A Secret Lesson for Two (1)

From long ago, Levian had seen straight through to the root of magic with a rare ability called Clairvoyance.

The moment he stepped out of the ancient hollow, a surveillance circle so carefully buried that it was ordinarily all but impossible to notice leapt into view at a single glance.

A status window, it seemed, was not limited to checking his own condition.

A familiar method.

The translucent letters that had risen without warning before his eyes resembled the record notebooks of his childhood. Desperate to win his tutor's approval no matter what, he had mastered every sort of magic circle and set them down that way—strengths and weaknesses, improvements and countermeasures. Later his teacher had found them and torn the pages to shreds, calling it a waste of time. Seeing that old format again after so long, he was certain the display was drawing on his own memories to put the information up.

So the Creators' magic has no limit?

Clairvoyance let him see through a spell's Mystery and its shape, and still a circle he had never encountered could only be read as speculation. A working as tangled as the ones he had corrected inside the ancient hollow would have taken him several minutes at least to analyze in full. He could not deny how useful this system, handed down by the ancients, really was. It cut short the tedious work of turning a thought into theory, and it even appended evaluations full of opinions he had never asked for, as if the woman from the hollow were trailing along at his side.

B grade? The alphabet ranks were abolished. I know that much. Is the Administrator's knowledge so old that it was entered wrong?

The grades in use at the academy now were finer than that: Basic, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and so on. At the thought, the Administrator flinched and hurriedly corrected the window.

Corrected in real time. That much, at least, was certain: a great part of the system depended on Levian's memory and knowledge.

Not only the surveillance spell.

He let his eyes drift, the way one might glance without purpose at a magic frame on the wall, and a new window rose.

...What is she even doing?

He had eaten and come out, then stopped by the library as usual, meaning to finish the books he still had not read. A nasty, clinging feeling had settled on him, as if something were staring, and he had wondered what it was. Temporary Professor Ivy. He could not say since when, but she had apparently been tailing him in that damp, secretive way the whole time. Without the system, he would have missed it.

Professors really have nothing to do.

He felt nothing in particular. Only the vague assumption that yet another absurdity had been stacked on top of the rest, the same as always. His magic was not improving, so they had probably stuck a powerless professor on him to dig around behind his back.

She won't last. She'll drop off soon enough.

It was hardly the first time. They would most likely decide he was a spy for the Eastern Union, or that he lived a dissolute life. In truth, Levian's days came to nothing more than wandering the school with time to spare, analyzing magic he was seeing for the first time, or hunting materials in the library. The only thing that passed for unusual was staring at a wall like an idiot and working a magic-circle puzzle, and he had finished that a little while ago as well.

"Haaahm..."

The yawn was short. Levian set his eyes back on the book he had open. A History of the Western Union: Concerning the Ancient Mages.

Anyone else would already have been busy trying out a power just gained, or hurrying to finish the task the Administrator had set. Curiosity came first.

That Administrator seemed awfully glad to see me.

A hidden space, made by mages with power enough to create any magic at all—and even to tamper with reality itself. A being great enough to guard a place like that would not have reacted that way for nothing. It was too soon to be sure, but no book he turned over held a single line about that space. There was a strong chance it was a kind of ruin that had never once been found in all of history.

An ancient ruin I was the first to find. The professors who hate me would faint.

Magic had gone stiff and settled. Among what remained, the forgotten spells of the past were valuable past any easy measure. Of course—

Well. I don't intend to tell anyone else.

The Administrator would plainly not welcome that either, and so Levian's thoughts slid, of their own accord, toward finding a new friend.

A thin buzz crawled over him. Someone was watching.

"Hm."

He knew perfectly well whose eyes they were. He shut the feeling out and took up a book ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he had already ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠found. How to Make Friends for Life.

What, exactly, was a friend? Even he, who could not use magic, had not been wholly without them, or without people who came to him. At first it had been those ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠drawn to his face, or students who approached with one purpose or another.

Most of his peers left before long. They expected whatever they liked and left whenever they liked, and they were remarkably consistent about it. Among them there had also been plenty of women past thirty, old enough to be called aunties, with a wide gap in years—teachers, parents of other students, and the like. Most of them were married.

It had been a tempting offer. If only she had not been breathing into his ear to an unsettling degree, and tickling his shoulder with her fingertips.

Ah. If I had taken that friend request then, I wouldn't be stuck on this now.

The trouble was that he had been young, and he had said the wrong thing. Her face had been far too red and her temperature far too high, and he had only worried she might be ill.

She seemed to have taken it as a refusal. Asking a stranger to be one's friend must have been a hard thing. Every one of them spat threats and vanished in a huff. Going back now to ask them again would almost certainly get him nowhere, and Levian was not stupid enough to hang himself on a hopeless cause. So he meant to study, through How to Make Friends for Life, the method of making a true one.

To begin with, how far does a friend even go?

It was stifling. The book said a true friend was someone whose back you could trust with your own, whatever the situation.

If I can solve a problem on my own, does that mean I can never make a true friend?

It also said that a being who eased body and mind, and made you glad simply by being beside you, was a true friend as well.

Then can a cat be a true friend, too?

He would rather have been told to analyze a circle, or to make a new spell. That would have been easier. He was still tilting his head over a problem with no answer he could reach, turning it over and over, when a tiny call reached him from the side—smaller than the sound of an ant being stepped on and dying.

"L-Levian...!"

What now. He turned his head, not bothering to hide the annoyance.

"C-coming out like this today means you've a-accepted my proposal... right...?!"

A pale-pink bob lay softly across her eyes, enough to make anyone looking feel stifled on her behalf. Her frame was so small she could easily have been mistaken for a lost child from some nearby elementary magic school. It was Temporary Professor Ivy, who had been tailing him in secret all this while, releasing Spirit Form and showing herself.

"Ah."

"I-I'm right, aren't I? Th-that's why you came out, isn't it? Y-you didn't forget, did you...?"

He had forgotten. The lecture met only every other day, and he had wiped it from his mind entirely.

"You haven't been waiting this whole time."

"O-of course. Of c-course I have! It's a promise with a student, so I can answer wh-whenever you...!"

Basic Mystery Theory, a required subject of the failing class, compulsory for any student in the bottom ten percent. As the only one with a score of zero, Levian was required to take it as well. What he lacked, though, was not theory, or the proper frame of mind. It was simply the limit of a body that could not use mana. The trouble was that he had answered every test and every question Temporary Professor Ivy set, without a moment's hesitation.

Once could be chance, and twice could still happen. She had let it pass. Then, because he had only been trying to end the class quickly, it had not taken her long to realize the results were his actual ability. She had been so excited she called him aside alone and started in about extra lessons. Faced with a tiny girl—impossible to believe she was in her late twenties—bouncing where she stood, he could not bring himself to answer, coldly, that he did not want to. Children were irrational, willful things. He had worried she might latch onto him and become a nuisance, and so he had thought, complacently, she'll forget soon enough, and fled with a promise to talk again later.

That, of all moments, was when Professor Ivy, still clinging, had set one promise.

This time he had no excuse.

"Th... then are you accepting the offer to take you as my d-disciple? Like I said, the way I see it, L-Levian, you have potential. You might even be more thorough with theory than I am, so once you just get used to magic..."

How many days had she been waiting? Temporary Professor Ivy, brightening and bouncing where she stood, looked pitiful enough to stir sympathy. Of course, the one who felt that pity was not Levian. It was only the thought of the Administrator, prying furtively along his line of sight.

"No."

"...Hhk!"

Levian's eyes stayed half-lidded. Unlike the first time he had found the mouth of the hidden hollow, the look on his face was plainly bored.