Reunion
The academy's grand auditorium lay under a pall of ashen dread.
Amid tens of thousands of students murmuring in anxiety and despair, a single streak of pink light appeared without warning and seized every gaze at once.
Like a fragile yet unyielding flower blooming alone in the heart of a storm.
— Click.
Linea Judith walked slowly up onto the podium. The sound of her heels striking the marble floor rang through the hushed auditorium.
When she drew back her hood, hair and eyes the color of cherry blossoms were unveiled beneath the cascading magical lights. Short gasps of wonder broke out here and there at a beauty so unreal it was hard to believe she was human.
"Huu."
Linea let out a short breath.
Her faintly trembling breath.
It was not the weight of countless stares that unsettled her.
For the genius of the Judith family, the jewel of the Blue Magic Tower, this degree of attention was nothing new.
There was only one reason Linea trembled.
…He's here.
The person she had to find. No—the person she absolutely must find.
The certainty that he was somewhere in this academy, perhaps even inside this very hall, was what had driven her.
It was why she had ended years of seclusion, shaken off the Magic Tower's protests, and come racing straight into this chaos.
Students' whispers drifted past her ears.
"Whoa, her looks are insane."
"I heard she's a genius among geniuses even at the Magic Tower."
"She's that young?"
"Idiot. She graduated early as top of our academy's magic department and got scouted straight to the Tower. Of course she's young. She skipped two whole years."
"Early graduation from the academy is even possible? From the magic department?"
"Means she was already a finished genius the day she enrolled. On a completely different level from ordinary people like us."
Genius. Genius. Genius.
A word she had heard until she was sick of it.
Linea bit her lip without meaning to.
It was the shackle that had bound her all her life.
From childhood, Linea had been different.
A direct bloodline of the Judith family—one of the continent's twelve chosen houses, and unmatched in the field of magic. And even among them, Linea was special.
The family's innate gift: Flow.
The flow of air becomes wind. The flow of water becomes waves.
Judith mages specialized in reading and commanding the flow of all things in the world.
Thus the family produced masters of wind magic and masters of water magic alike.
Magic of fluids and gases—that was the orthodox path of House Judith.
But what Linea perceived transcended that dimension entirely.
The flow of the world itself.
Time.
Her mana held time. Her talent understood time.
It was a wondrous blessing, and at the same time a terrible curse.
While everyone else handled air or water, she alone handled time—a solitary road she had no choice but to walk alone.
— "Linea! What do you think you can accomplish with just that!"
— "Can't you use something with more impact? Like turning back time?"
— "At this rate we can't even present you anywhere."
No one in the family understood her.
Instead they pressed and hounded her as she developed new magic, demanding visible, impressive results.
— "…I'm sorry. I'll try harder."
Linea worked.
Magic. Magic. Magic.
Even when her nose bled and her vision went white, she never released her staff.
That was the problem.
The human mind cannot bear the infinite flow of time. The countless possibilities of past and future, the crushing weight of causality, slowly ate away at a young girl's soul.
By the time she entered the academy, Linea was already half-broken.
Neither her mind nor her magic was whole.
Fragments of time drifted freely through her head; the boundary between reality and illusion had grown thin.
Everyone marveled at her talent. No one understood her pain.
No—they did not try to understand.
Because they could not understand time.
Linea was utterly alone.
— "Huu. Found you. Linea Judith."
Until she met him.
Was that meeting chance, or inevitability within twisted time? He became her patron and, at the same time, her only confidant.
— "I've come to sponsor your magic research. I look forward to working with you."
Learning and researching magic demanded enormous capital. Meeting him had been nothing more than an obligatory encounter under a patronage contract.
Most people invested money, checked the results, and left.
He was different.
Unlike the others, he did not fixate solely on her talent or recoil from her instability. He simply listened—quietly, steadily—to whatever she had to say.
— "Good research needs a sound mind too, so you can dump anything on me. I'm your patron, after all. I'll help with whatever you need."
When she spoke of the backlash of time magic no one else understood, of the chaotic shards of time swirling through her skull, he was the first to nod.
He considered her words with real seriousness and offered clumsy but sincere advice.
— "It must have been hard. Handling time… maybe it isn't a blessing so much as a punishment."
— "Not producing results right away isn't your fault. You're just too special."
— "I can guarantee it. You'll leave your name in history—so long as you don't go crazy. Haha."
His words seeped into Linea's frozen heart like warm light.
He was the only person who saw her not as a "genius mage," but simply as Linea.
For the first time she opened her heart to someone and began to lean on him. Only when she was with him could she slip free of time's shackles and become an ordinary girl.
But happiness did not last.
— "Patron! Won't you come visit our territory?"
— "There's a gathering of knights soon—I'd love for you to come."
— "Want to go see the Imperial Palace?"
There were always other people around him. People who needed him. People who relied on him. For reasons she could not name, the sight of them filled Linea with unbearable anxiety.
— "He's my patron… why is he sponsoring other people too?"
— "You said I'd become a genius. Then only sponsor me. I can give far better results than those kids."
