Refreshing My Mood
If you sat inside the inn with a cup of tea, a bird would come tapping at the window.
A crow. A big one.
Rubshi could not see, so she knew it only by sound. Those familiar wingbeats, that familiar knock — an acquaintance, then.
She gave her cane two light taps with a finger, and the window opened of its own accord.
"Mm. The children are simply precious."
"Things are progressing in a rather positive direction, I'll have you know. They've already warmed up to a shy soul like me. If I keep building on this rapport—"
"Haa... How dull."
She let out a long sigh, feeling as though she were addressing something inanimate. It was a far cry from those lively children, and boredom settled over her in a heavy wave.
"Shall we have a proper conversation? It's been so long since we last saw each other. I'll be retiring soon, you know. Is it really all right to keep sending nothing but crows?"
Rubshi stroked her cane in a slow, disappointed caress.
They had been on rather good terms. When had it come to this?
Until then, she had spoken with this bird's master face to face, gone on missions together, kept an amicable relationship. They had known each other since long ago, after all.
Perhaps it had been a few years now since communication between the One the cult served and His followers had grown difficult. It seemed to have started around then — the point when they stopped meeting face to face.
"How unkind..."
"I'm well aware. But why the rush? He knows how deeply I care for the cult. There's no need to worry."
"Is the situation that dire?"
"I wonder about that..."
The crow was gone before Rubshi could even finish answering, winging away into the far sky as if it had no interest in hearing another word.
Rubshi had an important mission. One that mattered more than bringing Sugar or Ryly back — her true final mission.
When the lives of the cult's faithful drew to an end, they threw themselves into His embrace. They offered up their entire bodies — quite literally — as a gift of the heart to the One who longed to be closer to humankind.
No one was forced if they wished to be buried in the earth instead. But remaining in the cult into old age was taken as a failure to measure the depth of one's faith, so most chose the former.
An Apostle was no different. In their case, however, it was called "retirement," and they were given a grand farewell that doubled as a celebration.
Rubshi was still young for retirement. She had years of activity left in her, yet she had chosen an early departure of her own accord.
For several years now, communication with Him had all but broken down, and He had begun to behave strangely. Having spent so long in the cult, and being so closely bound to Him, she meant to offer herself up and soothe whatever troubled Him from within.
And then she had found Sugar.
She had been endlessly worried about what would become of the cult once she left — and then she had discovered a talent who delighted her to no end.
If she raised this child... if she could use that peculiar magic as a foundation to breathe new life into a stagnant cult...
She would raise the girl with her own hands. That made Sugar her successor. If she poured every last drop of her essence into the child's growth and brought her to completion, she could depart for His side without a single worry about what came after.
She had no way of knowing what her fellow Apostles — her brothers and sisters — were thinking. She could only hope the girl would take up her mantle and lead them well, one way or another.
Lately, something had felt off.
Ever since she announced her retirement, she had sensed the others avoiding her, secretly working on something behind her back. They were planning something — leaving out the most senior Apostle among them.
At a time like this, "recruiting talent and training a successor" made an excellent excuse to postpone her retirement.
Rubshi set down her tea and lifted her face toward the window. Her eyes held nothing — only black — but she knew what lay above it: a sky so thick with stars it looked ready to spill over.
Peculiar eyes that saw what others could not.
And yet even those eyes had their limits. She could see the magic flowing through a person's body, but nothing deeper. The heart remained invisible.
That was what frustrated her, and so she gazed endlessly at the sky.
"Haaaaah..."
Mid-meal, Ryly yawned so wide his jaw cracked. Sugar, who had been watching from across the table, slipped a finger into that open mouth. He started to close around it — then realized what was happening and jerked backward in a panic.
"Gah— what the hell are you doing?!"
"Sleepy?"
"Can't you tell just by looking?"
He had spent the entire night hunting monsters to fill the pages of his grimoire, and had barely slept at all. Ryly was prickly on a good day. Sleeplessness made it worse.
"Didn't sleep well last night? I wonder why. Hmm?" Sugar asked it innocently enough, then narrowed her eyes and let only the corner of her mouth curl up. "Couldn't sleep 'cause you were thinking about me?"
"Give me a break."
There she goes again.
Ryly ignored her and stood. He was a foolish boy who had already bent the entire course of his life around thoughts of Sugar — and still insisted on pretending otherwise.
Sugar, who had long since finished her soup and been waiting, rose and followed. Neither of them needed to say it. They were headed to the same place.
The attic at the very top of the orphanage.
It was used for storage, so they had shoved the clutter aside far enough for several children to fit. Their own little hideout. Sunlight from a small window made the space feel snug and warm.
If they left the window open, a cool autumn breeze drifted in. It was October already. Her memories had come back in the height of summer — time really did fly.
When she became conscious of it again and began organizing the flow of her magic, she found Ryly staring at her.
"Tommy, what is it?"
Sugar still did not know Ryly's real name. She did not even know he was hiding one. She had spoken a name you could hear anywhere, ordinary as dirt.
Hearing it left Ryly with a vague discomfort. He couldn't say why. It just did.
He pressed the unwelcome feeling down and opened his mouth.
"We never did get to talk about it. What happened at the factory. Your current level. All of that."
"Did we?"
That day — the day he had bolted as if fleeing for his life after Sugar declared her tastes. He had originally gone to find her so they could go back over what had happened at the factory together.
