Root Connector (Hope)

My sister had announced that she was done early today and was heading outside to play, and with that, off she went.

I slipped into the room we shared. For the record, the room across from ours stood empty — it had originally been meant for the two of us to use separately. And if you asked why we were sharing one instead... ah... um...

That was me, back in my itty-bitty days. Ahem. Well — let's just say various circumstances led to my sharing a room with my sister. ...I'd appreciate it if you simply nodded and accepted that. They do say curiosity killed the cat, after all. If you'd rather not die, don't ask. 'Of course... now that I'm all grown up, I could probably manage on my own.'

That said, these days I really could have a room to myself whenever I wanted, if I truly wished it. Nothing frightened this body anymore — Serin the Invincible feared nothing...! I now knew the dark held no terror. I now knew nothing lurked under the bed. And I now knew that Santa had been Mom all along...!

Uu... mm... okay, that last one is a little sad.

Anyway. 'Not that I want to live separately or anything.' Leaving my sister's side held no appeal whatsoever. She was still so little — right at the age when a young child's emotional development matters most. And so I had reached the eminently rational conclusion that sisters rooming together and bonding like this was simply the better arrangement. Sisters who get along grow up bright and well-rounded, not prickly and closed-off. For the sake of the trust between us, and so she could grow up right, sharing this room was clearly the correct call.

'Yeah... anyway, that's not what I came in here to think about.' No — the reason I'd come here in the first place was to rough out some kind of summary of today's events. I dropped into the seat at our desk right away: the one my sister and I shared, roomy enough for two chairs. Regrettably, no computer to be found. At eight and six respectively, my sister and I didn't qualify — forget a computer; even the smartphone, ubiquitous as air, was locked to a kids' profile with nothing left but the calling function.

'That damned application — I wouldn't even waste one star on it...!'

I had pulled every stunt I could think of to bypass the password, and in the end, it refused to budge. This, at a moment when information was exactly what I needed. Stonewalled by a lump of code, with nothing I could do about it. No wonder the thing's store rating converged, mathematically, on the one-star range. How incompetent do you have to be for the score to sit at one star!! They truly, genuinely failed at making this...!! And to top it off, it had blocked my path at the precise moment I needed it most — which, under the law of lèse-majesté, made it guilty of insolence most grave and grievous. When I grew up and made it big, the company that produced such trash would simply have to be erased. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠...So I vowed, firmly, in my heart of hearts.

'Hmm... intel-gathering looks like a lost cause, then. Shall I organize the current situation first?'

Peeling my hands off the adorably decorated bunny toy on the desk — which, I realized, I had been fiddling with for who knows how long — I pulled out a notebook titled Serin's Very Own. Diary entries up front; doodles scattered across the back. A notebook of tragedy, you might call it: once a diary, now a doodle pad. In my humble opinion, this was always a notebook's true purpose.

Anyway.

Fwip.

Open the front cover, and the diary is right there. I'd written maybe five pages' worth?

Five pages, filled with content of roughly this literary caliber. It wasn't even the classic give-up-after-three-days kind of failure; mine was a diary written in twenty-day bursts, then quietly abandoned. But flip a little further and you reached the drawing section.

Most of what filled it were pictures of my favorite characters from PuriPuriPuripa: Bottom of Lilia and Top of Iris. They were honestly well drawn. The features, the details — all captured. Astoundingly high quality for a six-year-old's scribbles.

Looking at them like this took me by surprise.

'Maybe I'm actually talented?'

I'd never noticed while drawing them, but reviewing the evidence now, the knack was undeniable. Was it because my eye had changed? Whatever the reason, I had just realized exactly how gifted I was.

"Fufufu."

My shoulders squared all on their own. Perhaps I was born with golden hands.

'As expected of me, really.'

Heheh. Drawing this well already, at my age. Truly, I was mature beyond my years — and talented to boot.

'Then does that mean I'm finally self-sufficient?'

Having a talent for art stirred a small flutter of anticipation in me. Somewhere in my past was the memory of having wanted, badly, to draw well — and never managing it. And now that the talent existed, every scene I'd yearned to see and never could — this one, that one — I could simply draw them myself. All that fanart I'd ached to see and never got to... by the bushelful...!

Yes! Just imagining it made me happy!

'Wait — which fanart was it I wanted to see?'

On a whim — perhaps I'd draw it this very moment — I reached for the memory. ...Nothing came. It bothered me, and my brow creased. That awful sensation of something that should absolutely be there, refusing to show itself. Like a picture scratched into the beach sand, swept spotless by the waves — not a trace of it remained. A curiously clammy feeling. The feeling of sitting before a search bar, memory gone, typing, 'What was I even searching for again?'