— "Focus only on me. Look only at me!"
Jealousy swelled by degrees.
For all her genius talent she was emotionally immature, and she poured out her insecurity in clumsy ways. She demanded more from him. She tried to monopolize his attention.
She insisted on ever more expensive sponsorship so he could not support anyone else.
She summoned her patron over the smallest things.
Even knowing he was overwhelmed, she could not stop. The fear of losing him was simply too great.
— "It's difficult right now. But I'll gather the money soon and sponsor you…"
Hearing his weary voice, she felt a brief stab of regret.
And the next day, when he arrived exhausted and still brought what she had asked for, she was happy.
Because it meant he was doing that much for her.
…Dangerous happiness never lasts long.
One day—
"…Patron? Where are you?"
He vanished without warning.
As if he had never existed at all. His traces faded. Even the memories of him blurred like mist. His face, his voice, the warmth he had given her…
Everything seemed to have slipped beyond the far side of time.
Linea waited.
She simply waited, clinging to the vague belief that he would return someday. Even after she graduated from the academy and entered the Magic Tower, her waiting did not end.
Time passed. He did not come back. Hope thinned by degrees, and she sank once more into deep solitude.
Linea despaired.
She shut herself inside a Magic Tower laboratory and threw herself madly into the study of time magic.
If I turn back time, I'll be able to find him again.
She reached into forbidden territory.
Ancient black magic.
Magic that could cross past and future and glimpse the possibilities of other dimensions.
Ancient magic was best left untouched—but Linea was in no position to be careful.
She used it. The price was merciless.
Her mind frayed further. Her mana bucked and surged without control. Still she could not stop. If only she could find him again.
And at last, one year ago—
She found it.
A certain memory.
What… is this memory?
What poured into her mind was a fragment that belonged to her and yet was something she had never lived.
A world of despair buried in flame, blood, and ash.
There, a man was dying. A fatal wound marked his chest, and in his arms… was herself, wailing.
— "You idiot… why did you take the hit instead? Why you instead of me…!"
The "herself" of that unfamiliar world clung to the dying man and sobbed with raw desperation, pouring every scrap of mana she had into saving him.
A past I don't know.
In other words—a different timeline from this one.
In that timeline, she had been saved by someone's help.
And in the same breath she understood.
The man who had been dying to save the other her was none other than the patron she had searched for so desperately.
…Just who are you.
The man who had given her everything and more—and who, in some other time, had even died for her.
She had to find him.
Linea stood before the podium.
Somewhere in this place was the patron she sought.
Hiding her trembling hands as best she could, she unfolded the speech she had prepared. This was no time to be swept away by private feeling.
As a representative of the Magic Tower, she had a duty to deliver information about the disaster and steady the people.
"I am Linea Judith of the Blue Magic Tower."
Her clear voice, amplified by magic, rang through the entire auditorium. The murmuring died away. Every gaze fixed on her once more.
Even as she continued the prepared address, Linea scanned the seats with desperate intensity.
She swept her eyes across the hall.
Black hair. Black eyes. And… a gaze that looked somehow weary, yet held a deep and quiet sorrow.
Using that image as her guide, she hunted for him among the crowd.
It was not easy. Inside the grand auditorium the mana and emotions of countless people churned together in chaos. Worse, the aftereffects of forcibly stopping time in Seorigol a few days earlier still lingered. Her mana was drained; her nerves were raw.
If I meet him… what am I supposed to say?
Fear closed in. From the incomplete memories she carried, she could not shake the dread that she might have hurt him terribly.
"Regarding the confusion and fear you have all endured… I express my deepest regret. The Magic Tower is fully aware of the gravity of this incident, and in close cooperation with the Empire and the Academy…"
Her selfishness and obsession might only have made things harder for him. What if he resented her? What if he tried to avoid her?
No… he isn't that kind of person.
Linea shook her head. The man in her memories had always been kind, fiercely responsible, and willing to sacrifice himself for others without hesitation.
"Above all, you must be wary of beings who wield abilities that defy common sense. Do not approach them. They can ignore physical and magical law, so isolate them as thoroughly as possible…"
But no matter how hard she searched, the man was nowhere to be seen.
A fleeting despair brushed past her.
Then—
Among the sea of faces, one silhouette of startling familiarity entered her vision. A corner seat at the rear of the auditorium. A male student standing a little apart from the others.
He wore an ordinary academy uniform. Fatigue and wariness sat on his face. Nothing remarkable about his appearance. And yet…
…Those eyes.
Black eyes that seemed somehow empty, and at the same time held deep sorrow and unbreakable will. The very eyes Linea remembered—no. The eyes her soul remembered.
In that instant her heart dropped with a heavy thud. Breath-stopping shock crashed over her, and uncontrollable emotion surged in like a wave. Relief. Joy. And… a longing so sharp it ached, tangled with guilt.
Her gaze locked onto him. Forgetting she was still mid-speech, she stared blankly at the one person she had spent years searching for.
"…Found you."
The words slipped from her lips before she knew it—a whisper so soft no one else could have heard.
But it was enough.
At last, she had found him.