Only today had that become possible. Ryly set a pebble he had picked up somewhere down on the floor.
"Here. Put magic into it without touching it."
"I'm seriously terrible at that..."
Sugar could manage the manipulation of magic inside her own body well enough, but external manipulation was another matter entirely. Either ridiculously weak or ridiculously strong — she had no control over the intensity either way.
"You'd better do it by the window, just to be safe."
The window was already open. Sugar set the stone on the sill and poured magic into it.
"..."
A long moment passed. The stone did not so much as twitch.
"...Are you actually putting any force into that?"
The instant he asked, the pebble sliced through the air with a sharp whiiish and shot away in a dead-straight line. In the next breath it was gone, vanished without a trace.
"..."
"See? This is what I mean."
"...That's a serious problem."
Ryly had been able to manipulate magic freely from the very beginning, so he had no idea how to guide her through this.
To advance to Stage 3, you had to complete Stage 2 perfectly first.
Magic power can be converted into spells through processes such as incantations and gestures.
What was magic, anyway? It was the act of using magic power as a resource to manifest phenomena that did not normally exist in this world. You processed the magic inside your body and output it outward.
But Sugar struggled just to push raw, unprocessed magic outside herself — skipping every step of the process entirely. That was what worried him.
...Her magic's nature is just too bizarre.
The moment it was released from her body, it tried to dissolve into the air. All magic had that property, but Sugar's was especially severe.
To control it properly, you had to calculate the amount that would dissolve into the air versus the amount that would actually move an object, and pour in force accordingly. That could only be learned by feel.
In other words, it was going to take a long time.
"Let's put this aside for now. This time, let's verify what we did at the factory."
"The thing where the magic was mine but you were the one controlling it?"
The day Sugar's magic had poured out on its own and sent the looms and everything else floating through the air. She hadn't known how to control it, so Ryly had taken her hand and manipulated it for her.
It should have been impossible. They had done it anyway.
Ordinarily, to manipulate an object already under someone else's magical influence, you had to overpower them with even greater magic and seize control. It had worked just by holding hands.
"Hmm... I'll just try wrapping it in magic for now."
The pebble was long gone, so they rummaged through the storage and pulled out something suitable. Ryly's favorite stubby pencil.
"Hey... why that of all things..."
"I won't blow it up. And I think this'll be good for testing."
And so he concentrated, and released his magic.
"...Did it work?"
"I think so."
Sugar held out her palm. Ryly took her hand, still looking dubious. Something flowed through their joined hands.
Come to think of it, it had been the same at the factory. Back then Sugar's magic had been spinning so wildly his hand had been burning hot, so he hadn't really noticed.
"This... I think it's going to work again."
He focused on the pencil.
Imagine it floating — and it floated. Imagine it going left — and it went left. Right — and it went right. It moved exactly as he willed.
"It's working well. Try writing something."
That was why Sugar had picked a pencil on purpose. Ryly scrawled an "R" on a newspaper spread across the floor, and the pencil moved beautifully.
"Ooh."
Then another word appeared.
idiot
"Change it to 'Sugar the Great.'"
Sugar gave his hand a wicked little knead, so he wrote it, however grudgingly. If you had to describe the result, it came out something like Suuugaaar the Greeeat — forced and dragged along against its will. But he did as he was told.
"Good. I like it."
"This is so annoying..."
The moment Ryly pulled his hand away, the pencil froze in midair. Then it dropped to the floor with a little tap.
"It is pretty amazing, though."
Sugar's hand had been the one holding the pencil, but you could say Ryly was the one making that hand move.
Sugar picked up the fallen pencil and turned it this way and that. Watching her, Ryly tried to put his impressions in order.
It didn't feel like I was just seizing control.
It was as if he and Sugar had become one. As if their magic flows had merged.
Was it because they had exchanged magic before? Or simply because of her peculiar nature?
No way of knowing.
He looked down at her while running through the theories. She had the pencil perched on her philtrum and was going poo-poo like a little horn, perfectly at ease. He had wanted to ask what she thought of all this, but the sight was so absurd he forgot.
"Doesn't any of this strike you as weird?"
"It is weird, sure. But is it that important for learning magic? I honestly wouldn't know."
"..."
Sugar was unmoved. And she was right, in fairness. Figuring out how the proxy control was even possible mattered less than getting Sugar able to manipulate magic herself. That was the priority.
So how was he supposed to teach her?
He had to get this hopeless girl all the way to Stage 3, make her study, and send her to magic school.
Feeling somehow like a parent, Ryly sighed at how far they still had to go.
If only we had a wand...
A wand changed everything — the proficiency of magical operation, the precision of control. And a mage without a wand wasn't even considered a mage.
Easy spells and basic magic manipulation like this were possible without one, but anything beyond that required a wand as a matter of course.
They had no way of getting one, though. Wand shops were full of the things, but the two of them had no money.
The wand Rubshi had tried to give them flickered through his mind, but the thought soured at once and he dismissed it.
That kind of thing. I'll get one with my own power.
He was frowning, so Sugar sidled up to him, soft as anything.
"...Want to go out for a bit?"
"What? Go where, all of a sudden?"
When he asked, thrown by the non sequitur, she just smiled. She was going for bright and refreshing, but there was a distinctly sly edge to it.
"For a change of pace."
He had no idea why she had to say it with that little uheheh of a laugh.