...Most of the memories that had surfaced out of nowhere lately worked like that. They popped up freely when I wasn't paying attention, then evaporated the instant I tried to look at them directly. Something like that.

'...Moving on, for now.' It wasn't important. For the record, this was something close to the kind of thing close to a memory I didn't particularly need to recall. I knew roughly what it concerned without knowing exactly what the memory was — that sort of thing. ...Besides, my old life's memories were never what you'd call wholesome to begin with. Whatever it was, it had definitely been a weird one.

Fwip, fwip.

I turned the pages. Before long, the blank stretch arrived. Pen up. Click. I set the tip against the paper. A pristine, unmarked whiteness spread out before my eyes.

'So. What shall I organize first?'

I fiddled with the little magical girl sculpted into the pen cap. Fiddled... and fiddled... like so... hm-mm... just like so-o-o...

Click, click. My head tilted, tilted.

Click, click.

Whirrr-whir-whirrrr.

Fwoosh!!

"Aah...!"

Tat-tat! Rollll-roll-roll!

I went and retrieved the runaway pen. ...A pen, launching itself across the room of its own accord. Truly a masterpiece of anti-ergonomic design. It was absolutely NOT the case that I had been spinning it and lost my grip.

'Hmmmm... anyway.'

Disaster had struck. ...In truth, I had no idea what to do. Nothing to organize would come to mind. I was fairly sure I was supposed to be organizing something. Ugh. Dunno dunno dunno. Serin just doesn't know what to do, okay? With nothing surfacing, I resorted to wiggling — arms wrapped around the chair, rocking my body back and forth.

Creak. Creeeak.

The chair tipped back, swung home, tipped back again — over and over. ...Kind of fun, actually.

Ooh. Hee. Eeehee!

"Wh-whoa. Whoa-oh-oh!!"

And then, at long last, I held the perfect equilibrium of force — I could keep it perched on nothing but the chair's two back legs...!

"Ah... Sis! Mom...!"

I whipped my head around — nothing to be seen but empty room. Not a soul.

...Why? Why? This feat demands a flawless division of balance! Why. Why. Whywhywhywhy?!?!?

Ah, aaah. Aaaaah. AAAAH!!!!

AAAAAAHH!!!

Despair welled up. Like a phantom voice drifting in from who knows where. H-how could there be no one? Do you have any idea how monumental this was...! Is being alone truly such a sad thing? So this is what solitude is. ...I felt sad.

'I have to stay by Sis's side forever...!'

However I turned it over, I could never leave her alone. As long as I stayed beside her, she'd never have to feel a loneliness like this either.

Screeech. Thud.

My enthusiasm thoroughly spent, I set the chair back down and returned my gaze to the notebook, white to its final page. All that met my eyes was infinite blank. That — that maddening whiteness was driving me out of my mind. Like it was siphoning off every thought the moment it formed. The instant you stand before it, you want to do anything, anything else. Truly, a notebook of sorcery.

'...Come to think of it, though. I feel like there was something I forgot.' As I whiled the time away, something had begun hovering at the edge of recall. ...What was it? My head tilted, all on its own. That prickly, ticklish feeling right before a sneeze. What was it? What was it? Hmm. Hm-hm. No good. Still — it had been at least somewhat important.

I stared holes into the white page, reaching for the almost-graspable thing. Something like a massive shock, I thought. Something agonizing, something exhausting. Something that had cut my breath off short—

...!

"Oh. Arinie."

Oh.

Status window...!

Analyze!

And then — there was light.

"S-Se...Serina... what's wong?"

"Nothing. Arinie."

Hmph!

I looked away from Arinie, who was fidgeting and darting nervous glances my way. It wasn't really her fault, of course. ...And yet, for no good reason, I found myself resenting her. My emotional control was simply not cooperating. The inevitable consequence of a physically juvenile body, I told myself. Well — my brain was juvenile too. Acting the part to a certain degree was beyond my control. ...Granted, having admitted as much to myself, I really ought to have put the resentment toward Arinie to bed. But that trunk of resentment kept sending out branch upon branch, showing no sign of stopping. ...The suspicion simply would not dissolve, no matter what. When you write code, after all, it's always best to suspect everything — that's how you find the bug. Occupational hazard, this. '...Hm? Was I a programmer?' The instant I thought it, the memory quietly, smoothly slid out of reach. Eh, whatever. That wasn't the important part.

