense value to her. Her emotions had boiled over in an instant, and the mana beasts, sensing her fury, had judged Pas an enemy and unleashed a merciless assault.
"…I'm sorry. When I thought he'd stolen my most precious thing… I just got so incredibly angry all of a sudden…"
Silvie cringed as she spoke, glancing nervously at Kallen's expression.
"It won't happen again, I promise. I scolded them really hard. I told them that if they ever acted up on their own again, I'd only play with the other children and never summon them."
Her unfocused gaze shot a withering, resentful glare at the monsters.
The hideous fish, appearances notwithstanding, were far too busy fidgeting anxiously under her scrutiny to do anything else.
"…Unbelievable."
Kallen stared blankly at the sight of Silvie scolding mana beasts, then asked carefully.
"So recognizing me—that was also thanks to these… your friends?"
It had been over ten years since they'd brushed past each other, strangers who hadn't even known each other's names or faces. No matter how great the favor he'd done her, he had already found it strange enough that she'd recognized him on sight.
But Silvie shook her head slightly.
"It's a little different from that. I just… sensed something, I suppose you'd say."
"You sensed… something?"
"Yes. Something cool and pleasant that's unique to you, Professor—like a scent. Or maybe not a scent so much as a presence… oh."
Silvie, who had been unconsciously pretending to sniff the air, belatedly flushed red and quickly averted her eyes from Kallen.
"A scent…? A presence…?"
Kallen, still looking at her in confusion, suddenly remembered something and murmured.
"Hold on. You said the other children? Does that mean you can summon other mana beasts besides the ones here?"
"…Yes."
And at the sight of Silvie nodding with perfect composure, Kallen's voice died in his throat entirely.
He opened his mouth again, stammering.
"Th-then, um, how many, at most…"
"Hmm… I'm not exactly sure myself…"
Silvie made a show of thinking for a moment, then stated flatly.
"I think I've summoned about a hundred all at once before."
"What…? A… hundred…?"
"Yes. I could summon more, but… then I can't remember all their names…"
"…"
Kallen found himself even more utterly speechless.
"Still… a wrong is a wrong."
Apparently misreading his reaction in entirely the wrong way, Silvie hung her head, her voice wilting.
"I'll take responsibility. Whether it's disciplinary action or expulsion…"
"Responsibility, huh…"
Kallen slowly turned her words over in his mind, gazing up at the ceiling for a moment in thought.
His head, having endured far too much in far too short a time, was on the verge of overload. There were still plenty of things that didn't quite add up, but first things first—he needed to deal with the matter in front of him.
But responsibility was not a word that should ever come out of Silvie's mouth. That weight was, if anything, his own to bear.
"…Alright."
Having finally reached his conclusion, Kallen nodded.
"I will now announce the ruling."
In Ziya's office, where they had returned once more, two professors and two students now gathered in one place.
Silvie hung her head low as though she were a criminal convicted of some grave offense, fidgeting with her fingers.
Pas, wrapped head to toe in bandages, feared her even as a winner's smile already played at the corners of his mouth.
Kallen stepped forward, looking back and forth between the two of them, and at last spoke.
"First, Silvie."
"…Yes."
At the frost-edged sound of his voice, her shoulders hunched in even more pitifully.
Kallen studied her silently for a moment, then let out a long sigh and continued.
"You will serve eight hours of volunteer work at the library."
"…Yes, ye—what?"
Silvie couldn't help but blink in a daze. Compared to what she'd done, the punishment was barely even a slap on the wrist, and it left her thoroughly dumbfounded.
"No appeals will be heard. This is the price of injuring your classmate without cause, so no complaining—serve your discipline faithfully."
Kallen delivered the one-sided verdict in his usual indifferent tone.
Pas, who had been gaping openmouthed, belatedly came to his senses and sharply objected.
"P-Professor! This is seriously ridiculous—!"
"Who exactly is being so ill-mannered as to interrupt a professor mid-sentence? Hmm?"
"Eep."
But under Kallen's ferocious, predatory glare, Pas could only swallow a hiccup.
"Good grief… that idiot is the reason I… tsk."
Clicking his tongue at him in displeasure, Kallen spoke again.
"Pas. Three weeks' suspension."