Is This Magic?
When I was a child, I once watched a street magic performance. Seeing the cards drift and hover in the air, I looked up at the magician with sparkling eyes and asked, “Is this magic, by any chance?”
The magician leaned down, a gentle smile on his face. “Is that important?”
“It is.”
“Magic, huh. Hmm.” He stroked his chin for a moment, then continued in a slow, thoughtful voice. “That’s right. It is magic. And I am a magician.”
“Wow!”
The pure brightness of my voice back then, and the way the magician’s face softened into a warm, contented smile, still lingers vividly in my memory.
So does the way he panicked and confessed the trick the moment I started bombarding him with follow-up questions.
I loved magic. In a world where the word “like” gets tossed around so lightly, it might sound like nothing special, but I meant it with every fiber of my being. I wanted to use magic. The method didn’t matter. As long as it was magic, as long as it was a power wrapped in mystery, I would have been satisfied with anything. If I could touch it even once, I wouldn’t mind dying. That was the depth of my sincerity.
So dying and being reincarnated wasn’t a big deal to me. My gender switching to female wasn’t a big deal either. The world changing from an era of AR and VR to a medieval fantasy setting wasn’t a big deal. None of it was.
When I crossed that narrow alley and tumbled into this wide-open new world, the man who was presumably my father was in the middle of saying what sounded like a name.
“―――――? Rachel, ――――.”
Even then, I had only one thought.
So. Is there magic here?
* Fortunately, it turns out there is. Thank you.