Anyway — the reason I was eyeing Arinie with a gaze steeped in doubt and brimming with suspicion began yesterday, right after I checked my status window. The instant I saw it, ten thousand thoughts bloomed at once. I hunted for a cause and kept hunting, until the seeds of suspicion had spread all the way to Arinie herself. And because the theory happened to be so airtight inside my own head, my cheeks puffed up with indignation every time I so much as glanced at her. ...But without this, I couldn't have endured that cold, cruel reality. Because—

'Status window.'

Analyze.

The status window that rose before my eyes, wreathed in light, read—

—that. That's what it said. ...All it showed was my name. The ability slot: empty. No class, either. Why? ...That I had simply gone, one day, from a yuri-loving young man— no. From a yuri-loving adult to a yuri-loving child, and that this was the full extent of my power? Impossible. Unacceptable. Hello? Me — a man until recently, now turned girl. Me — the Serin Mom declared the cutest in the whole world. Surely... surely I was meant to be this world's protagonist. And this — this is the end of it...?

The sheer injustice of it all came seeping up, slow and sour. 'This is a bug...!' That was the conclusion I reached. And while I wracked my brain for what could have caused the bug, one hypothesis snagged me. Namely: that yesterday, right at the moment I tried to call up my status window— ...the loading had been cut off midway, and that was what broke everything. In other words, my ability had been mid-assembly when it suffered a fatal build failure! Which meant that the first time I tried to summon the window— ...it was Arinie's flying body-slam that interrupted it, and THAT was what did this!

Once that wildly plausible hypothesis had planted itself in my head, the stain of suspicion on Arinie became the kind no amount of OxiClean scrubbing would ever lift. Suspicion hardened into certainty — and certainty curdled, shall we say, into a quiet, simmering resentment toward her. Mmm... I know it's a little ugly of me...

"Uuu... Serina... I dunno why, but I'm sowwy...."

Whether because of my attitude or not, Arinie's lip had started to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wobble.

Ah—!

"No, no, Arinie! I'm otay! It's a misundewstanding!"

Gulp. What do I do? WhatdoIdo whatdoIdo? She's about to cry! Aaah!

Squeeze!

Out of ideas, I scoot-scooted in close beside Arinie and, still sitting, took her hand in mine.

"Hic... a... a misundewstanding?"

Her brimming brown eyes turned up to me. That guileless gaze stabbed me through the heart, pin after pin after pin. Ugh... what have I done to this poor child...

I rushed to say the words she wanted to hear.

"Y-yeah! I wike Arinie!"

"Weally? You wike me?"

"Arinie's my bestest fwiend!"

"Hehe. Otay!"

Thankfully, her face brightened at once. ...The truth was, I knew full well her body-slam hadn't been the real cause. People, by nature, will invent a target to resent whenever a truth is too hard to swallow. But I genuinely did nearly die from that body-slam yesterday, so I'd appreciate the record showing it was mutual fault.

'...So. Do I truly have no ability at all?'

Yesterday, I'd opened my mouth to ask Mom what hers was like — and shut it again. Terrified that the question would fix it in stone: no ability whatsoever. Please understand the delicate heart of a small child. Still, one last hope remained.

The blank written into the ability slot. It could simply be the system's way of saying none — but surely it wouldn't go to the trouble of special brackets just for that? Maybe I was just running my hope-circuits at full tilt, but I had reasons of my own. You know the type. The kind that kills a concept dead with a single stab. The kind that connects to the Root. The power from that novel where the hero goes beyond a split personality to a third one — something in that vein. As a rule, I never remembered non-yuri novels well, but I'd read that one enough times to love it. So I let myself hope my ability might be something like that. Honestly, by the strictest accounting, past-me and present-me ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠are already two different people, so dual personality arguably applies...! And if those two personalities crossed and cancelled each other out into an emptiness capable of anything, then something ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠like the Boundary of the Void might just be dwelling inside me, no?

'...It's hope, obviously. Just hope. Almost certainly not the case.'

Naturally, no lines of death shimmered before my eyes, and my personality wasn't flickering between two people, either. But the conclusion stood: unable to determine what my ability even was, I was, for the time being, powerless. I had tried this and tried that; nothing came of any of it. There was nothing I could do. Yours truly was a useless little woodland mushroom....

"Ah! Serina! It's stawting!"

"Ooooh!"

With nothing else to my name, there was nothing for it but to sit beside Arinie and watch PuriPuriPuripa.

Hehe. Still pwetty, though.

Magical girls are the best.