Even a Mastermind Has a Story (4)
Time went on in its steady way, and before I knew it, my seventh birthday had come. By Eustonia's reckoning of age, seven years had passed since I was born—short, if one cared to call it short, and long enough if one did not.
I carried the memories of a past life. Even so, live six years in a little kid's body and the self you once were is bound to thin. The researcher I had been, vast ambitions and all, had long since folded those ambitions away, and all that remained was a complacent little fogey of seven, sitting on the sofa and watching television.
"Wonder when he's coming."
"What is it you await?"
I had planted myself at the desk to wait for Folton, and Arthes, who had been watching, chose that moment to speak.
What a kid on her birthday waits for is obvious enough. Cake, and a present.
"A birthday present. Maybe he'll give me a Spirit Stone."
"You mean to take the Spirit Stones and bring forth spirits in great number?"
"Well, yeah."
"I look forward to it."
Arthes was hoping that if the stones came my way, I might feed it new spirits. Fair enough. More than a year had passed since I first used Spirit Creation, and I had yet to produce another Supreme-Grade Spirit. All those repeated creations had taught me was that Supreme-Grade and Advanced-Grade Spirits turned up with miserable rarity.
And so Arthes remained as it was, having consumed seven Advanced-Grade Spirits and thirteen Intermediate-Grade Spirits—more than five hundred Spirit Stones spent along the way.
"There you are, Junia. You've waited a long time!"
Speak of the devil. No sooner had we finished talking of presents than Folton appeared, a gift box slung over one shoulder and, in his other hand, a whipped-cream cake crowned with seven candles. He must have made it himself; the strawberries were all different sizes, set on crooked.
"I didn't wait that long."
"Of course not. Junia's a grown-up sort of child. You bore it admirably, I'm sure."
Folton set the cake down, laid a hand on my head, and stroked it as he spoke.
Grown-up child or not, a child was still a child. It felt like being handled as one, and it soured my mood considerably. I played the child when it served me, but that did not mean I welcomed the treatment.
"......What's the gift?"
"Go on, open it."
"Okay."
I knocked Folton's hand off my head and went to the box. Whether it was a kindness, meant to let me open it easily, a single pull on the ribbon undid every cord wrapped around it.
"Hah......"
What in the world was inside? I drew one deep breath, then lifted the lid.
What lay within was a lab coat of pure white. At a glance it was the twin of the one Folton wore, but look closer and the size had been taken in to fit me.
"......A lab coat?"
I asked, holding up the coat he had given me. Folton nodded.
"You don't like it when I give you dolls."
"Yeah."
"So I had one made just like Dad's. Junia is a proper assistant now."
"Thanks."
Unlike in the beginning, I truly was Folton's assistant now. I put on the coat and turned a slow circle where I stood. The cool, close fit of it pleased me more than I had expected.
"How do I look?"
"It suits you."
With that, Folton held up a small hand mirror. In the glass stood a little girl with blonde hair and golden eyes, dressed in a lab coat. What came off her was less a researcher's presence than an unmistakable cuteness. Even so, it felt a little like doing research, and I liked it well enough on my own terms.
"Mm. Mm. Not bad."
"And from now on, when you use Spirit Stones, you ask Dad for permission first."
"......"
"......"
The words landed the instant I meant to offer my opinion, and I flinched before I could stop myself.
As expected. There were no perfect secrets in the world.
An assistant's work comes in many forms. Brewing coffee. Cleaning. Helping with the research.
I, of course, did nothing but the last of these. I was not merely an assistant; I also held the exclusive station of only daughter, and Dr. Folton—a hopeless fool for that daughter—had no choice but to let it pass.
"Is there truly no way?"
In any case, seen from the post of Dr. Folton's sole assistant, his condition of late had been strange. He spent his days glued to the telephone, steeped in anxiety, unable to get a proper hold on his research, because one of the projects he had carried for so long had sat in the same place for years and yielded nothing at all.
"......I understand. I must beg this of you."
"What's going on?"
"It seems the answer is no."
That research, of course, was the matter of the Creation Spirit, the draft of which he had shown me two years prior. The hypothesis that Creation Spirit Irelion had existed at the dawn of things, and that Spirit Stones were the remains of that Creation Spirit. To verify what he had built, Folton needed at last to examine a Primal Spirit Stone—and he had still not been granted permission to do so.
A Primal Spirit Stone was a precious thing, granted. Even so, one of them sat on display in a museum. More than that, the paramount charge laid upon every nation of Eustonia was the study and proof of spirits. If there were an hour when the halls stood empty, Folton stepping in for a brief look should hardly have been a problem.
"A Primal Spirit Stone? They'll put one on display in a museum, but an investigation is out of the question?"
"Primal Spirit Stones are under strict control. It can't be helped."
"So you're just going to watch this happen and give up?"
Folton shook his head.
It was the meaningful research he had first boasted of to me with his own mouth. Having come all the way to the end, he would not want to abandon it. I was certain of that.
"In its place, they say the Spirit Society's investigation team will examine it themselves and let us know."
"They've been saying that for months."
"......They have."
"I don't understand why something so simple has to be dragged out this long."
"It's nice, agreeing with Junia for the first time in a while."
Folton smiled bitterly and stroked my head.
On any other day I would have flown into a rage and knocked his hand away, but this time I could not. He looked far too worn. Just now, he seemed to need comfort, even from a thing as small as this.
"You going to publish the paper?"
"Well. I don't know what I ought to do."
"Why not just submit it?"
The verification of the Primal Spirit Stone—the most important part—was unfinished, true. But honestly, the paper itself was complete past the point of finding fault. I could see almost nothing in it that would become a problem if he published it as it stood. If anything, the loss was Folton remaining shackled here, unable to move on to other work.
"You mean I should simply publish the paper?"
"Yeah. Aside from the Primal Spirit Stone, you've already done everything you can. And to people out in the world, it isn't even that important a point, so—"
When the Society's findings came in later, he could append them. There was no reason to stay tangled up with the Primal Spirit Stone right this moment.
"So that's how Junia sees it."
"Am I wrong?"
"Even so. The world is not so easily bent as that."
I rather thought I knew that better than he did. I was the one who had been shot and died for it, in a past life. A different world, perhaps, but the essence of human beings did not differ so greatly. The world was a place that pointed its finger and called you a madman for no reason but that your opinion was not like the others'.
"Still. If it were me, I think I would have tried."
"Why do you think so?"
"......"
At least, I believed my past self had been that way. Even if the world would not understand me, I had driven my claims through to the end. Well—I failed, in the end. But aren't the small failures simply the fertilizer of growth?
"Children these days are so mature."
The hand stroking my head grew warmer, more earnest. He seemed to have brightened a little, so I caught that hand and pulled it away. Being treated like a child was unpleasant, all the same.
"Not children these days. It's because I'm an adult."
"Yes, yes."
"So. You publishing the paper?"
"If my daughter tells me I must, then I must. What else am I to do?"
Folton lifted the sheaf of papers and looked at me. The same gaze as a moment before, and yet it felt a little different now.
"Mother?"
"No. It's nothing."
With that, he turned his eyes to an empty envelope. And beyond a single weighted remark, the answer came back in the affirmative.
"I'll publish the paper, just as Junia says. The review will likely take a fair amount of time, but you may look forward to it."